Corona Virus

[Paninistickers]

3 minutes ago, twoleftfeet said:

85% of the worlds deaths from this virus have occurred in Europe and the USA.

And 100% caused by China!

[StanSP]

11 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

And 100% caused by 5G!

Fixed that for you

[bovril]

12 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

And 100% caused by China!

Exacerbated by European failings though. I am sure the leaders who have ****ed up in various countries will try and save their own necks by deflecting blame. Believing it's China's fault but also that they are being used somewhat as a scapegoat don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. 

[yorkie1999]

6 minutes ago, bovril said:

Exacerbated by European failings though. I am sure the leaders who have ****ed up in various countries will try and save their own necks by deflecting blame. Believing it's China's fault but also that they are being used somewhat as a scapegoat don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. 

If you crashed your car into another car and that car knocked someone off a bike and killed them, who’s to blame?

[Wymsey]

 

 

25 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

And 100% caused by China!

 

13 minutes ago, StanSP said:

Fixed that for you

[bovril]

2 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

If you crashed your car into another car and that car knocked someone off a bike and killed them, who’s to blame?

Poor analogy in my opinion, because it suggests Europeans had no control over the situation. China is responsible for the virus, not the poor response in Europe. 

[Dr The Singh]

6 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

If you crashed your car into another car and that car knocked someone off a bike and killed them, who’s to blame?

Easier to blame Richie Wellens

[st albans fox]

30 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

And 100% caused by China!

 

6 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

If you crashed your car into another car and that car knocked someone off a bike and killed them, who’s to blame?

 

3 minutes ago, bovril said:

Poor analogy in my opinion, because it suggests Europeans had no control over the situation. China is responsible for the virus, not the poor response in Europe. 

there is a chance that this just ‘happened’ ...... I know that’s tough to accept because we all want to blame somebody ......we talked about this many weeks ago, that the blame game would get louder and louder as the deaths mounted up.  I accept there is circumstantial evidence re the Chinese govt etc but without hard evidence of source of the cause and that China have actually hidden tens of thousands of deaths in Wuhan that’s all it is - a blame game ........

[yorkie1999]

4 minutes ago, bovril said:

Poor analogy in my opinion, because it suggests Europeans had no control over the situation. China is responsible for the virus, not the poor response in Europe. 

China is responsible for hiding the truth about the virus from the rest of the world. That month delay gave the virus time to spread around the world.

[bovril]

5 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

China is responsible for hiding the truth about the virus from the rest of the world. That month delay gave the virus time to spread around the world.

Like I said, that's not mutually exclusive with thinking that Europeans were also slow to react. 

Edited 15 April 2020 by bovril

[ithuriel]

3 hours ago, UPinCarolina said:

The Gang of Four, who've helped spearhead the Misinformation Revolution that directs the Red, White and Blue Guards.

Ah the dancing clown 

 

[st albans fox]

7 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

China is responsible for hiding the truth about the virus from the rest of the world. That month delay gave the virus time to spread around the world.

China effectively shut down their country for a month - in what way was that ‘hiding the truth’ about the virus ?  Surely the rest of the world would be thinking - ‘wow, they shut down their economy for a month’ ..... this is really serious. Go back and look at the early parts of this thread and you will see some posters pointing this out.  The problem with the west is that they thought the spread into the west could be controlled ...... they assumed it would be like SARS or MERS .....

[yorkie1999]

10 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

 

 

there is a chance that this just ‘happened’ ...... I know that’s tough to accept because we all want to blame somebody ......we talked about this many weeks ago, that the blame game would get louder and louder as the deaths mounted up.  I accept there is circumstantial evidence re the Chinese govt etc but without hard evidence of source of the cause and that China have actually hidden tens of thousands of deaths in Wuhan that’s all it is - a blame game ........

They disciplined the doctor who was wanted to warn everyone, then pardoned him after it became impossible to hide.

[yorkie1999]

10 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

China effectively shut down their country for a month - in what way was that ‘hiding the truth’ about the virus ?  Surely the rest of the world would be thinking - ‘wow, they shut down their economy for a month’ ..... this is really serious. Go back and look at the early parts of this thread and you will see some posters pointing this out.  The problem with the west is that they thought the spread into the west could be controlled ...... they assumed it would be like SARS or MERS .....

But that was way after it was known about, when they could no longer hide it.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-china-51364382

Edited 15 April 2020 by yorkie1999

[twoleftfeet]

Chinas death rate 2 per million Spain's death rate is 400 per million.

Now I am not naive enough to believe the Chinese number of deaths it seams far too low but the worst in that part of the world Iran is only at 58 per million. China's close neighbour South Korea stands at 4 per million.

The death rates per million in the west seem well out of step with the rest of the world but i suppose only time will tell. 

[SpacedX]

2 minutes ago, twoleftfeet said:

Chinas death rate 2 per million Spain's death rate is 400 per million.

Now I am not naive enough to believe the Chinese number of deaths it seams far too low but the worst in that part of the world Iran is only at 58 per million. China's close neighbour South Korea stands at 4 per million.

The death rates per million in the west seem well out of step with the rest of the world but i suppose only time will tell. 

And which do you think are the more accurately reported? I'll give you a clue...the answer doesn't begin with I and end with N.

[yorkie1999]

5 minutes ago, Line-X said:

And which do you think are the more accurately reported? I'll give you a clue...the answer doesn't begin with I and end with N.

Spain

[yorkie1999]

13 minutes ago, twoleftfeet said:

Chinas death rate 2 per million Spain's death rate is 400 per million.

Now I am not naive enough to believe the Chinese number of deaths it seams far too low but the worst in that part of the world Iran is only at 58 per million. China's close neighbour South Korea stands at 4 per million.

The death rates per million in the west seem well out of step with the rest of the world but i suppose only time will tell. 

But there’s something like 100million 450thousand 350 billion Chinese people

[January47]

16 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

But there’s something like 100million 450thousand 350 billion Chinese people

However the class action lawsuits through the American courts will order hundreds of trillions of dollars against china

 

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

China's deaths are clearly a magnitude higher than they're letting on. 

[Guest Fktf]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Like I said, that's not mutually exclusive with thinking that Europeans were also slow to react. 

You can see evidence of your point within Europe. For instance, Poland locked down early from their first case, and has less than 300 deaths so far. Germany went for a test, isolate, trace approach, and this has limited deaths compared to other EU countries. Then other countries that were 'slow to react' and will face 20000 plus deaths, including us. But it wasn't these countries being slow to react, apart from maybe Italy who got the first major wave in Europe. After that, the rest of us saw what had happened in a similar country, and made a decision of what to do in light of that information. 

 

Whatever the tory sympathisers on here will tell you, the initial goal of our govt, and their selected science advisors, was herd immunity. Any epidemiologist knows that limiting person to person transmission will stop a virus (see approaches taken in Poland, Taiwan..). We didn't do it because we wanted it to spread, and only changed direction when it became clear the virus was far more infectious than first thought, and spreading at a rate that would overwhelm the NHS. 

 

What's sad is that we'd seen the likely trajectory of the spread in the UK in places like Italy weeks before. Boris was saying 'many of us will loved ones before their time', and the next day the polish pm was quoting this saying 'the reason we're implementing such tough social distancing measures is so you don't have to say goodbye to loved ones'. 

 

For whatever reason, we had the chance to prevent us being in the same situation as Italy, Spain, France, but chose not to take it. The govt talks about 'the science', like it reveals one objective decision. But is doesn't. Plenty of scientists saw the data from Italy and thought we should have locked down 2 weeks earlier than we did. 

[twoleftfeet]

Figures suggest the death date in the regions has risen by about a third whilst London as you would expect has more than doubled.

This article by the BBC raises some interesting points 

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

And this is worrying in the times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-fear-of-reinfection-grows-after-124-south-koreans-test-positive-for-second-time-xrj6pp5z6

 

[leicsmac]

6 hours ago, bovril said:

Like I said, that's not mutually exclusive with thinking that Europeans were also slow to react. 

Get outta here with your idea for nuanced accountability - can't you see it's not needed?

 

11 hours ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Unfortunately Alf, your little hatchet job is about as effective as a chocolate teapot and by extension the WHO at the start of this pandemic. Which is of course entirely my point, it isn't fit for purpose if all it can do is repeat the lines given to it by individual nations but you seem to have ignored that point in favour of grandstanding. 

 

Let us start by taking a line from your favourite publication "the WHO’s reluctance to challenge what it was being told, has cost the world dearly." You've managed to grasp the concept of challenging information but many don't believe the WHO was able to do the same. "Doctors and nurses in Wuhan told Chinese media there were plenty of signs that the coronavirus could be transmitted between people as early as late December. Patients who had never been to the suspected source of the virus, the Huanan Seafood Market, were infected. Medical workers started falling ill."Also "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection...27 (66%) of 41 patients had been exposed to Huanan seafood market", so presumably those other 14 just magicked up the infection. In that same Lancet paper with reference to the first person to die on January 9th  "The first fatal case, who had continuous exposure to the market, was admitted to hospital because of a 7-day history of fever, cough, and dyspnoea. 5 days after illness onset, his wife, a 53-year-old woman who had no known history of exposure to the market, also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalised in the isolation ward." Taiwan also claims to have warned early about human-to-human transmission. I have seen reports of Wuhan University had evidence of h-2-h transmission but I can't find it if it is indeed in English. Yet on the 14th January it was repeating the Chinese line about there being no evidence of human-to-human transmission. This at the same time, that on the ground China was preparing for an epidemic. China was preparing for an epidemic despite there being no human-to-human transmission. What exactly were WHO doing, did they choose to parrot the line told to them by Chinese authorities or did they question that robustly? I believe if they had and they were independent, they wouldn't have put that tweet out.

 

These words come from a WHO rep. "Analysts said local officials were more fearful of being blamed for disasters under President Xi Jinping and there was growing evidence of a crackdown on would-be whistleblowers. In January, Zhou Xianwang, the mayor of Wuhan, admitted that information about the coronavirus was not disclosed in a “timely manner” in the early stages of the outbreak." and from the same article "I think [China] were very quick to let WHO know . . . about it being a novel disease, they were very quick in being able to isolate the virus and share the genome sequence but I think on some of the more government public health type issues, they have been rather recalcitrant.” So I return to my point, what is the point of the WHO if it relies on information directly supplied to it from a regime not known for telling the truth in the past that probably thought if it could cover it up and get away with it, that was preferable to being open and honest. What is the point of it if it doesn't operate with some independence from the country where the issue has arisen?

 

"Ohlberg said the statements of the WHO have clearly been heavily influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. She says she was surprised that, from the start, many experts uncritically repeated information from Beijing and “preached confidence in the WHO and the Chinese government.” Similarly, I refer you back to the NS article referencing the comments of Japan's deputy PM (maybe driven by politics idk). "The WHO’s Bruce Aylward, the Canadian epidemiologist who led the team, described the process as “fantastic”. But he told the FT there was “huge back and forth” with Chinese officials about what went into the report." Now again maybe they were just honest back and forths and what's included in that article maybe the extent to it but forgive me for being somewhat skeptical about that and wondering, again, what is the point of the WHO if China can just spin the info it presents?

 

 

Also just seen on the news that we've got a shortage of straw now, apparently a man that lives in Leicester South has been hoarding it to build a giant strawman. Can you point me to where I said the UK government shouldn't be criticised because they relied on false info from China? Please, because I can't see anywhere that I did and that's probably because I don't really think that's an excuse for the UK government although it clearly wasn't helpful. But also it's the WHO's job to ascertain the facts and present them to the rest of the world, that is it's primary job at the start of the pandemic whereas the same can't be said of the UK government, in fact the UK's job is to work with the information the WHO gives to it, so obviously they'd be held to a different standard on that front. It's the WHO's job to obtain the information and the UK's job to act on that information. So that's a good start as to why your closing comments are dumb, I'm not treating them equally because they are not equal.  

 

Next up, yes I am minded to not be critical during the event if they are working with the best intentions, but it's quite clear I don't believe that to have been the case for the WHO, as of course some might for the UK government.

 

I don't really understand the relevance to your point of my worry that people will blame governments based on simplistic measures? The point being that just comparing number of deaths isn't reflective of government performance because that's like Spurs fans thinking possession wins football matches. You seem to have not quite grasped the thrust of my point that institutions within a country matter and that what I want at the end of this is for people to question institutional structures, to think about the optimal institutional structures to respond to these sorts of events and done as a proper comparative study. Institutions (and institutions can be defined however broadly or narrowly people want) are a big causal factor in how governments are able to respond short-term and thus have a large determinable effect on measured deaths at the end, ie PHE v RKI. So now I have literally questioned the point of the WHO as an organisation (but have not solely blamed them) because it is seemingly not able to operate effective to the benefit of the globe when a novel virus emerges from China which is a constraint on the abilities of all governments. Such organisations need rethinking, but the imagination for that isn't forthcoming because, it is my opinion that, people are too infatuated by the theoretical ideals and intents of international cooperation to bother questioning whether it's actually effective in the mould it currently exists. Do I agree with Trump's timing? No. Maybe I should have heeded my own advice on speaking out about criticism of the WHO until later on but other than that tell me where my inconsistency is?

 

The point on the most vociferous voices being motivated by politics was not me saying that they are but me saying that it's hard to believe any defence otherwise when all they do is criticise the man and the party.  I've also never exempted myself from being political, in fact in that same post I said denying being political (because that manifests itself in many ways) is absurd as that was the point I was addressing and said that criticism being politically driven doesn't invalidate it. You seem to think I was defending the UK government when I was defending all governments but used the UK as its the example I know best, it was not particularly the UK government but all governments. I actually don't know what politics I've been motivated by but even if it is politically motivated, your gotcha attempt falls flat.

...so the WHO aren't just incompetent as an institution, they're now actively malicious? Interesting. Does this thought extend to other international organisations, too?

 

And that isn't a strawman - the bolded sentence explicitly infers the above.

 

For what it's worth, I'm inclined to think that such international organisations are, given leeway, much more inclined to be less malicious than merely national-based ones because they have a mandate to take into concern the needs of everyone, as opposed to prioritising the needs of their own citizens above all others with the result that other people may suffer and die due to the decisions they make in that interest. Of course, theory and practice are two entirely different things and goodness knows such international interests have been hamstrung by more powerful nations who worry about not being the biggest dog in the pound since time immemorial.

 

I'll repeat what I said earlier - if the WHO is either as incompetent or malicious as being stated here then bin it off and start again immediately rather than faffing around, but that won't happen nor even be seriously suggested because that isn't what this is about - regardless of the truth regarding accountability China, the US and other powerful interests are all looking for a scapegoat (or patsy) and using all of this as an excuse to limit international cooperation and the reach of international organisations for their own political ends. They don't want any challenges to their own national authority, and they don't give two shites about actually cooperating internationally, even on matters like this one where it's so critically necessary.

 

It's as @yorkie1999 said earlier. "Trump might come across as a dickhead to the rest of us but he's doing what he always said he would do, put America first, bit by bit given the chance." That's exactly right, and it's the same with the Chinese too. However, I find absolutely zero merit in even implying that's a good thing because "he says it how it is" because the results of "putting X country first" long term can and likely will be nothing but dire.

Edited 16 April 2020 by leicsmac

[Nod.E]

1 hour ago, twoleftfeet said:

Figures suggest the death date in the regions has risen by about a third whilst London as you would expect has more than doubled.

This article by the BBC raises some interesting points 

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

And this is worrying in the times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-fear-of-reinfection-grows-after-124-south-koreans-test-positive-for-second-time-xrj6pp5z6

 

That BBC article is far and away the most sensible and well rounded piece I have read so far.

 

Please, please, please, I urge everybody to read it.

 

It's so easy to hear about deaths and hit the panic button.

 

See the bigger picture. Understand the overlapping. Take emotion out of the equation and understand that if this lockdown goes on for much longer, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot.

 

The long and short of this is that if you get Coronavirus then statistically you become as likely to die during the month that you have it than you are to die within the entirety of the year. So if you weren't fearing for your life or thinking you're close to kicking the bucket already, you shouldn't be thinking Coronavirus will spell the end either.

 

Now, of course, the issue we do have is that we have this peak and the health service is overwhelmed. That's why we're in lockdown now.

 

I know it has taken a lockdown to ensure this is the case so far, but we're at the same levels of excess deaths as the great flu outbreak of 2015. Haven't heard of it? No, me neither. (See graph) Yes I'm sure that number will increase in the coming weeks but the point stands that this is not the apocalypse. Not even close. While I sympathise with health care professionals, because this will be a very stressful time for them - their workloads have increased significantly and there is 0 social outlet - the car crash of their day to day lives right now is not a reflection of the incremental number of deaths. Pay them more, give the NHS more resources, but don't let their emotional anecdotes cloud judgement. It must be horrible to be on the front line and I could not do it myself. I take my hat off to them for doing their best to save every life that they can, but it's their job to save lives, not to influence key decisions and lessen the overal impact of coronavirus (psychologically, economically, and ironically second handedly in terms of related deaths, too.)

 

This peak will pass. Life will resume, and soon. It will take a while for things like gigs, football matches and international travel, but like it or not things will begin to return to normal, and it is for the best.

 

Best of all I can stop reading the shiite on this thread. Wonderful.

 

Edited 16 April 2020 by Nod.E

[WigstonWanderer]

Got to say that I’m quite happy with the way the Australian government is handling this, after a rather complacent start. The path that they are plotting out of the crisis is everything I had hoped for, based on extensive testing, tracking and isolating.

 

Whether this will be possible in the UK remains to be seen. There seems to be a greater sense of impatience, and a simplistic assumption that releasing restrictions will be good for the economy.

 

I haven’t been Scott Morrison’s biggest fan, mostly due to his fossil fuel fetish, but he does seem to have stepped up in the last month and is now saying, IMO, the right things.