Costello's tweet re Whitty & lockdown Now retracted *edited by MNHQ at OP's request*

[mac12]

Anyone heard anymore on this? Apparently amid the testing chaos, we’re now thought to be at 38,000 cases a day & CMO wants a 2 week national lockdown
twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1306351773356118022?s=21

@SunshineCake

So many people missing so many points.

I'm not entirely sure but I would assume Chris W has no actual power to force Boris Johnson to do anything. This is on the PM but also on the stupid and selfish people who haven't followed the rules at all never mind to the best they could.

The PM was right that when he said if he locked down too soon then we'd be potentially out at the worst time but also that people wouldn't tolerate it for long. Well some of those people will have to tolerate people they care about getting ill or dying instead. Then no Christmas dinner with granny might not seem so bad when they can still talk to her on the phone.

People tolerated it for months. If they hadn't, the R rate wouldn't have come down and people would still be dying. That isn't happening.

Maybe the government should have got its house in order before allowing people back into pubs and paying people to eat out. Maybe they should have made sure the testing system was actually able to cope with the very obvious high demand that would happen as soon as schools open. Maybe they should have sanctioned Cummings who very evidently broke the guidelines and then maybe people would be more willing to comply.

They have fucked this up royally. This isn't the public's fault. It was ALWAYS going to come back after summer and it is going to get worse during the winter. This isn't news to anyone.

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.

[quote Splodgetastic]@kirinm, I was going to go back to the office soon too, but have had a rethink. I know that some people don’t have a choice, but I do at least for office-related aspects of my job.[/quote]
My company is giving people the option - we are in London and will have to use the tube / trains / buses to get in so there were already lots of people who didn't want to go back anyway. And there is only 25% capacity so no-one is allowed back full time.

If the cases keep rising then I suspect they won't re-open the office at all.

Question with regards New Zealand and Australian States who have shut their borders.
Have their scientists been involved in vaccine development and research? And if not, will that potentially have an impact on their ability to source a vaccine from other countries? I’m not well versed in the politics of big pharma but I know it’s a complicated market. I have a sense that whilst NZ and some Aus states have ‘done well’ so far, the absolute lack of community exposure is potentially a problem going forward. How long can they stay shut for?

@Friendsoftheearth

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.

I'm not sure he'd have outsourced the test and trace system to his mates.

kiri link please?

@Friendsoftheearth

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.

The priority for any politician is political point scoring. Had they ALL worked together with strategies, I think the messages would have been clearer and we wouldn’t be in this unholy mess. Labour, devolved administrations SHOULD have been reaching cross party agreements putting their petty sniping and undermining of each other aside. And as for the media

kirinm

Friendsoftheearth
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.
I'm not sure he'd have outsourced the test and trace system to his mates.

Then we’d still be doing 500 tests a day as per the NHS

@festfestfest

No, you don't need to lock down until there's a vaccine. You can lock down until cases are reduced to a number that you can trace and test effectively. And you can try to eliminate the virus instead of throwing your hands up.

Everyone is at risk from Covid. Just because you don't die or don't get hospitalized doesn't mean you are fine. There are thousands of young people with long Covid. For example. There was a healthy 27 year old in the Guardian who still can't climb his stairs after 6 months. It looks like it damages every cell in the body, the brain, the heart. We have no idea if this is permanent or what the long term health fall out is going to be from this.

Exactly this! I think if there was more information out there about the long term risks of Covid - even from mild cases, people would be able to make a more informed choice and balance personal risk and they may well be more compliant with social distancing. This isn't something that just affects the elderly and that all young people are immune to or will just bounce back from. We don't yet know enough about the virus to throw caution to the wind... but unfortunately that's what most people are doing and I do understand why. We need more transparency and truth from the government, but we have the wrong government in power for that

Do you read the news?

Dido Harding - now in charge of Track and Trace. Previous experience - Talk Talk. Baroness in the HoL via David Cameron.

Public First - "review of covid response "£800m contract. Used to work for Gove and Cummings

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/dominic-cummings-allys-pr-firm-hanbury-strategy-given-covid-19-contracts-without-tenders

@ProperlyPdOff

Currently we are sending whole year groups of 200-300 pupils home for 2 weeks if there is a single positive case in that year. Those children are stuck at home, cannot leave their house. Those 200-300 pupils have no symptoms and no test to show they are infected. This is to protect others who are free to carry on as usual.

And worst of all many of those children will be vulnerable to abuse and neglect at home. How anyone can justify those children sacrificing so much, while callingbpeopel who dont agree selfish is beyond me.

www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/16/serco-given-contact-tracing-job-despite-asylum-seekers-fine

@MrsPerrywinkle

kirinm

Friendsoftheearth
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.
I'm not sure he'd have outsourced the test and trace system to his mates.

Then we’d still be doing 500 tests a day as per the NHS

How well are Serco doing with the track and trace system?

I didn't say Corbyn wouldn't outsource it. I did say he wouldn't outsource it to his mates. I'm not a Corbyn fan but the suggestion that Labour would have handled this worse than the Tories is just nuts.

The priority for any politician is political point scoring.
Had they ALL worked together with strategies, I think the messages would have been clearer and we wouldn’t be in this unholy mess. Labour, devolved administrations SHOULD have been reaching cross party agreements putting their petty sniping and undermining of each other aside. And as for the media

This, I really feel there should have been a cross party effort in dealing with this but having said this BJ cant seem to work with most of his own party!
He trumpeted a world beating t and t system. It's not a fucking competition, I would hope countries would share successful strategies, we just need a functioning system that is adequate to cope with demand, that should surely be the priority.

@MrsPerrywinkle

kirinm

Friendsoftheearth
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.
I'm not sure he'd have outsourced the test and trace system to his mates.

Then we’d still be doing 500 tests a day as per the NHS

Yeah because the only 2 options are blatant nepotism or doing nothing. When will people hold the government to the same account as their neighbours?

@kirinm You are absolutely right.

I’ve asked MNHQ to change thread title given Costello has now retracted his tweet.

37000 out of about 60000000 is very small, about 0.06%.
It’s unclear whether the tweet means “37000 new infections per day” in which case just under 1% of the population are getting it per day, which is not nice but perhaps not as bad as it sounds, given that many will have it very mildly, and will recover, or “on average, there are 37000 people infected in any one given day”, in which case that’s a rolling number as (most) people will get better after a couple of weeks, while others get infected.
I’m lucky enough to be in a workplace where I have some control over social distancing and who I mix with, so I’m relatively relaxed. I feel very sorry for those who have no such control.

@user1471588124

It'll always be the neighbours fault or kids fault because lockdown brought out the absolute worst in people. And now the government's line is that it is the public's fault for there being no tests. They never take responsibility and people suck it up.

It’s nice to see the ghost of Corbyn on so many threads, rattling his chains and managing the pandemic badly.

kirinm

MrsPerrywinkle
kirinm

Friendsoftheearth
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn would have been any better, to be fair.
I'm not sure he'd have outsourced the test and trace system to his mates.

Then we’d still be doing 500 tests a day as per the NHS
How well are Serco doing with the track and trace system?

I didn't say Corbyn wouldn't outsource it. I did say he wouldn't outsource it to his mates. I'm not a Corbyn fan but the suggestion that Labour would have handled this worse than the Tories is just nuts.

The facts are in the numbers, no one else in Europe is doing more. It’s not perfect but more of that appears to be down to how we define who is eligible than the current volume ( see Germany for how to manage that aspect).

Beats me how anyone can imagine any government doing much worse than this one - not buying PPE they were told they'd need, lock down too late, reopen too slowly, allow foreign holidays with no checks on return (seeding infection across the country again), giving contracts to incompetent mates at inflated prices. The only thing this governments has been good at is opening golf courses and grouse moors.

kiri In my line of work, we work with Serco and have done for many many years, all companies of this size will make mistakes, but on the whole they are extremely good, and always have been. I imagine that was the reason they were offered the contract, although you can always read into every last possibility if you want.

My point is that Labour would NOT have managed any of this any better, it is a global pandemic, every government is struggling in every country to deal with it. To keep making political capital over such a deadly disease I find it extremely distasteful.

This is not a political issue, but a national crisis.

I find it boring that every possible opportunity people berate the government, knowing full well that Corbyn and his cronies would have been an unmitigated disaster in this scenario, he could barely string a sentence together at the end of his stint as Labour leader much less deal with a pandemic.

I am not a conservative by the way, I am politically neutral and lean towards the green party, but I don't think it is at all helpful always drawing politics into this.

No one has the magic formula or silver bullet!

@borntobequiet - Quite so. I rather miss JC and it is sweet that so many posters are still thinking about what kind of PM he could have been.

Well some of those people will have to tolerate people they care about getting ill or dying instead. Then no Christmas dinner with granny might not seem so bad when they can still talk to her on the phone.

My MIL is terminally ill and has approximately 6 months left. At the moment we can’t go and see her as a family as we have 3 teenage children. If this 6 people thing is still in place by Christmas we will never have another Christmas with her. She would dearly love to see all of her 3 children with their families but can’t.
Your comment was actually extremely crass and not quite the mic drop moment you thought it was. Accusing people of killing their granny because they love her and want to spend time with her is far from a normal thought pattern.