Is anyone else angry and embarrassed right now ?

[Sapphiresunrise]

For the developed and resourced country that we are, we are potentially going to be overtaking Italy and Spain by the looks of things.
Australia and other nations have death rates in double figures. They were smart to close borders and even close regions. Canada the same. Denmark, etc. The list goes on. South Korea have the situation under control.
We were warned about this. I feel like majority of those deaths could have been avoided.

What is the actual point of wanging on and on here, on a chatboard? Why are some of you so bloody invested in telling-what-you-know? Why do you think people should be listening to you?

The way that some posters speak to others, heckling, ridiculing and berating is exactly why there is next to zero credibility given. This chatboard could have been a brilliant resource but it's not, not any more. It was ruin with Brexit and the virus could have brought people together but no, the usual crew with their instructions and hammering approach.

Be ashamed if you were part of that, definitely, because every mocking post was, at best, a wasted opportunity to get people on board. Don't say it couldn't have because there are some incredible posters on a variety of topics who are listened to - Brexit (RedToothBrush), Relationships (AnyFucker), LowCarbing (BIWI)... those are just examples of the more well-known posters, there are many others who are equally erudite and who many posters actively listen to.

Where is this board going at the moment? Full of recriminations and deniability, coupled with back-slapping and tribe-gathering. Utterly pathetic.

It's the most divisive and saddening place, a wasteland of spite and bickering. If it carries on then it will just grow in that vein and that's what it will carry on being. What a legacy, eh? I feel very sorry for MNHQ having to moderate this trollish sludge, it's every bit as damaging.

I'm not angry or embarrassed. I hope I catch CV and die, because it would be preferable to lockdown (for me).

Can we make it Keir Starmer's fault? FFS

Australians are less prone to hysteria than Brits
Are you sure? We saw the videos of toilet roll panic buying/fights in Australia before panic buying started here

We still don't know how may people died of coronavirus and with coronavirus.

Recording of deaths is different in different countries.
We shouldn't blame the government for not stopping the flights. What about all the Brits who had to come home as they were kicked out of other countries?

Definitely a decrease in road accidents and other types of outdoor accidents here in Canada. Very noticeable decrease in emergency hospital visits.

Ireland adopted a very rigorous regime, modelled on S.korea. We also shut down schools very quickly. The island of Ireland has 19 deaths per million now, rather than the 45 of the UK.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/some-thoughts-on-the-british-response-to-coronavirus-essay-alexander-van-tulleken/

This is a great article by Xand van Tulleken. He’s not a fan of the government but explains the rationale well

how about the government comes out with the truth and says if we do not do x y z in this time frame we can expect to have x number of dead by April

So they should have done this in Feb?

The fact that people are still not adhering to the lockdown just shows how the complacence of the government has ruled off into the general populace.

But unfortunately society has members that kill others so you think it's possible to get 100% compliance. How draconian would you be in your measures?

**

Can we make it Keir Starmer's fault? FFS

Give it a minute and someone will be blaming Meghan and Harry 😉

What might Labour have done differently if they were in charge?

Take over Private Hospitals
Pay businesses to pay their staff to stay at home doing nothing
Stop evictions for non-payment of rent
Enact laws to stop people unnecessary travelling
Build new hospitals and morgues
??
I am absolutely not a Tory supporter, but I think what we have at the moment is pretty much what any government would have done.

I daresay if Labour were in power and had tried to do these things, the banks and business leaders would have been screaming that its the end of civilisation.

Maybe it is.

Shocking lack of testing and quarantining of people coming back from Italy over half term, shocking that people flooded here from Madrid for a football match when it was obvious that the situation was escalating in Spain at the time, shocking that concerts, Cheltenham races, crufts etc were allowed to continue when it was obvious what was happening.

mocha what’s to come will make draconian measures seem like a holiday. And you probably know that too.

what’s to come will make draconian measures seem like a holiday. And you probably know that too.

No I don't know that, that's the whole point!

You do though so come on you tell us what's coming?

Lying it’s a chat board though? Isn’t open discussion what it’s meant for? Whether you agree or disagree with someone I think it’s important to have these discussions because it’s a snapshot of how the country thinks and feels.

I'm so angry. What could the government ha done?!?? Prepared? Bought ventilators, ppe, rolled out training, quarantine or AT LEAST temperature check incoming people in airports?! Back in February. Or when the who advised that we should start social distancing- maybe they should have listened and not made up a yarn about herd immunity?! The advice was a shambles and entirely unclear as it was intended to be.

A local example to me was the wales Scotland six nations. The games to be held in Europe Gad already been sensibly cancelled . They cancelled the wales game the day before having sworn all week it was going ahead. Which meant that hundreds of Scots were already in Cardiff, or on planes coming down. So what could they do? They still went to the hotels and pubs and the city was packed!!! Then the next day, the stereophonics concert went ahead. Either it was safe or it wasn't (it wasn't). People don't like bad news, they would rather believe that cancelling the games was wrong and actually all is well- it was up to the government to deliver the bad news and stop large gatherings- people won't stop until forced. They left us that weekend carrying on as per.

I predicted this. Haven't been out for weeks longer than the official advice and have made sure I've had supplies in since January. If a pleb like me can see what's coming/ just pay attention to the global news then you can sure as hell guarantee that plenty of far more intelligent and far more influential people would have told the government. Not least the who. They were afraid to act and put money before lives.

And now instead of owning up, it at least acting at all humbled, we have Johnson ( not unsurprisingly) making statements like "I've said for weeks that testing is what will get us out of this!" Even though we were all watching 10/11 days ago when he said only people in hospital needed the tests everybody else should just self isolate. I know he's a liar but good god, this is serious and people are dying. I'm ashamed of our government and fear the next week as their foot dragging policies are exposed via the death toll

We should’be adopted the South Korean approach from the get go

Good luck with that when these boards are full of supposedly intelligent people asserting their right even now to walk their dogs four times a day and pop into the shop for a bar of chocolate as often as they like.

And today from Matt Hancock:
"Four doctors and some nurses have died"

It's an absolute scandal that any NHS staff have died but some nurses. How many nurses?! Honestly I don't know why our nurses put up with the shit they get from this government but I thank them from the bottom of my heart that they do. If there isn't a national campaign to sort out pay and working conditions for nurses after this crisis then I will start one.

I genuinely think if our government went in harder and earlier there'd be no support for the actions.

Many many many people were laughing at people trying to plan and prepare as individuals throughout January and February. They were accused of being mentally unwell m, told to get a grip and that they were being way OTT for worrying about family members dying. Maybe we should be angry at ourselves, at the "it's just a cold". Rug add and at those who bang on about more people dying from a, b or c and okay I down just how bad this is going to get. If the general UK public took it more seriously back on jan and feb instead of taking the piss out of people wanting the government to act and supported them our government may have acted sooner if they knew people would comply.

@wettham what do you think is going to happen then? The end of the world?

@Quartz2208 - yes, obvs. You haven't been paying attention, have you?

Wehttam Fair enough but then (not aimed at you specifically) stop feigning education or being informative and then subsequently casting blame at people that haven't been listening to you.

If it's a chatboard then, that's the extent of it and on that basis, nobody needs to listen to anybody else.

So the recriminations can stop then, presumably? Given that nobody here is answerable to or responsible for, anybody. Good, that would be a vast improvement.

Agree @Babyroobs
Those measures were not a strict lockdown but they were sensible measures that the government could have taken to control the spread.

We go from one week where we had Cheltenham, Crufts, Madrid fans coming in to Liverpool and then a week later were all in lockdown. It could have been handled better.

A gradual upping of the social distancing measures, cancelling large events, ordering more tests and trying to test more in the community so we could work out where the hotspots were. Stricter isolation criteria for those returning from Italy and China.

I’m not actually supportive of a long lockdown but we may actually have to do it for longer because we didn’t do all the other softer measures first....

Yes it's shocking that medical staff are dying, yes the numbers of people dying is scary, a family member of mine has died (unrelated) but the funeral won't be until May due to a backlog.
However this doesn't change the fact that you need compliance from the population. If the government had closed borders, shut down businesses & schools in Jan/Feb how many millions would have listened?

mocha I would say because of our inaction and how this scenario will spiral out of control we can expect a breakdown of society as lockdown is maintained indefinitely. We are only a few weeks in and already the cracks are showing, many at their wits end, many without money, many struggling to get by.

Once those cracks open up and the restlessness kicks in we have a big problem. The virus isn’t the killshot, instead it’s the trigger. It’s the toppling of the first domino. You know it’s a dire mess when the Queen is addressing the nation. So draconian measures started earlier may have allowed us to ease them up sooner.

We could have avoided what’s to come, not only the staggering amount of deaths but the knock on effect of long term societal disruption.