Priti Patel saying "I'm sorry if people feel there have been failings over PPE" is like a killer saying to a victim's family "I'm sorry for your perceived inconvenience".

 

No acknowledgement. No ownership. No remorse. No empathy.

What, seriously. It ain't gonna bring back doctors and nurses who have died from it because of lack of PPE.

Trump absolutely lost it now and gone on the warpath and withdrawn funding from the WHO.

 

Not saying I don’t agree he’s trying his best to affect blame but also of the view point personally he’s right about WHO and the role of China. I think most people agree China’s official numbers aren’t entirely correct, so either we are all wrong or China and WHO have pulled the wool under our eyes as WHO praised China for being so open. The thing is if it was any other official leader is would be taken half-seriously!

No matter how valid Trump’s criticisms (I’m going with “not very” for now), this is not the time to be withholding funding. This moron is endangering people’s lives.

Trump, of course, doesnt care about lives, he has no ability to empathise, he has shown this throughout his life, he genuinely is a sociopath incapable of remorse or offering even the slightest bit of support to other human beings. He's one of the most dangrous people who could have been elected to that office because his lifelong reaction to criticism is to attack and shift blame. If anyone can be called evil, it's a politician who plays fast and loose with peoples lives and well-being and always deflects blame elsewhere. I'm going to repeat what one Trump's former wives said: the only book she saw him read, and which was on his bedside table, was Hitler's "How To..." guide. How to manipulate and lie to people to gain power, and how to keep lying no matter what, especially about those that try to provide fact-based opposition. Because they have to keep not-lying or you just have a battle between two sets of liars and nobody believes anyone anymore. Bannon & Trump have achieved most of their aims - the only problem with getting what they wanted is that they have been unlucky enough to face the ultimate test of a pandemic to see exactly what they have done. It's hard to hide facts and lie about 25,000 dead Americans (so far) when every lie you have been telling is on videotape and it affects everyone in the country. You also cant hide the blatantly obvious fact that you are a blithering moron when you are ranting incoherently day after day to the extent that even Fox News can't save you as they get ready for an avalanche of claims from families of dead relatives who may have died due to their denial of reality lies.

 

The WHO, whatever it's failings, is still dependant on information provided by countries and whatever medical information it can get hold of. If that information is being with-held (and let's be honest, China's local politicians refused to recognise the problem and tried to hush it up and shut up whistle-blowers who were also dying from it) then their ability to make accurate assessments is also reduced until it's too late. Politicians who's gut instinct is to dismiss experts as moaning Cassandras wouldnt have acted any differently, and that's been borne out by delayed actions even when it's happening on camera right in front of their eyes.

It’s hard for WHO because they are in a real tight spot. If they’d gone in heavy on China for a cover up then China would close ranks and throw them out or starve them of information. Time and time again we have been given endless amounts of evidence that this is how the Chinese state operates. WHO has to walk a narrow tight rope in order to function as best that it can. There is legitimate complaints to be had over how it handled the outset of this outbreak but now is very much not the time for that introspective review and defunding is never the bloody answer.

 

Trump is a giant manbaby and such a major threat to the world

that breakdown of total deaths is a good indicator (because I don;t believe it's just coincidentally massively higher than the average) that the number of deaths extra to "normal" times is about one-third higher than the figures quoted.

 

It's scandalous. I'd be willing to bet a hell of a lot of countries are massively under-reporting deaths and it's almost certain to be double the quoted figure. If you can't trust many democracies to be open and honest, then it's a sure thing IMO.

 

Given the European and American figures now the Chinese figures look quite suspect!

Given the European and American figures now the Chinese figures look quite suspect!

 

I guess we might never know, but something is very suspect and I don't believe for one second it's because China handled the impact initially. It's why I find the criticism of the WHO quite valid as while they are definitely cosying up to China and doing the best they can now, in the initial offset they made some grave mistakes. Mind boggling at the rate it spread here compared to China, especially since nobody confirmed human to human transmission until the back end of January. It does aid a lot of credidence to the theory that most people are asympohtomatic.

Yes, the Chinese figures do look suspect, Their record for supressing news that portrays them in a bad light inevitably leads to scepticism. However, the asymptomatic cases could be part of that. We have no way of knowing (for now, at least) whether the proportion of asymptomatic cases has remained roughly the same throughout all this. If the proportion has been rising steadily, that could be why it has spread more rapidly in Europe and the US than in China. Perhaps the Chinese were able to slow the spread there while the virus was spreading undetected in Europe.

Those ONS stats will hopefully put paid to those 'they'd die anyway' comments, that highest ever weekly figure is soon going to be the 4th/5th highest ever weekly figure.

 

Especially worrying when you see a graph like this.

 

@1249986522692096003

 

The WHO, whatever it's failings, is still dependant on information provided by countries and whatever medical information it can get hold of. If that information is being with-held (and let's be honest, China's local politicians refused to recognise the problem and tried to hush it up and shut up whistle-blowers who were also dying from it) then their ability to make accurate assessments is also reduced until it's too late. Politicians who's gut instinct is to dismiss experts as moaning Cassandras wouldnt have acted any differently, and that's been borne out by delayed actions even when it's happening on camera right in front of their eyes.

 

This is great analysis — if only more people were open to understanding the intricacies of ongoing situations like this. I have been reading too many conspiracy theories about WHO being solely in the pocket of the Chinese government.

 

Early mistakes were made, of course, but defunding them is just unbelievably reckless. Trump is so desperate to deflect blame.

 

Unrelated — Chris and Vidcapper have disappeared?

Edited April 15, 20205 yr by blacksquare

I buy that it was worse than the official numbers in Hubei for a while. There were a number of changes in how they were reporting figures at first and clear they wanted a narrative of winning the battle against the virus. Definitely considering the asymptomatic cases as a part of it though, because originally it was all about symptoms and outside of Hubei those without symptoms were relatively free to move before a 14-day quarantine was required for anyone who had been travelling at all (which is still very easily enforced if anything is suspect about the health of yourself or anyone you've been near).

 

The big thing I'm concerned about with the figures is whether the relative lack of new cases is actually true now, although with it being the first country affected, strict controls for anyone moving about, an easy way to test and trace if anything suspect emerges, based on observance and what I've heard from other foreigners in China, there's much less of a concern than there was at its height and while still vigilant, the Chinese are in the phase of having 'beaten the virus'.

 

Regardless of all of that, it still wouldn't be a reason for Trump to pull funding from WHO. It's zero-sum geopolitics and this is not the time to be playing 'the global system is anarchic and America needs to look strong' because it really isn't.

 

Unrelated — Chris and Vidcapper have disappeared?

 

The latter is permanently banned, the former is serving one of many series of increasing temporary suspensions, and if he continues being a promoter of Britain's worst newspapers and winding everyone up, those will continue to get longer and longer.

 

Vid must have seriously overstepped the mark Regina-style to get perma-banned.

My friend works in a hospital & has worries about the number of people unable to take cancer drugs right now as it will make them immunocompromised & thus ripe for corona.

 

That means for now they have to either go untreated or go straight to radiotherapy.

 

So something like that applied across multiple illnesses will no doubt be upping death rates tangentially. As well as people avoiding hospitals from fear of getting it.

 

Our priority NEEDS to be ability to judge risk level of getting it. If it turns out less fatal than thought then many people will have over-avoided it & possibly damned themselves for lack of treatment.

My friend works in a hospital & has worries about the number of people unable to take cancer drugs right now as it will make them immunocompromised & thus ripe for corona.

 

That means for now they have to either go untreated or go straight to radiotherapy.

 

So something like that applied across multiple illnesses will no doubt be upping death rates tangentially. As well as people avoiding hospitals from fear of getting it.

 

Our priority NEEDS to be ability to judge risk level of getting it. If it turns out less fatal than thought then many people will have over-avoided it & possibly damned themselves for lack of treatment.

One of the things reported in the last couple days has been that the reduction in visitors to A&E has been a lot greater than expected. We can assume that there has been a big fall in the number of people pursuing activities that might result in an accident needing hospital treatment, including relatively mundane activities such as driving. It is also likely that there are fewer people going to A&E for something trivial. That, of course, is to be welcomed and it would be great if it continues after all this is over.

 

However, there is a fear that people who do need to go to A&E are not doing so, either because they "don't want to be a burden" or because they are worried about contracting the virus in hospital. Some of those cases could lead to the patient becoming more seriously ill because of the delay, hence the concern.

current death rates of those known to have Covid-19 is about 3 or 4% - now that's not necessarily the overall death rate because no-one knows how many have had it. About 20% of those known to have it get very ill, I've read some of the experiences people are going through and it's much worse than anything I've gone through (and I've been bed-ridden for quite a while when I was younger feeling like death-warmed-up).

 

So it's not necessarily what the risk is that you'll die (but which is probably at least 1 in a 100 on average, much more for some people, much less for healthy younger people) but how incapacitated it's going to make you and for how long, and 1 in a 5 is quite a high risk (or even if it's a more likely 1 in 20) that you wouldnt want to take if you are unwell anyway. It's a terrible choice to have to make, especially given people are catching it in hospital and that must increase your risks quite a bit. I've had to consider what happens to my parents if one gets ill - both of them needed medical attention in December and January, and dad had hospital operations in Jan/Feb, so in one sense we were lucky with the timing. For mum, I've decided the hospital is out of the question anymore, she's too frail to cope with the stress of being somewhere she doesnt recognise, cut off from family and TV which keeps her going, so even when she has a fall I deal with it and the problems it causes myself, and call doctors only for medication needs like antibiotics. Being in A&E is worse for her than staying at home. For dad, only if the alternative is dying through not going in hospital.

 

That's how we are having to think of life for a lot of people now.

There could also be an increase in the amount of suicides/accidental overdoses happening? Last year had the highest suicide rate since 2001 and given everything that's going on I wouldn't be surprised if there's been a spike in suicides over the last few weeks or so.

Edited April 15, 20205 yr by Envoirment

There could also be an increase in the amount of suicides/accidental overdoses happening? Last year had the highest suicide rate since 2001 and given everything that's going on I wouldn't be surprised if there's been a spike in suicides over the last few weeks or so.

 

Who knows, but the danger the goverment have is the longer the country is shutdown, the harder the immediate effect on the economy. I mean what the economists modelled the other day was scary, never mind a recession we're heading for the Great Depression II. So with that will become a large increase in mental health problems, redundancies, addictions etc. - so plenty of social problems will be intensified. I think we will lockdown for another 3 weeks, but after that I suspect is everything goes OK in the other European countries we will start to see maybe junior schools re-open and some businesses as a pilot.

 

Otherwise I just don't see how we recover. It's sad but there's got to be a trade-off somewhere between saving lives and stopping a great depression.

@1250462011286335489

 

Germany is coming out of lockdown!! A lot of restrictions are extended but we have a back to school date and the reopening of smaller stores which is great for a lot of the vulnerable SMEs.

Who knows, but the danger the goverment have is the longer the country is shutdown, the harder the immediate effect on the economy. I mean what the economists modelled the other day was scary, never mind a recession we're heading for the Great Depression II. So with that will become a large increase in mental health problems, redundancies, addictions etc. - so plenty of social problems will be intensified. I think we will lockdown for another 3 weeks, but after that I suspect is everything goes OK in the other European countries we will start to see maybe junior schools re-open and some businesses as a pilot.

 

Otherwise I just don't see how we recover. It's sad but there's got to be a trade-off somewhere between saving lives and stopping a great depression.

The one consolation is that the depression should be short-lived and followed by a sharp recovery. Of course, if the government did something really stupid such as not extending the transition period, that recovery might not be so rapid.

Who knows, but the danger the goverment have is the longer the country is shutdown, the harder the immediate effect on the economy. I mean what the economists modelled the other day was scary, never mind a recession we're heading for the Great Depression II. So with that will become a large increase in mental health problems, redundancies, addictions etc. - so plenty of social problems will be intensified. I think we will lockdown for another 3 weeks, but after that I suspect is everything goes OK in the other European countries we will start to see maybe junior schools re-open and some businesses as a pilot.

 

Otherwise I just don't see how we recover. It's sad but there's got to be a trade-off somewhere between saving lives and stopping a great depression.

 

But if you reopen in a situation where people are still scared of going out, then the economy won't recover, there'll be no consumer confidence, and any further outbreaks will send everything right back into lockdown.

 

The other thing is that right now, there's a bit of solidarity for those who are already unfortunate enough to be out of work due to this, because it is knowingly completely out of their control. If there's a rush to reopen the economy without an exit strategy for regrowing it, then you send a lot of people into the point where their unemployment is now their personal responsibility again that they can do nothing about, and that's not going to be good for mental health either.

 

Basically the system is not going to go back to normal anytime soon and none of the options are particularly appealing. That's why Starmer's call for thinking about an exit strategy is the right way of thinking, there needs to be a steady and staged plan for getting out of this that isn't rushed because of the need for capitalism to get back on its feet no matter the human cost.

 

As such tentative steps like Germany's above are the right thing, slow, careful and don't rush for the sake of "the economy".

But if you reopen in a situation where people are still scared of going out, then the economy won't recover, there'll be no consumer confidence, and any further outbreaks will send everything right back into lockdown.

 

The other thing is that right now, there's a bit of solidarity for those who are already unfortunate enough to be out of work due to this, because it is knowingly completely out of their control. If there's a rush to reopen the economy without an exit strategy for regrowing it, then you send a lot of people into the point where their unemployment is now their personal responsibility again that they can do nothing about, and that's not going to be good for mental health either.

 

Basically the system is not going to go back to normal anytime soon and none of the options are particularly appealing. That's why Starmer's call for thinking about an exit strategy is the right way of thinking, there needs to be a steady and staged plan for getting out of this that isn't rushed because of the need for capitalism to get back on its feet no matter the human cost.

 

As such tentative steps like Germany's above are the right thing, slow, careful and don't rush for the sake of "the economy".

I don't understand why the government keep insisting that this isn't the time to be thinking about an exit strategy. Nobody is yet calling for a firm strategy with specific dates attached, but a rough idea of how they expect things to go would be helpful. At the very least, it might give us some confidence that the eventual strategy has been considered carefully rather than thrown together in a ten-minute Zoom conference.

 

Yes, we know that the initial version might undergo changes in the light of experience elsewhere but, again, that might lead to more confidence that it has been thought through properly.