For the last two days it's killed someone in Italy every 4 minutes.
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Let's say it kills a million people in Britain alone. Then what? Do we self-isolate forever after that? Do we all keep a cupboard full of emergency pasta and bog roll? How does it alter our way of life on an existential level in the long-term? It doesn't. The Cold War did. The War on Terror has. It's a temporary pain in the arse, not an existential crisis.
I would say the impact, as far as I can see, to us in the West from the War on Terror has been minimal. Cold War is a fair shout though, but again and as Jim said, people still got on with their daily routine.
How does losing a million people change the way we live? Really? I mean that's fucking huge. That's 3x more than we lost in ww2 (soldiers).
By the way, watching this through the markets, like CNBC, is fascinating. Really incredible scenes every minute.
The FTSE did indeed bomb today and it's going to again tomorrow.
There’s not one thing any of us can do about the markets so we may just deal with whatever is left when the dust settles.
Then again we all watch sport and you could say the exact same about that.
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/stat...215872522?s=21
Jesus fucking christ.
At least they’ve changed their minds, I suppose.
So when is the UK government going to announce emergency measures for business like suspended business rates, tax breaks and other support measures? And also self employed/zero hours getting welfare payments to avoid going in? Not forcing pubs/clubs/theatres/etc to close is cowardly as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the restaurant I work at isn't closed in the next week anyway based purely on the drop in numbers, Kiko.
Do you think people stockpiling hand sanitiser will outlast the lingering suspicion of Muslims harboured by a decent amount of the population? Will all of the concrete blocks littering city centres be removed before people stop washing their hands for twenty seconds? Will the ridiculous layers of security around government buildings be loosened before the old people are allowed clubbing again? All these minor pains in the arse (and societal shifts) are permanent, so much so that we've got used to them. Staying indoors won't be.
It would be 1.5% of the population, which would put it roughly half-way between Second and First World War deaths. The English Civil War was more than double that. And we're a peaceful country. That sort of death and misery is routine in the shitter parts of the world.
The Spanish Flu infected 25% of the entire world population and killed 20 to 50 million people. Life moves on.
We’ve just been told that half of us will get it anyway. There’s no hope our medical system can treat 2.5m people so maybe it’s time to start licking door handles.
It's not about death totals. I'm not playing that down (as such). My point is that for it to be an existential crisis our lives will have to be fundamentally altered in its wake, and I don't see how they could be.
The same briefing is telling whoever is assembled that the only way out is a vaccine.
“To avoid a rebound in transmission these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunise the population - which could be 18 months or more.”
Regardless, it's not going to happen. Every country will find a China-like equilibrium sooner or later
Also wonder how much of a PR coup it's going to be for Xi knowing his country has donned the Europeans and Americans senseless
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...point-11958542
This is great.
Guys, I've just gone all in on the panic being good. My dealer gave me 2 for 1 on the weed and a free gram of the white stuff 'in case they do a proper lockdown and I can't get over here for a bit'.
Only my Gran is still alive, she'd be fucked if she got the common cold never mind anything else. Other than that, fuck the whole lot of them.
Actually fuck my Gran as well, she'd be far better off in the ground.
Which is an inconvenience.
I forgot my big step-sister is on immuno-suppressants.
:uhoh:
Similar to Diana dying.
:baz:
We desperately need some new threads.
I don't have the answer(s), but curious to know if there were major societal shifts after the Spanish Flu - different context, to be sure, but could be a lens of analysis.
I think we will see a glut of funding into networking and conferencing technologies (AR/VR, 5G), and probably a large downsizing in office space as we realize that the massive fixed infrastructure investment is...not that necessary.
In this country at least, we'll end up with a universal basic income, and Labour will win the next four elections.
Some kind of global pandemic response charter. Office space is a weird one because the open plan offices I have seem to give you the space between workers. Aviation's going to go through some changes. The use it or lose it EU slot rules will probably stay gone to allow flexibility. I've heard some chatter about them changing routines around how they clean planes but, to be honest, disease spread on planes is about proximity as much as it is about surfaces.