Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

Hester
And as an aside: what about zero-hours staff - have they been forgotten?
If they are put on Furlough, it will be based on their average actual earnings, like every other worker.

Listening Noone is locking down for climate change
There is no silver bullet that solves all problems at once
Defeating Hitler did not defeat Stalin

This is not pointless as you claim:

The aim of these measures are to flatten the curve of cases

• people will still get it and gain immunity, but at a lower rate It also gives times to build up NHS critical care beds and equipment

In 12-18 months, there should be a vaccine, which with the people already immune should give good herd immunity

Viruses like COVID mutate, but normally become less virulent over time

Hence, unless things get screwed up, COVID could indeed become a manageable winter danger - comparable to a severe flu strain ? - after 2-3 years

.... But I expect you are not really considering any of this, which is understandable

• you are losing your business and a lot of money

Others are under desperate stress at home and also can't stand any more

Yes, we should have had a calm debate first about numbers & costs,
but those denying there ever was a crisis held out too long
so the govt ran out of time to explain cost / benefit to the public and gauge their opinion

At this stage, we can only rely on the experts gawd help them if they screwed up, because BJ won't

I think it's a pretty safe bet to dismiss anyone whose proposing an end to this lockdown without a clear plan on dealing with the next pandemic.

BigChoc
Unless the UK government PROPERLY funds

• the NHS as a proportion of GDP
• education per capita back to 2010 levels
• adult social care per capita back to 1990 levels

NOTHING will be gained from this chaos.

Where will the taxes to pay for Rishi's magic money tree come from if we've all had to accept lower earnings?

Priti has very kindly offered 1 year extensions to EU NHS staff - still leaves the NHS 80,000 staff short and every trust in deficit with Brexit around the corner.

A climate change heatwave like 2003 would make Covid look like a walk in the park if it hit London (it was 15,000 French deaths in a month by the way).

All these lockdowns and closed parliaments and draconian laws are setting up much bigger problems down the line

Come on LQ - this is not a "normal" disease we are fighting. You only need to see pictures of bodies removed from Brooklyn Hospitals into make shift wards to know - we have nothing to compare this too.

You have to look beyond the numbers the government are releasing- as they are a co plate understatement.

Everyone is hurting - but preventable deaths - should be prevented.(and by that those that can be saved by the use of ventilators or just oxygen- and the only way that is going to happen is by slowing the spread)

Unless the UK government PROPERLY funds
- the NHS as a proportion of GDP
- education per capita back to 2010 levels
- adult social care per capita back to 1990 levels
NOTHING will be gained from this chaos.

I'm really not a fan of throwing other peoples money (let alone mine) at problems as a "solution" to anything. Which is what a lot of politics seems to have descended into.

I'd much rather we all started off with a proper, grown up and transparent debate about (for example) What is the NHS for ?. And then work backwards to how much money we think it needs. Because that question should trip over other issues in society around lifestyle choices, the role of the state in those etc etc.

You could do the same for education. Why do we educate our kids ?. Because while I can guarantee there will be a constellation of opinions here and in real life, the reality is we educate kids so that schools can get funds for exams passed. Actually equipping them for their future is a happy - but not essential - by product.

Rinse and repeat for most things the state does. After all, what's the first line in a project plan ? "What does success look like ?". I have yet to see that explicitly defined for the NHS, education, transport etc etc.

I'm probably not making much sense to anyone here - not even me now .

Sorry wards=morgues

Listening You seem to be demanding that this expense to solve the main problems in the world
Of course it can't, any more than WW2 could deal with Stalin

This lockdown will only help deal with COVID
It will not do much for inequality, even if the Tories have temporarily borrowed Corbyn's used Y-fronts

Have a think why the TORY party would be so mad
Why countries around the world with a few eccentric exceptions are doing much the same

"When you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs" .... you probably need someone to explain shit

The extra 10,000 deaths in France shamed the country - for a while - but didn't cause panic
Dying of the heat is not catching with exponential growth

Unfortunately, since there will be a global recssion / depression, the proposed new C02 summit this Autumn looks dead
and countries may indeed agree to postpone agreed targets and measures

We definitely need to build up NHS and public health capacity to rapidly surge x multiples, not 30%
This is because a biology team in China found wild bats have umpteen more SARS viruses of unknown virulence

This was not the dreaded Pandemic X, that will kill 100 million
The next one out of China - or elsewhere - might be

It was interesting listening to Andrew Cuomo (his daily tour de force outlining the current situation in New York State): what he was saying about what was needed in the health service for it to cope was positively National Health Service-ish/communistic (in the opinion of USians).

Unfortunately the news coverage then cut away to the far less interesting Michael Gove.

This was not the dreaded Pandemic X, that will kill 100 million The next one out of China - or elsewhere - might be

I can't keep saying it enough. Viruses are weird. We're not 100% sure they are terrestrial either (but that's another debate). For something that isn't alive, they can do a pretty good job of fucking up living things.

Because they are incredibly hard to study - it's hard to discern their entire "life" cycle.

I would not be surprised if having brewed up these conditions, C-19 turns out to have been a harbinger for a much nastier virus. (I'm not asserting it, just reflecting) that sweeps in and takes over.

It's humans that have shrunk the world to a 36-hour girdle when most viruses can live 48 hours. It's humans that will be affected most.

(Shakespeare reference to return the two fingers to Miss C )

Yesterday's R4 Start The Week is required listening. We've got used to a fast-changing, ever growing world economy, but this has been slowing down since the 1960s and soon we shall be static if not on a negative path. We have a generation of politicians who think we can always catch up by growing the economy, and a generation of big business bosses who think they are uniquely brilliant because of their ability to deliver profits in a world where there are always more people with more money, and it aint gonna be true in the very near future.

Generation Greta are going to look at you all with increasingly scowly faces.

Yesterday's R4 Start The Week is required listening. We've got used to a fast-changing, ever growing world economy, but this has been slowing down since the 1960s and soon we shall be static if not on a negative path

I don't need anyone to tell me that growth in any material system cannot continue indefinitely ...

@Mship You also like maths models

This simulator is only for Germany, but allows us to modify a large number of input parameters via sliders,
to examine a huge number of scenarios

Gives an idea of all the relevant parameters we need to consider for the UK too
So complex and of course often interacting, not independent variables:

www.covidsim.eu

MrsLaughan
I am well aware of the death rates in New York.
Its just the cameras do not normally film them.

BigChoc
I am scared and angry for the now - how I will financially get through the next few months.
I am scared and angry for the future - how my family income will ever recover.
I am scared and angry for my children's future

and I have this massive feeling that a lot of what is being done under the auspices of Covid - particularly the loss of civil rights
is a variant of oh, look, a squirrel
that we will look back upon with great regret in ten years time

DG That team of biologists found a whole witches' brew of unknown SARS viruses in the "Bat Caves"

and that's just one wild animal, in 1 small area that they could study

Ok - explain to me why you are prepared to sacrifice 1000's, 10,000's of people ....... because your income?

I lived in NYC - there were not temporary morgues around the city with the exception of sept11.

Is it because of your personal cost? Pouring money into the nhs is fine because it won't cost you? Because you run your income through a company so you can control your tax....

I am trying to understand your rational..... is it because you can't grasp the share quantity of people that would die if this is not controlled?

Listening I sympathise massively
Hardly anyone is secure

Pensioners shouldn't be smug either, unlike that twat on the radio

• bank failures, confiscations as in Cyprus, pension companies going broke .....

We are where we are
We have nearly all lost a lot, some life-changing amounts

So now we are passengers in a rickety boat on a stormy sea, with visible and hidden icebergs
No life boats
And we have a workshy piffler for a captain and mostly nutcases for the crew

I still wouldn't jump overboard
We can only grit our teeth and hope the Motley Crew get us safely to port.

I have only sympathy, no suggestions as to a different course now wrt COVID

... except of course to work with the EU as closely as possible, including to rebuild trade and the economy afterwards

• it will be even worse, maybe the killer blow, if the No Dealers win

But it will be a horribly hard, long slog whatever happens

Downstairs neighbour is a funeral director. Saw her for the first time for a couple of weeks today. She’s exhausted - says so many people dead. This is rural SW Midlands. She also said she and her colleagues are well equipped with PPE.

The EU are trying to get Orbán to cancel / time limit his new law that basically gives him dictatorial powers in Hungary for at least 2 years.

He's one leader who has taken full advantage of the crisis
He won't give it up without one hell of a fight and I don't think the EU have the bandwidth atm to spank him, with the current crisis

MrsLaughan
I am not sacrificing anybody. I am obeying the lockdown no bloody point going out for other than essential food
And I reiterate the point that its the excess deaths which will be the judge of severity.

I run my income through a company so my house is not at risk.
CT plus dividend tax is 26% with no zero band on the CT
PAYE plus NI is 31% with a chunky zero band
the net loss to the Treasury is not significant.

I pay my taxes and hope that maybe we will get a better cohort of politicians after all this
but I was wrong about Brexit
and I was wrong about December 19 election
so what do I know

As predicted, Germany's death rate rising noticeably as more of the old have become patients
and some of those kept alive for weeks on ventilators are dying

70,000 cases and 720 dead, so above 1% death rate
Number of new cases well down the last 2 ½ days

• but still at far too high a level and may be a statistical blip anyway

We need a week for a reliable trend.

Merkel has already said our lockdown will remain until at least 19 April - and we started a week before the UK

Rather unexpected that the German target is not to get below XXX new daily cases,
but to stretch out the doubling of cases to be every 10 days or more

We are currently having some debate about Lives / Costs / Immunity for the next step,
but it is being conducted calmly

It may well be that people need to experience not just the deaths, but also the economic consequences,
before fundamental debate starts about what happens next

Germany is quietly having this debate
Possibly the UK can also now have a calm debate, but they need a calm leader first

I likes this Titanic analogy, with Cap'n Johnson calling "Full Steam Ahead" and Third Officer Goveoller telling us everything's under control.

Not enough lifeboats ventilators and second class all locked in below decks with no toilet roll.

^and I have this massive feeling that a lot of what is being done under the auspices of Covid - particularly the loss of civil rights
is a variant of oh, look, a squirrel
that we will look back upon with great regret in ten years time^

We can not look back and talk about what we should have done at this point in relation to this crisis.

We can only look at the best way to solve the problems we have here and now and that begs the question: what is the alternative? Is it any better?

I honestly don't know the answer to that question.

We are faced with a decision between civil liberties, hopefully temporary, and human compassion and the equality of a right to life.

If we fail to try and save the lives we have in order to protect our civil liberties, are we really protecting our rights?

I don't know what the solution is and it's hard to know whether the decision made was definitely the right one at this stage.

Certainly given what has transpired in Bergamo and Lombardy generally, it does seem there was little alternative. But we don't know what the consequences of the path we are taking will be either.

It's like fumbling in the dark and working on the basis of probabilities calculated on incomplete data.

Actually, I get where listeningquietly is coming from. My DM died from pneumonia in hospital, aged 88. Her obs an hour previously were fine; apparently she deteriorated quickly enough to be dead within an hour - no one noticed, she was found dead on the ward. She wanted to die anyway... These reports of intubation and respiratory distress are so horrible.

But the economic consequences are going to affect EVERYBODY, not just those who are nearing the end of their lives. And we, and our children, will pay for it.