This isn't about party politics but I don't get how the government's approval ratings are so high? 66% in a poll a few days ago. Anyone can see that they closed the schools and put us in lockdown way too late and that combined with the damage done the health service, lack of testing, Priti hopeless etc why are people so supportive? What will it take for people not to support these people.

 

But Boris is just like you and me! He can get the deadly virus too! And isn’t he such a fighter? They’re all working so hard to help us out and Boris has beaten the disease and given us hope! The NHS will cope fine whilst everyone keeps clapping for it! And then when this over we can forget about it and carry on voting Tory!

 

That’s probably why. People are stupid. They won’t remember that our government were ill prepared and bumbled through the whole thing. They’ll remember that the government ‘did their best’ and that ‘no one could have known this was going to happen’.

 

It actually makes me feel sick.

But Boris is just like you and me! He can get the deadly virus too! And isn’t he such a fighter? They’re all working so hard to help us out and Boris has beaten the disease and given us hope! The NHS will cope fine whilst everyone keeps clapping for it! And then when this over we can forget about it and carry on voting Tory!

 

That’s probably why. People are stupid. They won’t remember that our government were ill prepared and bumbled through the whole thing. They’ll remember that the government ‘did their best’ and that ‘no one could have known this was going to happen’.

 

It actually makes me feel sick.

This is what happens when you have a press like this country. There's MANY problems with the American media but at least there's lots of outlets holding Trump to account. We don't have that here, we have Tory mouthpieces bar a few newspapers.

 

I can't even say thank f*** Scotland's getting out of here because Boris won't give us permission lol

Has anyone seen the Westminster bridge video? Shocking!

Has anyone seen the Westminster bridge video? Shocking!

 

I saw it on Twitter. People appear to have missed the whole point.

We do- the UK has kept flights coming in and has fewer cases than Italy.

 

The US banned flights in early February and has many more cases (per capita). Once the virus was in the community it was able to spread quite easily with the most and only effective strategy for slowing the spread being social distancing.

You also did only a 4th of the tests italy did, or 1/3rd of their tests per million inhabitants.

 

Italy has also peaked, as opposed to the UK. You cannot compare the 2 as the UK is behind italy's curve right now

 

The US has New York as their major cluster and a total incompetent government and healthcare system, let's not get started on that one

You also did only a 4th of the tests italy did, or 1/3rd of their tests per million inhabitants.

 

Italy has also peaked, as opposed to the UK. You cannot compare the 2 as the UK is behind italy's curve right now

 

The US has New York as their major cluster and a total incompetent government and healthcare system, let's not get started on that one

 

The examples were slightly facetious, but my point was really that community spread overwhelms any apparent reduction in numbers you get from banning flights. It's like shutting the door once the horse has bolted - if it's already in the community it is too late, banning flights only works before cases arrive. Ultimately it makes little difference once you've had a few - which is why you cannot find any examples where banning travel actually significantly helped reduce spread of the virus.

And my point was that with banning travel you reduce the risk of introducing new clusters outnof nowhere

And my point was that with banning travel you reduce the risk of introducing new clusters outnof nowhere

 

No, because social distancing is *already* stopping the spread of new clusters. Therefore banning flights = Pointless.

Has anyone seen the Westminster bridge video? Shocking!

 

Doing their bit for the NHS by making sure they continue to get more patients.

 

Or, making sure they get on telly so everyone can see how caring they are, me, me, me, me..

 

A better way of supporting the NHS is to give cash donations, and you dont have to even tell anyone how caring you are or go around showing the receipts to prove how caring you are.

 

On other topics:

 

Boris at 66%. large number of people dont think too deeply about anything, or notice chains of events and links and causes, they just superficially accept whatever is being said at any given moment, especially if Vera Lynn is busy singing "We'll Meet Again" to invoke the wartime spirit for those who weren't actually born when WW2 was on, as if staying indoors to avoid people dying is in anyway like fighting Nazis, bombs dropping, rations, disease and working in factories for the war effort. That he has actually proven himself to be a complete dick by ignoring his own advice and catching Covid-19 has been corrupted by his spinners to "see, even the PM can catch this terrible disease, so brave battling it and winning, he's just like us all" sympathy hanky time.

 

banning travel: does prevent disease spreading. All the new cases in China are from citizens RETURNING to China and starting the ball rolling again. Clearly it spread round the world from international travel to and from China, it didn't just magically materialise. This is not news. We knew this back in the 70's (see BBC's Survivors series). It terms of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, it still helps because if people are travelling from countries which have coronavirus then they will 100% for sure be spreading even more pockets of it.

 

 

There can be no safe international travel until:

 

There's a vaccine

 

OR

 

people are tested before flying, with a certificate to prove they are safe

 

OR

 

the departure nation has zero cases of Covid-19.

 

 

We went from zero cases in the world to 2.25 million in the space of 4 months. To have any other approach is irresponsible and it will just happen all over again. There's still another 7.5 billion or so still waiting to catch it......

 

 

Nobody knows if it'd have made a difference. As far as we know many more infections clusters could've broken out had flights not been seized. The south and Rome have been relatively safe, but trust and believe had the flights remained incoming there'd have been more clusters.

 

Yes Italy were just very unlucky in that they got the virus very early before they banned flights from China. Therefore the example of Italy for the reason why supposedly banning flights is pointless is not a good example in my opinion.

 

If they wouldn't have banned flights from China when they did, the outbreak could have been even worse there.

 

the ever-blunt Marina tells it like it t-i-i-s:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2...MP=share_btn_tw

....and just to keep the upbeat mood going, many reputable broadsheets are reporting on people who have had Covid-19 testing positive a 2nd time, hundreds in South Korea and Japan, many with symptoms returning. Suggestions are that it's harder to shake off with full immunity than thought, possibly due to mutations by the virus keeping ahead of the body's ability to develop immunity. If this is true (and it's still "If" fingers-crossed) the whole "herd immunity" theory is dead in the water. If there's one thing we know about viruses it's their ability to mutate and not be wiped out no matter how hard you try. Or as Trump puts it "They are smart. Really smart." A virus is clearly smarter than Trump, who has announced he is winning the war against the "smart" virus despite increasingly mounting death tolls. Trump: less brain cells than a virus. Official.

 

PS Trump is tweeting that the States need liberating from lockdown and is inciting rioting and civil disorder as he has always wanted (see previous pre-election quotations).

 

....and just to keep the upbeat mood going, many reputable broadsheets are reporting on people who have had Covid-19 testing positive a 2nd time, hundreds in South Korea and Japan, many with symptoms returning. Suggestions are that it's harder to shake off with full immunity than thought, possibly due to mutations by the virus keeping ahead of the body's ability to develop immunity. If this is true (and it's still "If" fingers-crossed) the whole "herd immunity" theory is dead in the water. If there's one thing we know about viruses it's their ability to mutate and not be wiped out no matter how hard you try. Or as Trump puts it "They are smart. Really smart." A virus is clearly smarter than Trump, who has announced he is winning the war against the "smart" virus despite increasingly mounting death tolls. Trump: less brain cells than a virus. Official.

 

PS Trump is tweeting that the States need liberating from lockdown and is inciting rioting and civil disorder as he has always wanted (see previous pre-election quotations).

 

 

I would find the first line really, really unlikely. It's a possibility but from most things I have read it seems the virus has barely mutated. Surely the bigger likelihood is the testing is not right. Otherwise it goes against pretty much every virus going that your body does not form some sort of natural immunity (even for a temporary time). If anything probably adds to the conspiracy that the virus was man-made.

 

Pretty scathing report in the Times tonight highlighting the failings of the UK government to handle this crisis.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/cor...aster-hq3b9tlgh

 

• Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus
• calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears.
• Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives

On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world. Passing from person to person and borne on ships and planes, the coronavirus was already leaving a trail of bodies.

 

The virus had spread from China to six countries and was almost certainly in many others. Sensing the coming danger, the British government briefly went into wartime mode that day, holding a meeting of Cobra, its national crisis committee.

 

But it took just an hour that January 24 lunchtime to brush aside the coronavirus threat. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”.

 

Key quote though:

 

What you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends ... There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared”

Here, from the government website, is a transcript of a speech made by Johnson in February. He was literally floating the idea of doing nothing about coronavirus and hoping we’d be able to exploit economic collapse elsewhere.

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-s...3-february-2020

While I am not surprised about Boris at all (I mean it's clearly obvious he does minimal work) and in no way am I fan of the government, didn't pretty much the entire Western world not take the threat seriously in January. We contained the cases (as did the rest of the world) in January fairly easily. It was only after the outbreak in Austria that the world got hot badly. I am not a fan of this government at all, but nobody really took this seriously until Italy started crumbling after a few weeks. I mean even the WHO were late with their severity of the virus as well.

While I am not surprised about Boris at all (I mean it's clearly obvious he does minimal work) and in no way am I fan of the government, didn't pretty much the entire Western world not take the threat seriously in January. We contained the cases (as did the rest of the world) in January fairly easily. It was only after the outbreak in Austria that the world got hot badly. I am not a fan of this government at all, but nobody really took this seriously until Italy started crumbling after a few weeks. I mean even the WHO were late with their severity of the virus as well.

 

You are not surprised that the PM does a half-arsed job in a crisis that could economically cripple the country worse than all of the Great Depression, World War II and the Financial Crisis of 2008. I love your relaxed attitude to this.

 

UK deaths are four times higher per capita than Germany, where the initial European outbreak is thought to have originated. That looks like some governments were a lot more PREPARED than others to me.

 

Not sure what you mean about Austria, it was Italy (specifically the northern Lombardy region) where community spread first became widespread.

You are not surprised that the PM does a half-arsed job in a crisis that could economically cripple the country worse than all of the Great Depression, World War II and the Financial Crisis of 2008. I love your relaxed attitude to this.

 

UK deaths are four times higher per capita than Germany, where the initial European outbreak is thought to have originated. That looks like some governments were a lot more PREPARED than others to me.

 

Not sure what you mean about Austria, it was Italy (specifically the northern Lombardy region) where community spread first became widespread.

 

No, I'm not surprised at all because he is a lazy and everything about his political career history today shows this- he's a showman. What can I do by getting wound up about it? What happened has already happened. All we can do is get through this mess, learn for the future and hold those to accounability when it's all over. His whole attitude about it was wrong, but then again so many people's attitudes were because clearly the reports coming out at the time, did not account for how quickly it spread or how lethal it could be. The whole 'it only affects old people' linre rightly or wronly was spread. As I've already mentioned we were under prepared. I don't think the Government will get away with this when it's all over, someone will quite rightly take the flack, but it will probably be the wrong person.

 

I know Lombardy was the initial hotspot in Italy, but aren't a lot of the original cases in Europe linked not to Italy, but to Austria? At least that's where a lot of cases are linked to from the end of February which seemingly caused the spread to a lot of countries.

No, I'm not surprised at all because he is a lazy and everything about his political career history today shows this- he's a showman. What can I do by getting wound up about it? What happened has already happened. All we can do is get through this mess, learn for the future and hold those to accounability when it's all over. His whole attitude about it was wrong, but then again so many people's attitudes were because clearly the reports coming out at the time, did not account for how quickly it spread or how lethal it could be. The whole 'it only affects old people' linre rightly or wronly was spread. As I've already mentioned we were under prepared. I don't think the Government will get away with this when it's all over, someone will quite rightly take the flack, but it will probably be the wrong person.

 

I know Lombardy was the initial hotspot in Italy, but aren't a lot of the original cases in Europe linked not to Italy, but to Austria? At least that's where a lot of cases are linked to from the end of February which seemingly caused the spread to a lot of countries.

Most initial cases are actually linked to returning tourists from Italy or Iran as well as chinese tourists

 

The tirol cluster did infect a lot of skiers, but those were later on in the timeline

No, I'm not surprised at all because he is a lazy and everything about his political career history today shows this- he's a showman. What can I do by getting wound up about it? What happened has already happened.

We can learn that it is not a good idea to have a Prime Minister whose only skill is that of self-promotion. We might even learn (although I'm not optimistic) that having a press that is overwhelmingly on the side of the governing party is not a good idea.