8ball
Decolonise colons!
They don't have a single confirmed case of internal transmission yet as far as I know.
Is this the most cautious response we've seen?
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They don't have a single confirmed case of internal transmission yet as far as I know.
Is this the most cautious response we've seen?
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
I also read, maybe on here, that they are spending way more per head than we are (not sure how that stands after the budget). I don't see johnson/whitty going for anything like this yet, but having a common border means this ramps the pressure up a bit more.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Do you think they are reporting accurately Yoss?
Yossarian
⏭️
I think so - in Hong Kong, at least, medical authorities seem very strong-willed and would be unlikely to go along with any government attempt at a cover-up.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
They also have experience and infrastructure from SARS. There was a piece on the World Service about it earlier today - quite how nasty it was seems to have passed me by at the time.
bimble
floofy
BBC News - BBC News Special, Coronavirus Pandemic
Live coverage as the UK government updates the public on its coronavirus plan.
Supine
Newt Member
Science stuff starts 17 or so mins in. I kind of hate to admit it but i do get it now, why the gov response is as it is.BBC News - BBC News Special, Coronavirus Pandemic
Live coverage as the UK government updates the public on its coronavirus plan.www.bbc.co.uk
Yeah, I watched it for an hour. Impressed by the science guys.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
It seems far too reliant on behavioural psychology to me. It feels likefar too much of a gamble, implementing measures at precisely the right time, when existing evidence seems to show the quicker you do social distancing the better.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Science stuff starts 17 or so mins in. I kind of hate to admit it but i do get it now, why the gov response is as it is.BBC News - BBC News Special, Coronavirus Pandemic
Live coverage as the UK government updates the public on its coronavirus plan.
Yeah, if you understand that, and the fact that is it supported by the Chief Medical Officers & governments of the other 3 nations of the UK, you can get over the knee-jerk action of blaming Johnson for inaction, because he's cunt.
Of course, he's a cunt, but he knows he's been handed a fucking red hot potato, which could blow up in his face, hence him reaching out for cross-party talks, he's a cunt, but he's not daft.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I think its pretty daft in a way to reveal the that 'science based approach' is currently thinking we are 4 weeks behind Italy. I mean thats not daft if they are right, but if they are wrong then everyone is going to know about it and have a really simple measure of the error.
You can stick to your line about consensus but the more other countries diverge from what we are doing, the more the bad stages of the pandemic will be associated with Johnsons regime and the things they did and didnt do, and their choice of timing. Scotland is already starting to take its own measures with their own timing, and we are not at all privy to how much consensus between the devolved administrations and UK government there is in the meetings themselves.
Maybe their data and models and assumptions are all really good and most of my points will therefore be irrelevant. But they have taken a risk by so clearly taking their own distinct approach, and by giving us enough info about their timing assumptions that we will be able to tell if they've made a catastrophic error.
Yossarian
⏭️
Yep, the outbreak in Hong Kong was terrifying, by all accounts - there was this mystery illness and nobody was sure what was happening for months, it later turned out that authorities in mainland China had been hushing up the outbreak for months - much like today, if they'd shared information right from the start, the outbreak wouldn't have been nearly so bad. More than 400 medical workers in Hong Kong got SARS and at least nine of them died, so I think they'd be very resistant to any attempt now to keep the truth from the public.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Deference is dead, I shall take an evidence based approach by judging how accurate their timing estimates are and what level of disease burden we end up with compared to other countries. I can only do it with hindsight, so I am just setting the scene without knowing what will actually play out in it.
MrSki
Who am I to say you're wrong
A large part of the population have been wearing face masks before the outbreak started.
Yossarian
⏭️
Yeah, when I saw that there were massive queues etc. in Hong Kong for masks that don't even protect against the virus properly I thought people were being kind of foolish, but turned out that since so many infected people don't have symptoms, having almost everybody wear face masks in public at all times apparently does a lot to make the outbreak less severe.
Fez909
toilet expert
miss direct
misfungled
Schools and universities shut in Turkey for two weeks. And only one confirmed case.
Supine
Newt Member
It’s easy to sit and be a judge after the fact. Some people have to make the big decisions while the situation develops.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Portugal by cut and paste:
78 cases officially confirmed but one of my Portuguese neighbours , who is tbf slightly barmy , told me there were 280. I’ll take that with a punch of salt .
7:42 pm - Government will decree closing schools from Monday
Some universities have closed
one strike called off and the same union cancels May Day celebrations
Some beaches and markets also closing
Football League suspends games and training indefinitely.
First case if someone diagnosed and cured
78 cases officially confirmed but one of my Portuguese neighbours , who is tbf slightly barmy , told me there were 280. I’ll take that with a punch of salt .
7:42 pm - Government will decree closing schools from Monday
Some universities have closed
one strike called off and the same union cancels May Day celebrations
Some beaches and markets also closing
Football League suspends games and training indefinitely.
First case if someone diagnosed and cured
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes they do, and there are many hard and difficult decisions to make. But the press arent sitting around assuming that the government have got everything right, and neither am I.
There are a bunch of different approaches to morale and stuff like that, and its probably been clear for a month who I was likely to not be in tune with here on such matters. Although I will say that despite my gobby nature, I am actually taking many of my cues from what the mood is like more broadly. If its a week where the press and people here are questioning things quite strongly, I'm going to throw my lot in. If we end up in some especially bleak period where people decide to focus everything in a very different way, and put the blame to one side for a bit, I wont choose to spend all my time out on a limb still moaning about Johnson etc.
Given that its quite obvious now that telling people all about certain future steps they might want them to take is a deliberate part of the plan (today is at least the third time its happened), I do wonder if their behavioural science approah is also including something for those who are skeptical about the governments proposed timetable for action. They are giving people enough info to start doing certain things early if they want to, I assume they are sending deliberate signals that are expected to start influencing some percentage of behaviour earlier than their timetable strictly suggests.
I suppose its also possible that they are dragging their heels in regards mass gatherings because they'd rather those were cancelled by other means than central government decree. eg local decisions, or organisations own risk assessments. Or in the case of many sports, if I were them I would be assuming that most of those sports will eventually end up cancelled anyway, because as soon as participants in the sports teams themselves start falling ill, leagues etc quickly become unviable to continue.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
But "the science" doesn't say one thing, there are a variety of different views and all those views are political.
The idea that it is as simple as "respecting their expertise" reveals an extremely naive view of both scientific and political views
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elbows
Well-Known Member
elbows - perhaps my use of words was not elegant enough, but what I was saying is pretty much what the WHO DG said just yesterday:
But the UK government are not taking that approach, they are talking about large proportions of the population getting infected, herd immunity, and stuff like that.
We have moved out of the containment phase. It would be one thing for you to hope the UK might still pull off containment if thats what the authorities were still saying they were trying to do, but its quite another when they have moved on and are trying to inform the public of the future picture that involves lots of infections and nothing like full contract tracing and cluster isolation at all.
Fez909
toilet expert
Yes, the 'plan' is basically: We're all fucked, so please, please stay at home if you're sick and your gran/dad/neighbour might not die due to lack of beds. Eventually, we'll have all had it, and it's gonna be awfully sad, but then we can move on.
Not very reassuring.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
And I don't think it's particularly politically tenable especially if other countries successfully minimise outbreaks through early social distancing.
elbows
Well-Known Member
And the thing is, that unless some funny business happens with the UK Covid-19 death statistics, it will probably be possible to test more strongly the idea that we could possibly be as long as 4 weeks behind Italy, within a matter of days. I know others will try to do that now using number of cases, but I mostly moved on to death (and ICU numbers in countries where that data is published) as the statistics to follow, so I shall apply that to UK-Italy comparisons too.
