Westministenders: Peak something

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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

Also re the extension of furlough many will still be in the "risk categories" (even though these aren't clear yet and need more research - plus viral load seems to be an important factor) and needing shielding until perhaps a vaccine is available.

Yoikes, yes, the softly softly approach to "telling the truth" that won them Brexit and meant that we relied on Behavioural Science at the start of this idiocy. This is akin to a large research experiment for that lot! Wouldn't be surprised if they are collecting more data than the COVID biomedics and virologists combined which will be used to enable further capitalist ventures, no doubt.

jesuis yep :(

I think the Furlough scheme being extended also has something to do with redundancies. There was something on the news this morning that for companies above a certain size they have 45 days to give notice (and do other things I'm sure) of redundancy which would mean companies would have to give redundancy notices within the next week if there's no guarantee of work being normal or close enough come end of May.

Interesting that Rishi Sunak has announced furlough scheme extension.

How long do folk here think the current level of lockdown will last?

I think at least another 3 weeks after this, likely 3 more after that?

I cannot see Schools resuming before the next academic year?

Yes, OhLookHeKickedTheBall you are correct on that re 45 days

OldLace- for me I think it depend son whether we start properly testing to isolate the disease. Until that happens I'll just say indefinitely.

Of course, as I've said, that doesn't mean the govt will do that (it may be too sensible and too costly for them to entertain) but they will end up paying out far more if they don't.

Even if a vaccine is ready within a year
and there is a functioning economy after that long a lockdown
How long will it take to vaccinate tens of millions of people per country?
Get real folks.
Vaccine is a red herring
It would take YEARS to vaccinate a whole country
assuming that folks like illegal migrants were even willing to go near the authorities under the Hostile Environment

I am willing to be good money that within 3 years we will be back to sports crowds and festivals and holidays and 95% of the population will have completely forgotten covid
as they already have the emergency of flooding in February

JeSuisPoulet

yes - good points - there are so many different theories online and I thought the Westministenders threa will offer the answers with the most research and brain power behind them!!

Been talking to some of my clinical colleagues, and the hospital admission rates for COVID are dropping rapidly this week (this is in Scotland).

BCF How can you tell if the mathematician/physicist you're talking to is an extrovert? They're looking at your shoes, not their own.

How long it ought to last and how long it will last are no doubt going to be totally different things.

If we stay in lockdown longer than other countries, it highlights the myth that we're no worse off than any other European countries...

I bet Raab is praying that Johnson is well enough to take on that decision in the next three weeks. Or perhaps he's just being set up as the sacrificial lamb.

I do find it surreal that Raab is deputising as technically Sunak is the most senior cabinet member after Johnson
but as Sunak has a brain and a bit of charisma, I guess that would never do.

It will be interesting to see how Sunak handles the Brexit spreadsheets when they are handed to him

as the double whammy of a WTO Brexit on the tail end of Covid would be disastrous
and in terms of morale, the whole government has to hope that Brenda does not get ill .......

www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/17/british-workers-reject-fruit-picking-jobs-as-romanians-flown-in-coronavirus

...Friday and all the senior management have buggered off for the weekend, leaving us with Alok Sharma, all the charisma and humanity of a self-service till. Unexpected Virus In The Bagging Area.

Anyway, the good news is we are going to find a virus because we are British and dead good at that sort of thing.

Another weight taken off my mind.

I love your posts mockers
They always make me smile :)

...Thank You. It's only being so miserable as keeps me 'appy.

Vaccine. I meant Vaccine. Sharma has name-checked Jenner three times. makes a change from Burberry, the only clothes firm we have left. Forty years of bulldozing UK manufacturing because we can get it cheaper made by kids in Bangladeshi firetrap sweatshops is coming home to roost. I expect there will be Burberry price tags on those polyester gowns.

I'm so utterly pissed off at this shitshow of a govt
They knew what was coming
They knew what to expect
They saw the daily figures from Spain, France, Italy...
And they sat on their arse and did NOTHING
Until it was too late that is
That meeting when the Imperial College data got shown must have been fun

Too right, yoikes

I would have thought that PPE was something relatively straightforward to build up stocks off 'just in case'.

And probably much more important than ventilators that don't actually work.

Probably less sexy, I suppose.

Re-use your gowns.

Cut a head-hole in a bin bag and you have a stylish alternative.

Do not resusitate the old dears, they are probably going to die anyway soon.

O Brave New World

Old Lace re lockdown, 9 weeks minimum I’d say, i.e. a further 6 from now roughly.

I have been very sceptical about the “end game” of lockdown questions at the daily briefings on previous threads. However one thing I think it would be reasonable for the Government to say now is that schools will not be reopening before the start of term 6, that’s I think at the beginning of June, at the earliest. I’m tempted to say pupils will not return to school this academic year, but that could be premature but certainty about the next 6 weeks could be given now IMO

If its 9 weeks, there will not be much of the economy left when we come out the other end.
Anybody whose pension scheme has invested in UK commercial property should be very worried that is all of us by the way

If its 9 weeks, there will not be much of the economy left when we come out the other end.

It would be fascinating to know how people who feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that the economy wasn't working for them anyway feel about that ?

Listening I get that you are depserate for the economy to restart

but you are the one who needs to "get real" if you think people will just work and shop as normal through hundreds of thousands of deaths
and do the same every year until enough people have acquired herd immunity or died out

You had better hope that there is either a vaccine - or a very effective treatment - developed and rolled out very soon,
because there will be no "Normal" economy until most people feel safe to resume what was their normal daily activities.

We all need to "get real" and accept some whole sectors of the economy won't restart before then
So in the interim, people working there will need to live off savings or benefits if other jobs aren't available

Your kids may spend a couple of years in NMW jobs supporting the shielded, or in supermarkets, fruit-picking, anywhere the young & healthy are in demand

Previous generations of youngsters in many Western countries had to accept a couple of years national service.
That will be much less onerous

www.politico.eu/article/imf-to-uk-dont-make-life-tougher-by-sticking-to-brexit-deadline/

The U.K. would be "wise" not to add to current economic uncertainty by ruling out an extension to Brexit trade talks, the International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.

"Wise" and the current talentless Tory Government do not sit easily in the same sentence!