How long do you think this shit will go on and what happens if its really long?

[Guinness Boy]

On that.....as I noted elsewhere, yes, shocking lack of role in Covid but....leaving the EU.....we shall see....I'd still rather we ran it than ran away from it....too late now I guess.

All the best, young man.

And to you mate. Stay safe.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Other than for cinema, pubs (indoors), restaurants and large stadia sports, it wouldn’t surprise me if much of ‘normal’ life has resumed by this autumn.

We are taking a big step towards normality this Friday. The key area I’ve been looking at is restaurants (and bars selling food) which re-open, inside and out, with 50% capacity and social distancing; we can mix with other households. I have taken the plunge and booked a fancy restaurant and 2 trips to Brewdog, including Brewdog Wings Wednesday.

Have to say Merkel and the Robert Koch Institute has been incredible over the past week or so and have fully explained the re-opening, the justification and also discussed concerns regarding the R number being over 1. They are monitoring this but the infections come from two very small clusters, and when taken against a back drop of low infections skew the data. The approach is to look at things more locally as opposed to nationally; the national R rate is not overly useful. If infections run over 50 per 100,000 in any area local lock-down reoccurs.

Very cautious first steps on what will be a long road. And a lot of the responsibilities are down to us.

More here https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52632369
[MENTION=1200]Harry Wilson's tackle[/MENTION] , I have been reading your posts with great interest. Be interested to hear what you think.

I appreciate this will hugely disappoint [MENTION=36]Titanic[/MENTION] but you can take some comfort in the fact that someone has at last responded to your pant-pissing posts from a few days ago

 

[nicko31]

We are taking a big step towards normality this Friday. The key area I’ve been looking at is restaurants (and bars selling food) which re-open, inside and out, with 50% capacity and social distancing; we can mix with other households. I have taken the plunge and booked a fancy restaurant and 2 trips to Brewdog, including Brewdog Wings Wednesday.

Have to say Merkel and the Robert Koch Institute has been incredible over the past week or so and have fully explained the re-opening, the justification and also discussed concerns regarding the R number being over 1. They are monitoring this but the infections come from two very small clusters, and when taken against a back drop of low infections skew the data. The approach is to look at things more locally as opposed to nationally; the national R rate is not overly useful. If infections run over 50 per 100,000 in any area local lock-down reoccurs.

Very cautious first steps on what will be a long road. And a lot of the responsibilities are down to us.

More here https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52632369
[MENTION=1200]Harry Wilson's tackle[/MENTION] , I have been reading your posts with great interest. Be interested to hear what you think.

I appreciate this will hugely disappoint [MENTION=36]Titanic[/MENTION] but you can take some comfort in the fact that someone has at last responded to your pant-pissing posts from a few days ago

All the UK government can do is listen and hopefully learn something...

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

All the UK government can do is listen and hopefully learn something...

Other countries are also relaxing and re-opening so there will be experience to pull on.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Something which jumps out of that BBC piece.

Fewer than 1,000 Germans are becoming infected every day.
By contrast, it's thought that in the UK something like 20,000 people are becoming infected every day - far fewer than at the height of the outbreak, but still a serious number.

That’s quite a difference.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

“"One change in Germany which could be recognised: we now have some hotspots of infections, for example meat production”

Think I’ll lay off the sausage for a while.

 

[CheeseRolls]

We are taking a big step towards normality this Friday. The key area I’ve been looking at is restaurants (and bars selling food) which re-open, inside and out, with 50% capacity and social distancing; we can mix with other households. I have taken the plunge and booked a fancy restaurant and 2 trips to Brewdog, including Brewdog Wings Wednesday.

Have to say Merkel and the Robert Koch Institute has been incredible over the past week or so and have fully explained the re-opening, the justification and also discussed concerns regarding the R number being over 1. They are monitoring this but the infections come from two very small clusters, and when taken against a back drop of low infections skew the data. The approach is to look at things more locally as opposed to nationally; the national R rate is not overly useful. If infections run over 50 per 100,000 in any area local lock-down reoccurs.

Very cautious first steps on what will be a long road. And a lot of the responsibilities are down to us.

More here https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52632369
[MENTION=1200]Harry Wilson's tackle[/MENTION] , I have been reading your posts with great interest. Be interested to hear what you think.

I appreciate this will hugely disappoint [MENTION=36]Titanic[/MENTION] but you can take some comfort in the fact that someone has at last responded to your pant-pissing posts from a few days ago

To be fair Boris talked about the localisation of the R rate, when he explained the alerting system. The UK has more than pulled its weight on academic research. The logistic required to deliver a response are completely missing. Give it a couple of weeks and we will bring the army in to move test results around and will still miss the point.

https://www.hsj.co.uk/coronavirus/e...=t.co&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=newsfeed

Who needs to know the test results?

The person infected is quickly as possible (not a 10 day turnaround)

Their GP - If someone thinks they have Covid-19 and they don't, is their something else seriously wrong? Is there someone vulnerable they are living with?

Their employer - There needs to be some form of work sign off for infection or self isolation.

Local Government - If there is a localised outbreak in Barrow-In-Furness and the whole town needs to go into complete shutdown. Local government needs to coordinate food drops, social care and a whole host of activities, which require some early warning.

Hospital Trust - Infections are going up, expect to see more admissions in the coming days.

Whoever owns track and trace - you were in contact with an infected person, you need to isolate and report for a test if you experience any symptoms, or at the end of your isolation. With a loop back to GPs, and employees.

I could go on. We could reach 2 quad zillion tests per day and be the world leaders on testing thanks to a bunch of lucrative outsource contracts awarded to the usual suspects. It looks great on a chart, but is f'all use if it isn't joined up.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

We are taking a big step towards normality this Friday. The key area I’ve been looking at is restaurants (and bars selling food) which re-open, inside and out, with 50% capacity and social distancing; we can mix with other households. I have taken the plunge and booked a fancy restaurant and 2 trips to Brewdog, including Brewdog Wings Wednesday.

Have to say Merkel and the Robert Koch Institute has been incredible over the past week or so and have fully explained the re-opening, the justification and also discussed concerns regarding the R number being over 1. They are monitoring this but the infections come from two very small clusters, and when taken against a back drop of low infections skew the data. The approach is to look at things more locally as opposed to nationally; the national R rate is not overly useful. If infections run over 50 per 100,000 in any area local lock-down reoccurs.

Very cautious first steps on what will be a long road. And a lot of the responsibilities are down to us.

More here https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52632369
[MENTION=1200]Harry Wilson's tackle[/MENTION] , I have been reading your posts with great interest. Be interested to hear what you think.

I appreciate this will hugely disappoint [MENTION=36]Titanic[/MENTION] but you can take some comfort in the fact that someone has at last responded to your pant-pissing posts from a few days ago

Thanks for the heads-up and link. I have taken a look and find it interesting. The long and the short of it is that if we behaved like Germans we would be in a different place. But....

I do wonder what, that they do, we could do here. Politics is the art of the possible. I don't think any government here has ever trusted the people, having a mixture of fear of and contempt/pity for the plebs (depending on whether your agenda is to rule (tory) or to nurture and facilitate (liberal - labour is a mix of both)). What this means to me is that the UK government has to match what it sees to be the 'correct course' with what it sees as 'what the people will tolerate', because if the people won't tolerate it, it won't happen (even Thatcher fell foul of the Poll Tax).

I have a feeling the Germans have a clearer idea of the national good. They (and I am making sweeping generalisations now, and that's always a bit risky) also differ from the English in their attitude to hygeine, tidiness, self-discipline, rumpy-pumpy and responsibility. In comparison great swathes of Brits are smelly, slatternly, unreliable, prudish and fickle. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Where does that leave us? The German government were able to bring in measures that were draconian swiftly without fear that the lazy and self-entitled lump of the population wouldn't instinctively rebel (like ours would). They had no fear that a powerful and influential media (Murdoch etc) would seize upon their every move with a disruptive glee, as it does in the UK (actually much less these days - but it wasn't so long ago that 'it woz the Sun wot wun it'). I doubt that fear of the media is particularly important to german politicians (correct me if I'm wrong).

Thus, the German government has a freedom to operate that is not the same here. Especially for a weak and indisciplined prime minister whose own personal and moral code is libertarian and opportunistic (where is the authority there?).

One thing I really like about the German approach is to monitor and isolate the hot spots and lock them down. We should be doing that. However, we have noisy self interest groups who would be crying 'unfair' and 'victimising northerners' 'victimising the working class' and 'racist' as soon as this or that town were locked down. The Brits are obsessed with treating everyone the same these days. To the point of absurdity*.

*[To go off on a tangent to illustrate the point, we had a couple of young researchers who kept sending poor grant applications to the BBSRC some years ago. The BBSRC complained about the waste of their time having to evaluate this shite. My employer could have responded well in two ways. They could have told the BBSRC to do their bloody job. They could have spoken to the two young researchers and mentored them a bit. What did we do? We created a college wide system whereby all grant applications have to go through an internal approval programme. I shit you not. This is the typical way Brits deal with things, and it is a national canker that provides much work and power for the most dismal paper clip filing numpties the nation pops out of the backside of its education system. True dullards. Meanwhile much more paperwork is created for the rest of us. In the end we just become pen pushers rather that doers.]

So we should be getting out the metaphorical fly spray when a hot spot starts to buzz (I cocked up at metaphor, dodn't I). Instead we are flooding the entire nation with luke warm water in the hope it might help a bit, without offending anyone. I am very far from a 'political correctness gone mad' merchant and have no time for discrimination, but our weak government has confused targeting the disease with discrimination, and does not have sufficient wherewithal or gravitas to be able to quickly indoctrinate the nation into why this or that action is needed. The 'stay alert' shambles exemplifies this. And that fact that lots of nice sensible people have come on here to say how much the like and understand 'stay alert' proves my point.

My point being the people get the government it deserves. If the people refuse to be told, and instead wallow in an unchallenged world of confirmation bias, and take heart from the daily bulletin that gleefully reports that PPE production is 15% ahead of schedule, and sunny uplands are just around the corner, then I can only conclude that far too many people, politicians and pubic alike, read 1984 and figured that this is the way Forward for Britain! Vigilant and alert!

I didn't enjoy writing any of that. I am actually welling up. With anger.

 

[Diablo]

On a lighter note !

 

[LamieRobertson]

Thanks for the heads-up and link. I have taken a look and find it interesting. The long and the short of it is that if we behaved like Germans we would be in a different place. But....

I do wonder what, that they do, we could do here. Politics is the art of the possible. I don't think any government here has ever trusted the people, having a mixture of fear of and contempt/pity for the plebs (depending on whether your agenda is to rule (tory) or to nurture and facilitate (liberal - labour is a mix of both)). What this means to me is that the UK government has to match what it sees to be the 'correct course' with what it sees as 'what the people will tolerate', because if the people won't tolerate it, it won't happen (even Thatcher fell foul of the Poll Tax).

I have a feeling the Germans have a clearer idea of the national good. They (and I am making sweeping generalisations now, and that's always a bit risky) also differ from the English in their attitude to hygeine, tidiness, self-discipline, rumpy-pumpy and responsibility. In comparison great swathes of Brits are smelly, slatternly, unreliable, prudish and fickle. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Where does that leave us? The German government were able to bring in measures that were draconian swiftly without fear that the lazy and self-entitled lump of the population wouldn't instinctively rebel (like ours would). They had no fear that a powerful and influential media (Murdoch etc) would seize upon their every move with a disruptive glee, as it does in the UK (actually much less these days - but it wasn't so long ago that 'it woz the Sun wot wun it'). I doubt that fear of the media is particularly important to german politicians (correct me if I'm wrong).

Thus, the German government has a freedom to operate that is not the same here. Especially for a weak and indisciplined prime minister whose own personal and moral code is libertarian and opportunistic (where is the authority there?).

One thing I really like about the German approach is to monitor and isolate the hot spots and lock them down. We should be doing that. However, we have noisy self interest groups who would be crying 'unfair' and 'victimising northerners' 'victimising the working class' and 'racist' as soon as this or that town were locked down. The Brits are obsessed with treating everyone the same these days. To the point of absurdity*.

*[To go off on a tangent to illustrate the point, we had a couple of young researchers who kept sending poor grant applications to the BBSRC some years ago. The BBSRC complained about the waste of their time having to evaluate this shite. My employer could have responded well in two ways. They could have told the BBSRC to do their bloody job. They could have spoken to the two young researchers and mentored them a bit. What did we do? We created a college wide system whereby all grant applications have to go through an internal approval programme. I shit you not. This is the typical way Brits deal with things, and it is a national canker that provides much work and power for the most dismal paper clip filing numpties the nation pops out of the backside of its education system. True dullards. Meanwhile much more paperwork is created for the rest of us. In the end we just become pen pushers rather that doers.]

So we should be getting out the metaphorical fly spray when a hot spot starts to buzz (I cocked up at metaphor, dodn't I). Instead we are flooding the entire nation with luke warm water in the hope it might help a bit, without offending anyone. I am very far from a 'political correctness gone mad' merchant and have no time for discrimination, but our weak government has confused targeting the disease with discrimination, and does not have sufficient wherewithal or gravitas to be able to quickly indoctrinate the nation into why this or that action is needed. The 'stay alert' shambles exemplifies this. And that fact that lots of nice sensible people have come on here to say how much the like and understand 'stay alert' proves my point.

My point being the people get the government it deserves. If the people refuse to be told, and instead wallow in an unchallenged world of confirmation bias, and take heart from the daily bulletin that gleefully reports that PPE production is 15% ahead of schedule, and sunny uplands are just around the corner, then I can only conclude that far too many people, politicians and pubic alike, read 1984 and figured that this is the way Forward for Britain! Vigilant and alert!

I didn't enjoy writing any of that. I am actually welling up. With anger.

The things is Harry we never had a poll

 

[Weststander]

Something which jumps out of that BBC piece.

Fewer than 1,000 Germans are becoming infected every day.
By contrast, it's thought that in the UK something like 20,000 people are becoming infected every day - far fewer than at the height of the outbreak, but still a serious number.

That’s quite a difference.

Have German scientists been able to calculate how many of the population have truly had covid19?

The Naked Scientist on R5 today said just 5% here, 10% at the very most. He politely poo-poo’d the various stories where almost everyone here feels that they’ve had it some time in the last 5 months. Countless stories of colds, loss of smell or taste. He said despite lockdown, there’ve been been loads of cold bugs going around.

 

[Justice]

All the UK government can do is listen and hopefully learn something...

Not much chance of that happening

 

[e77]

Have German scientists been able to calculate how many of the population have truly had covid19?

The Naked Scientist on R5 today said just 5% here, 10% at the very most. He politely poo-poo’d the various stories where almost everyone here feels that they’ve had it some time in the last 5 months. Countless stories of colds, loss of smell or taste. He said despite lockdown, there’ve been been loads of cold bugs going around.

I am not convinced there are millions of people out there who have had it and not realised but they have proven it was in France in December and a choir in Yorkshire had symptoms in January after one of them had been to Wuhan.

It is wishful thinking on behalf of a lot of people to think they had it but some people are describing very specific symptoms.