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??

well it certainly can’t be both from a lab and wet markets both! Some are just lashing out.

It should also not shock anyone when the true death figures are discovered to be 1000s and 1000s higher and that they've just left Covid/Corona off the death certificate.

I am confused by this claim - influenza and pneumonia deaths are not inflated in the ONS link below. What would doctors be putting on death certificates instead?

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending17april2020

Who is going to make a shit load of money of the back of this vaccine

People who write this haven't got the foggiest about what it takes to develop, test, market and distribute medicines and therapies including vaccines. It is massively expensive to do all this, globally, across all demographics, ethnic variances etc etc - people would be the first to winge and moan if all the required steps were short circuited, and safety was sacrificed to get the vaccine to market quicker.

Yet more anger, finger pointing blame, with no idea of the facts. [sigh]. Now we have armchair pharma, to add to armchair epidemiology. The list goes on.

All the talk about "making shitloads of money" is unhelpful and totally beside the point. The politics of envy and resentment.

Angry at what? At who? Mother nature for creating this virus? What good will being angry do? There's far too much anger in this country anyway, it's why shop assistants get talked to like shite, it's why people in call centres get screamed at down the phone. It's awful.

derxa all done after the event. My point was that if it had mutated into a communicable disease we would be who the world is blaming. And my point is that we are transparent in our dealings with animal. Did you read my Reuters link which showed how the Chinese government covered. Here it is again.
www.reuters.com/article/us-swinefever-china-epidemic-specialrepo/special-report-before-coronavirus-china-bungled-swine-epidemic-with-secrecy-idUSKBN20S189

*covered up swine flu

Some people are asking if it was a lab or wet market. There has been mixed information throughout the epidemic but the one thing that has not gone away and coronavirus tests have been positive are from the wet markets.

There was a poster around who seemed to know something about China and said these “wet markets” aren’t quite the disgusting filthy germ haven we picture here. They’re just markets, used mostly by poorer people, which include regular eating animals for the most part, and were very well regulated

This was being discussed on a podcast I listened to yesterday- “wet market” is the term used in SE Asia for any food market. They are not hygiene free hell holes. Borough market is a wet market and sells both fish and birds for human consumption (if you think about it).

LaurieMarlow No one suggested that. If you have to exaggerate to make your point, you know what that says

My post was in response to the suggestion that the government should lead the public more stringently ( which looks like what?) In response to my suggestion that the public wouldn’t have accepted this lockdown any earlier.
There’s zero point in banning Cheltenham, a big outdoor event when thousands of people are crammed into tube trains everyday or flying in on planes with recirculated air.
Look at the population density of the U.K. and compare it to all the other frequently cited countries. We are doing pretty well actually ,considering how piled on top of each other we are.

I think that mistakes have been made by all governments but there was never going to be a perfect response to a pandemic such as this as it is unprecedented and we do not yet know enough about how it came about. I think there are definitely lessons to be learned though but I also think there has been massive misinformation about the transmission and the scale of this and a huge amount of scaremongering. However I accept that down here in Cornwall we have been protected to a certain extent as we have few cases.

Do you have a link, if it’s still active mouldygrapes? I’d be interested in finding out more.

I dont think you can blame the current government for lack of pandemic planning following the 2016 simulation, as the current government have only been in governement since December 2019.
I DO think you can blame the current government for their response. There are many things they did not get right, some of which I am sure will be investigated. There will be an inquiry, I presume.
Some people think the lockdown was too late. Others think the lockdown should not have happened at all.
You CAN blame previous Conservative governments for their response following the 2016 pandemic simulation and report. What were the results of the simulation? What actions recommendations were proposed/acted upon? Were these followed up in the relevant departments?
I am not sure whether the report in 2016 highlighted PPE, but it is clear to me, that going forward we must (as a country) have the capacity to manufacture sufficient in the UK, and sort out the distribution.

well it certainly can’t be both from a lab and wet markets both! Some are just lashing out

Nobody is saying it is. They're saying maybe it came from the lab rather than the market. Although it could feasibly have leaked from the lab and then passed through the market.

Or the market could quite be the cover-up the Chinese government chose to hide the lab's mistake. Also perfectly believable to be fair.

I read an article about a scientist at the lab who, when they were finished testing on the animals, he then sold them illegally to the wet markets for food, he was jailed for 12 years.

Yeah, great idea, lets eat infected animals

They are not hygiene free hell holes.

Some aren't hygiene free hell holes, as for only exotic animals only being eaten by the rich, that is classic CCP disinformation campaign.

www.liveleak.com/view?t=CJwfc_1580239584

to show just one wet market.

@ThrowingGoodAfterBad - trying to remember, it may have been either the BBC corona podcast or The Bunker. It could also have been on the radio 🙈 but it was someone who had worked and lived in SE Asia saying clearly that wet markets are just markets

but it was someone who had worked and lived in SE Asia saying clearly that wet markets are just markets

Indeed

No, wet markets are not just markets. Or, perhaps more correctly, they are nothing like a market you've visited here in the U.K. or mainland Europe. I know, because I've been in them. They are a roof with open walls, or an old warehouse type building in colder places on the ground floor. There are different stalls selling fruit, veg, fresh fish and meat. There is no cold storage, nothing on ice. There are live animals in cages. One of the reasons I won't go in them is because, being in a hot country, I wore open shoes. Whenever I went there the floor was always wet, giving had the excrement, dirt and whatever hosed down and washed into the drains. It's horrible to step in. The only thing I've ever bought from a wet market was some knock off Gap and Ralph Lauren from the side stalls.

It's not just the wet markets either, the food imported from China is grim. I used to go into a shop called Welcome and they had imported fruit and veg. It was unrecognisable as an onion, cucumber or tomato as they usually where 4 times the size and more white than colour. I don't know how the hell they got their veggies to grow that big but I never touched them, largely because of the urban myth that expats cling to about what they did to them.

Well, I've read the first 3 pages with people coming on and saying how very angry they are and I feel so exhausted by their anger that I am going to stop reading now and have a nice stress-free cuppa in my peaceful home.

@Justanotherlurker
The video you posted is one of the milder ones compared to what I've seen but i think it gives a very clear picture of what's going on.

I've been in wet markets in West Africa, which are very similar. I also visited one in Thailand while we were staying with friends who live there. I didn't see a particular problem with them, although admittedly I wasn't the one choosing where to buy food from.

Well said @Hingeandbracket

So just in the course of this thread, we've got people saying we should be angry at: China, the current UK government, past UK governments, locking down at all, locking down too late, not locking down hard enough, the NHS. Glad we got all of that clarified.

When it comes to other countries' pandemic response: New Zealand is a small, sparsely populated island in the middle of, pardon my French, fucking nowhere. Their approach and their figures - and this isn't over yet - really has no relevance to the pandemic strategies for a densely populated nation in very close proximity to other Western countries which contains a world city and major global hub. We can certainly look at the responses and figures of city-states like Taiwan and Singapore, but they have two things we don't have: recent experience of managing a pandemic, and a tolerance of a much more authoritarian style of government. Can you imagine that authoritarian style applied in, say, the US? It would have broken down hopelessly and made things much worse. Pandemic responses have to be individual: tailored to a country's culture and geography and economy. I'm not saying there won't be plenty to learn. But we aren't New Zealand and we aren't South Korea, and doing the exact same things as them could well have made things worse.

Yes, pandemic preparedness has been highlighted as an issue before. But how many of you, right now, know that there are issues you really need to address: drink less, quit smoking, lose weight, get more exercise. But you haven't done it, have you? Even though you knew the consequences for your health were very real, and would definitely happen. Some day. But you just didn't have the time, and there were always more immediate priorities, and it was hard and dispiriting, and nobody was really holding you accountable. How many of you were agitating for the government to improve their pandemic preparedness in April 2019?

Again, I'm not saying that we have the very best set of people in charge right now and that they made the very best possible decisions. But our decisions came about through very real and very human constraints and impulses which we all share. Being angry at somebody or something is an understandable psychological response right now and a way of trying to make a narrative out of the kind of bad and fundamentally random shit that has always happened in the world. Be angry if it's helping you. But learning does not require anger, and right now I think it would be a waste of my energy.

I am not sure whether the report in 2016 highlighted PPE, but it is clear to me, that going forward we must (as a country) have the capacity to manufacture sufficient in the UK, and sort out the distribution.

Going forward, yes, but I expect many European governments had previously made similar decisions regarding stocks of PPE.

This came from an article on Macron;

"It was decided in 2011 and 2013 [in France] that there was no longer a need to keep massive stocks of masks, considering that factories could deliver quite quickly, namely in China."

Who is going to make a shit load of money of the back of this vaccine

Hopefully no-one. Don't know about the US vaccine, but in the UK Oxford University and Astra Zeneca are providing at cost, to UK first, then to third world. Any profit subsequently made will be put back into Oxford Research projects. Seems fair to me.

A little part of me, philosophically, also sees this whole "thing" as a world reset. I don't believe in God, but there is a cycle to nature. Perhaps "earth" decided there were too many people, too much commerce, too much pollution. Everyone so often the "earth" clears out. We, in the West, have been very lucky recently, that most of these events occur elsewhere, we are not often touched by natural disasters or disease. But perhaps we are going to have to come to terms with what is, for a large proportion of the world, a fairly natural and common occurence. Of course, with our dedicated and funded science and medical operations, we, in the West, will probably overcome, but the cost, monetarily, and in terms of lives, will be something we will have to come to terms with.

Rambling musings, apologies.