We shouldn't forget that there have been two occasions when football has come to a halt, during the two World wars. This is just as much a world war, but against different weapons and enemy. When the football program restarted it was more popular than ever, due in part to fans being starved of it.
Actually Frenchie the 1914/15 season was played through to an end despite the first world war having started. Strangely enough Everton remained champions through both world wars.
It seems as though everyday here the numbers who are allowed to gather reduces. 1,500, then 1,000, then 500, followed by 250. Now it has been further reduced to 100. Another week at this rate and I will have to split the house in two, one part for Mme and the other part for me.
Is the EPL reading our thread? Liverpool are 'set to be handed the Premier League title' if season is ended now due to coronavirus crisis... with a '22-team division set up, FIVE teams relegated and EFL Cup axed' to make room for more games in 2020-21
Yesterday my wife was talking to a surgeon's secretary at a local private hospital regarding a potential operation for her mother. She was informed the hospital was ready to implement a long standing plan to accept pandemic patients as priority if required. On a national basis this will greatly increase the number of beds if required.
One of the biggest problems now is one of family cohesion. Without football there is always the danger that your nearest and dearest will start to think - and will come out with things like 'Dearest, now that there's no football going on don't you think we need a new kitchen', at which point men's hearts begin to sink. My first forced task as a result of no football has been to replace a fence with a newly planted hawthorn hedge - a nice job which prevents me having to think about the kitchen for the time being.
Thinking about Liverpool - in a way their lead suggests they should be more than cable of winning the title "next season" or are they expecting a much improved Man City etc?
All schools here are shut down with some lessons being done by video link.. The First Minister in N. Ireland has said today that schools will be closing there for a minimum of 16 weeks. If we think that football will be back in April I suggest that is a pipedream. Meanwhile more and more experts are saying that the UK is out of step with other countries because the approach is not scientific. To say that people will get bored with it if it goes on too long cannot be proven, and it is a bad reason to put off action.
Brighton CEO says the league want to just delay in the season and see what happens. Different view point to Karen Brady who wants it scrapped.. https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/s...eague-meeting-coronavirus-suspension/?ref=rss
With regard to schools the same applies in Germany from monday until the end of the easter holidays. All Universities are closed - this has taken a while in Germany because education here is in the hands of the German states and not central government - but all states are doing it anyway. All football has been stopped - even down to the regional level. In Cologne all social life has ground to a halt - everywhere people could gather is closed - theatres, museums, the zoo, all clubs and bars are closed - only those which serve food are allowed to stay open but only if tables are two metres from each other. Some curious changes in the public transport (which is all still running) buses in Germany have two points of entry and the front door, where the driver is, isn't being used - this is in order to protect the driver from close contact with guests. There are also no ticket controllers going around and so public transport is, practically, free at the moment. I wouldn't like to be a ticket controller on the trains at the moment so I can understand their reluctance. Just a further point on the school closures - the major danger is that working parents will try to farm their kids off to their grandparents (thus threatening the most vulnerable) - this has been put forward as a possible problem and various ideas are being put around to prevent this. The idea of a trial period for an unconditional basic income for all citizens is doing the rounds at the moment.
I am not a political person, but your comments do not relate to the press conference that was broadcast on Thursday evening. Time and again it was stated that they were basing their approach on Scientific data taken from computer predictions based on what happened in China and is happening in Italy. It was also stated that the approach was to try and delay the peak of the crisis into the warmer months when respiratory illness is less prevalent, which would help the NHS deal with the coronavirus peak. It also stated we are supposedly four weeks behind Italy at present and based on what is happening in Italy they are calculating how best to deal with its peak which they estimate will be in ten to fourteen weeks. They are telling people to self-isolate if they have any of the symptoms but mass self-isolation at this stage would be counterproductive. It was also stated that keeping children at home would effectively put an increased burden on NHS staff who are needed to work. Apparently it was stated that children appear in this case to get Coronovirus mildly unlike some types of flu which would require school closures, so at present it is considered better to keep schools open. OFH I am sure you could if you wish to watch the news conference, which gave full reasoning to why the Uk is taking this path of action. As mentioned in a previous post it is not helpful to criticise for the sake of criticising. I am hoping against hope that the UK does get it right in dealing as best it can. Other countries who are taking a different route do not at the moment show any better data for their actions ie, they are not mitigating Coronavirus significantly better than the UK, perhaps this will show to be the case going forward but can not be used as an argument for the Uk to blindly follow others at this stage. To close schools for sixteen weeks should be a last resort as the education lost will never be caught up and there is nothing to prove at this point this will significantly improve things going forward and appears a knee jerk reaction with no strong basis. It is better to keep an open mind than an always critical one. The time to criticise is when it is proven mistakes were made and not to question everything an elected government does just because you do not like the political party that they are and who incidentally I did not vote for. It is times like this that you have to put trust in the so-called experts. I hope that going forward my trust was not misplaced, because if the experts get it wrong what hope for the rest of us.
If they are looking at China then they should also be looking at how China dealt with it - or more practically how South Korea has dealt with it. All European countries are talking about a peak in so many weeks time, yet South Korea has it's peak behind it - and we should be looking at how they have achieved this. Children do, indeed, get this virus mildly - but that does not stop them picking it up and handing it on to their grandparents. There is only one key to this - at the moment you have people being infected and maybe going to the doctor 4 days later when symptoms appear - in the meantime they have infected others. You have to find ways of shortening this period, and that can only be through expanding testing to include a much broader spread of the society - blanket testing of the type done in South Korea, where they are now testing 30,000 per day. I have a feeling that Italy is moving onto this model, now that they have the facilities for mass testing (helped by China) which is why they are finding so many cases at the moment - and the more you test the more you will find. It sounds alarming to see that Italy has 3,497 new cases today but it is better to have them known than still on the unknown list - the problem is that we do not know how many 'unknown' cases there are.
Totally fair post Flitton, and it is good to make your point. I did see the conference that you refer to, and took on board what they were saying. Since then however there has been a whole host of other experts who disagree. Today a letter was published from the Lancet, the doctors own journal, stating that the evidence being used was flawed. I have read many articles from around the world, and have seen how countries who thought that they could take a similar path to the UK are now reacting differently. The fact that part of the UK is talking about shutting schools for 16 weeks is on the advice of their own medical advisors. Can we wait to see this play out and find that the advise was flawed or otherwise? Time and again I see the same figures being produced that the numbers suffering from it in the UK are between 5,000 and 10,000. The greater the number the greater the chance that you will come into contact with the virus. Closing down schools, football, museums, art galleries etc. is at least one way to stop contact. The WHO is critical of the UK response, the US has now said it is stopping flights from the UK, so along with the other evidence is it not fair to ask if despite the press conference the UK is taking the right course of action? I must say that I am quite happy to know that my grandchildren who live here are not going to be at school, pick something up, and pass it on to an oldey like me. They are continuing with a form of schooling that is not ideal, with two of them taking exams that will to some degree map out their future, but arrangements are being put in place. I could write about why the UK government is following their own course of action from what I know and have now been told is the reasoning behind it, but that really would be political, so I have kept away from it.
What he is basically saying is that you take every opportunity to knock the UK whilst pretending everything is wonderful in France. This as we know in reality is far from the truth.
You really make little sense SH when you come on here to attack people who have a different perspective on life to you. Tonight I have seen the French government increase the measures designed to stop contact between people. It would appear that you are not really thinking for yourself and coming to a conclusion, but are happy to accept what is being given to you by a single source. I was always told that you had a brain to use, so I use mine by gathering information then trying to make sense of it all.
