36,000 confirmed cases and 691 deaths today. Is is still an administrative error? 
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
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Girl at work hasn't had result back since Friday. She did walk in
Imagine if all you live for in your 20's is house parties...
3.4 days on average for test returns (up from 2.9 only a couple of weeks ago). Wouldn't surprise me if you're at 4-5 days for a test return.
The only question is whether they've learnt their lesson that locking down earlier is preferable.
A bloke on Reddit (I know), says he's at 7 days currently waiting for his results.
At a point where you isolate for over a week to be told you didn't have it on the first place.
36.8k new cases
691 deaths
68.3k deaths in total.
A real chance we will hit 70k on Xmas Day
691 deaths
68.3k deaths in total.
A real chance we will hit 70k on Xmas Day
The same Boris that ousted May by saying he had an oven ready deal for Brexit. Honestly how does anyone believe a word out of his mouth?
He's setting that country back generations
Oh sure yeah. Look I don’t think you’ll find anyone outside of the government and their really devoted supporters that will say they’ve handled it well. The people that they have in some of the most critical positions are there simply because they’re Brexiteers. They are legitimately not competent enough to deal with the tasks they’re given and we have suffered for it. That’s negligent in normal times and catastrophic in a crisis. But the population chose these people. They are a reflection of the citizenry.
The point wasn’t a defence of the government, they’re shite, it was just to establish that a lot of more competent governments have struggled an awful lot with this, and there are a lot of other incompetent governments in the world. This is an incredibly difficult situation and it is not at all uncommon that the exceptionally high level of competence required to deal with it just isn’t there. That isn’t a unique UK problem. Balancing these decisions is tough and we don’t have limitless resources to make a few mistakes and avoid punishment for it. Almost every country in the same position has been punished for that. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Sweden, Germany or Italy.
Saying the UK is the worst is a silly point scoring competition. Saying they are doing so much worse than anyone else would have done in that position is factually incorrect. We have too much information on the responses of other countries for that to be considered a legitimate claim. You can only believe it if you ignore inconvenient facts. You can only say it if you’re more interested in advancing an agenda than describing the reality.
Well my MP is Mark Francois so any medical advice from that oaf would probably involve British leeches from British farms and something about gunboats.
I agree our PHE experts have always been frank on what has been needed but its taken a backseat to the constantly changing restrictions and government messaging. I think when we talk about risk there's individual/family risk which for many is low irrespective of case load and then community risk. People have been willing to make personal sacrifices to lower the community risk but when government and the public are showing they'll let covid spread it becomes harder for people to feel the worth of their sacrifices. I have sympathy for the younger folk who have sacrificed a lot and seen those sacrifices wasted, especially if the counter argument to their frustration is well you should have got involved in the spreading sooner. To me it feels a lot like the climate change issue encapsulated into a year of hell.
People's individual contribution to covid circulation is across the year but at the end of the day you don't get a pass for good behaviour and the risk is the risk. One social event now is probably as bad as 10 events in September.
It's a good point that's often overlooked when people seek comparisons. Western Europe is really inexperienced in dealing with any form of modern pandemic.
It's not just lack of competence though, but lack of common sense.
When Schools and Universities went back they seemed to think that it wouldn't cause a spike in cases. That it would have no effect.
Every parent knows that when kids go back to school, suddenly they pick up colds and other viruses. Every uni student knows about freshers flu. Bear in mind at this point, secondary school kids in England still didn't have to wear masks in hallways.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3678
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ome-test-kits-run-out-in-england-and-scotland
They've been blindly walking from one crisis into the next.
When Schools and Universities went back they seemed to think that it wouldn't cause a spike in cases. That it would have no effect.
Every parent knows that when kids go back to school, suddenly they pick up colds and other viruses. Every uni student knows about freshers flu. Bear in mind at this point, secondary school kids in England still didn't have to wear masks in hallways.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3678
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ome-test-kits-run-out-in-england-and-scotland
They've been blindly walking from one crisis into the next.
How many countries do you think this applies to? If very few, then you can only believe that dozens of countries willfully decided to expose their population to an unreasonable degree of harm. If quite a lot, then by definition your definition of common sense is out of touch with what is literally common. Of course there's a better explanation for why those decisions were made that doesn't require you to imagine their thinking on the subject. Your impression of what they seemed to think is something you've invented, with lots of evidence to either confirm or contradict that invention. If you choose to only consider the former then you have to acknowledge that guarantees you will have a blindspot on the issue. It leads to answers you're more comfortable with, but it doesn't lead to better answers.
Did anyone see the reuters report where it said EU is throwing the UK a lifeline and will open borders
Its mad how they're using covid in politics
Its mad how they're using covid in politics
January will be awful. Good grief, why haven't the Government done a complete national lockdown until after the New Year?36,000 confirmed cases and 691 deaths today. Is is still an administrative error?
Inexperienced and with highly interdependent economies, that are utterly reliant on frictionless movement across borders. The exact opposite of what you need to contain a pandemic.
The government delayed the inevitable in March, history could be about to repeat itself.
Brwned Do you want some more IF statements in your post? .
All I'm saying is, in August, all the parents in my circle (including myself) were saying "cases will go up when schools go back, cases will go up when schools go back, cases will go up when schools go back."
And they did. And the government were underprepared.
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I find this quite a strange argument. It's hardly absurd to suggest that dozens of countries, particularly in Western Europe, have made a series of entirely avoidable blunders in their response to the pandemic and are suffering as a result. In that context, the idea that they might also have made the same mistake of sending schools back and being unprepared for the inevitable consequences is hardly the absurd suggestion that you are presenting it as.
At the very least in the UK we have Whitty on record in August saying:
So let's not pretend that it was just armchair experts playing at epidemiology who happened to think that the return of schools had associated risks. The problem was the same problem that we've had throughout the pandemic, a tousled haired buffoon was scared to make the unpopular decision he had to make to balance the risks with the benefits of having schools open, and here we are. The failure of other countries to mitigate against the same risks is its own, unrelated, failure of political leadership.
The way countries react to this new strain in UK is funny. This pandemic might not happen if they showed the same decisiveness towards China last year.
Definitely. Although it would have helped if China had been as forthcoming about viral transmission as the Uk have been this last week.
Brwned Do you want some more IF statements in your post? .
All I'm saying is, in August, all the parents in my circle (including myself) were saying "cases will go up when schools go back, cases will go up when schools go back, cases will go up when schools go back."
And they did. And the government were underprepared.
It’s not just schools reopening that caused this. It’s the combination of schools and all the rest. We’ve no idea what would have happened if they had opened schools but not pubs/restaurants/offices and vice versa. I don’t think anyone had the appetite to keep the whole lot shut down until Christmas, that’s for sure. Hence we are were we are.
My personal bug bear was allowing offices to reopen but we’ll all have different axes to grind depending on our personal circumstances.
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You’re talking to a man who takes biased surveys that say there is limited evidence regarding spread in schools as evidence there is limited spread on schools. And accuses others of blind spots.
It's the people not following the rules that don't help- my partners parents have been over twice, despite us being in tier 2 where visiting other people in their home Is banned. Safe to say I was not immune, however I think his family thinks they're immune, his brother brags about walking round on public transport with no mask and says he would say he was exempt if asked. Said brother is also one of the "virus doesn't exist" lot. His dad is elderly so vulnerable, but no that isn't stopping them! His mother hugs partner and everything when coming round, no social distancing.
While I haven't been round my parents, bar during the summer when lock down lifted, and they haven't been round ours, because we can see the bigger picture and want to protect each other.
While I haven't been round my parents, bar during the summer when lock down lifted, and they haven't been round ours, because we can see the bigger picture and want to protect each other.
Have a very ill brother that likely wont make it another year. Have waited until this Christmas break to travel south from Scotland to see him for the first time in a while and now haven't got a clue what to do.
It’s not, but all the evidence they had showed that school closures had a significantly bigger impact on the R rate than hospitality. And we have had plenty of periods where hospitality was shut and schools weren’t with minimal impact on case numbers. We need to try to at least stagger attendance at schools and assess how that works.
Having offices open is obviously a much more stupid decision. There at least is a practical benefit in trying to keep schools open other than the economy. Recommending people go back to the office to save the high street was premature and costly.
@Pogue Mahone indeed not saying it's just schools that caused this. I only brought it up to say; we talk of competence in government but I think they also are severely lacking in common sense.
The UK government might be mostly run by middle aged men who's wives raised their children, and so maybe they do lack the commen sense that the average mum of 3 from Bury could tell them. But as @NinjaFletch says there were warnings that something else might have to close to allow Schools to open.
So a failure of commen sense, and a failure of competence.
The UK government might be mostly run by middle aged men who's wives raised their children, and so maybe they do lack the commen sense that the average mum of 3 from Bury could tell them. But as @NinjaFletch says there were warnings that something else might have to close to allow Schools to open.
So a failure of commen sense, and a failure of competence.
I'm probably a bit unusual on here in that I think schools should have remained open throughout. The consequences of shutting schools for many disadvantaged kids is just too great, in my opinion. I've seen it first hand. I would shut almost literally anything and everything else ahead of schools.
Or we could try limiting attendance to those most in need. That’s at least trying something other than closing our eyes and hoping for the best.
Schools should have definitely gone back earlier.
My local pub effectively reopened before my local school did.
Priorities
True, China had never been forthcoming and tried to cover up every time when there's a crisis. That's why when they announced the occurence of suspicious pneumonia by Dec 31, people should have already prepared for the worst. Instead the corrupted WHO joined the club and recommended against issuing a travelling ban on China, and many countries were so dumb that they followed the advice.
Of course, but we knew that the re-opening of schools was going to be a significant contributory factor and we have people on the record saying that. My issue is pretending like the case spike was unforeseeable or unpreventable, or that it's absurd to suggest that what we saw in the UK (which was, let's be clear, to change absolutely nothing bar re-open schools and force universities with threats of tuition fee reimbursement to teach f2f) was governmental incompetence just because other countries in Europe were similarly complacent in the summer.
If schools had to re-open, and I completely accept the argument that they did, then we needed a public debate at what cost that should come both in terms of what we needed to close, and how many deaths we would accept for them. We never had that.
My friends mum is a primary school headteacher and according to her a high majority of kids at her school have been so hugely handicapped both educationally and socially that they may never catch up.
Yes better measures are needed to protect teachers but shutting schools (especially primary) just isn't an option.
Yes better measures are needed to protect teachers but shutting schools (especially primary) just isn't an option.
I think it's going to be devastating for a lot of children's futures.
It's genuinely terrifying how many people are so relaxed about the prospect of schools closing again, or in some cases even calling for it.
Guys, a question. My colleague and his daughters started quarantining on Friday after his wife was confirmed as positive, yesterday his youngest daughter tested positive, does his 10 days quarantining start again from scratch?
What you are saying isnt completely true with this virus. They should have been more forthcoming earlier but they did release the genome sequencing in January which meant virologists around the world were able to start working on the virus pretty early on in the scene. Within days of the genome sequence being released scientists all over the world were making noises about the seriousness of the virus. This article was from Jan 11th. I remember it being fairly prominent in the news. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ome-virus-implicated-wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak
Most people seem to be more concerned about their own ability to socialise than with the vital importance of schools. While I understand people being selfish to some degree - especially at this time of year - it's incredibly short-sighted.
Even now, too many people have failed to internalise the seriousness of this disease. A couple of pages ago @Roger made a comparison to the kinds of sacrifices people needed to make during WWII and in the years afterwards, and how comparatively trivial the restrictions this year have been on most of our lives. I don't know if our generation is just weaker than back then, but it's been pretty disappointing to me how many people seem unable to cope with adversity. I'm not talking about people with serious mental or physical health problems, but just regular people who have been taking the piss and to hell with the consequences. I've certainly learnt which of my friends walk the walk about being caring/rational/civilised people, and which of them will throw everyone under the bus for their own gratification.
the "west" is getting the experience that asia had in 2009 with pandemics and that is why they reacted so well, government and the citizens. Nothing is learnt better than feeling it into your skin. If (when)cit happens again, it will be a plan and hopefully reaction will be better. Blaming not having borders in europe is nonsense. China has no borders inside their 1.5 billion people, or India. Controls can be achieved inside the EU as it can be inside individual countries like regionalized lockdowns. Is a matter to have a plan, be clear about it and implemented. Not the blurry shitshows that we had been having all around europe at ALL LEVELS