Covid-19: UK faces 50k cases a day by October without action
bbc.com
bbc.com
He said:
"If, and that's quite a big if, but if that continues unabated, and this grows, doubling every seven days... if that continued you would end up with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October per day. Fifty-thousand cases per day would be expected to lead a month later, so the middle of November say, to 200-plus deaths per day. The challenge, therefore, is to make sure the doubling time does not stay at seven days. That requires speed, it requires action and it requires enough in order to be able to bring that down"
If that's not a prediction but rather a pure hypothetical then why is he saying it? And why is he then using what he just said to justify a call for "action"?
If it looks, walks and talks like a prediction then it's a prediction. The BBC are right to ignore his mealy-mouthed attempt to wriggle out of accountability by pretending it's not.
I still can't believe how un-Tory our Tory government has been, and yet still they're The Worst of The Worst in the minds of those with strong opinions. I don't much like our political classes, but I really wouldn't want to be in their shoes this year.
Expecting Boris to have mandated mask usage in February is bizarre, not a single country or health authority anywhere was even considering doing that back then and remember - all the scientific studies said that masks were of unclear or no value in stopping the spread of flu, one of the closest analogues. So that's some pretty serious Captain Hindsight behaviour going on here.
https://archive.is/xfHiL#selection-407.27-407.105
and, although the title is pretty fierce, it does seem to be well-argued and b/c today it was revealed that the author is someone who works for Fauci at CDC!
Great experience! Thank you for providing level headed and well articulated responses to the widely spread mass hysteria.
I also learned a lot, special thanks for pointing Thomas Howell's books. Reading now the 'A Conflict of Visions'.
1) David Camerons right to own policy was very favourable among young adults who felt like they will never be able to own a home. I had a friend of mine tell me that he "selfishly" voted tory because of that policy.
I didn't have the heart to tell him where the money came from.
2) Tories are good at projecting a feeling of "control" and making their opponents seem a bit chaotic or not as clear. Their opponents do not help themselves here.
This is my own observation, I see often that tories will speak clearly with a single voice and paint labour as being "in chaos" or that labour is seriously divided on key issues.
3) People are generally afraid of immigration. Tories are on the anti-immigration side of things publicly (though, this is betrayed by their actual policies, because immigration brings a lot of wealth to the country.)
4) People don't like taxes, and see the cuts to public services as "eventually coming to them". This was told to me by my friends father who voted tory.
When I was younger I definitely favoured Labour, but drifted towards Tory/Brexit party when Brexit happened. I don't particularly like giant power structures and want small government - Labour will never give me that. I also strongly identify with core conservative values, even if the Tories don't project them very well, I don't see an alternative.
Sibling comment is fairly on point.
TL;DR: "The least worst" party (imo).
- Pro free speech (or as The Guardian like to describe me, "free speech extremist")
- Equality of opportunity (but not "positive" discrimination), NHS and safety nets fit here
- Proud of our country and history, and acknowledging the bad parts without trying to destroy them
- Capitalism/free markets over intense regulation
- Pro small business and anti corporatism
- Self responsibility
So definitely not the current Tory party, but more ideologically aligned with me than any other.
For now, I'd definitely ask you to consider if supporting the current party (which as you note is antithetical to some of your values) might damage the country or move it too far away from your ideals?
I generally feel let down by all the major political parties, so I've been attempting to vote for whoever will do the least harm but it's so hard to figure that out these days :/
In other words, taking the Covid issue head-on and making decisions in spite of what the media reaction would be may be something that the same group of people could support?
What we have now is a PM and Govt being criticised from all 'sides'. A classic example of trying to please everyone and actually pleasing no one, if you like?
I don't think they would have, though, at all. The "get Brexit done" sentiment is mostly popular amongst people who discount the chance of Brexit having any significant impact on their lives (there's polling on this; the most pro-brexit people are also, oddly, the ones most likely to think that Brexit won't actually do anything much in terms of practical impact on their everyday lives). Whereas decisive action on covid would have been, in the short to medium term, far more disruptive than what has actually been done.
Actually that last sentence may not be obvious. On his blog, Dominic Cummings made a rather important point about the UK and EU that largely escaped notice: the EU is broadly unpopular with a clear majority of the British population. The idea that the EU sucks is widely accepted. The referendum was a (somewhat) close match only because a significant proportion of the people who don't like the EU and would have wanted to leave feared the terrible consequences they were promised.
People who genuinely support the EU as a project has never really got higher than about a third of the population:
https://dominiccummings.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/screensh...
This is why the EU/Remain strategy during the campaign was so unrelentingly negative. The message was consistently not the EU is great and we should stay because it makes sense, the message was the UK's nominal allies will inflict great punishment if it leaves. This was a rather cynical but understandable political calculation when you see the polls. Fear motivates. It nearly dominated and caused Remain to win.
"the most untory" is probably because they're trying to spend their way out of this; but that is actually completely in-line with criticisms levied at the tories: Spend nothing on prevention, and overspend when shit hits the fan.
In mainland China authoritarianism played a part but people made a lot of efforts by themselves, not out of fear, like in Taiwan and Korea.
I think that's one of the main problems we're having in the UK. Too many people have zero civic sense and complain about their "freedoms being infringed" instead seeing the big picture that in an epidemic everyone must act together for the group at the cost of individual sacrifices.
Freedoms are being infringed, but I do understand the need to sacrifice. We're not being asked for a lot compared to previous generations.
What we do need is real leadership though and lack of leadership is causing people to check out of caring about the virus. People would care a lot more if they believed their government had a plan.
> Freedoms are being infringed, but I do understand the need to sacrifice.
That's the point, isn't it? To understand that individual freedoms, and individualism, are not absolute and can be reduced temporarily when necessary.
Yes and no.
An individual right/freedom is immutable. It's not something "granted" to us by government, and not something they should be able to take away.
I understand the need for emergency measures, but in my opinion the government should've gotten consent before continuing this for months on end. There is a balance to be had here.
It's not a sacrifice if it's not a choice.
We now know the government doesn't have an exit strategy, so we could be stuck in this state for many more months to come. This is espet alarming when you consider people are missing NHS appointments (e.g. cancer diagnosis) or the serious economic issues. Serious fallout is coming.
Yes, tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented.
South Korea has a population of a similar size to the UK (51 vs 65 million), and have had approximately 400 deaths due to Covid compared to 40,000 in the UK.
None of this is to say that I believe the UK has performed well.
So clearly the 'solution' would have been to very early on close the borders and lock everyone down for two weeks. Done and dusted!
But can you imagine that EVER having come to pass pre-March?
Our populace has no contemporary history or understanding of the implications of a pandemic and would have reacted with furore. Perhaps in future people will be a little more open to such practise, but certainly not prior to now.
That said, I hope you don't take it as a rebuttal for the sake of it if I disagree.
The "solution" that our government suggested was to do nothing, not just to not to lock down at all but to quite literally do nothing.
This could have been the right thing to do and indeed was based on a pandemic model that had been created before. But was widely criticised at the time because the pandemic model which was used in the model had a significantly lower unmitigated R value.
It's possible for some to conclude that "they did the best with the information that they had at the time" owing to the fact that typically we always operate with an uncertain future, and looking back on passed decisions can be done with the clarity and certainty that only living with consequences can grant: but that does not apply here. Boris and co. intentionally downplayed the pandemic, intentionally killed off PPE plans and intentionally prevented the roll out of testing where needed.
This is before we even _think_ about lock-downs.
Lock-downs are not a panacea and they do nothing to stop a pandemic, they merely slow it while we work on a vaccine or until the population is sufficiently immune (without overwhelming healthcare).
The key thing for the current government is, then: do not overwhelm healthcare.
Which is harder to do when your party has chronically underfunded it for over a decade.
Do I think Labour or the LibDems would have done any better, given they'd likely end up relying on much the same scientific input? Nope.
I do think that the conservatives have done worse than the others would have, but that's not really supported with any evidence other than it couldn't have been handled much worse.
The real fact I'm trying to bring home is that the healthcare capacity is one of the most important things and it is one of those things that has been in atrophied for many years.
The current governments approach, while quite slow, miscommunicated and contradictory: would have worked better if we had a working and well funded healthcare system.
In particular, the UK government seems to have an obsession with getting people back to offices; as far as I know basically everywhere else in Europe has continued to at least suggest, if not mandate, working from home where possible.
To herd or not to herd? To hide or not to hide? What risk is acceptable, and in what domains - social? Emotional? Economic? No one knows, but everyone still has opinions (myself included!).
We're not at the end of this.
I think it applies to any political party which is currently governing in all countries. this is very difficult situation and none of the options are pleasant.
Beds data is here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
I think the 'nightingale' sites are all but unused at the moment, so there's some buffer, but the point is 'hey stop ignoring guidance/laws - the trajectory is bad' rather than 'it's bad right now'.
I mean they spent the last month giving the entire country a month-long 50%-off "Groupon" to every restaurant and telling us to go out more to prop up the economy. Then a couple of weeks later, they open schools without sufficient testing capacity and say it's our fault for a disease spreading because we aren't complying with the ever-shifting and often nonsensical rules.
I'm sure nearly everyone in London has had the experience of being required to wear a mask on a train and then walking 5 feet into a coffee shop where you can sit in an enclosed space smaller than a train car without a mask. Or you've seen two restaurants next door to each other where one has their staff wear masks and the other takes literally no precautions. Or you've been told you can't have another family of 4 over to your house to eat dinner but you can play full-contact rugby with them if you like.
Combine that with the fact that COVID rates have been so low for so long now that must of us don't have personal experience with COVID and of course people are losing their will to cooperate. It would be one thing if there was an exit strategy on the horizon, but without one clearly defined, I think most people are just starting to give up on the idea of stopping COVID if it requires them to indefinitely suspend living their life.
This is just my impression of how my friends are reacting - I'm not saying that the situation isn't serious.
Just last Friday, our PM announced that we're clearly dealing with a 'second wave', and to fix that we will close bars at 00:00 in particular regions. Why? Because apparently people in bars will behave properly until 00:00 and after that they start shouting into each other's mouths.
I think to anyone with half a brain it's obvious that these measures don't really make sense, so contrary to the intention more and more people will just say fuck it and go back to doing what they did pre-pandemic.
And our PM will wait for a huge surge to implement more serious lock-downs, because at least /then/ he'll have a reason to do so that doesn't make people dislike him. Fucking politicians.
I think this is an important issue: The government has enacted 'strange' guidance, and offered that £10 restaurants handout because it does not want to anger anyone. But one would have hoped that the public could see through that and focus on the key advice (face masks and don't get too close to anyone)... Alas not.
I did not "eat out to help out", I have not set foot in a pub or coffee shop since March, and I haven't had a professional hair cut yet this year. Why? But I think that the priority is distancing and avoiding crowds in enclosed spaces, not saving £10 on a curry.