I've lost all confidence in our leaders. **Title edited by MNHQ**

[Ofthread]

I'm freaking out. Why isn't our country doing more? I've lost all confidence in their abilities to lead. Did anyone see the government advisor guy with the dead eyes on the Channel 4 special this evening? He explained quite calmly that the measures would be enough and that they would 'flatten the curve'. Another guy was practically jumping up and down screaming 'You have to do something NOW, these measures won't flatten the curve'.

7.2% ??? Source??

God! What are we heading to??

www.corriere.it/salute/20_marzo_13/coronavirus-italia-17660-casi-1266-morti-bollettino-13-marzo-15b1622c-654a-11ea-86da-7c7313c791fe.shtml

You can't lock everyone up forever, there is no way round this now. We have to go through it!

OR we could actually take some steps that would flatten the curve and prevent the NHS collapsing?

Watching what's going on in Italy is terrifying. The makeshift hospitals look like something out of a war zone. And apparently they had twice as many intensive care beds as we do.

I think Boris and his cronies have decided to just let the virus run its course. Survival of the fittest and all that. It's a chilling prospect. I thought we were more civilised than that.

They are looking at flattening the curve. I suggest you relook on bbc iplayer what was said. Look at the graphs.

Check your source.

Approximately.....
1200 deaths
17600 infected (deaths are 7% of these)
60,000,000 population (0.08% infected, 0.002% deaths).

I really think if people cant understand the numbers, they should stop posting and scaremongering!

We do NOT just have to go through it. Wuhan had 3000 cases per day at the point at which in enacted shutdown. It peaked within a fortnight and had 5,416 deaths total.

Boris is telling us that 60% of us need to catch it to give herd immunity. If the death rate is really 7.2% this would mean 3 million dead.

We can contain this. We need to try.

Yeah, it's fucked up

We will only know the true mortality rate when its all over. I would be very surprised if its anything like that high.

I've just been reading an article which says that given the age of the population its likely that the younger people are not coming forward for testing (due to not feeling particularly unwell) it may be skewing the death rate.

I think this article explains the UK’s approach well. (Not just re schools, but the whole ‘not seeming to do anything’ tactic)

Coronavirus: Why is the UK not shutting schools like other countries? www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51874084

I think the lack of fighting spirit from Boris and Co is amazing.

Every other country has co-opted its citizens to fight together to protect the vulnerable. But not here. Do we really have that much to lose by trying? The global economy is already a cluster, not much can be done about that at this point.

Think about it, if London had 80 % older population and the 80% died from CV it doesn't mean that its that its 100% mortality rate (except in that population).

I'm actually reasonably sure that the government are doing their best under almost impossible circumstances. This is nature at work, the human race cannot control everything that happens to it. We are still vunerable, for all our technologies and everything else!

@galoopnorth no it’s not. Looking at the stats in the article 7.2% is the death rate amongst confirmed cases and not the population. Yes it’s high but there will be many people that have been infected and got better without being tested.
Italy has a high death date but other countries have lower death rates. It’s not a given that we’re going down the same route as Italy.
People need to take precautions and follow advice but we don’t need the scaremongering.

hang on - please look at @HappyTeacher75 comments

7% of infected people

Dead eyed bloke as you put it, gave me far more confidence than the hysterical, flapping Californian.

@HappyTeacher75 put it much better than I did.
This scaremongering needs to stop

Sir paddy is totally disingenuous.

He says.. If you shut everything down and stop xyz we will surpress it until winter and it will explode.

Actually even in China people went to shops etc...

We don't need total shut down.

We need thinning out and personal choice..

HappyTeacher, I checked my source & got the same result you did?

If the death rate is really 7.2% this would mean 3 million dead.

1. That is not the death rate for the disease. It is the death rate for diagnosed cases in the worst hit region. Only the most serious cases go to hospital and get tested. There is good reason to think that Itally has missed large numbers infected in the north- hence how it got so bad. The real death rate will be a small fraction of this.

1. The reason the rate is so high is that the infection is uncontrolled in a few cities and their hospitals are overwhelmed. The UK plan is to keep the infection at a managable level, so our death rate is low.

1. The worst case scenario is a 1% death rate. That is half a million dead. Obviously that's terrible, but suggesting 3 million dead is silly. Hopefully it will be far fewer if the plan works.

1. There is no clear alternative to the current plan. It seems inevitable that the bulk of the population will catch the disease. The goal is to manage the infection so the most vulnerable are protected. I don't see any way that locking down the UK for an indefinate period would help do anything other than delay the inevitable.

Tested are 97488