Westministenders: Peak something

[BigChocFrenzy]

Westministenders: Peak something

The story so far

COVID has changed the world for the next few years, like a slowly exploding nuke:

• killed well over 100,000 people
• made many people afraid to leave their home
• caused a Global Depression

Countries locked down because they needed the extra time to

Raise the Line while Flattening the Curve:

1. Flatten the curve of the numbers needing healthcare to a level the system can manage

2. Raise the capacity of their health services and public health systems - their testing and tracking process

Also, scientists desperately needed time to find out more about COVID:
how to avoid it, how to treat it

What happens next ?

Research teams around the world are working to produce a vaccine,
will become hopefully available within the next couple of years

In the meantime, treatment procedures are being developed to better treat COVID sufferers.

Also in the meantime, countries will need to gradually exit lockdown to rescue their economies from complete catastrophe.

Timing & measures for each country will be dependent on:

Death rate after peak,
health service capacity,
testing & tracing capacity etc

....and also what their govt and public deem an "acceptable" level of extra deaths & serious illness.

Possibly some countries will need to cycle in and out of lockdown,
whereas others will be able to accept the death toll with lesser social distancing measures.

The first few countries are already relaxing lockdown,
so the UK will watch, wait and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

..... then copy these the correct way round

PMK

Thanks bigchoc

Thanks PMK

Pmk

To continue from te previous thread.

• I would really like to see some proper cross party work going on (that's my UNicorn). A situation like this should never be dealth with as a battle between parties but as a way to find the best solution for the country, not point scoring against the 'Other'.

Most of the reaction has been pure panic both from the public (understandable) and from governments (less so) along side a head in sand attitude from the UK. I wish to studies and numbers about the real long term human cost of the pandemic + lockdown*.
It's not just about 'the economy'. The consequences are much much wider than that and should actually take into account the OTHER impending disaster that climate change is.

I think Keir is asking the right questions.
Businesses need to know what the plan is - so they can plan.....
But planning is not part of this government's modus operandi- so it's just fuck business......

.

Incidentally, I see EasyJet will be returning less their middle aisle of seats. Thus decreasing their profitability (and therefore raising prices) by at least 30%. If other airlines survive follow suit, that's a massive reduction in capacity overnight.

I think cheap short hop getaways will be a memory in 2022.

I'm guessing that as I slide into old age, I'll actually be entering a strangely familiar world of my youth. Shit bland food. An annual holiday (if you're lucky. We weren't). Walking or cycling everywhere ...

I would like to see cross party working, but I don't see it happening. Johnson, doesn't even trust his own side, he kicked out anyone who was decent from his Government, to appoint mediocrities who would massage his ego.

If he did appoint some cross party working group, it would be entirely so that he could pass the buck.

pmk

Pmk

PMK

Pmk.

I'm guessing that as I slide into old age, I'll actually be entering a strangely familiar world of my youth. Shit bland food. An annual holiday (if you're lucky. We weren't). Walking or cycling everywhere ...

These are not all bad. Simple food doesn't have to be bland.
Walking or cycling should improve the obesity crisis.
Annual holiday as opposed to jumping on planes for drunken nights in Ibiza? Some of our best holidays as children were very simple ones, taken not far from home.

This could go either way - post WW1 - depression, poverty, fascism.
Post WW2 - people with vision who set up international agencies to promote peace and the common good and a welfare state which provided a safety net.

Where are the people with vision now? Not in Johnson's cabinet, that's for sure.

Simple food doesn't have to be bland.

I can remember Vesta curries and Bernie Inns being the height of sophistication ...

More cyclists will also help take on the peculiarly British Cyclophobic posts we sometimes get in another part of the MN Forest

AIBU to think all cyclists should stay home/get off and walk/be put up against a wall and shot, etc.

Cycling depends on where you live. In the Fens, (flat) cycling is a normal mode of transport, (or it was when I was a lass.) In the Peak District, it's only the keenies who cycle, or kids cycling round town on their bikes.

Ah yes, chicken in a basket, duck a l'orange.

PMK

I am less worried about the food and more worried about the acceleration in the trend towards rabid nationalism and xenophobia that is already happening. We stand to lose the gains we have made since WW2 very quickly indeed.

"I can remember Vesta curries and Bernie Inns being the height of sophistication ..."

Oh, me too! My mother was not a good cook, hated cooking and her home-made repertoire was limited to shepherds pie and steak and kidney pie, both of which she learned at school. I always say I learned to cook to make up for deficiencies!

One of my first attempts at cooking was one of those Vesta curries when I was about 12 or 13. I still remember so well the disappointment when I compared the picture on the box with the reality when I'd finished!

Ah I'm findus crispy pancakes and soopernoodles era.

What a time to be alive.

I remember the excitement when a Chinese restaurant opened up in our sleepy market town. Late sixties, sometime.

PMK. I remember being thought weird for eating yoghurt. I had to buy it from the Health Food Shop.