I think my arena has one if the lowest case rates. Shit to go from tier 1 to LOCKDOWN.
I think my arena has one if the lowest case rates. Shit to go from tier 1 to LOCKDOWN.
Not even lived north of the Thames.
Actually, that's not true, I stopped in the grim post-industrial hell hole of Maida Vale for a year.
Same. And (he says aware of being a broken record) my holiday was to another tier 1.Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
Well as someone who has lived north and south, I believe it has much to do with the quality of living standards, the low wage, the lack of opportunities, lack of investment, lack of health services etc etc.
I've always enjoyed a much better standard when living nearer your end than up here. There's definitely something in that.
I wonder what the North/South split is for working remotely? That's got to be a factor.
The main cause of spread is at home. The more people living in/visiting a home, the more it spreads. Us stand-offish southern bastards have earned the right to our CenterParcs holidays, and you friendly northern bastards (I think you're actually further south than me, or at least level, but Wales is the north, MATE) have ruined it for us all.
The 'quality of living' stuff falls down a bit when you look longer term, where practically nobody in the prosperity belt stands any chance of accumulating (and passing on) any sort of genuine wealth.
I'd say it's more a poverty belt than prosperity.
Nice to see Sunak getting a battering too. Well overdue.
I legitimately hope no fucker follows the rules. Chucking multiple generations under the bus whilst telling Ethel and Fred that they don't need to shield is mental. I can't think of a single other health concern where the primarily affected aren't asked to wrap themselves in cottonwood before expecting others to sacrifice for them.
And it's not even that I don't think we should. To an extent, of course we should, but why is Ethels ability to go to the shop more important than half the work forces ability to go to work? Why not ask Ethel to stay the fuck at home and arrange food and support for her? Is it because Ethel votes more than Bamster does? Is that it?
I guess you got here first Spikey, but if people don't follow the rules then there'll genuinely be no other option than to keep Ethel indoors.
For the 3M who received no support since day one then staying at home isn't really an option and given it's been eight months now I don't anticipate much change happening within the next month. I feel equally as sad for those who have just been made redundant because of the furlough ending and then the wanker goes and extends it once more. I don't understand the shielding nonsense as it can't suddenly reduce in importance, if it was important to do so during the first wave then a prolonged second wave as this one is going to be just contradicts that they were told back then, no?
Hospitality is fucked. There's no coming back from it.
This entire government from top to bottom has been a complete shit show. The entire Conservative party is finished, I reckon but unless something drastic happens, I dread to think what state they are going to leave the country in. I think at best we just have to hope for the fallout from the blatant corruption and use the Recall MP Act 2015 to call local elections, reduce that majority or just burn the place down.
Care has been fucked for decades and if something like this doesn't change it, nothing will. What's probably the worst aspect of all of this is a real lack from all sides to take charge. This is the kind of crisis where party lines shouldn't stand.
Forgetting the care/health side of things, I mean, Matt Hancock, Nadine Dorries and that other useless bint Helen Whately mean there's no salvaging that but the quoted part above. That's all it's been is one giant political game to them all. Playing games with our lives, our jobs, our businesses.
Public has to take responsibility for not using common sense (hurrah) but the misguided messages, cheap point scoring, the he said she said bollocks and still, eight months later, we have no exit plan. Nothing.
Even Wales, we'll come out of our Firebreak and go back in before the end of the year without a doubt. England the same. There won't be a vaccine and anyone expecting one is a deluded fuckwit. It's just lies, lies, lies.
We're fucked. Absolutely fucked.
Last edited by Smjffy; 01-11-2020 at 12:18 AM.
The route we're taking, if you can call it a route, makes absolutely no sense without the expectation of a vaccine. Watchutalkinaboutsmiff?
There will be a vaccine early next year.
We're hoping rather than expecting?
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
I thought that was a decent read.
How many vaccines are you aware of that have been developed in less than twelve months? I specifically recall reading that around 6% of vaccines ever make it to market let alone one that the entire planet needs pretty promptly and even if by some huge stroke of luck one was to pass all trials, be approved and dished out, it won't be early next year that everyone gets it. 2021 will be much like 2020 with lock downs continuing which in turn means job losses, more businesses closing, reduced quality of life, added mental health pressures and so forth.
I hope I'm wrong but I just can't see how we're getting out of this.
All things pass.
The vaccine has already been shown to work, they're just testing to what extent it works now. I believe there a US and a German one showing similar promise too.
A vaccine has never been as important as this for so many people, never been so well funded and never been worth so much money.
Last edited by Spikey M; 01-11-2020 at 09:04 AM.
I hope Eat Out To Help Out is on the primary school syllabus in 40 years time, and thought of as horrifically as the Holocaust.
I'm a twit
Lockdown is about preventing the NHS literally falling apart over winter. It's already stretched to breaking point every year, it will only take a few extra patients to properly implode.
Also, to the "I won't need a ventilator so I don't care" crowd, do you think they'll keep a few spare in case you fall and hit your head and need ITU treatment, or get in a major car accident, or any of the other things which might end up with you needing one? Because they won't, they'll all be taken up by covid patients.
Nah the losers and weak will be demoted so I'll have my car crash, thanks.
Your mob have had a year to get some more in. Leave the bloody Easter Eggs alone and get it sorted.
It's good to know we only exist to serve a particular system of health provision. Sit in the Cold to Protect Our National Grid.
Unfortunately ventilated patients require ITU trained doctors and nurses to look after them, which can't be magicked out of thin air in the space of a year. Lol at your chances if you end up with me in charge of your ventilator. There's also the factor of physical ward space, and you need things like piped oxygen so it can't just be any old broom cupboard. They've been frantically trying to build a new covid unit where I work but it's not yet ready and Winter is Coming; *insert strained metaphor about the Night King/covid and Aria/vaccines or some shit*.
If there was an energy shortage then yeah I'd imagine we'd be being asked to switch off the hot tubs so the lights can stay on.
If there is an ITU bed available and they are making the choice between young, healthy male care crash victim (admittedly with a difficult airway due to past facial trauma) and someone clinically vulnerable with covid then yeah you might win that one. But nobody is getting taken out of an ITU bed to make space for you if it's full.
Plead guilty to prevent our courts being overwhelmed.
That's part of what offering plea-bargains is about right?
We could bargain between smashing up millions of lives and livelihoods to save (let's say) a hundred thousand people. But we havent. We've just decided to throw millions of pounds after individual lives, which in normal circumstances the health service, constrained as it is by having to make the sort of decisions it now says it won't, would lol its bollocks off at doing.
The health service is not normally having to make decisions to leave someone who is otherwise fit and healthy to die because they need ITU treatment for a modest period of time and there is no capacity. That could realistically happen this winter.
Despite what the media might sell you, it doesn't really happen that people are denied potentially life-saving treatment in the NHS. A terminal cancer patient may be denied an extremely expensive cancer drug which might add a few months to their life, but that's entirely not the same.
This IS different to any position we have been in before and you ARE wrong.
Have you got some slides to back that up?
Have you lost your fucking marbles?
I know everyone's annoyed at another lockdown, but doing so to stop the NHS being ravaged (and people who'd have otherwise lived from dying) was the only sensible choice at this stage.
The real ire should be directed at us being no further along the line towards having an effective test, trace and isolate system. Vaccine or bust baby.
It is different in that it is on a much larger scale; but the principle is the same. The health service rations and has its prioritise in normal times, hence varied waiting times, postcode lotteries etc., so why haven't we weighed wider societal concerns in the same way? If that means effectively denying treatment to some people then unlucky grandad.
Yes it's different. You are talking about rationing life-saving treatment. That isn't what currently happens.
It's not just Grandad though, is it? If you, or I, get more ill than is statistically likely with it, then no bed for us.
People say this in the style of 'we need better tactics' but I haven't managed to find out what a good one might actually look like. The problem with the current one (spending on it aside) was that asymptomatic people don't want to isolate based on a text message and so don't do it. How do you solve that?
As far as I can see you need a bloke in a military uniform and a gun at the other end of the line. There are about 5 countries in the world who appear to have a good one, two of which are NZ and Australia who solved it (for now) by being ten thousand miles away and shutting the borders early doors.
Would it be denied if the annual NHS budget was eight-hundred billion quid and thousands of incidental lost lives and businesses? It would wouldn't it, otherwise we would routinely spend half of our GDP on keeping people alive.
How much is my life worth to the government? If multiple millions, why not buy me a Range Rover to reduce the likelihood of me dying in a traffic accident?
Yep. You can notify them they might be at risk but you can't limit their movements on a text message. And there's a real lack of context with the whole process. Did someone walk past my window who had it or was it a family member who I spent an hour with yesterday?
Yes. But it isn't. So that's an irrelevant straw man.
If covid turns out to be permanent, then yeah this isn't sustainable. But the belief at the moment is that it won't be, and so a temporary sacrifice of other things is worth it to save lives in the meantime.
Last edited by randomlegend; 01-11-2020 at 04:11 PM.
But... the livelihoods!
Yes, the livelihoods. The businesses going bust. The amount of people that are going to be homeless when this ends is not to be sniffed at. It's going to be a major problem. But it's alright Brenda, no need to sheild yourself. You crack on.
We could, as a society, not let people go homeless.
Could we? I'm sure the mortgage companies, social housing providers and landlords would love that. How do we go about it? Are we going to tax everyone and clear the arrears? Or are we going to just pretend the arrears don't exist?
Neither is going to happen.
Some people are just really shite with money and no amount of government handouts will change that.
The government can continue to support individuals and businesses during this time of lockdown. There should be a buffer to make compliance not a choice between survival or bust.
If the government had any credibility, test and trace could be widely used and that would be the exit strategy. The problem is they don't and they've lost their audience.
Why is it worth it? What about things that are permanent like the normal flu etc.? We could keep tier one lockdown forever (or just distancing and masks) and put a serious dent in those numbers every year.
The biggest mistake they made was not handling the Cummings / Barnard Castle thing better, as I said at the time. I'm not even sure he had to go, but as soon as they all came out defending him like wet fishes their moral authority over the public making sacrifices was completely lost.
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