Fair play to you for standing up and putting forward your creative response. I too believe it is to early to implement, however you must begin to build a range of ideas to be ready to move forward. The ongoing testing and PPE actions would have to continue of course - that is an underlying given for some time to come. Don’t let the negatives of our society stop you being constructive WWR. This is the time to building the layers and possibilities for the future.
Sadly the government will be blamed when the death toll rises because idiots can’t follow the guidelines.
Well Col...I am not sure you could insult me more , but please dont take that as a challenge and try . I agree I did not phrase my post correctly, I was annoyed again...Of course the government is doing something...but it always seems too late, a bit of a knee jerk reaction, and often in response to something in the press/media or what another country has done. There does not seem to be any real forward, joined up planning. Take the testing, it was only when they said we had the capacity for 50,000 tests a day, but only the facilities to do 20,000 did some one think of getting the army to do it in mobile units. I was suggesting getting the army to do it weeks ago (no I am not a genius, I am not claiming it to be my idea , I read it on twitter...!) Therefore, I was pleased to see Boris main take home message from this morning was "this is a critical time". We need to maintain control, because I am sure Raab and the rest were losing control a bit. No strong leadership Yesterdays Priti Patels..."look at the crime rates briefing", was embarrassing....There are lot less shoplifting (shops are closed), Burgalries (we are all at home), Street crime (far less people out, far less drunks out). Sthere is a hike in domestic violence though. What I am worried about....and I saw it this morning (every week, we shop very early on Monday mornings and have for last 6 weeks), is that there was alot more traffic on the roads than any previous weeks. A lot. The local council, had closed a road near us to do pot hole filing.....essential ? A gang of 4 working together In our village, 3 large builders lorries had stopped and were meeting to off load materials for an (essential!!) house refurbishment. The Polish car wash (not racist that is what is called) had reopened, and was hand washing cars. Local Council Office car park was half full (previous weeks it was essentially empty) Arsenal have gone back to their training ground this week Scotland are talking about going their own way out of lockdown. That is without wondering about the Mail's pictures of beaches etc The lockdown is breaking down. One reason is because the daily briefings have been uninformative, uninspiring and with no plan. Coming out of lockdown has been floating around for a week now. Other countries are doing it. Other countries are saying what is going to happen on May 3rd or May 7th. We said nothing....it was as though we were waiting for Boris to come back. That is what I was trying to say. (Something I have edited out of this rant is ....The cult of the Messiah bit, the bit where I said it must be part of the plan for Boris to take us out of lockdown ...like Moses parting the dead sea...I am glad I edited that bit out, because Ellers would not have like that analogy)
Great to have Boris back. Could have been any bloke on the street saying that but it just means so so so much more because Boris says it.
Was any information given during that speech, any proactive actions or was it just to remind us of who the PM was. Glad hes well, although he doesn't look that great.
I don’t think I have access to anything like the information I’d need even to make an educated guess on this, so it would be pure opinion and as such useless. I am beginning to suspect that the people making the decisions are in the same boat. Just from the last couple of days - - both Raab and Whitty really play down the chances of a vaccine for at least twelve months. Meanwhile the people at the Jenner centre who are trialling one are spectacularly confident that we will have a tested vaccine (maybe not in volume) by September. Who to trust? - the WHO say that there is no guaranteed immunity, even short term like for flu, for those who have had COVID 19, while many researchers and companies (including mine) are building treatments based on antibodies and Raab says the government will buy 50 million antibody tests. Who to trust? - Ferguson, the bloke from Imperial with the big mouth who did the modelling which the government used to justify the lockdown, says that there will be 100,000 deaths by the end of the year if we loosen restrictions. Yet Sweden, with much looser restrictions than us, has a lower death rate per million of population. Who to trust? - the article from the FT I posted a link to shows the incredible surge in all cause deaths over the average in many countries, especially in urban areas, most of which is not attributed to COVID19. Why isn’t this being talked about and examined? Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, three countries which coped much better than us with the first wave of the virus and raised restrictions some time ago are now reimposing them as a second wave hits. I’d keep an eye on these guys and the other countries - Germany, New Zealand - which are clearly doing better than the rest of us. Firmly on the fence. I want to loosen restrictions, and think that some of the dafter ones, like the number of times you can exercise, should go with the focus on maintaining social distance, But personally I wouldn’t want the responsibility of making the decision. I really really want the Swedes to get away with their approach. Any loosening of restrictions which is based on the house arrest of the vulnerable and elderly should not be acceptable in a civilised country. I am confused.
There are lots of reasons why the lockdown has been getting more poorly observed. What about the fact that the self employed have had very little help financially and that people simply have to go to work? This isn't aimed at you, but this thread and the politics thread are becoming dominated by insults and people who believe that they are the most intelligent person to have an opinion in the entire population. Everyone else is just thick apparently. The Government have made mistakes. Most have. But they are getting blamed for all the problems, whereas there are a myriad of reasons behind those problems: The Government supply money for procurement, but it's the useless managers in the NHS that have failed to do their jobs properly in ordering this stuff; 84% of care homes are private, yet the government gets the blame for a shortage of PPE etc in these places. Just two examples. All along the government have clearly had to balance how much they completely trash the economy, possibly leading to many more lives being lost compared to how many the virus takes, and stopping the spread of the virus to save lives and stop the NHS being overrun. This, I'm sure, has led to some clashes with scientists and some delay in timings etc. These are impossibly difficult problems and anyone on here saying they know better etc is, frankly comical. All this talk of delays etc costing lives has to be balanced with how many more lives would be lost in the future if we'd locked down sooner, trashing the economy even more. Would you like to be making these calls? Time for a walk.
But doesn't all this demonstrate just how difficult this thing is to deal with? It's unprecedented. Yet, listening to some on here (not you) and you'd think it was the easiest thing in the world to solve.
Actually Beth a poll yesterday I think said 82% of people support the lockdown. It's a few scallywags that are breaking the guidelines which then puts us all at risk at a later date. I and others haven't given up all this for idiots to cause further damage down the line.
Might not be the easiest to resolve Col......but then again the c**** in charge aren’t on minimum wage either. Don’t they get paid handsomely to be able to come up with some kind of plan ?
Just before this Lockdown happened my mate asked if I wanted to go out for a few beers at the local pub (in the countryside). A beautiful old pub with an old man and a dog in the corner and 2-4 locals. real beers and just an all-round fab atmosphere. I said no actually .
