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'.

Regarding community testing in the UK, it's felt that the horse has bolted and they can guess the community spread by knowing the number of hospitalised patients. (I was informed by someone who's involved with NHS planning - basically it's not the best use of nhs staff to test, we need them for other work, and we can model actual community numbers well because other countries show the ratios of hospitalised :community cases).

Thanks to the sane and calm voices on here such as donquixotedelamancha maggiecate and others. Freakout thread titles such as this and the inability of subsequent posters to refrain from adding to the hysteria and flinging around figures of deaths in the millions despite an utter inability to understand statistics or even mathematics are monumentally irresponsible. How the hell does this help anybody?

In other news, I hope this will give some cause for optimism:
Research team has isolated the COVID-19 virus

Stop with the scaremongering. Honestly MN should be ashamed of themselves letting threads like these run rampant

Honestly MN should be ashamed of themselves letting threads like these run rampant

I don't know. MN's philosophy is generally better to allow discussion of anything, in the hope that rationality wins out. OP is not mendacious, just worried- as we all are.

Idk why they aren’t testing. It’s ridiculous. Speculation:The government wants to do this to avoid panic perhaps or maybe because testing kits cost money, which they think could be better spent elsewhere. Either way it’s all totally shit.

MN's philosophy is generally better to allow discussion of anything, in the hope that rationality wins out.

But it's not discussion. The majority of it is hysterical chatter. Rationality will be decided by the government lead by scientists & health chiefs.

@mummyoflittledragons Testing is of limited use at this stage because with the numbers now infected doing contact tracing isn’t going to be feasible, and you have to go somewhere to be tested which in itself carries a risk of transmitting the virus on. It’s safer now for people with symptoms to assume they have it and stay home.
Testing also ties up a lot of staff - workers who collect the swabs, porters who transfer to the labs, lab techs who do the testing, admins who process the forms and who do the notifications, cleaners who dispose of the waste. they’re are all going have to be deployed to do what’s absolutely essential rather than what’s just really good to have.

this is hilarious, Italy has a better health system than the UK's (although even there austerity and cuts have hit hard), they are taking more serious measures than us, Boris has basically told us he is going for herd immunity and to be prepared for vulnerable people dying (apparently we are protecting the vulnerable, but how?), and yet people on here insist we will be fine and nothing like Italy will happen here... ok...

Reading between the lines of the bojo's speech yesterday was that the majority will get it and some will die.

Their plan is to build herd immunity which means that the virus then can't spread across the population like it is now.

Some older people will die that is inevitible. Hopefully lots won't.

I've been annoyed they've not done more but if you think about it logically it would only take 1 active case somewhere in the world for the whole thing to kick off again and then what?we can't stay locked up forever

It's partly about saving pressure on the NHS and partly about building immunity.

I just can't believe that for all our technology etc how vulnerable we all are.

'Giorgo Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, said that in some cases in Lombardy the gap between resources and the enormous influx of patients “forced the doctors to decide not to intubate some very old patients,” essentially leaving them to die.'

Source; www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coronavirus-health-care.amp.html

Italy has a better health system than the UK's

No they don't. Stop scaremongering. If Italy is so great, why do all the immigrants risk their lives trying to cross the channel to set up home here. Stop spouting rubbish

My brother lives in Hong Kong. He says that the memory of SARS is still fresh in people's minds and as a result they all have hunkered down and stayed at home as much as possible. And it's working.

www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/coronavirus-best-response.html

My brother lives on Mars. He has barely any recollection of SARS because things like 24hr news, iPhones & forums like this wasn't applicable to most back then. He tells me many people just got on with their every day lives

Guess the result - do you think over 99% of UK doctors agree with Boris' plans, or disagree?

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/02/coronavirus-just-eight-out-of-1600-doctors-in-poll-say-nhs-is-ready

@blankscreen it’s a wake up call to remind us that When it comes to viruses technology really isn’t all that helpful - our immune system is still the most effective weapon we have. Technology has made us more vulnerable in some ways - planes mean viruses travel round the world far quicker than they would in any other species and modern media means misinformation causes panic really quickly. But it’s also made us better fed and healthier as a population than we’ve ever been at any point in history which will help.

Chanel 4 news tonight said Fear is important & needed so people take it seriously and think about their actions for the sake of others. So these threads are a great help! 🙈

What I don't understand is 64K people at Cheltenham races during a pandemic? Oh wait yes I do, racing & betting benefits the economy massively!

@raybentos What a strange comment about Mars.

Plus of course Italy attracts huge numbers of immigrants. It's one of the hottest political topics.

What a strange comment about Mars.

Any stranger than some of the hysterical posts I've read on this topic today?

Plus of course Italy attracts huge numbers of immigrants. It's one of the hottest political topics.

Yes, it's such a shame. Another beautiful country losing its identity because of multiculturalism

"The UK plan is to keep the infection at a managable level, so our death rate is low."

This is interesting as The Netherlands are also adopting a herd immunity approach, which is a good 'longterm' solution. However it also has the 'survival of the fittest' ingrained within it, without a doubt. Is it shortsightedness or just a complete lack of respect and care for the older demographic and kind of smacks against the importance of a singular life which we are supposed to uphold as a civilised western world.

This virus has only been around 3 months now. There are no scientific papers with near absolute peer validity on it - i.e. how long a person is infectious, how it really aggressively transfers between humans, it's mutation possibility, it's R0 isn't defined after 3 months of research, but it is reasonable to take the best mathematical modelling at this stage.

Even if it becomes 'seasonal' as the UK’s scientific adviser hangs on, now is the time to taper it's spread and hope for a vaccine, managing it until then. Not sacrificing an older population for herd immunity and driving the health system to breaking point. Italy is not an outlier, it's what is happening.

Italy is not an outlier, it's what is happening.

This is wrong, scaremongering nonsense and should be banned

OP is not mendacious, just worried- as we all are

I'm not sure about "just worried'. She said she's freaking out. Which is entirely believable, given the sheer number and content of threads on here about it. People are whipping themselves up into a panic and threads like this only exacerbate that.

@SmellyBeard My brother is also in Hong Kong and says exactly the same as yours.

The death rate will not be known until this is over.
But it's clear that many will die not just from the virus itself but because medical resources which would otherwise have been available to them, will be tied up.

@angelicakauffman - completely agree, especially those with grossly misleading titles.

we can model actual community numbers well because other countries show the ratios of hospitalised :community cases).

That only works if everyone who should be hospitalised, is.