#COVID19 | Page 414 | Vital Football

#COVID19

Old Red Fart said:
Couldn't resist the temptation strettea, anything for a stir some days. Even so I have an opinion on those figures which may be totally wrong of course. I've watched some of the UK stuff on our TV and in particular the sight of some of your beaches some of which looked full of bodies and also scenes of Wollaton which would have our police in quick left me with the sense that too many UK folk have not taken the virus seriously enough, and that includes the authorities as well.

You seem to have a sensible view on most things on here, anything to add ?
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I'll add, as I told you last time, that the beaches remained open and we were told - with a smirk - that "sunbathing is back!" by the Health Secretary.

Yes there are idiots but please stop blaming the British people for killing ourselves.

To do so literally suggests we are the stupidest nation on earth. We could all point at individuals who might fit that description but I don't think that's true on a national level. Do you?
 
Old Red Fart said:
Couldn't resist the temptation strettea, anything for a stir some days. Even so I have an opinion on those figures which may be totally wrong of course. I've watched some of the UK stuff on our TV and in particular the sight of some of your beaches some of which looked full of bodies and also scenes of Wollaton which would have our police in quick left me with the sense that too many UK folk have not taken the virus seriously enough, and that includes the authorities as well.

You seem to have a sensible view on most things on here, anything to add ?
Click to expand...
Also, they're might have been some transmission away from those beaches (probably was) but at undetectable levels.

I have seen no evidence of peaks in infection rates following those busy weekends either in Bournemouth, Woollaton or on a national level. Maybe we were lucky with that but it remains true that infection rates are low in a well ventilated, spaced, outdoor setting (in contrast to football stadia or horse racing stands). You can continue that to include the BLM protests. No spikes.

So I'm afraid you will have to stop blaming beach goers or those protesting against social injustice and point the finger of blame where it really belongs instead. Specifically, the government (with a mention for SAGE who I am not absolving of responsibility at this stage although their level of incompetence is still unknown).


That's not partisan by the way. I do hate this band of nincompoops - true - but the spikes, or absence thereof, is just data.
 
Oh dear itto it looks as though I've put the cat amongst the pigeons without knowing it. I didn't intend to but having gone this far perhaps you would like to offer a reasonable attempt at explaining the possible cause of why the UK has the worst figures in the world for deaths from this virus.
 
Old Red Fart said:
Oh dear itto it looks as though I've put the cat amongst the pigeons without knowing it. I didn't intend to but having gone this far perhaps you would like to offer a reasonable attempt at explaining the possible cause of why the UK has the worst figures in the world for deaths from this virus.
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Again?
 
In a nutshell:

Too late to lock down
PPE;
Ignoring Cygnus;
Lack of confidence in government advice;
The impact of Cummings' antics, deception and failure to be sacked by his puppet;
Care home fiasco;
Masks;
Testing
&
Tracing;
Mixed messaging;
SAGE
Right wing bellends sitting in all the big chairs.

For more information go back 400 pips and start reading through again.


This is easily contrasted with the countries who have done relatively well. I.e. those who had sufficient supplies of PPE by heeding the advice of their own planning exercise reports, those who protected vulnerable elderly citizens in care homes, those who had a proper policy on masks (and didn't go with anti-science bollocks just because they didn't have enough to go around), those who had a good testing programme and released the data to people who needed to know, those who locked down early to snuff out the ascendancy of infection, those who had a proper lockdown of sufficient duration to make the most dramatic rapid/dramatic change to the curve, those who had a good contact tracing system to suppress local outbreaks, those who had good clear messaging from trustworthy and competent leaders.


You don't even need to do all of those things. There is more than one way to skin a cat. But if you put so many bad decisions together then you end up with the worst body count and economic crisis of the worlds leading countries. Turns out that Believing in Britain sometimes isn't an adequate substitute for sound policy and competent leadership.
Does that help?
 
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Yes we have a denser population that some countries, etc. There are a few mitigating factors. However, to end up bottom of the heap is an unnecessary disgrace that brings shame and masses of personal and collective misery on our country.
 
For a start ORF, any time you have heard about a 'lockdown' or 'local lockdown measures' since the pubs re-opened, you have been tricked, because the pubs are still open everywhere.
You either lock everything down or you don't. It doesn't help stop the spread of a virus to kind of lockdown some things a little bit.
I've been told I can't have a neighbour in my garden, but also i can take everyone on my street to the nearest restaurant and get a government subsidized meal out. How do these measures stop coronavirus?
Its been like this from the start. Government decisions have been slow and ineffective in almost every area, and have been so half arsed as to be completely useless in practice.

As one small example,. I am having an operation next week and i'm supposed to be shielding.
Because the government wants people spending money in pubs, my housemate has to go back to work, even though the pub he is working in isn't safe from corona. I am being told i must quarantine but i can't expect the guy to lose his job on my behalf.

tl;dr Contradictory policy that doesn't make sense and is unnecessarily PR focused and confusing, as well as being ineffective is the reason for the UK's poor showing.

Sure, you can choose to blame individuals at the beach, but with problems on this huge a scale i think its reasonable to zoom out a bit and look at what the causes of that behaviour are and whether anything could have been done to predict/change said behaviour.
 
in_the_top_one said:
In a nutshell:

Too late to lock down
PPE;
Ignoring Cygnus;
Lack of confidence in government advice;
The impact of Cummings' antics, deception and failure to be sacked by his puppet;
Care home fiasco;
Masks;
Testing
&
Tracing;
Mixed messaging;
Right wing bellends sitting in all the big chairs.

For more information go back 400 pips and start reading through again.


This is easily contrasted with the countries who have done relatively well. I.e. those who had sufficient supplies of PPE by heeding the advice of their own planning exercise reports, those who protected vulnerable elderly citizens in care homes, those who had a proper policy on masks (and didn't go with anti-science bollocks just because they didn't have enough to go around), those who had a good testing programme and released the data to people who needed to know, those who locked down early to snuff out the ascendancy of infection, those who had a proper lockdown of sufficient duration to make the most dramatic rapid/dramatic change to the curve, those who had a good contact tracing system to suppress local outbreaks, those who had good clear messaging from trustworthy and competent leaders.


You don't even need to do all of those things. There is more than one way to skin a cat. But if you put so many bad decisions together then you end up with the worst body count and economic crisis of the worlds leading countries. Turns out that Believing in Britain sometimes isn't an adequate substitute for sound policy and competent leadership.
Does that help?
Click to expand...

I do think you need to add SAGE to that list!
 
Calvin Plummer said:
Initial advice was not great, nor was breaking lockdown rules...telling truth to power is never easy but it took them a while to get the hang of it.
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Largely agree from what we can see from here but it's still difficult to assess without knowing the full story. E.g. how much influence Cummings had as he sat in the room; whether disagreement in the committee was relayed accurately to ministers; whether the snippets we have heard were cherry picked from a broader conversation/report; and so on.
I certainly hope that lessons will have been learnt from this and that changes will be made. The nature of the committee having secret composition is important in some ways but damaging in others. No insiders giving their own versions on twitter, etc.

Even so, as we have been over before, if SAGE advice was so out of kilter with the advice received by other nations and with the public utterances of very many other British scientists (even to the extent that some went to the trouble and potential reputational damage of forming Alternative SAGE), it is up to ministers, and maybe the civil service, to understand why that is and take a broader view.
 
Thanks chaps, part of the reason I'm chasing this a bit hard is that New Zealand had a hard lockdown a few weeks ago now and it worked well at the time and the virus disappeared for 4 weeks, everything back to normal. Then out of the blue this week it's appeared again and nobody has any answers as to how it's happened or where it's crept in. That coupled with our own problems in Melbourne which are nowhere near being resolved and other worldwide problems which are also nowhere near being fixed are starting to give me a headache, the economic consequences are already mind blowing for all of us and are only going to get worse.
Should I put my faith in Putin ?

I think not. Prefer to wait for a vaccine that's been properly proved but it's starting to stretch my patience.
 
Old Red Fart said:
Oh dear itto it looks as though I've put the cat amongst the pigeons without knowing it. I didn't intend to but having gone this far perhaps you would like to offer a reasonable attempt at explaining the possible cause of why the UK has the worst figures in the world for deaths from this virus.
Click to expand...


I'll answer that for you

We have actual ghouls running the country
 
It might be wrong to add SAGE as a whole to the list.
The problem with the advice is Cummings listened to a room full of people and only passed on the bit he liked/ that fit his herd immunity agenda. The vast majority of the members of SAGE were probably giving good advice. I think the parallel advice given by Indepenant Sage shows the government were just doing what they wanted; taking the advice of just a couple of SAGE members, then using the whole group as scapegoats.
 
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