How much are you willing to accept?

[TheFatBottomLine]

There are a lot of threads asking those who do not believe in further lockdown etc, how many people catching covid etc they are prepared to accept in this scenario.. So I'm asking those who want us to be stricter, to lockdown again etc.. How many businesses collapsing, how many unemployed, how many losing their homes, how many with declining mental and physical health, how many years of trying to repair all the damage this has caused, etc etc are you prepared to accept as the price of further restricrions and lockdown?

During non lockdown vulnerable people still have the option to isolate whilst others can weigh up the risks for themselves

They DO NOT have this option if they work in schools or are parents of school aged children, or other keyworkers.

I think you'd be surprised how many 'vulnerable' people are actually quite important key workers.

Also, if we 'let it rip' through everyone else - who will be left to provide medical care to these vulnerable groups should they have a health crisis while the hospitals are overwhelmed?

@Venicelover so this is a good thing- the school are following procedures and taking huge steps by sending large numbers home or shutting individual schools.
Of course kids and teachers are going to get it? People from EVERY sector are going to get it now we have opened up- not just via kids and schools?

Boris has just announced that huge numbers of people will need to retrain and be prepared to take on jobs they've never considered!

We have skills shortages, and thousands of vacancies in sectors sitting side by side with rising unemployment.

Do we allow more immigration so these roles can be filled? or do we instead use a carrot and a stick to get Bob the sales manager recently redundant to retrain to do care work, brick laying or refuse collection?

Whatever happens, even if the economy were to completely collapse, even if we started a revolution (I might agree with Bojo about retraining and redeployment, but he's a fascist tory cunt, I'm a mother and hard left softie) some jobs just need doing irrespective of economics. Some jobs provide what in Marxist terms is called 'use values' they produce socially useful outputs. Other jobs produce commodities that have exchange and use value. What determines use and exchange value is how society values those outputs. In a capitalist society we have a huge number of outputs that create exchange values (and produce jobs, outputs, profits) that are not actually necessary under any other economic system. Its when economic crisis hits that this hidden phenomena is made plain for all to see. Even Bojo can see it.

@MiniTheMinx

PinkSparklyPussyCat, you would be surprised, what hunger or destitution does to your sense of sqeamishness! Just as well we have state benefits then.

Believe me, if you knew me you would understand I'm not cut out for looking after anyone!

Seriously, I really couldn't do it. I last had a blood test over 6 years ago and that was only because I was told I could die without surgery. Even then, if it wasn't for DH I wouldn't have had it done.

It's all very well for Boris to talk about retraining, which I actually think is a good idea, but there are some people who really can't do certain jobs and nothing will change that.

[quote Time2change2]@Venicelover so this is a good thing- the school are following procedures and taking huge steps by sending large numbers home or shutting individual schools.
Of course kids and teachers are going to get it? People from EVERY sector are going to get it now we have opened up- not just via kids and schools?[/quote]
I suppose it depends on your perspective.

I definitely don't want schools to close, but nor do I want teachers on the frontline without PPE, as is the case now.

I know of teachers working with cancer, and lots of other underlying issues who are quite scared from day to day.

AlecTrevelyan006
That was then, this is now.

We had lockdown, the curve flattened. We started to lift lockdown and the numbers are rising again.

It hasn't gone away now

I can understand the logic behind the first national lockdown, even if I didn’t fully agree with it.

I don’t understand or agree with continuing restrictions because they are disproportionate to the problem we now face and are causing more problems than they are solving

The problem we now face is that some lockdown restrictions were lifted, so we need to go back into lockdown

The virus has not gone away and there is no lasting immunity

We have been told this from the start. That we would have rolling lockdowns and that it is an extremely serious situation. Why is this so hard to understand

These threads are a bit of a waste of time. Seems like most people think the restrictions are inevitable.

@MiniTheMinx

Good post & yes I think this is a once in decades chance of restructuring our economy. I don’t necessarily think we need to rely on immigration either. It’s a lazy solution - especially for menial work plus it can lead to depopulation in donor countries.

It is a really sad insight into the economics of this country when financial ruin is a direct impact from the pubs shutting at 10pm.
I vaguely remember when the the UK actually made stuff and did not rely on "hospitality" and coffee shops and before you all pile on, yes you can blame Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown et al, but unfortunately everyone has decided that all the tricky and difficult stuff is better outsourced and the cheap & easy tat available from China is so tempting that we buy it instead of what could be produced here, then with what we save through not paying British workers, probably then buy even more of it but meanwhile the UK will do skinny lattes for bankers.

what Boris has said about jobs concerns me.

www.weforum.org/press/2019/09/uk-government-first-to-pilot-ai-procurement-guidelines-co-designed-with-world-economic-forum/

Widespread rapid testing at local level, like they have in Italy, would help hugely. Currently there’s too long a time lag between needing a test, actually getting one and getting the results.

Just imagine if a teacher could go to a church hall near their home, get a test and a result in 30 minutes? I’m sure I heard on the news that the US we’re rolling out rapid testing.

What are Germany doing? Just had a check and their cases, although rising like everyone at the end of August seem quite level rather than increasing rapidly?

I know they have very good track and trace.

We need to sort out testing and track and trace. It can’t be a week before they get their act together.

People don't seem to understand what exponential growth means!!!

Right now, I’m in a lockdown area and living to work. It’s utterly miserable.

I think some of the nasty comments are uncalled for. DH did everything right and has been beaten out by less qualified candidates on technicalities. Watching someone you love go through that is beyond shit.

Also being hit with financial and job instability with small children (I’m currently on mat leave) is even worse and something a lot of young families are going to experience because of Covid.

I just find it very hard to swallow that a few weeks ago the whole country was clapping for people like my DH who were truly on the front line and now he’s just been passed over unfairly.

He’s not even been given a interview. I appreciate the RoCA have ‘tried to make it fair’ but let’s be honest if they were actually making it fair they would at least have awarded some points for having passed the exam, given it some sort of value. How can you award points for having a random second undergraduate degree but not for having passed the primary FRCA?

@RufusInTheLibrary have you posted on the wrong thread?

Ophelia2020, thank you for sharing. Yes very worrying. "government as market actors" is not government having ability to legislate, or raise taxes, or innovate. The language implies government as just consumers of private services. It goes on to say that the AI solutions will advise government procurement processes. So basically the likes of Deloitte use AI to advise government to by services from.....Deloitte. Its due to capitalisms need for growth despite constant crisis of over production that the way forward for private investment is to make government its number one consumer. No longer will the state be the active mediator between the interests of capitalists and the welfare of its citizens.

Its as good as saying we the people invest our sovereignty in Delloitte et al.

*buy

How many businesses collapsing, how many unemployed, how many losing their homes, how many with declining mental and physical health, how many years of trying to repair all the damage this has caused, etc etc are you prepared to accept as the price of further restricrions and lockdown?

I genuinely misread this and thought you were asking those against restrictions how many of those things they would accept as the price of covid. Certainly covid will cause all the above whether it be through restrictions or through rising rates of infection.

@ragged

I'm with OP.

How many deaths is a business the size of Primark worth, or Wetherspoons?

There is no actual calculus going on, no "10 deaths is too few to close Primark down for but 1000 deaths is definitely worth closing Primark down."

Can say that equation is too transactional and who cares about Wetherspoons.. so what if by 2025, 50,000 people have had an extra 2 years of pain and morbidity due to the months/years of strict infection controls and huge backlogs that delayed their joint replacement operations? Is that just the price that had to be paid as well? Every decision we take has a cost. The official strategy is to reduce one kind of risk only for now, shrug & hope the future harms are someone else's problem.

How many joint replacements do you think will take place while infection grows to a natural peak? Genuine question. If any dos take place, how many (mostly elderly) recipients will agree to go in or survive to come home?

Doctors and nurses were dying in the first peak, which was miniscule compared to a natural peak. Why should they go in to work if the rest of the nation has thrown up its hands? Before lockdown schools were already saying they might be closing due to staff absence, parents were keeping kids home. Shops were closing to protect staff and due to reduced footfall. Again, this was in response to a mere storm in a teacup compared to a natural peak.

DH and I were talking about this the other day.

We both did a bit of thinking out loud and think that Boris will probably give up on corralling us quite soon. Mask, soap and common sense, and if you consider yourself to be vulnerable then do what you need to. There was something on the BBC about a bad flu 5 years or so ago, and the vaccine was useless- so it would be a similar situation in some respects (not saying COVID=flu before anyone does 2+2=5).

It would be useful to know how many COVID deaths were purely down to this virus and how many people who died were already (knowingly or not) already terminally ill and unlikely to survive the summer. That's not at all saying that it's ok that COVID took last few precious days, it just might help in terms of direction and policy. The effect on the NHS and on other services (cancer treatment etc) has been pretty hefty and we simply cannot sustain this, we cannot allow other diseases and conditions to proliferate because of this virus.

Financially we don't think this is sustainable. The company we both work for is shedding heads at a frightening rate, and with the best will in the world all the job retention funding has to come from somewhere. I'm not a Tory, and I'm quite happy to pay taxes to help folk out, but you can only spend a pound once.

So in short our considered and not-expert joint opinion is that the lockdowns should not return.

The effect on the NHS and on other services (cancer treatment etc) has been pretty hefty and we simply cannot sustain this

No we can’t, so that’s why we need to keep infections low. Hopefully not through another national lockdown but we do need to take some fairly drastic measures. Otherwise nobody is getting medical treatment for other things. How would that even work?

“Okay Mr Smith, the hospital’s hugely overwhelmed with covid patients but how about you come in for your op anyway and we’ll just cross our fingers you don’t need an ICU bed because there’s a bit of a queue if you do? Also we can start your wife’s chemo next week, that’s going to go swimmingly now most of the hospital is the National Covid Service and half our nurses are off with it. Why didn’t she get that cancer seen to sooner anyway? Afraid to go to the GP with so much covid around you say? Oh how silly, you should tell her we’ve all just decided to move past it now!”

@aLilNonnyMouse

Mass illness and death = fucked economy.

Extended lockdown = fucked economy.

If it's fucked either way, we should take the "save the most lives" route through this. The best option seems to be what we are doing. Lockdown, drop the case numbers, open a bit, and then relock down until it drops again.

This.

I wonder if the ongoing current hammer blows to service economy in Britain will mean full tilt demolition job longer term. As a result countries like Nigeria, India or China will pick up & run fast with all of the "non-essential" service jobs that some MNers have disparaged as trivial longer term. The services that there is huge huge global demand for. The skills advantages Britain had... maybe that will diminish & many can say this is a good thing.

I'd rather have the pubs open then schools - as I think would most people who don't have primary aged kids

Just remember those kids whose education you don’t give a shit about, when you are old, will be the government, the doctors, the nurses, the manufacturers etc that you will be relying on.

According to Private Eye, in Germany tests are available through...............drum roll..................the GP surgery.