Coronavirus 2020 - What can I do?

[big mervyn]

An MCB old girl in a spot of bother over in Jockland!

Nay bother, one rule for them; had it been anyone on this board it would be resignation time Monday 9.00am.

Administrators and technocrats don't resign, they are the New [pseudo-Calvinist] Elect of national and international pen pushing.

At least she's had the decency to hide her Norn Irn accent and adopt an affected Embra one Strange how BBCNI overlooked the local angle on this one

[big mervyn]

... and I wonder if HRH the Prince of Wales will also be getting a visit from Scottish plod?

[big mervyn]

You have to applaud Boris's British pluck and selfless work ethic. It's time IDS put those shiftless idle b@stards whiling their hours away on ventilators to work.

[Amiga500]

I liked the cut of Kier Starmer in the run up to the Labour election (that all went off pretty quietly, didn't it?) but the first headline today is him criticising the government for its mistakes. If that's his best opening comment, shame on him. If it's an out of context line that the papers have chosen to emphasise, to make a story, shame on them. The simple truth is that we could never have been fully prepared for this; mistakes are inevitable at all levels; people will die who might have been saved if this or that had been different, etc etc.

Sorry Solid, but Boris and his bunch of clowns have made this 10* times worse than it needed to be. I include the arrogant assholes from Imperial College that flat out refused to learn anything from other countries and instead insisted on using a basic flu model for attempting to drive decisions.

Boris, Cummings etc were more concerned with the economy initially. Not helped by the Imperial lot fumbling so awfully and significantly downplaying risk.

One glance at what the Chinese were doing - more or less stopping a Trillion dollar economy to fight the virus - should have underlined just how serious it was before it got to Europe. Did Boris and the assholes think China arrived at that decision lightly?!?!

Why were all schools not told to immediately abandon ski trips to Italy when it kicked off there?
Where was everyone travelling from an infected country not told to self-isolate for 2 weeks (and not just the symptomatic)?

Those two measures alone could have cut the current numbers in half by denying the thing anything like the same toe-hold in the country.


*could have made it a lot more than 10 times worse than it needed to be!

[solidarity]

I liked the cut of Kier Starmer in the run up to the Labour election (that all went off pretty quietly, didn't it?) but the first headline today is him criticising the government for its mistakes. If that's his best opening comment, shame on him. If it's an out of context line that the papers have chosen to emphasise, to make a story, shame on them. The simple truth is that we could never have been fully prepared for this; mistakes are inevitable at all levels; people will die who might have been saved if this or that had been different, etc etc.

Sorry Solid, but Boris and his bunch of clowns have made this 10* times worse than it needed to be. I include the arrogant assholes from Imperial College that flat out refused to learn anything from other countries and instead insisted on using a basic flu model for attempting to drive decisions.

Boris, Cummings etc were more concerned with the economy initially. Not helped by the Imperial lot fumbling so awfully and significantly downplaying risk.

One glance at what the Chinese were doing - more or less stopping a Trillion dollar economy to fight the virus - should have underlined just how serious it was before it got to Europe. Did Boris and the assholes think China arrived at that decision lightly?!?!

Why were all schools not told to immediately abandon ski trips to Italy when it kicked off there?
Where was everyone travelling from an infected country not told to self-isolate for 2 weeks (and not just the symptomatic)?

Those two measures alone could have cut the current numbers in half by denying the thing anything like the same toe-hold in the country.

*could have made it a lot more than 10 times worse than it needed to be!

I don't disagree that mistakes were made, and bad mistakes, mistakes that cost lives but that's not the point. We are jn a situation in which even the best of the experts disagree, as is shown by the different responses in different countries, each driven by 'experts'. With the best will in the world, today's wisdom is tomorrows folly. That's life. Maybe, in ten years time people will look back and say, Why were they so mad that they stayed isolated when they should have hugged each other and got to grips with the pain in a short sharp shock, killed off the weak and let the strong live? Did they not see that the second wave would be hugely worse than the first and that the social disruption would cause violent revolutions?'

My point is that Starmer should have been looking forward, rather than back, being constructive rather than carping. There will be time for recriminations, but now is not the time.

By the way, do you really want to hold China up as a model for social structures? Yes, they can do things that we can't do, but this also allows them to do things that anyone a liberal democracy must reject with a passion. Or do we have to say that strong social control works and that's the price we have to pay to be able to respond best to times like this that occur once a century.

Makes my head spin, Amiga, or maybe I'm coming down with something.

[big mervyn]

Sweden is very interesting. Their graph is slightly better than the UK's with much less restrictive measures. Most people are still at work and bars and restaurants are open. Mostly it's just the vulnerable who are self isolating.

[rumncoke]

Apply measures too soon and the public will in all probability ignore them either at the start or at the end thus rendering any measures useless in a non police state.

Rural communities seem to be less affected than Urban which is understandable because firstly there are more people and they mingle more often to enable the virus to spread.

Any measures only delay the spread they can't stop it because people become infected from those not showing infection , thus any measures employed are basically designed to enable the countries Health Service to cope while the health providers search for firstly suitable treatments and secondly vaccinations to prevent the disease especially in those most vulnerable to develop serious complications .

Economics has very little to do with start or delay of measures other than the fact for most people only live at best 3 months from poverty -- and successful non socialising requires to be in place for at least 12 weeks -- given the timeline of the illness.

The models that science use are not perfect and hindsight is the food of those who think they had the answers.

[BR]

Hope you're not all going stir crazy, as I live in a small village and have not been into either Montrose or Arbroath for almost a month, I'm dodging most of the worries. People in our village sadly seem to think it's ok to carry on as normal as they think we are immune, social distancing seems to mean less than a couple of centimetres, not metres, we manage to get out for daily exercise by waiting till they've all gone home. Built a pond in the garden, shifted 2.25 tons of soil, so no need for a gym membership......not bad for a 70 year old lol.

Good man TB. Keep your head down and make sure you and yours get to the other side. If people are coming a bit close, I usually start a bit of coughing fit. They usually remembrrbtheir manners.

[big mervyn]

Hope you're not all going stir crazy, as I live in a small village and have not been into either Montrose or Arbroath for almost a month, I'm dodging most of the worries. People in our village sadly seem to think it's ok to carry on as normal as they think we are immune, social distancing seems to mean less than a couple of centimetres, not metres, we manage to get out for daily exercise by waiting till they've all gone home. Built a pond in the garden, shifted 2.25 tons of soil, so no need for a gym membership......not bad for a 70 year old lol.

Good man TB. Keep your head down and make sure you and yours get to the other side. If people are coming a bit close, I usually start a bit of coughing fit. They usually remembrrbtheir manners.

My seasonal reaction to tree pollen should put the wind up a few people.

[rumncoke]

With the tourist market kicked to hell for about 3 -4 years --

The time might be right for the NHS to lease a hotel or two to unblock the "--Bed-Block " using the hotels to provide a miminium care facility .

There is little difference in the room size between hotel and the Ulster hospital rooms -- tile the floors, with glass panel doors provide the electrics for the the monitors and panic buttons and bottle oxygen for emergencies.

Some Hotels have gyms to provide physio and habilitation

[Tender]

Maybe when this is over people will realise the hype surrounding sport, baking and fecking ballroom dancing is ridiculous.

Maybe lazy journalists will ask why the British Government put the economy before the lives of NHS staff, care workers, teachers and the general population.

It is a fact the Government ignored WHO advice to TEST TEST TEST.
It’s mid April and they are still testing less than 10,000 per day. In Germany, they are testing ten times as many people and as a result their Covid deaths stand around 3000. The UK official CoVid deaths passed 10000 yesterday and that figure is a manipulated government lie. It’s only the CoVid deaths which occur in hospitals. No care home, nursing home or domestic deaths are included in that number. Senior scientists say we could probably double that figure and be nearer the true number of UK CoVid deaths. So that’s not a mistake, that’s a government lie which is ongoing.
So that’s Germany’s 3000 deaths, against the UK’s figure of close to 20000. No Russian Linesman is going to fix that.

So testing works. Germany has proven it works but heh..we’ll fight them on the beaches, we’re all in this together!!!

The NHS do not have the necessary PPE. Doctors in intensive care units are running out of the necessary drugs to keep people alive. We don’t have enough Doctors, Nurses, Hospital Beds, Ventilators, drugs or equipment because our beloved UK Government cut the NHS to the bone and ignored a pandemic warning, not just from January of this year. They were warned three years ago a global pandemic was an inevitability but sure ‘We’ll be OK, we’re British..Dunkirk Spirit and sure we’ll all have tea’

FFS wake up. The Government didn’t cause CoVid19, but their actions and lack of actions, in the face of advice warnings and cold hard evidence, has been shameful. They’ve compounded that shame by continually lying to cover up their mistakes.
Tens of thousands of people in the UK will die needlessly because of decisions the UK Government made.

Can we ignore that? Or choose not to think about it? Maybe it’s easier to imagine that the nice clown like Boris Buffoon wouldn’t lie to ‘His People’ ...

[Setanta]

Well said Tender.

[big mervyn]

Welcome back Tender. I think tbere were a few concerns here about your recent absence after your last posts. Are you over the lurgi?

[Tender]

Welcome back Tender. I think tbere were a few concerns here about your recent absence after your last posts. Are you over the lurgi?

Alive and kicking Merv. Still not 100% but 100% sure the UK Government’s monetarist policies will result in the needless deaths of thousands

Apologists may choose to ignore the fact to support their narrative of a caring Government, but when the Govt trot out HRH Lizzie to support their lies, we can see how desperate they are to maintain their message.

[rumncoke]

So the Spanish and Italians have Monetarist policies

Explain how testing reduces a death rate ? It may reduce spread but then the major means of reducing spread is to reduce social contact .

no i would conclude the lower death rate is due possibly to the better provision of ventilators and possibly the lack of post mortems then they could of course attribute death to different causes instead of covid 19-- respiratory failure -- heart failure or an multiple reasons other than covid 19 . eg many years ago my mother died of pneumonia which was a result of having cancer thus those who had an existing aliment before acquiring covid 19 maybe recorded as dying from the existing ailment rather than covid 19.

All that glitters is not gold.

Every Government is to some extent is massaging it's figures for a variety of reasons.