Corona Virus

[EnderbyFox]

 

[davieG]

Getting a bit close to home now my son's best mates Father in law is in ICU with suspected Covid-19.

 

 

[brucey]

5 hours ago, MattP said:

Now this is leadership. 

 

 

Not the most brilliant idea getting retired healthcare workers to come back, when PHE guidelines have now downgraded recommendations for healthcare workers from FFP3 masks to surgical masks only when dealing with confirmed patients. The very same surgical masks that they tell the public are ineffective against preventing you getting infected, and only avoids you infecting others... 

 

 

[blabyboy]

3 minutes ago, brucey said:

Not the most brilliant idea getting retired healthcare workers to come back, when PHE guidelines have now downgraded recommendations for healthcare workers from FFP3 masks to surgical masks only when dealing with confirmed patients. The very same surgical masks that they tell the public are ineffective against preventing you getting infected, and only avoids you infecting others... 

 

 

 

I fully agree with you. We're in dark times, and these are brave people to be doing this. Good people come to the fore in the dark times, sometimes even at personal cost. A cost that too often will not be appreciated or recognised in times ahead - more likely to be forgotten, yet still they come.

 

Some people are just born to do the right thing. Thankfully.  

[Trumpet]

A chap I work with has gone into hospital with it today, they won’t test but have confirmed he has it. We sit close enough that he could tap me on the shoulder. I’ve not been in the office with him since last Tuesday, but other people within the team are claiming symptoms now.

 

I won’t be leaving the house for the foreseeable.

[shen]

2 hours ago, Shane said:

 

 

This video should be stickied

[Carl the Llama]

If the number of people coming through my coffee shop today is any indication, people still aren't taking the social distancing remotely seriously enough.  It's all very well saying the govt need to do more (they do), but - and not that I want to see our takings plummet - a lot of people need to take a lot more responsibility for their behaviour and how they're responding to what's going on.  People are leaving used tissues on tables fgs. That's nasty in normal times let alone the middle of a growing pandemic.

[String fellow]

Sorry to hear about your coffee shop customers' lack of responsibility. BoJo should stop advising people, and start telling them what to do, otherwise the next three months will be truly horrendous. Liberal democracy is great, but.....

[egg_fried_rice]

Eviscerating and accurate - Marina Hyde on Johnson's leadership during this crisis.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/boris-johnson-covid-19-prime-minister-brexit?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

Britain. A nation of shopfighters, presided over at a time of mortal peril by a newspaper columnist, who has for three decades moonlighted as his generation’s leading liar. Still, as the words clawed into the side of the plague pit probably once read, “We are where we are.”

 

But where, currently, is that? It is a place where, at 5pm every day, the disease-threatened populace is expected to take prophylactic advice from Boris Johnson. From Monday, most British parents will be home-schooling their children. Not Johnson, of course – I imagine he doesn’t want to break his own pledge on class sizes. The prime minister keeps saying that the forthcoming test to determine whether you have coronavirus will be “as simple as a pregnancy test”, spaffing his sole area of expertise rather early in what is likely to be a long campaign.

 

Actually, that’s unfair. His other area of expertise is disguising rather basic points with needlessly obscure language. Once this made him a highly overrated prose stylist; now it could make him accomplice to the death of your relatives and friends. “The key message,” Johnson key-messaged on Tuesday, is that people follow the advice “sedulously”. Ah, sedulously. Sedulously. The signal for 10 million hardworking families to draw down the leather-bound thesaurus from their shelves and browse synonyms for the word “twat”.

The government’s crisis communications strategy could not be going worse if it was being led by the last speaker of a dead language, with Typhoid Mary on bass. People are still clearly extremely confused by what the advice is. Never have bullet points been more called for, and you’d think someone as obsessed with the second world war as Johnson is would know that an effective Ministry of Information was inextricably linked to the success of the war effort. Unfortunately, as indicated, Johnson is basically just a columnist. I don’t want to spaff what we might euphemise as my own area of expertise too early, but trust me on this: he is hardwired to spin that shit out for 1150 words. How to put this in terms that even a wildly overeducated prime minister can understand? JUST TELL US THE INFORMATION. It’s a public safety briefing, not a fricking ring quest.

 

The government’s inability to clearly define essential terms means we are in a situation where “self-isolating” demonstrably means a range of things to different people. Same with “social distancing”. These urgently need simple and precise definition, and a comms blitz everywhere from social media to news bulletins to short TV ads.

 

Instead, Johnson prefers to chuck new soundbites on the pile. The current one is the pledge that “we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks”. If you missed this clip, don’t worry. My suspicion is that you’ll be seeing it hundreds of times more this year. It has a strong “Over by Christmas” vibe to it, and is the sort of thing you could imagine on the side of a bus.

There is something deeply unsettling to watching Johnson and Dominic Cummings’ Brexit media strategy be lightly repurposed for a deadly contagion. The prime minister is already crossing the streams, declaring repeatedly on Thursday: “I’m very confident we’ll get this thing done.” Mate … that’s your slogan for the other one? We’re about three days off him telling us we can take back control.

 

Yet control is once again looking somewhat tenuous. Huge amounts of this week have been dedicated to gaslighting the nation that, last week, no one in a position of power said “herd immunity” out loud. And yet, they did. Meanwhile, Dominic Cummings, high priest of the 20,000-word blog, can tell you everything about what the Manhattan Project taught us, but he seemingly can’t work out that if you let a “London will be imminently locked down” story go viral for 18 hours before you deny it, then people WILL physically fight over bogroll. Nurses coming off 48-hour shifts WILL cry in videos because they can’t buy anything in the shops. I guess Cummings is interested in behavioural science in the way I’m interested in Olympic figure skating. Which is to say, I like it, but I’m unbelievably, lethally shit at it.

 

Physically, meanwhile, Johnson is ageing slightly quicker than the guy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who drinks from the wrong grail and goes from middle-aged to ancient to exploding skeleton in around six seconds. There seems to be some unholy symbiosis between him and Rishi Sunak, who appears to be growing younger with every appearance. Perhaps for every year that the prime minister gains, the chancellor loses one. In a fortnight, Sunak will require home-schooling, while Johnson will be over 70 and consequently allowed to self-shield from having to do his job.

 

Of course, we are not the only nation to be conducting an interesting social experiment to determine what happens if you elect a clinical narcissist to run a country which later turns out to be facing grave danger. At this stage, the US’s experiment appears to be going rather worse, and you certainly wouldn’t rule out Donald Trump judging November’s elections to be something that had better be suspended under the circumstances.

 

Even so, it has been quite something to watch Johnson’s boredom and terminal ironist’s smirk kick back in, live on air, as the week has progressed, even while people are asking him about the soon-to-break ventilator crisis in intensive care. “Operation Last Gasp” as Johnson reportedly called the need to address the equipment deficit in a conference call to manufacturers this week.

 

What can you say? If there were any kind of movie justice, the key component for the coronavirus vaccine would occur naturally only in Johnson’s brain stem. Alas, even in that eventuality, he’d decline to do the right thing for the greater good. Johnson has never at a single point suggested he got into this game for public service. His idea of heroic sacrifice is allowing someone else to raise his offspring.

 

That the music should stop when Boris Johnson of all people is prime minister is the darkest of cosmic ironies. We are being asked to put our trust – our lives – in the hands of a man whose entire career, journalistic and political, has been built on a series of lies. It is the work of seconds to dredge up Johnson columns about radical population control, or Johnson buses about the NHS enjoying vast savings from the EU. Who knows which of these, if any, he ever really believed.

 

Time and again this week I have been reminded of that great line from last year’s Chernobyl drama series. “When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”

[blabyboy]

38 minutes ago, Wet Trump said:

A chap I work with has gone into hospital with it today, they won’t test but have confirmed he has it. We sit close enough that he could tap me on the shoulder. I’ve not been in the office with him since last Tuesday, but other people within the team are claiming symptoms now.

 

I won’t be leaving the house for the foreseeable.

how can they confirm if they won't test?

[Leicester_Loyal]

I think by the end of next week we'll be in a forced lockdown, people just aren't taking the social distancing serious enough unfortunately.

[StanSP]

Just now, Leicester_Loyal said:

I think by the end of next week we'll be in a forced lockdown, people just aren't taking the social distancing serious enough unfortunately.

I think it needs to be sooner. People can't be trusted if they're just 'advised' to do something. Too selfish to think otherwise. 

[adam1]

The Gov has been v v poor in handling all of this.

 

They knew months ago that it was spreading and yet have taken little action:

 

1) have not ordered more ventilators. Still.

2) protective clothing for NHS staff

3) testing kits - as the WHO say, test, test, test.

 

 

On top if this it is very poor leadership. No clear messages, no action being taken (see above), and what action they have taken (to save businesses) does not go far enough and will not work in the majority of cases.

 

It is literally as follows, common sense being ignored for a make do attitude. This is deadly.

 

 

 

In addition to the above I have noticed a pattern across social media. Brexit supporting accounts support and the govs approach yet say we are over acting. Remain accounts v critical and are saying more action is required....

 

 

[rachhere]

Bearing in mind they are saying that such a large proportion of people will have mild symptoms, to the extent they might never have realised they have had it, I am frustrated at lack of guidance on what these mild symptoms might look like. It would be so helpful to have a description of the symptoms that people who fit in the bracket. 

 

I am self-isolating at the moment as I have felt fatigued and had a bit of a fever on and off. I also had a very very intermittent cough, but no sense of the persistent dry cough and the difficulty breathing like the government are saying to watch out for. I am now starting to get a slightly more frequent cough, and I can definitely feel shortness of breathe if I climb the stairs, for example. On that basis I think the decision to stay in has been proved to be right.

[Desabafar]

i could slag anyone off in a guardian column but i couldnt even imagine trying do the job of the prime minister and the people around him atm. they get things wrong and it's a bit muddled but dont envy them

[Leicester_Loyal]

10 minutes ago, adam1 said:

 

In addition to the above I have noticed a pattern across social media. Brexit supporting accounts support and the govs approach yet say we are over acting. Remain accounts v critical and are saying more action is required....

 

 

Probably because a lot of Brexiters are Con voters where Remain accounts would be Labour/Lib Dem? Seems fairly obviously to me.

[davieG]

5 minutes ago, Desabafar said:

i could slag anyone off in a guardian column but i couldnt even imagine trying do the job of the prime minister and the people around him atm. they get things wrong and it's a bit muddled but dont envy them

Aye and  lectures from the media is a bit of a joke considering some of the stories they're putting out. Although I do think the Government have been to slow to act.

[adam1]

3 minutes ago, Desabafar said:

i could slag anyone off in a guardian column but i couldnt even imagine trying do the job of the prime minister and the people around him atm. they get things wrong and it's a bit muddled but dont envy them

They have had time to prepare and yet they havent.

 

Last night - will last 12 weeks.

 

This morning - SAGE: will last a year.

 

They have the right information, and refuse to disclose it so that they can come out with their spaff.

[nnfox]

1 minute ago, adam1 said:

They have had time to prepare and yet they havent.

 

Last night - will last 12 weeks.

 

This morning - SAGE: will last a year.

 

They have the right information, and refuse to disclose it so that they can come out with their spaff.

But that's the thing isn't it.  He didn't say it would be over and done with in 12 weeks he said about the tide turning.  To me that means just past the peak, not gone away.

 

 

[deejdeej]

Excuse my ignorance here, but can anyone explain what Korea and Japan have done to stem the spreading of the virus so well? 

[Guest Kopfkino]

7 minutes ago, Desabafar said:

i could slag anyone off in a guardian column but i couldnt even imagine trying do the job of the prime minister and the people around him atm. they get things wrong and it's a bit muddled but dont envy them

Does it really matter? Anyone that already doesn't like Boris will be spaffing all over the shop as they get a few seconds of glorious dopamine popping about whilst nobody else cares what a Marina Hyde actually is

[brucey]

18 minutes ago, rachhere said:

Bearing in mind they are saying that such a large proportion of people will have mild symptoms, to the extent they might never have realised they have had it, I am frustrated at lack of guidance on what these mild symptoms might look like. It would be so helpful to have a description of the symptoms that people who fit in the bracket. 

 

I am self-isolating at the moment as I have felt fatigued and had a bit of a fever on and off. I also had a very very intermittent cough, but no sense of the persistent dry cough and the difficulty breathing like the government are saying to watch out for. I am now starting to get a slightly more frequent cough, and I can definitely feel shortness of breathe if I climb the stairs, for example. On that basis I think the decision to stay in has been proved to be right.

Anecdotally, a few people have reported the persistent loss of smell (even without any blocked nose/sinuses) as an unusual specific symptom related to coronavirus. But the common symptoms are dry cough, fever, shortness of breath, muscle aches and extreme fatigue.

[The Fox Covert]

When I saw the reports that supermarkets were having a pensioner hour when only older people were allowed to shop I thought what a great idea that was. It hasn't worked out so well in practice. My neighbour, who is 70, went to Tesco's yesterday and there were hundreds of people in there with not a grey hair on their head. There were a couple of security at the door but people were just pushing them out the way and walking past them. If this goes on for much longer I hope the government introduces rationing. Dozens of MoD plod where I work who normally sit around all day doing stuff all. They could be given a real job to do.

[nnfox]

8 minutes ago, Desabafar said:

i could slag anyone off in a guardian column but i couldnt even imagine trying do the job of the prime minister and the people around him atm. they get things wrong and it's a bit muddled but dont envy them

Spot on about the media.

 

Boris wanted the job though, nobody held a gun to his head.  He is human and I can accept that he and the people around him will make mistakes, but this is kinda a big thing so they need to learn from their mistakes and learn quickly.

 

This weekend, starting this evening, will be a watershed moment in his time as PM.  He HAS to get it right.  Right now.  

 

This country needs a strong and decisive leader right now, Boris needs to step up, or step down.

[Dahnsouff]

6 minutes ago, adam1 said:

They have had time to prepare and yet they havent.

 

Last night - will last 12 weeks.

 

This morning - SAGE: will last a year.

 

They have the right information, and refuse to disclose it so that they can come out with their spaff.

Suggest taking time to read whats quoted and try to avoid being so reactionary. This is a dreadful situation, and one no-one (literally no-one) has ever had to deal with before.

Don`t care who is in charge of the country, but as long as they have the scientific facts available too them and use them as best they can, then we continue onto tomorrow.