Thankfully mine are just tipping in their eighties, both are living with ailments but we are determined to let them stay in their own home. We now have a network of carers, cleaners, family etc who drop by on them. Long may that last.

👍

The current estimate of deaths is 45,000 in the UK. The question I’ve heard asked is how many of those 45,000 were ventilated? If they weren’t, why not? We’re told that that is the treatment for COVID 19. The question really is, are we not running out of ventilators because a decision has been taken not to use them on a certain demographic. Also, if a good result would be less than 20,000 dead, how do we classify the current position?

Also, the government has always said its following the science. Yet our science has always been at odds with everyone else’s science. Now that we know who’s on SAGE, doors that explain it?

With my little medical knowledge, ventilation requires the patient to be sedated, this adds to the medical risk. Putting patients onto ventilation is a medical decision and will remain so. This virus is very new and behaving in ways not previously seen. Medical science is not the same as mechanical engineering; one process does not fit all.

20,000 fatalities would have been a good, indeed remarkable outcome, what we are seeing is bad. Casualty figures are notoriously difficult to predict as history shows us. The WW2 calculated attrition rate for D.Day was exceeded massively, but that didn't mean it was wrong in anyway - just a method of checking progress.

Frankly 'our' science, is not at odds with anyone else's. Science is not an exact art - we and 'they' simply don't know the answer, let alone the paths to follow when trying to determine the way forward. I must admit, from my view point, we are actually closely following the distilled learning and knowledge of our world leading medical experts for once and taking above politics decisions as a result.

I'm not surprised that Cummings is attending various high level committees, he is one of the high level advisors, so it would be exceptionally stupid to leave him out of the emerging cascade of grounded information.

These questions certainly do reveal a big issue confronting us, for which we also don't have a cure. That is, the demonstrable lack of intelligence in our mainstream reporters and sadly of many politicians. Thinking doesn't seem to play a part in their skill sets; which even when we are through this pandemic, bodes ill for the future.

The two "prolific" parties,(press and politicians), seem to delight in slogging it out like some gladiatorial spectacle for the masses in the forlorn hope that those putting a scientific mind to the problem will present the solution tomorrow morning so everyone can return to normality while slapping each other on the back in smug satisfaction.
I have long been critical of the singular lack of planning for such an event only to learn yesterday evening, (Panorama), that this question was covered 4 years ago under something called "Operation Sickness" and it seems sweet FA was done about it. I am not entirely sure which annoys me the most; not planning for it or planing and ignoring the findings? Little doubt, unless a 5 legged bunny is pulled out of Boris's hat, his tenure behind the door with the wonky number is going to be pretty short but what the heck will replace him.

Exactly so, these are the real questions. Much of the failure to maintain safety nets and properly manage contingency can, as you say, be properly laid at the door of government. Of all pursusisons, Labour, in the Blair and Brown year were as bad, and the yellow brigade can be judged by their deeds in local government. Sadly, the furnace of populism was stoked to white heat by the media circus where the reporters made themselves the news. Your conclusion is spot on; there isn't anyone remotely able to replace Boris Johnson, so the master stroke of doing what our experts are telling him, might just buy us and ironically him, more time. However, how to bring the change in governance? Unless we get those that believe 'their solution' is the only way forward and it's right to keep fighting lost wars, we are going nowhere and neither is Boris!

Strikes me we could quickly ask some of the U.K. textile firms to start producing mass quantities here on the gaurentee that when the dust settles, we won't tender outside UK for strategic / mission critical stuff. Just like nation producing our passport covers does!

As I understand it UK companies are offering PPE but getting no response from the government so sending it abroad instead.

It’s reminiscent of the government saying they are working with the supermarkets on food supply yet the supermarkets saying they’d not heard from the government and the government reporting a lack of chemicals for testing and the chemical producers saying we’ve got loads!

Are you surprised?

It is going to take a long time to blow out the sludge in the Civil Service. Presently its peopled by those who 'know best' and 'look after our interests' and under the previous regimes answered to the EU. Delivery of government is the province of the Civil Service - so firms offering help will rightly be dealt with by public servants. Sure, right now we simply cannot afford this bad behaviour, but even Cabinet Ministers are hard pressed to use traditional last chance approaches to put things right, as the Home Secretary has discovered in her acknowledged dysfunctional department. You simply can't be nice about applying size 11s.

Newres would have it sorted in a jiffy. He's a demigod.

Click to view attachment
This has been a cluster****.

No Italy, Belgium, Spain your graph? I wonder why?

No Germany either. But we should have seen Italy and reacted properly. No herd immunity, no Cheltenham and lockdown 2 weeks earlier with test, track and trace. Eventually this will all come out. 40,000 plus dead so far.

My point is if you are going to put graphs up at least show all countries rather than ones that make the UK look specifically bad. You don't do yourself any favours...

Put up one that makes the UK specifically look good then.

Just use a data set that is complete. You can use this to drill into real data rather than cherry picked.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-de...BEL+ITA+ESP+GBR

Dont throw out #fbpe loon inspired graphs..

So, so, easy isn't it, all you need is a degree in hindsight.

No one without this priceless asset knew how this very new and very peculiar virus presented. 'Herd' immunity is simply a vogue term to explain what most medical people believed at the time, that just like other similar (similar) viruses, a community would be I e immune. We now know that wasn't the case.

Locking down against the 'media evidence' current at the time certainly didn't have mass public support and without a Military style enforcement, woukdn't have happened.

The WHO preached test, test, test. your news bending skills have modified that. However, as we now know, that was disenjenous anyway, because the test resource was short world wide and worse, even in Germany, unreliable.

I do agree with your implication that the North Korean model seems the most effective.

"North Korean Model"... 🤣🤣👍👍

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co....ng-21488373.amp

I suppose if you shoot everyone who has it then it stops the spread and saves the North Korean NHS....

Hindsight Wasn’t needed.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-...ie-f4d3d9cd99ca

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-c...-herd-immunity/

Read what Richard Horton was saying.

Even Farage was screaming about those returning from skiing with no checks or quarantine.

The scale of death was knowable and preventable. We were on the same trajectory as Italy and the government failed to act.

I’m listening to Farage as I type. He is highly critical of the government over this. I agree with much of what he has to say on it. We have the worst death rate in Europe yet you folks think we’ve done well. What would doing badly entail?

The far left and the far right normally are bed pals so that doesn't surprise me that you have started agreeing with Farage.

I’m centre left. Blair territory. But I was against the Iraq War. Lies are pretty easy to spot.

To return to the topic. With the worst mortality rate in Europe, do you think we’re doing well?

Never said we were. On a similar level to Belgium, France, Italy and Spain..The only notable exception with a Country with a similar popularity is Germany. We can learn from them to be more efficient but efficiency has always been in the German DNA...whatever they turn there hand too...so carry on with your Boris bashing...the real reason is Brexit and the election that some people cant get over...

Wrong. I wanted them to get it right. Do you think I want a **** government? Brexit is done. (Although we should seek an extension with Coronavirus). I wanted this government to get it right. I don’t want tens of thousands of deaths or a locked down economy a day longer than needed. I run a business. I can’t just work from home like you probably are. Grow up!

But of course! Classic if you want to make a name for yourself, slag off everyone else. Funny none of these are mainstream.

The editor of The Lancet not mainstream? Who do you want? Jim Fecking Davidson?

No, he's not advising the government and he's selling a paper so he is, in authority terms, in the same category as the editor of the FT is when it comes to finance.

The issue is simply when you are running government, who do you believe? How do you balance that advice? Some very difficult and hard decisions.

Do you honestly believe such independent advice wasn't picked up and considered at the time and tested against what else was being said? Do you honestly imagine, even for one moment Government Ministers are actually pleased about the number of deaths? Don't you think, given the state of our economy, they are just as anxious as you are to get us back to something like normal as rapidly as possible?

Of course, mistakes have been made, presumably you make them too, but this government's response has not been unreasonable, irrational or bad. The outcome of the pandemic has been dire, but the health service is coping.

Rather than wasting energy on past history, what rational and grounded solution deliverable now can you offer that would quickly solve this crisis?

All we can do is what the government seem to be planning now. Continue the lockdown to manageable levels then test, track and trace. But they’ve been dragged here. Kicking and screaming.

But ask yourself. Why all the secrecy surrounding the modelling they were using and why not publish the science they were guided by?

They will. Just not now. Most people don't blame the government as shown by the polls. In a few months you will be moaning about your civil liberties. You never mention the source of this plague...I expect you blame the USA...🙄

Published back in march,
"The sense that people will “fatigue” of self-isolation measures is another one of these behavioural insights. It may be hard for some members of the public to swallow, but the government is being guided by evidence that suggests that people wouldn’t stick to self-isolation for more than a few weeks. If the peak of the virus in the UK is not due to happen for weeks, or, at the upper end of the estimate, for even three months, the government’s decision not to lockdown the country is wise and important: such a move would carry the risk that people would start to ignore the measures, just when they will be needed the most."

Guided by medical and scientific opinions.

The source isn’t really relevant to how we have managed it. But I don’t “blame” China, any more than I blame America for the Spanish Flu.

I’m not happy about the restrictions on my civil liberties now. Are you?

I'll bet you're a big BuzzFeed reader?

And Femi, Carole Cadwallder and the usuals. Everything is a conspiracy. No one could actually be trying there best in horrendous circumstances...🙄

Spanish Flu wasn't Spanish - the first case was recorded in the USA. It was called 'Spanish' because that country that reported it the most - the other countries that were hit (and much worse in fact) had their media restricted by wartime censorship, Spain remaining neutral throughout the war.
Current theory is that flu was shipped from the US to Europe by American troops - maybe that's what prompted the Chinese to accuse US military competing in the Military World Games in Wuhan of spreading Covid-19.

I expect he's got a subscription. Journalism with the morals of an alley cat.

In other news the Germans look like they have jumped the gun... waits for Newres to call for Merkel to be sacked...

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-germ...-eased-11980194

Nope.

I do. Their filthy, disgusting, cruel, inhuman "wet" markets were the source of this scourge and previous ones.

And yet they don't do anything to stop it. Cultural innit.

Yeah but because of our "history"...opium dens, Hong Kong etc we deserve it (in the warped liberal mind anyway...)..

Before your blood pressure returns to something like normal, how about this for a world that hasn't learnt a bloody thing.

https://www.plantbasednews.org/culture/bull...avirus-lockdown

One would have hoped that the whole thing would make us stand back for a moment and take stock of our position, but no we still believe the planet is there for our usage.

Fair makes my piss boil! 🤬

**** Tories.. without them there would be no bullfighting.

I see Johnson had a son today...I understand its called Damian and Gove and Hancock cut a chickens head off over it, whilst chanting satanism rituals...

If only we had known Not sure if this is sprog number 5 or 6? Anyhow he is obviously ensuring a hefty supply of tory voters over the coming years.
Have you noticed the deafening silence from the pro euro brigade when animal welfare is mentioned? Shame on us right wing bunny loving retards.

Guess you feel the same about fox hunting?

Fox hunting is banned.
Bullfighting is legal and celebrated in Spain and thousands flock to this sick spectacle.
Spot the difference?

Least the fox had a fighting chance to avoid the hounds, but to rear an animal for the purpose of torturing it to death with no chance of it leaving the arena alive is sickening. And their bloody god, or at least it's earthly representatives, condones it.

Yes, yes I do. Glad it's banned. If people feel the need to go hunting there are lots of poor people around. ��

Wonder how many of the pro hunting club see the coronavirus as a kindred spirit? Different matter all together when something kills you. Hypocritical b******s

The Tories at the last election before one had unbanning it high on their list of things to do as I recall. But as you probably know, the ban is openly flouted. But are you ok with fox hunting though? I think bull fighting should be banned by the way. It’s abhorrent.