Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[Thunder Bolt]

Surely this will provide the kick up the backside required for our government to increase funding and recruitment for a stretched Nhs.

I doubt it very much, unfortunately. Their solution will be, it has to be outsourced to be able to cope.
Privatisation by stealth.

 

[nicko31]

I always knew Brexit would have a "happy ending"

Its the perfect time to be imposing trade sanctions on ones self.

 

[The Clamp]

Surely this will provide the kick up the backside required for our government to increase funding and recruitment for a stretched Nhs.

Hahaha hahahahhaah. Hahahhaaaaaaaaaaa. Oh that’s tickled me.

 

[Mackenzie]

I doubt it very much, unfortunately. Their solution will be, it has to be outsourced to be able to cope.
Privatisation by stealth.

That sounds about right, hopefully the voting public won’t allow that to happen. You never know though, the government might do the right thing for a change.

 

[Nobby]

From the BBC who are in the locked down zone in Italy where not much is happening to lock it down.
Either the Beeb are getting worse at reporting or the Italians are not taking it seriously.[emoji2]

“But perhaps the lockdown is going to be stepped up in the coming days because there are even penalties of three months in prison or a fine of €206 for breaking the rules”

I think I’d probably take the fine

 

[beorhthelm]

From the BBC who are in the locked down zone in Italy where not much is happening to lock it down.
Either the Beeb are getting worse at reporting or the Italians are not taking it seriously.[emoji2]

“But perhaps the lockdown is going to be stepped up in the coming days because there are even penalties of three months in prison or a fine of €206 for breaking the rules”

I think I’d probably take the fine

i gather the problem is some authority said there would be a quarantine, but they haven't actually formally announced much less implemented it. the media report it as a thing that happened, then report how its not in effect.

 

[LamieRobertson]

From the BBC who are in the locked down zone in Italy where not much is happening to lock it down.
Either the Beeb are getting worse at reporting or the Italians are not taking it seriously.[emoji2]

“But perhaps the lockdown is going to be stepped up in the coming days because there are even penalties of three months in prison or a fine of €206 for breaking the rules”

I think I’d probably take the fine

They’ll be a new name for solitary confinement ..answers on a postcard no prizes

 

[Thunder Bolt]

That sounds about right, hopefully the voting public won’t allow that to happen. You never know though, the government might do the right thing for a change.

Truthfully and honestly, would you trust this current lot to do the right thing?

 

[Gazwag]

From the BBC who are in the locked down zone in Italy where not much is happening to lock it down.
Either the Beeb are getting worse at reporting or the Italians are not taking it seriously.[emoji2]

“But perhaps the lockdown is going to be stepped up in the coming days because there are even penalties of three months in prison or a fine of €206 for breaking the rules”

I think I’d probably take the fine

I think people are ignoring how big the zone is, isn't it roughly Brighton to North London north south and Brighton to Bournemouth west east, I'd like to see our army patrol every single road

 

[Nobby]

I think people are ignoring how big the zone is, isn't it roughly Brighton to North London north south and Brighton to Bournemouth west east, I'd like to see our army patrol every single road

I think the Italian police are ignoring it [emoji849]

 

[Mellotron]

Regular positive news update;

China down to 40 new cases today, down from 99 yesterday. At current rate, China will be Coronavirus free within weeks.

 

[Mellotron]

Decent, sensible, mature reporting from the Telegraph today;

Growing up, I never heard the phrase Keep Calm and Carry On. The wartime poster on which it was emblazoned did not feature in any of the jingoistic comics I read as a child because it was never actually distributed, or at least not widely. Propagandists felt the sentiment would not go down well among people being bombed out of their homes so most of the posters were pulped, disappearing from public view until a few were rediscovered in a bookshop in Northumberland in 2000 and commercialised.

The maxim really came into its own around the time of the financial crash in 2008 and all of a sudden it was everywhere, a faux-nostalgic evocation of British stoicism in the face of adversity. At the time, there were predictions of the end of capitalism, of the collapse of democracy, of people wheeling their belongings through a blasted post-apocalyptic landscape like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. OK, I exaggerate; but the uncertainty was real and unsettling, just as it is now with coronavirus.

It is not knowing how to judge the risk that is the real problem. Radical Uncertainty, a new book by the economists John Kay and Mervyn King, seeks to explore what constitutes rational behaviour in a world where the consequences of particular actions are impossible to discern. The authors quote with approval Donald Rumsfeld’s maxim about “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns”, which was widely derided when uttered, yet sums up how people and governments must approach uncertainty.

Unlike risk, which is quantifiable against precedents and probabilities, uncertainty has no calculus by which to measure the right response. All we can do is prepare and cope. People manage and adapt, even to the most difficult circumstances. Although coronavirus is troubling because of the unknowns, from what we have seen so far its spread can be contained, albeit with a combination of draconian controls and sensible precautions. Partly these are state applied but mostly they are personal actions.

The action plan published by Boris Johnson yesterday endeavours to get this balance right through “necessary and reasonable” measures while emphasising the uncertainty. As the Prime Minister said in response to many of the questions he fielded in No 10 yesterday: “It’s too early to say.”

The worst case scenarios hinted at in the 27-page plan would have a maximum of 80 per cent of the country infected but that has not happened in China, nowhere near it, and it is not going to happen here. In extreme circumstances, entire towns could be cordoned off and one fifth of the working population quarantined at home or in hospital while soldiers patrol the streets.

But for now, during the containment phase, the principal aim is for people to carry on pretty much as they are at present while taking sensible precautions. If we can get to the Easter school holidays without a major outbreak and the virus proves susceptible to warmer weather then things might look up.

The real danger is panic, though at what point does that become the rational response; or rather, when is it wise to behave in a way that we would normally repudiate? We are all wondering how to best protect ourselves while avoiding the headless chickenism that will merely make things worse for everyone. For instance, is it sensible to stockpile food and provisions?

We know that if we go to the shop and strip the shelves of tinned soup then no one else will be able to buy tinned soup. On the other hand, if we don’t and everyone else does then we are the ones who go without. In such circumstances, the rational response may well be to panic-buy.

It is like a run on a bank. In 2008, people with money in Northern Rock all knew that if every customer took out their cash at the same time, the bank would crash. But the rational response, if your life savings were at risk, was to join the queue and hope to get your money out before the collapse. Otherwise you would look a bit silly sitting there congratulating yourself on being rational and enlightened, but broke. The bank crashed.

We get into difficulties through action that everyone knows must eventually blow up in our faces but which it seems irrational at the time not to join. That’s how sensible people in 17th-century Europe ended up paying a fortune for tulip bulbs that had no intrinsic value, only an inflated one produced by an asset-price bubble.

Even if Charles Mackay’s account of this mania in Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) has been debunked by modern economists, our propensity for what seems like irrational behaviour is considerable. On the other hand, who wants to lose out on a sure-fired profit? Speculation can be a perfectly rational approach, if you get out in time.


The sub-prime mortgage debacle was another example when not missing out on the bonanza seemed the rational thing to do. Why would you when banks were prepared to lend you the cash with no questions asked? In The Big Short, his classic account of the crash, Michael Lewis quotes a banker who realised things had gone seriously wrong when his cleaner told him she was buying her fifth home. When the crash happened, catastrophe was only averted because governments stepped in to rescue the banks.

The real danger of any crisis, and especially a pandemic whose course is yet to be determined, is panic and governments have to make sure they do not contribute to it while preparing for the worst. For now, most people are just getting on with their lives. Coming into London every day, I hardly see anyone in a mask, though that might be because the entire stock has already been bought up.

Some fret at the lack of sanitising gel but it is not a panacea; hot water and soap to wash our hands will suffice. The people who really need the proper kit are health workers most likely to come into contact with sufferers.

We need to be sensible and avoid any overreaction that could shut down the country. If things do get as bad as they might then we can cope because we have to – just as we have before, in far worse circumstances.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/03/big-danger-coronavirus-panic-greater-crisis/

 

[Napper]

reckon we will get to a few thousand and will be much ado about nothing

 

[Blue3]

I doubt it very much, unfortunately. Their solution will be, it has to be outsourced to be able to cope.
Privatisation by stealth.

Abosolutly agree with you the Tores are no friends of the NHS remember they were firmly against its formation in the first place

 

[dingodan]

I was really impressed with how Boris approached this the other day. I didn't think much of it at the time, but for me, there were two notable takeaways.

1. The PM did not come out with a bunch of the usual spin and politics that you get in a crisis. Infact he actually explained, in a way which doesn't presume that people are stupid, why the gov is taking the approach that it is. Specifically, explaining that, from a behavioral science point of view, it would not be best to instruct the public to limit their movements and interactions etc, because people don't have a lot of patience for such things. So they have to be done at the right time, so that people are still being vigilant when that becomes most important.

Which leads me to:

2. Read between the lines there, and actually what that means is that it would be a good idea to limit your movements and interactions (social distancing etc). The PM/scientific advice was never that these measures would be of no use. Not at all. The point was that until things get pretty clearly bad, people will question the point and let their guard down, stop taking the advice seriously. Potentially you could have everyone dismissive of the advice just when it comes really neccessary to take it seriously.

In that sense, the only reason we are not being told to do these things is because human nature means that we can't do those things for an extended period without them losing their effectiveness - because of our behavior. So it's not that they are ineffective ways to protect yourself. Actually they probably are effective, if you can maintain them with discipline, even while things don't seem "so bad".

It was a refreshing approach to public information (compared to the usual political spin) and also pretty informative, if you read between the lines. Do take measures to distance yourself from others and restrict your activities. But only if you are smart enough and disciplined enough to know that getting bored with it, or questioning whether it's neccessary is not a reason to stop.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

reckon we will get to a few thousand and will be much ado about nothing

Lets hope it does peak at just a few thousand, absolutely. If it does stop at a few thousand, it will mean the intense response by the authorities has been effective. Much ado about something, one could argue

 

[dingodan]

Viewer Discretion advised.

[tweet]1236792832247160844[/tweet]

 

[Si Gull]

Lets hope it does peak at just a few thousand, absolutely. If it does stop at a few thousand, it will mean the intense response by the authorities has been effective. Much ado about something, one could argue

That's the issue...it could be the 'panic' that saves us, who knows?

 

[nickbrighton]

Regular positive news update;

China down to 40 new cases today, down from 99 yesterday. At current rate, China will be Coronavirus free within weeks.

I saw this and wonder why its not making bigger headlines. "Only "36 cases in Wuhan, and 4 elsewhere in China. Japan has noted steady falls in new cases as well. Given the sensationalised scaremongering that the press are engaged in I'm not surprised this good news is buried as a side note.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

Regular positive news update;

China down to 40 new cases today, down from 99 yesterday. At current rate, China will be Coronavirus free within weeks.

Perhaps they had the vaccine all along!