To wonder why people aren’t more angry?

[Rainbowb]

Throughout this whole crisis I have really been surprised by the level of acceptance from everyone in this country of the whole situation. I know we haven’t had much choice in the decisions made and we’re probably a very polite nation as a whole but we have been so quick to accept the arrival of a deadly virus and drastic changes to our lives, seemingly without complaint. Is no-one out there demanding to know how on earth this was all able to happen? We’ve faced the huge loss of human life worldwide and it is continuing, surely we are all entitled to get angry and demand answers? I see grieving families, children missing out on being with other children and not having an education, families being separated indefinitely, people’s mental health suffering and vulnerable people potentially at risk and I feel so frustrated and angry. If we got fired up about climate change, why not this??

I am angry-basically Everything @TheMagiciansMewTwo said. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
But quite frankly I've spent years angry at the Tories & the havoc they have wreaked in our public services, poor, vulnerable & children/young people. And I feel helpless as they have been voted in time & time again & Boris is absolutely loved.

@oakleaffy

**It will be hard to stop the eating of these animals /reptiles entirely, as there will be a black market if banned.
Yes i agree it will be very hard but we have to start somewhere 🙂

"Additional allowance claims up to £10k can be submitted. In all cases, MPs must pay up front and then claim back, submitting receipts, and only get the money if the expense is approved."

Yes, and the money is not for the MPs anyway, it's for their staff. An MP you'd expect to have some kind of work space at home anyway and be able to afford a new computer if necessary, hardly fair to expect their low paid staffers to do the same. The level of case work at the moment must be huge and people would soon complain if their MPs don't answer them because their staff don't have good enough broadband or a laptop.

I think the way it was announced was obviously a public relations fail though.

Criticising the government in ANY nation (whether China or Belgium or Ireland or wherever) for their immoral actions (or inaction) is not racist.

Focusing ONLY on the country that’s racially different to yours, while ignoring ...

How Italy’s desire for cheap Chinese labour for clothes manufacturing exacerbated the crisis

How the UK’s totally inept response led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths

IS racist, yes.

There are plenty of questions to be asked when this is over. Those questions need to be logical, forensic and relentless.

Anger now is pointless.

I am old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher being utterly wrong footed by a member of the public over the sinking of an Argentine battle cruiser during the Falklands War.

Get your facts straight, get your questions ready and then hammer the politicians with them.

LaurieMarlow - I am more thinking about protests, mass gatherings still going on, expensive health care system, a president that is capable of understanding the seriousness of the situation....
We are still better off than many other countries, just count your blessings. Obviously there is always space for improvement but nobody knows what is the best policy.

Did you see the scenes in italy, with people lined up in the hospital corridors on folded blankets on the floor. Dying on the floor with no ventilators, no bed and no one around them because there simply wasnt room?

Wake the fuck up. The only difference is that in the U.K. these people died at home and in nursing homes. They didn’t make it to hospital.

Frangipanini Thu 30-Apr-20 09:10:58
YANBU

I've lived in a number of places with wet markets and I never went into them for a reason. They are repulsive. This is also my 2nd lockdown with a respiratory disease caused by animal viruses jumping to humans as a result of poor hygiene and dodgy market practises as I was in the middle of SARs in HK in 2003.

This isn't the only thing going on. If you watch the Aussie news you will see that the Chinese government is trying to hoover up struggling companies brought to their knees by this. The are trying to buy Virgin in Australia, their 2nd largest carrier. So, unleash a virus on us, then try and buy off all our silverware on the cheap. Nice!

Our governments will do nothing about this as there is too much money at stake from the Chinese government and they have their fingers in too many of our pies already. Ian Duncan Smith is all over the news internationally slating them, but no one here is.

If it is the case that this has been caused by a wet market in China, a leak from a lab and covered up by them, then the only people that can do something about it is us. Our governments won't so it is up to us to stop them by not buying anything made in or from China. They are trying to buy up failing companies and will continue to do so with hey, guess what? The money we have spent on stuff, that is made in, or has parts made in China.

======

Reposting Frangipanini's post because it's absolutely the nub of the issue...

As much uproar as the government ignoring the exercise that demonstrated we did not have the necessary things in place if a pandemic occurred?
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/labour-urges-government-publish-findings-2016-pandemic-drill

This is not just about PPE. The government have been underfunding the NHS and social care for a decade. This is the result. Between this and their inexcusably slow response (especially when we had the benefit of seeing the situation in other countries), we should be angry with them. The severity of this situation could have been curtailed by swifter action, and better funded and equipped public services, as we have seen elsewhere.

Given the inability of pretty much every country in the world to prevent the spread of this virus, it’s a bit rich to be angry with China for being incapable of containing it. As China got the virus first, it was dealing with the unknown. The UK, on the other hand, knew more about the virus when it decided not to stop people flying in from countries known to be affected and not to quarantine, so it seems a bit hypocritical to be angry about China’s slow reaction now. Why should China have had a better crystal ball than the rest of the world? As for China now taking advantage of the situation - no surprises there. The expect the US would do the same if it could (or Amazon!...).

The only difference is that in the U.K. these people died at home and in nursing homes. They didn’t make it to hospital.

Or rather they were told not to go to hospital, until they were turning blue. And until yesterday their deaths were not counted (and even now, not being counted if they died before being tested).

I don't support the Chinese attitude to animal welfare and the wet markets (though in a country where in living memory there has been mass starvation you can understand why people eat what they can) but I would remind those frothing at the mouth that the UK was one of the sources of a disease that jumped two species because we fed infected sheep brains to cattle and then consumed the product. Fortunately for our international reputation that disease does not spread by contact or droplet, though many countries in the world still refuse blood products from people who have lived in the UK for any length of time.

I think if anything is to be learned from this virus it is that we are like children playing with fire when it comes to how we deal with, exploit and abuse the natural resources and other inhabitants of our planet. But we knew that already.

And not being counted if they die in sheltered or assisted housing.

This week (yes, week) there were over 22,000 deaths, which is about 11,500 more than the same weeks average over the last five years. Apparently only 8,000 or so are COVID related, if you believe the government. What they mean is that only 8000 of them were tested and found positive for COVID.

I saw a photo from the current Mars lander on Facebook the other day. Martian landscape in the foreground - earth like a tiny star in the sky. It made me realise how very alone and fragile we are. So anger is a waste of energy and emotion. Yes mistakes are being made, but we're the species with the answers, so we have to stop finger-pointing and get on and find them. Because this is our home - we have nowhere else to go.

@Piglet89- sorry I didn’t put that so well. I meant rates within China, not global spread. If they had suffered in the way other countries are now are I’m not sure that globally we’d be so fast to blame them.

@loobyloo1234
I have done my research thank you.
Its everywhere plain to see.
Wet markets may not have started out this way but it is how they are now so i really do think its you that may need to educate yourself on the darker side of it. I did also say that ALL countries need to ban it not just China, you are obviously not reading the post properly. I don't agree with them that's my opinion if you do then that's your opinion but don't go on at me and expect me not to respond.

And that’s more than a week out of date!

On the contrary we havent hit capacity of hospitals, the NHS isn't overwhelmed and we managed to build a 4000 bed capacity hospital in 10 days as a back up which we dont even need

I don’t think current policy is wrong, indeed I fail to see many other ways this could have been handled with regards to the NHS given the short timeframe (made shorter by our governments lack of willingness to prepare earlier) and limited knowledge of covid; but let’s be clear on a couple of things here. The NHS is not currently running as the service we know, many services have been completely suspended. From that perspective it has most definitely been ‘overwhelmed’.

Also the nightingale wards weren’t built specifically for right now, they will be used, most likely as a resource to allow hospitals to resume some services. It’s great they weren’t needed straight away but it’s premature to take that as a sign of success.

No matter how smart we think we are as a race, the forces of nature have us over a barrel. There are untold numbers of bacteria and potential viruses out there waiting to wipe us out, and we're extremely fortunate to have made it this far. If your choice is anger or desperation, then anger is a more useful emotion, but it's misplaced. Instead, why don't you just remind yourself that you're fortunate to have a roof over your head and food to eat, and that you've not succumbed to this disease. In time restrictions will ease, treatments and/or a vaccine will be found, and we will move on. Anger won't get us there any more quickly.

Useful post Chazsbrilliantattitude raging, tantruming etc. is pointless and childish. Researching your facts, asking questions and taking rational action where you can is productive.

The posters saying PPE couldn't be stockpiled. You do realise that isn't what anyone asked for?

But just in case you didn't, let me explain.

In every big organisation, in every charity that works overseas, in every multi-national company and in every government, you have a person, team or department who is responsible for emergency planning. It is their job to prepare for every eventuality , to risk assess to the nth degree and to have steps that swing into action as soon as that particular risk takes place. If there's a flood, an earthquake, a complete power outage, etc, there will be a risk assessment in place.

Ironically the original UK pandemic planning has been copied worldwide but our pandemic planning was based on a flu pandemic (which coronavirus isn't) and despite having pandemic planning, the UK Government didn't take the steps it outlined or adapt them to the details of coronavirus. Other countries adapted our pandemic planning model during SARS, adapted it again for the coronavirus and crucially actually implemented it.

The model would have included ordering PPE at the earliest opportunity, commandeering any produced in the UK and incentivising UK producers and manufacturers to move to producing PPE and increasing production.

This isn't a situation where you need a magic ball. It isn't just 'luck' that other countries did better. The UK government has shown systemic failure of leadership, decision making and action.

@Littlemeadow123. you say we eat animals we know are safe - except when we don’t. You only learn what is unsafe when people become ill from eating it.

BSE in cattle lead to humans contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which killed them. Luckily for the rest of the world (although not the innocent victims) CJD did not prove to be contagious. If it had been communicable in the same way CoVid is the West’s shoddy farming practices would have caused a pandemic.

My Granny caught brucellosis through eating butter made from unpasteurised milk from infected cattle. The whole family (including me) ate the same butter because it was freely available locally , cheaper than shop butter and utterly delicious. The rest of us were just lucky we didn’t contract the disease that way or later catch it from my granny. It didn’t kill her but she died young and her doctors thought the brucellosis had weakened her and so was a contributory factor to her death. She wasn’t at fault for catching it, we just just were not fully aware of the risks at the time.

Whichever Chinese person caught the first case of CoVid 19 did it in all innocence. They ate something they thought would be safe and in doing so unleashed a monster but it wasn’t their fault. They are as much a victim as anyone else.

If it is eventually firmly established that eating a pangolin was the cause of CoVid 19 people will stop eating them, just as nowadays people avoid untreated dairy from herds with brucellosis and farmers take more care with cattle feed to prevent BSE and CJD.

Anger leads to war. War is not what the world needs. Human beings need to learn to collaborate better, not piss about being angry all over the place.

It's hard to be angry when it hasn't sunk in yet. Over 21,000 people have died from this. I can't get my head around that. I almost feel like I'm in denial. I remember being absolutely horrified at how many people died in 911 (and it is horrifying) but that figure is only a fraction of this figure. People should be angry. I am angry the virus was created/released/whetever happened to get it out and killing people. It should never have happened. But I don't feel I'm angry enough because I'm still in some kind of shock I suppose. It's just so tragic how many people have died