The WhatsApp message leak

[Mycatsgoldtooth]

So, we’ve had the FBI saying it was a lab leak, the leaked messages showing many of the restrictions were for show, stats on the reality of masks being mostly useless unless N95s. Where are all the people that were so upset about anyone saying anything against the government now.

It’s almost as if no one care where the virus came from and how the government reacted. If I’d spent years being terrified and washing my shopping I’d be really pissed off.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/01/untruth-untruth-peddled-justify-great-lockdown-disaster/

Don't forget, in early 2020 there was some talk about whether we should have a government of national unity. Parties do tend to unite in the face of external threats, and that's what covid was. The opposition at that time did play a part iirc in insisting on sunset clauses for some of the measures - that's what I would see their role as - being completely on top of analysing everything that was being proposed, constantly being alert to overreach - but not automatically disagreeing for the sake of it just because they're the opposition.

If a proposed measure comes only from one side and also fits suspiciously well with their political ideology, economic interests or election chances, people are naturally going to be suspicious of it. Most of the covid measures don't really fit into that category, although the more extreme 'let it rip' ones do fit quite well with very right wing, individualistic, libertarian agendas (which is not the same as traditional small c conservative Tories). Highlighting that isn't using right-wing as an insult, it's drawing attention to the possibility that the people proposing those things may not be being very objective. Similarly, some of the lockdown measures were very authoritarian and will have appealed more to some people than others.

Thanks @thing47 .

I checked when Starmer was appointed and actually he didn't become Labour leader until April 2020. Before that Corbyn was still outgoing leader. I had thought they changed over earlier than that. They were basically rudderless when covid hit. He was appointed on the 4th of April and Johnson was in hospital the next week!

Labour wanted stricter rules, earlier and harder lockdowns.

Did they @EmmaEmerald? Gosh, so if Labour had been in a stronger position at the time of the pandemic, would we have had even more stringent rules?

Some of the Hancock stuff that's coming out at the moment makes it clear that the government (or he, at least) just ignored the more nuanced points and balanced approach being advised by the likes of Chris Whitty in favour of targets and headlines – so these were political decisions rather than scientific ones, right?

They were political decisions, but so was every decision made about how to manage the pandemic. It's an inherently political process. The response to covid basically involved choosing whose interests to prioritise and whose to sacrifice, the making of a value judgement. And there's just no way to make that not political. Especially in a democracy, where governments know they have to carry the population along with them and will be punished at the ballot box when they don't.

Although even then, the Chinese government have a fully functioning police state, labour camps and no elections to worry about and they still ended up bowing to public pressure eventually.

@thing47
I knew quite early on that it's very, very difficult to catch Covid outside unless someone is repeatedly coughing or sneezing into your face for several minutes so all the restrictions on going for walks, jogs, or to parks with the kids was a total nonsense

There were no restrictions on going for walks, jogs, cycle rides or any other out door activity, so long as you did it either on your own or with with family members, did not use a car to get there & it was once per day.... the no sitting on a bench was to stop people gathering.
Even those restrictions were relaxed, driving allowed and exercise more than once per day.

The 1 hour outside rule was made up, there was no such law.

If you knew quite early on CV was extremely difficult to catch outside, then good for you, as a expert virologist, you should have been in SAGE.

"If you knew quite early on CV was extremely difficult to catch outside, then good for you, as a expert virologist, you should have been in SAGE."

Such scorn for someone who made a correct assumption from what was going on in the news, around them and some general education.

But as is being discussed elsewhere at the moment, it didn't matter a tiny bit what the "rules" actually were - it was the perception of them that counted. Even bloody ministers didn't know what was legal and what was not. Such confusion fed into the atmosphere of suspicion and haranguing people just out for a stroll, or letting their kids have some fresh air. It was the blocking off of the aisles selling colouring pencils and arts and crafts stuff for children (let's not forget this was when their schools were shut. And yet shops in Wales were denying them colouring in stuff). It was the taping off of playgrounds, and the taping off of sinks in public loos, meaning crowds as people inevitably queued for the remaining sink - you know, because they had been told to wash their hands while singing Happy Birthday twice.

Did any of this ridiculousness save a single life? It was utterly fucked up.

And yes that scorn and blatant attempt to embarrass and silence is awfully 2020.

The whole thing was so arbitrary as well. Why could you not drive somewhere for exercise? Why once a day only?
Why was it dangerous to buy tampons in Wales but not England?

Given that every single country had a different set of random rules around the whole thing, it was clealy plucked from the ether and had no scientific basis in anything, beyond whatever the government's pet behaviouralists had come up with.
Pandemic by social science.

I am genuinely baffled by the the argument that schools and businesses need to implement air filtration. Maybe I'm confused but surely air filtration requires you to keep all the windows and doors closed? How does that work in a school? Does it require air conditioning (or is air conditioning part of the filtration process?). In schools, surely the big issue in terms of infection is that children are close together and tend to be rather free and easy with their snot and spit? How will filtration help with that? It seems like massive and pointless overkill to spend huge amounts of money and energy on a complex system that requires sealed rooms, when the actual way infections get spread is between children who sit close together and sneeze all over each other. The infected air from one child might get taken and filtered but not before the closest four or five have had a good inhale of it. Filtration makes the air in a room generally cleaner, but it doesn't prevent the immediate problem of person-to-person transmission.

Wales was particularly bonkers.

I wonder if Mark is a bit embarrassed now that he revealed his inner authoritarian?

@Alexandra2001 I guess there might not have been any legal restrictions, but as we all know the police were definitely trying to enforce such rules about people being outside.

If you knew quite early on CV was extremely difficult to catch outside, then good for you, as a expert virologist, you should have been in SAGE.

DD2 is, as it happens, precisely that. She has a first-class Masters in control of infectious diseases from a university ranked 2 in the UK and 4 in the world for that subject. And has worked in the field since graduating 18 months ago.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard

Hungry : Right Wing, Populist. Didn’t fare well.

Finland : Centre left, regarded as one of best Covid strategies in Europe

“Support for right-wing populist parties in most European countries is associated with more hostile views toward pandemic restrictions. In the Netherlands, those with favorable views of the right-wing populist parties Forum for Democracy (FvD) and Party for Freedom (PVV) are more likely to think restrictions went too far. The pattern among right-wing populist supporters to favor fewer restrictions is also particularly prominent among Alternative for Germany (AfD) supporters in Germany, Lega supporters in Italy and Vox supporters in Spain.”

Half the problem is if anyone made an observation that would have been common sense pre-covid they were treated scornfully. So many of those predictions were right. We can see from the leeks things the cmo said that were shouted down by Cummings/Hancock.

Not the far right again.. can you answer any actual points rather then just calling people nazis

Just this meme but post after post

@Mycatsgoldtooth thank you, I've had that meme in my head for quite a lot of the latter part of this thread. Obsessed or what?!

The country with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world is the United States, which is led by an authoritarian right-wing nationalist and populist, Donald Trump. Second place belongs to India, which is led by the authoritarian right-wing nationalist and populist Narendra Modi. Next in line is Brazil, led by the authoritarian right-wing nationalist and populist Jair Bolsonaro.

Instead of saying ‘childish’ and ‘obsessed’ - try and formulate a proper argument to counteract what I am saying, I’d say memes are pretty childish….

This thread is about political leaders, political response….is it not?

Yes and we are stating that a right wing party, whose policies you support with all your heart turned this country into a police state, with spying, people dying alone, people being criminalised for going to visit vulnerable children, poor people being forced to chose between earning a living or breaking the law by working and all you can do is say “you’re all right wing”.

I think the Minky doth protest too much. You loved the authoritarian policies of this right wing government you attest to hate so much.

As you said earlier “it’s a Sophie’s choice” and my point is that the choice was to favour the laptop/pension/ house and garden class over the vulnerable. A fairly right wing thing to do. And yet, you come out fighting for them time and again with no reflection on anything other then.

Your points gave been

• it didn’t happen
• if it did happen don’t talk about it you’re weaponising
• it had to happen
• there’s nothing in those leaks that I disagree with more then the things posted on this thread
• and then two days of ‘you’re all far right’

@MinkyGreen you can't just use countries like India and Brazil as a comparative. There's a totally different demographic.
India has so many poor people who would die if they didn't get out and earn a few rupees by working.

Where are you pulling these details from? Trump hasn't been the leader in the US fir a while and cases aren't as relevant as deaths. Most people seemed to have had covid and recovered well.
We're also discussing the response as a whole including economic, educational and mental health outcomes

@Mycatsgoldtooth

No I didn’t support their politics, and I also very much don’t support an extreme version of their politics : which would be no restrictions/no measures. As seen more in Hungry.

Finland are considered to have had a better lockdown response - so isn’t it worth discussing how they managed it better?

I stated my family situation earlier and it was absolutely nothing to do with pensions, laptops and gardens. Two children in a pretty critical situation due to Covid. I had a Mum with bowel cancer trying to access treatment during the pandemic, I knew a young family who lost their Dad to Covid. This is why I supported restrictions to control infection spread. They were vulnerable and needed protecting.

Left wing governments - to my mind, looking globally (Finland, New Zealand) MAY have implemented better by using a more immediate, and then hopefully - shorter lockdown. To control spread until a method is found to control the spread.

Isn’t that worth consideration?

I support science, I tend to veer to left wing politics. I don’t support the right.

@MinkyGreen you're looking at total cases not deaths per capita btw. Obviously countries with larger populations would have had higher overall case numbers, as would countries that did a lot of testing.

If you look at deaths per capita then Peru did worst of all globally. Peru was lead by Pedro Castillo for most of the pandemic and he's left-wing.
John Hopkins website has all the numbers if you're interested.

It’s wild how people still think “we should have locked down earlier”