Corona Virus

[WigstonWanderer]

32 minutes ago, SemperEadem said:

I mean I think these findings are pretty important to discuss.

Might be better to discuss in the News thread.

[Collymore]

Was pleased to see us dishing out key equipment to those in need around the world at the start of the outbreak, the government has actually gone up in my estimation. 

 

The Times paints that into the article to stir up more hatred though...

Edited 19 April 2020 by Collymore

[CosbehFox]

Just now, Collymore said:

Was pleased to see us dishing out the PPE equipment to those in need around the world at the start of the outbreak, the government has actually gone up in my estimation. 

 

The Times paints that into the article to stir up more hatred though...

The background of the government buying £16 millions worth of duff testing kits from the Chinese can do that 

[fuchsntf]

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823b17327b2bf1d4

 

If your interested this is the daily updates (grahically) in Germany.

To help with basics:-

 

Falle = Cases,  Todesfalle= deaths, Genesene = recovered, Vortag= Previous Day   

Edited 19 April 2020 by fuchsntf

[WigstonWanderer]

TBF I think too much is being made of the shipment of PPE to China. It sounds like a pretty small amount and presumably was a genuine humanitarian gesture. It does however speak to the government not quite understanding the situation, both as to the risk posed by the virus, and the precarious position of UK PPE supplies.

[StanSP]

59 minutes ago, MattP said:

No point saying anything else, the report is pretty terrible and some serious questions are going to have to be answered by those in charge. I'm not particularly bothered about not attending meetings providing people are fully briefed but the health secretary in particular seems to have been totally off the ball.

 

Least it gives the anti-Boris mob some decent ammo though so they don't have create faux outrage, spread edited videos or just make shit up for at least a couple of weeks.

 

35 minutes ago, MattP said:

To be fair this does need to be spoken about, its clearly a respectable source with some pretty damning information about the response of the government.

 

Some of the bullshit we've seen over the last couple of weeks has just been nonsense from the professional FBFE twitter types though isn't.

But the above is alright

 

This isn't an anti-Boris thing. While the article carries a bit of focus on him missing COBRA meetings, the bigger point of the article is the failing of the government. I don't think any government would have handled this perfectly. If a Labour gov was in charge, there'd be criticism and some of it more fair than others. Just because it's your preferred choice of government in charge does not mean they can escape and criticism (speaking generally, not just to you). 

 

Going back to the point I think @Dahnsouff made several pages ago which I agreed with - perhaps now isn't the best time to reflect or critique. Not in the middle of the crisis anyway. The fact the Sunday Times of all papers have chosen to publish this should speak volumes to people on all sides. 

[Guest MattP]

28 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

Marr asked Gove about a couple of specific allegations from the article this morning. Namely, Johnson not attending 5 successive Cobra meetings and the UK sending PPE to China.

 

On the face of it, Gove's replies made decent points:

- The PM doesn't normally attend such Cobra meetings in a specific field (health here); they're normally led by the relevant minister

- The PPE was sent to China when Covid-19 was rife there but hadn't yet spread here - and since then China has sent us a lot more PPE than we ever sent them (interesting).

 

But the article highlights wider issues that were already out there:

- From January, wasn't there a growing volume of information about the potential gravity of this crisis? If so, even if the PM didn't normally attend health Cobras, shouldn't he have done so? Was it an example of the govt generally not taking the issue seriously enough quickly enough?

- Again, it's quite reasonable for PPE to be channeled to where it's most needed internationally at a given time - sensible cooperation & use of resources internationally. But that doesn't answer the wider question raised in the article as to why not only there was a shortage initially but, more importantly, it has taken so long to procure PPE since then. Again, that speaks to a failure to recognise the gravity of the crisis early enough.

 

It's interesting that the article identifies a divergence in how the unfolding crisis was viewed in Asia and in the West. Namely, that in Asia they saw this as a more serious version of SARS, whereas in the West (not only in the UK) it was assumed to be similar to a flu pandemic, so less dangerous. Indeed, the UK's pandemic planning, such as it was, based itself on a flu pandemic. The responses and comparative impact in Asia and Europe/UK/USA do give that claim credibility....

 

Hope you have a good birthday with your son. Strange, potentially disturbing times for kids. Particularly younger kids, I suspect. I'm comparatively lucky in mine being a teenager who spent a lot of time alone in her room anyway - must be very hard for anyone with younger kids used to playing out or socialising a lot, and less able to understand what's happening and why it's dragging on for so long. 

Have you noticed how whenever a massive cock up or disaster is publicised Gove is always the one sent out to face the press? Whether people like him or not he's clearly the trusted body to throw out in times of trouble, imagine chucking out Patel to this

 

I think it's quite clear now this wasnt taken seriously enough early on, that seems to be beyond doubt. Getting to the bottom of who, why and how it happened needs to be addressed though with full transparency. 

 

The middle March stuff really baffles me, I had tickets for day 3 at Cheltenham and we just binned it off and watched it in the pub instead (which I realise isn't great either) as I thought given my condition it was too much of a risk to take - in finding it really difficult to reconcile me doing that and the government still allowing gatherings of 50000 people.

[StanSP]

3 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

TBF I think too much is being made of the shipment of PPE to China. It sounds like a pretty small amount and presumably was a genuine humanitarian gesture. It does however speak to the government not quite understanding the situation, both as to the risk posed by the virus, and the precarious position of UK PPE supplies.

Gove said this morning the original shipment of 237k before it struck here was to help out Wuhan at the time as they were struck hard as well known. He also said China have given back far more than what we gave out and that the 237k we gave out was not from a pandemic budget or fund. I don't know how much China has given us tbh. 

[yorkie1999]

30 minutes ago, reynard said:

Well, if true, the article is extremely damaging to the government. I notice that Gove's response does not suggest that it is that far from the truth,.

 

The first, primary and most important thing a government must do is protect the lives of the people. Any goverrnment that fails to do that risks losing the moral mandate to govern.

The failings of our government are immaterial because when all’s said and done, they’ll still be in control and no amount of press articles or complaints will do anything about it. They’re incompetent now and they’ll be incompetent when this is all over. That’s the system.

[Guest MattP]

3 minutes ago, StanSP said:

But the above is alright

 

This isn't an anti-Boris thing. While the article carries a bit of focus on him missing COBRA meetings, the bigger point of the article is the failing of the government. I don't think any government would have handled this perfectly. If a Labour gov was in charge, there'd be criticism and some of it more fair than others. Just because it's your preferred choice of government in charge does not mean they can escape and criticism (speaking generally, not just to you). 

 

Going back to the point I think @Dahnsouff made several pages ago which I agreed with - perhaps now isn't the best time to reflect or critique. Not in the middle of the crisis anyway. The fact the Sunday Times of all papers have chosen to publish this should speak volumes to people on all sides. 

This isn't no. This needs to be spoken about.

 

But continuous posting of edited videos, misdefinitions of herd immunity and left wing Twitter accounts wasn't.

 

This is serious though and should be treated as such.

[RowlattsFox]

Investigations and inquests needs to happen but it needs to be done later. Focus now needs to be on here and now and what we are doing moving forward. All interviews and press briefings are now going to be them straight-batting questions about this story rather than about the current situation. 

 

Admittedly, i don't know very much about politics but I've always wondered why ministers in certain fields aren't experts in the field, particularly health. 

[WigstonWanderer]

10 minutes ago, MattP said:

This isn't no. This needs to be spoken about.

 

But continuous posting of edited videos, misdefinitions of herd immunity and left wing Twitter accounts wasn't.

 

This is serious though and should be treated as such.

Have you got any examples? And might I ask what your definition of herd immunity is?

Edited 19 April 2020 by WigstonWanderer

[StriderHiryu]

Some of the key points of the article currently being discussed:

-------------

It was a big day for Johnson and there was a triumphal mood in Downing Street because the withdrawal treaty from the European Union was being signed in the late afternoon. It could have been the defining moment of his premiership — but that was before the world changed. That afternoon his spokesman played down the looming threat from the east and reassured the nation that we were “well prepared for any new diseases”.

The confident, almost nonchalant, attitude displayed that day in January would continue for more than a month. Johnson went on to miss four further Cobra meetings on the virus. As Britain was hit by unprecedented flooding, he completed the EU withdrawal, reshuffled his cabinet and then went away to the grace-and-favour country retreat at Chevening where he spent most of the two weeks over half-term with his pregnant fiancée, Carrie Symonds.

It would not be until March 2 — another five weeks — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus. But by then it was almost certainly too late. The virus had sneaked into our airports, our trains, our workplaces and our homes. Britain was on course for one of the worst infections of the most deadly virus to have hit the world in more than a century.

Last week, a senior adviser to Downing Street broke ranks and blamed the weeks of complacency on a failure of leadership in cabinet. In particular, the prime minister was singled out.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there,” the adviser said. “And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”

 

An investigation has talked to scientists, academics, doctors, emergency planners, public officials and politicians about the root of the crisis and whether the government should have known sooner and acted more swiftly to kick-start the Whitehall machine and put the NHS onto a war footing.

They told us that, contrary to the official line, Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.

An adviser to Downing Street with extensive knowledge of Britain’s emergency preparations — speaking off the record — says their confidence in “the plan” was misplaced. While a possible pandemic had been listed as the No 1 threat to the nation for many years, the source says that in reality it had long since stopped being treated as such.

Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,” the source said, “but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs.”

The last rehearsal for a pandemic was a 2016 exercise codenamed Cygnus which predicted the health service would collapse and highlighted a long list of shortcomings — including, presciently, a lack of PPE and intensive care ventilators. But an equally lengthy list of recommendations to address the deficiencies was never implemented. The source said preparations for a no-deal Brexit “sucked all the blood out of pandemic planning” in the following years.

 

A senior department of health insider described the sense of drift witnessed during those crucial weeks in February: “We missed the boat on testing and PPE . . . I remember being called into some of the meetings about this in February and thinking, ‘Well it’s a good thing this isn’t the big one.’

“I had watched Wuhan but I assumed we must have not been worried because we did nothing. We just watched. A pandemic was always at the top of our national risk register — always — but when it came we just slowly watched. We could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.”

Towards the end of the second week of February, the prime minister was demob happy. After sacking five cabinet ministers and saying everyone “should be confident and calm” about Britain’s response to the virus, Johnson vacated Downing Street after the half-term recess began on February 13.

He headed to the country for a “working” holiday at Chevening with Symonds and would be out of the public eye for 12 days. His aides were thankful for the rest, as they had been working flat out since the summer as the Brexit power struggle had played out.

By Friday, February 28, the virus had taken root in the UK with reported cases rising to 19 and the stock markets were plunging. It was finally time for Johnson to act. He summoned a TV reporter into Downing Street to say he was on top of the coronavirus crisis.

 

 

 

Edited 19 April 2020 by StriderHiryu

[Dr The Singh]

6 minutes ago, StriderHiryu said:

Some of the key points of the article currently being discussed:

-------------

It was a big day for Johnson and there was a triumphal mood in Downing Street because the withdrawal treaty from the European Union was being signed in the late afternoon. It could have been the defining moment of his premiership — but that was before the world changed. That afternoon his spokesman played down the looming threat from the east and reassured the nation that we were “well prepared for any new diseases”.

The confident, almost nonchalant, attitude displayed that day in January would continue for more than a month. Johnson went on to miss four further Cobra meetings on the virus. As Britain was hit by unprecedented flooding, he completed the EU withdrawal, reshuffled his cabinet and then went away to the grace-and-favour country retreat at Chevening where he spent most of the two weeks over half-term with his pregnant fiancée, Carrie Symonds.

It would not be until March 2 — another five weeks — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus. But by then it was almost certainly too late. The virus had sneaked into our airports, our trains, our workplaces and our homes. Britain was on course for one of the worst infections of the most deadly virus to have hit the world in more than a century.

Last week, a senior adviser to Downing Street broke ranks and blamed the weeks of complacency on a failure of leadership in cabinet. In particular, the prime minister was singled out.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there,” the adviser said. “And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”

 

An investigation has talked to scientists, academics, doctors, emergency planners, public officials and politicians about the root of the crisis and whether the government should have known sooner and acted more swiftly to kick-start the Whitehall machine and put the NHS onto a war footing.

They told us that, contrary to the official line, Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.

An adviser to Downing Street with extensive knowledge of Britain’s emergency preparations — speaking off the record — says their confidence in “the plan” was misplaced. While a possible pandemic had been listed as the No 1 threat to the nation for many years, the source says that in reality it had long since stopped being treated as such.

Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,” the source said, “but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs.”

The last rehearsal for a pandemic was a 2016 exercise codenamed Cygnus which predicted the health service would collapse and highlighted a long list of shortcomings — including, presciently, a lack of PPE and intensive care ventilators. But an equally lengthy list of recommendations to address the deficiencies was never implemented. The source said preparations for a no-deal Brexit “sucked all the blood out of pandemic planning” in the following years.

 

A senior department of health insider described the sense of drift witnessed during those crucial weeks in February: “We missed the boat on testing and PPE . . . I remember being called into some of the meetings about this in February and thinking, ‘Well it’s a good thing this isn’t the big one.’

“I had watched Wuhan but I assumed we must have not been worried because we did nothing. We just watched. A pandemic was always at the top of our national risk register — always — but when it came we just slowly watched. We could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.”

Towards the end of the second week of February, the prime minister was demob happy. After sacking five cabinet ministers and saying everyone “should be confident and calm” about Britain’s response to the virus, Johnson vacated Downing Street after the half-term recess began on February 13.

He headed to the country for a “working” holiday at Chevening with Symonds and would be out of the public eye for 12 days. His aides were thankful for the rest, as they had been working flat out since the summer as the Brexit power struggle had played out.

By Friday, February 28, the virus had taken root in the UK with reported cases rising to 19 and the stock markets were plunging. It was finally time for Johnson to act. He summoned a TV reporter into Downing Street to say he was on top of the coronavirus crisis.

 

 

 

Was this written by the same person that writes the script of EastEnders or Mrs Brown's boys?

[Guest MattP]

28 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Have you got any examples? And might I ask what your definition of herd immunity is?

Well what it certainly isn't is a video cut off that was posted on here three of four times.

 

https://fullfact.org/health/boris-johnson-coronavirus-this-morning/

[Kopfkino]

40 minutes ago, RowlattsFox said:

Investigations and inquests needs to happen but it needs to be done later. Focus now needs to be on here and now and what we are doing moving forward. All interviews and press briefings are now going to be them straight-batting questions about this story rather than about the current situation. 

 

Admittedly, i don't know very much about politics but I've always wondered why ministers in certain fields aren't experts in the field, particularly health. 

 

Because the skills needed to be a minister extend much further than having knowledge. It seems attractive but is there much to be gained when they have a team of advisors with relevant expertise, especially when you can't guarantee the right person with the right knowledge at the right time (a former GP isn't necessarily any more qualified to organise infectious disease testing). I think a really important thing for ministers to do is to question and challenge the information they are fed which seems to be, along with early inaction, the key failing in this case but is something you don't need specific subject knowledge to be capable of. 

 

Whether we end up with good politicians, and why we might not, is a separate issue but I don't think this crisis has much helped the argument for technocratic/epistocratic solutions. 

[st albans fox]

56 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

TBF I think too much is being made of the shipment of PPE to China. It sounds like a pretty small amount and presumably was a genuine humanitarian gesture. It does however speak to the government not quite understanding the situation, both as to the risk posed by the virus, and the precarious position of UK PPE supplies.

it’s of no consequence  - it was a humanitarian gesture at their time of greatest need. Their manufacturing base was locked down and they were unable to make the amount of kit they needed themselves. I suspect a lot of countries did the same 

 

52 minutes ago, StanSP said:

Gove said this morning the original shipment of 237k before it struck here was to help out Wuhan at the time as they were struck hard as well known. He also said China have given back far more than what we gave out and that the 237k we gave out was not from a pandemic budget or fund. I don't know how much China has given us tbh. 

China’s PPE base is huge but it cannot keep up with global demand as it currently sits.

 

but I’ve seen a couple of illustrations recently where we have had availability dates pushed out because the Chinese govt have taken production space  - so if our govt makes a direct appeal to the Chinese govt for production then I suspect they deal with it. But again, there is a finite amount of production and with all countries in the same boat there will be people at the back of the queue.

 

inflation because of the lack of supply is now rife. Airfreight costs are as much as a third of the product cost and on items such as face shields, the airfreight is almost the cost of the item!  I have a live enquiry for nitrile gloves o/s and I can currently buy cheaper off amazon and eBay here than I can bring in large volumes from China !   that shows the rise in price and this will be reflected here over the next couple months.  Non sterile disposable masks are currently three weeks production (the Chinese have a holiday first month may which won’t help matters) and as I posted more than a week ago, gowns are August delivery!   Where we could be cute is getting fabric sent from China and manufacturing gowns/scrubs over here or e Europe/n Africa where garment manufacturing is at a standstill.  But no one in govt moved quickly a month ago to inform anyone what qualities were needed to make these items. There are huge volumes of garment production sitting idle all over the world and mills in China and turkey were able to produce the fabrics but no one in authority has managed to put two and two together ...... so I’m left to bring in masks, shields and gloves to try and earn some money to cover my fixed costs when I could be doing what the country needs most by bringing in medical gown fabrics (but I have no experience in these qualities so no idea what to buy and now that the whole world is buying them from China, they are full on fabric production anyway). 
 

this is sort of my point from earlier - govt don’t seem to be able to think outside the box and laterally to solve upcoming problems. If they’ve put their trust in a Turkish supplier of clothing then they’re in for a shock .....if they were promised today then I expect they will turn up early may !!! 

[Alf Bentley]

13 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Whether we end up with good politicians, and why we might not, is a separate issue but I don't think this crisis has much helped the argument for technocratic/epistocratic solutions. 

 

To save anyone else having to look it up....... 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistocracy

 

epistocracy

1. Rule by citizens with political knowledge, or a proposed political system which concentrates political power in citizens according to their knowledge of public affairs, whether by distributing votes to citizens by their knowledge of political matters or some other means, as contrasted with democracy, in which the right to vote and political power are theoretically equally shared among all citizens. 
2. A government run by citizens with political knowledge.

[st albans fox]

Just read that we don’t have a vaccine for any other corona virus ........presumably we weren’t under pressure to develop one in the past (for the previous 18 as per kellyanne Conway !)

[Dahnsouff]

23 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

To save anyone else having to look it up....... 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistocracy

 

epistocracy

1. Rule by citizens with political knowledge, or a proposed political system which concentrates political power in citizens according to their knowledge of public affairs, whether by distributing votes to citizens by their knowledge of political matters or some other means, as contrasted with democracy, in which the right to vote and political power are theoretically equally shared among all citizens. 
2. A government run by citizens with political knowledge.

And this was after @Kopfkino said

 

Quote

Whether we end up with good politicians, and why we might not, is a separate issue but I don't think this crisis has much helped the argument for technocratic/epistocratic solutions

I think this has been a fantastic lesson and illustrates that the populace at large could do with being a whole lot more politically savvy 

[The Blur]

Considering the amount of people posting that they miss Nandos on social media,  I am actually dreading likes of Nandos opening,   I can imagine the queues flouting social distancing rules upon the opening day.

 

I wonder whether if the major chain restaurants would be looking at introducing an online booking system given the likehood of reduced tables due to social distancing measures and it would be in everyone's best interests to reduce queues as well.   Is it feasible to commission website developers and to have the new booking systems embedded in their websites/interface etc in the space of few weeks should there be ease of lockdown restrictions for restaurants in May as an example?

[leicsmac]

27 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

To save anyone else having to look it up....... 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistocracy

 

epistocracy

1. Rule by citizens with political knowledge, or a proposed political system which concentrates political power in citizens according to their knowledge of public affairs, whether by distributing votes to citizens by their knowledge of political matters or some other means, as contrasted with democracy, in which the right to vote and political power are theoretically equally shared among all citizens. 
2. A government run by citizens with political knowledge.

 

1 minute ago, Dahnsouff said:

And this was after @Kopfkino said

 

I think this has been a fantastic lesson and illustrates that the populace at large could do with being a whole lot more politically savvy 

Further to this, and risking philosophical territory here, what a person thinks an ideal government is often depends on what they want humanity to achieve now and in the future and the value they place on each.

[Dahnsouff]

1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

 

Further to this, and risking philosophical territory here, what a person thinks an ideal government is often depends on what they want humanity to achieve now and in the future and the value they place on each.

Sorry, blame me, I have unintentionally taken us into banned topic territory (Politics) 

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Sorry, blame me, I have unintentionally taken us into banned topic territory (Politics) 

Well, maybe all of this will get lobotomised...but as other people have said, since the Sunday Times dropped their bombshell this matter has seemed to take on an inextricable link to politics. I'd be happy with just analysing just the numbers and science of it all in this thread, though.

[bovril]

3 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Sadly, when Britain needed a bold leader of the stature of Churchill, the papier-mâché version wasn’t enough.

This is one of the problems with the UK though. We don't need a Churchill figure, we just needed better decision making. I wish this country could just act like a medium sized country for once and take pragmatic decisions that benefit its citizens, rather than seeing ourselves as exceptional in some way, or connecting things to our history, or making everything tribal. 

Starmer, Johnson, May, Blair, makes no difference. I'm beginning to think the problems of the UK are cultural and structural rather than about which PM is in charge.