Coronavirus

[BIGRON]

Ireland lockdown extended until May 5th at earliest. UK will possibly/probably follow suit.

This is gonna last till well past May , i rereckon it will be August or September before things are any way near over

[Clive Evans]

Yesterdays announced daily death toll was higher than any daily death toll in Italy or Spain. Looks like the UK Government has really screwed up. The only redeeming factor, is that our NHS ( not a Tory organisation) has held up well and provided enough beds. Shame the Government has fell well short on protective equipment. The Beeb really laying in to them this morning. Also a strangely high death rate amongst medical staff from foreign climes.

[Mistadobalina]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21P1VF

Quite long but worth a read. Have tried to reserve judgment as much as possible on the approach we've taken, but if we're still a week off from the peak, then we're looking at a seriously grim outcome, possibly the worst in Europe. Given that we had all that extra time to prepare, that does seem unforgivable. You wonder when the breaking point with the public will be if the Tories are seen to have thoroughly bungled things.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21P1VF

Quite long but worth a read. Have tried to reserve judgment as much as possible on the approach we've taken, but if we're still a week off from the peak, then we're looking at a seriously grim outcome, possibly the worst in Europe. Given that we had all that extra time to prepare, that does seem unforgivable. You wonder when the breaking point with the public will be if the Tories are seen to have thoroughly bungled things.

Unfortunately, unless Boris went to the hospital with a machine gun and finished off every infected patient, he’d still be deemed as doing a good job by most of the public.

If any other high profile issue was bungled this badly, the person at the top would have to resign.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Yesterdays announced daily death toll was higher than any daily death toll in Italy or Spain. Looks like the UK Government has really screwed up. The only redeeming factor, is that our NHS ( not a Tory organisation) has held up well and provided enough beds. Shame the Government has fell well short on protective equipment. The Beeb really laying in to them this morning. Also a strangely high death rate amongst medical staff from foreign climes.

I look forward to the numbers going down because they change the way we count, to make them look better.
Also, these numbers are only recording hospital deaths and not care homes.

[Long slender neck]

Yesterdays announced daily death toll was higher than any daily death toll in Italy or Spain. Looks like the UK Government has really screwed up. The only redeeming factor, is that our NHS ( not a Tory organisation) has held up well and provided enough beds. Shame the Government has fell well short on protective equipment. The Beeb really laying in to them this morning. Also a strangely high death rate amongst medical staff from foreign climes.

The 'daily death toll' is actually a deaths reported toll that is a figure that is made up of deaths that occurred over the past week or longer.

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21P1VF

Quite long but worth a read. Have tried to reserve judgment as much as possible on the approach we've taken, but if we're still a week off from the peak, then we're looking at a seriously grim outcome, possibly the worst in Europe. Given that we had all that extra time to prepare, that does seem unforgivable. You wonder when the breaking point with the public will be if the Tories are seen to have thoroughly bungled things.

There isn’t a breaking point.

Even people like yourself have refused to criticise them.

[Disoriented]

Now the BMA clearly state that doctors are constantly putting their lives at risk because of a lack of PPE.

Yet, morons still think Johnson, Hancock et al are showing leadership and handling the crisis well.

Extraordinary times.

[Thor]

The scientists need seriously questioning when this is over, along with the modellers at imperial college. The government have based their approach on the scientific advice, this from that report and what we are seeing or hearing is proving that it is inadequate. The government by that very basis has serious questions to answer as well, why didn’t they challenge the Advice? Why wasn’t more emphasis placed on other data from other countries such as Italy for example where the number of cases were rocketing?

When this is over the mother of all enquires will be opened, how quickly we will get an answer or how transparent it will be can only be imagined right now.

[Real Al]

Also a strangely high death rate amongst medical staff from foreign climes.

29% of doctors and 18% of nurses (figures from ONS) are non- British nationals. Of the rest, an unknown number of the British nationals would have been born overseas. I would assume that a lot of these are also concentrated in the large cities, where the virus has been most prevalent. So not such a surprise.

It does make the 'send then home' brigade look even more half- witted than normal though.

[Real Al]

The scientists need seriously questioning when this is over, along with the modellers at imperial college. The government have based their approach on the scientific advice, this from that report and what we are seeing or hearing is proving that it is inadequate. The government by that very basis has serious questions to answer as well, why didn’t they challenge the Advice? Why wasn’t more emphasis placed on other data from other countries such as Italy for example where the number of cases were rocketing?

When this is over the mother of all enquires will be opened, how quickly we will get an answer or how transparent it will be can only be imagined right now.

What data and advice are you questioning?

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

The scientists need seriously questioning when this is over, along with the modellers at imperial college. The government have based their approach on the scientific advice, this from that report and what we are seeing or hearing is proving that it is inadequate. The government by that very basis has serious questions to answer as well, why didn’t they challenge the Advice? Why wasn’t more emphasis placed on other data from other countries such as Italy for example where the number of cases were rocketing?

When this is over the mother of all enquires will be opened, how quickly we will get an answer or how transparent it will be can only be imagined right now.

The medical advisers are already being lined up to take the fall for this. Every time you see Hancock or Boris on the tele, they state they’re only following the advice of the experts.

Not surprised to see buffoons falling for this line.

[Disoriented]

The scientists need seriously questioning when this is over, along with the modellers at imperial college. The government have based their approach on the scientific advice, this from that report and what we are seeing or hearing is proving that it is inadequate. The government by that very basis has serious questions to answer as well, why didn’t they challenge the Advice? Why wasn’t more emphasis placed on other data from other countries such as Italy for example where the number of cases were rocketing?

When this is over the mother of all enquires will be opened, how quickly we will get an answer or how transparent it will be can only be imagined right now.

The medical advisers are already being lined up to take the fall for this. Every time you see Hancock or Boris on the tele, they state they’re only following the advice of the experts.

Not surprised to see buffoons falling for this line.

Yes, to question the opinions of experts in their fields yet believe the buffoons with no qualifications to be a politician.

Mind-boggling.

[Long slender neck]

Read the link mista posted.

[BoniO]

The scientists need seriously questioning when this is over, along with the modellers at imperial college. The government have based their approach on the scientific advice, this from that report and what we are seeing or hearing is proving that it is inadequate. The government by that very basis has serious questions to answer as well, why didn’t they challenge the Advice? Why wasn’t more emphasis placed on other data from other countries such as Italy for example where the number of cases were rocketing?

When this is over the mother of all enquires will be opened, how quickly we will get an answer or how transparent it will be can only be imagined right now.

Hurrah! You've already told us you'll be marching to Downing Street to demand answers and now this. What a guy!!!

As has been said by others, the scientists will be the fall guys, whereas what happened was that they presented options to the government and the government chose the option with least impact on the economy, regardless of the cost in human life. The government also failed to learn from the best practices seen in places like Sth Korea and Singapore. That was way past stupid, inept, incompetent. We're now reaping what they've sown.

[Long slender neck]

The *scientific committees* thought that the British public would not accept a China style lockdown.

[Mistadobalina]

A consistent problem seems to be centralising decision making and a lack of transparency. This was getting criticism back in early march, the fact that the assumptions that government advisors were making were not available for scrutiny. Once the approach was challenged publicly, it changed almost over night.

That is a Whitehall problem all over. We have one of the most centralised states in the western world. Will admit that the fawning press over Whitty had me reassured more than in retrospect should have been.

Doesn't give much hope that we'll learn from other countries on how to exit lockdown - if there is a way really to at all.

[BoniO]

The *scientific committees* thought that the British public would not accept a China style lockdown.

Yup - not their call to make - that's what this government was meant to do.

[BoniO]

Also, the section where the UK didn't attend an EU wide meeting to discuss obtaining ventilators (although we were invited) and thus missed out on the chance to order them early. This being explained away by HM government as an "admin error".

One huge and costly cock-up after another.

[Dunners]

The scientific advisors can only present data, models and a range of predictions. What they do not do is make decisions. That's what the government does.

[Dunners]

Having said that, the WHO does need to be scrutinised.

[Long slender neck]

The *scientific committees* thought that the British public would not accept a China style lockdown.

Yup - not their call to make - that's what this government was meant to do.

It's not their call but seems like they didn't even advise it. They didn't set the threat level to high til mid march either.

"Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions."

[StillSpike]

It doesn't seem very scientific, though, does it? - simply to assume "oh Britons would never accept such restrictions, so we won't even consider that" That just doesn't sound like the sort of assumption scientists would make. It is odd.

[Mistadobalina]

The people advising the government on this aren't 'the scientists'. They a group of scientists within a structure and culture. How that is organised seems to have been a real issue. Plenty of external (ie non governmental advisory) scientists have been scathing about how this has been led, and that criticism isn't just reserved for the politicians. Since it's been the same party in charge for a decade though, they have to carry the can for any institutional issues as well as the obvious f*ck ups with procurement and NHS readiness.

[Dunners]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21P1VF

Quite long but worth a read. Have tried to reserve judgment as much as possible on the approach we've taken, but if we're still a week off from the peak, then we're looking at a seriously grim outcome, possibly the worst in Europe. Given that we had all that extra time to prepare, that does seem unforgivable. You wonder when the breaking point with the public will be if the Tories are seen to have thoroughly bungled things.

Thanks for linking this article - very interesting.

Like you, I've been reserving judgement, and I still believe that it will only be in 12 to 18 months before we can begin to clearly analyse the results of different approaches. However, notwithstanding that a number of claims in the article will need verifying in due course, it does indicate systematic bias and possible failings within the machinery of government. There is also a strong suggestion that obsession with Brexit (remember that?) may prove to have been a catastrophic distraction.