[boinging_along]

Plenty of those about isn’t there. If we shut down too late, it was days not weeks. They could not do it much earlier like some now think they should have. They couldn’t destroy the economy until they had too.

Nobody saw this coming and if we had shut down earlier the public would have hit the roof. Imagine Joe bloggs having their holiday cancelled whilst the rest of the world carried on and it turning out to be another SARS, which didn’t really effect the west.

While I agree you don't need to completely shut down the country at the first sign of a cold in China - we could easily have asked people to work from home where possible, we could have prevented events like Cheltenham going ahead, we could have started social distancing earlier, we could have start getting the PPE that we desperately need.   All of those would have helped us flatten the curve.

[zippyandbungle]

To be fair....it’s a very stressful situation.
People are scared, panicking and in some cases angry.

There is much to consider
I dont think anyone truly got it (as in understanding) and many still don’t, when it first filtered on to the news people were still shaking hands ....laughing about it even...and carrying on with life (driving and standing at Swansea away), the players did that gesture of not shaking hands....then shaking hands at the end of the game...oh how twitter laughed.
The govt of (insert any country) could not have foreseen or planned for it....you may have various strategies for x and y , but the cost of prepping for each makes it unrealistic...the millions you invest in a “could happen” scenario would be immediately unpicked by the opposition, Boris would become “wasteful” his term brought to an early end .
For me personally I think the government really have ...and are trying with the best intentions of everyone....now is not the time for sniping, it’s certainly not the time for YouTube selfies of one person moaning he’s not going to get as much as his neighbour....every bloody news bulletin.

2 weeks before our lockdown....17 planes came in to Heathrow on direct flights from Italy, assuming each one had 100 people on board, assuming half used some form of the tube system in the next seven days .....and knowing that the tube has over 5 million users per day... the maths move fast.
We could of locked down then , we could have closed all borders (try not to see the irony and turn in to a brexit/racist competition) ....we chose not to....and in line with all other countries at this point....it probably hasn’t helped.

I’ve read this morning that there has now been unrest and clashes with the police in Italy and even China....this is a big concern...like the STAYING IN, it will only take a very small number to ruin it for everyone....I think we know how the Chinese will “manage” it....my biggest concern is that over here we probably need to be exactly has hard....so it stops it dead and doesn’t circulate, I’m not scaremongering but I think if there is the slightest grumble of civil unrest turning to violence then shots will have to be fired..it’s not nice but if not I genuinely fear for us going forward.

Finally there is the elephant in the room....I am not trying to offend in anyway, lord knows this week I’ve felt it, my brothers best mate lost his dad to it, my best mate from school lost his dad and now his mom has been admitted with pneumonia....but....if there is no cure, no vaccine and no real end in sight.....do we at some point have to say.....back to normal from a week on Monday .....do we then tell the vulnerable to stay in for 10-12 weeks so any contamination can be almost drip fed and managed and do we let the people in the “relatively safe” groups just get on with it?
It’s a very difficult question, but parking the euphoria of Rishi,s bailouts and trumps very strange speeches ....lockdown will not build a strong future, and whilst everyone is really feeling like they will change their mindset and be nicer/fairer/more sharing when this is over....it’s taken less than a week for many to show their true colours.
6 months of this.....and we (humans) may never recover..

I hope you all stay safe and see the baggies lift that trophy this bloody summer....but it may be wishful thinking .

[LiamTheBaggie]

Where's the contradiction?  You can ask the media to step back from exaggerating and scaring people while also thinking there's a danger and we need to investigate.  The thing with science is, as more evidence comes to late you change your position, and that's what he did a week later.  You don't just stick to it and ignore new evidence.  Even our own government didn't do that.

The contradiction is clear - he was criticising the Government for not doing enough to tackle the epidemic despite them knowing about the virus in January. He has commended the WHO who stated in January there was no evidence of human to human transmission. His views at the time are entirely in line with the Government.

Now he is doing some retrospective mud slinging.

The other points within the article are worth a discussion however, I comcede there are questions to be asked on that front.

[Droitwich Baggie]

To be fair....it’s a very stressful situation.
People are scared, panicking and in some cases angry.

There is much to consider
I dont think anyone truly got it (as in understanding) and many still don’t, when it first filtered on to the news people were still shaking hands ....laughing about it even...and carrying on with life (driving and standing at Swansea away), the players did that gesture of not shaking hands....then shaking hands at the end of the game...oh how twitter laughed.
The govt of (insert any country) could not have foreseen or planned for it....you may have various strategies for x and y , but the cost of prepping for each makes it unrealistic...the millions you invest in a “could happen” scenario would be immediately unpicked by the opposition, Boris would become “wasteful” his term brought to an early end .
For me personally I think the government really have ...and are trying with the best intentions of everyone....now is not the time for sniping, it’s certainly not the time for YouTube selfies of one person moaning he’s not going to get as much as his neighbour....every bloody news bulletin.

2 weeks before our lockdown....17 planes came in to Heathrow on direct flights from Italy, assuming each one had 100 people on board, assuming half used some form of the tube system in the next seven days .....and knowing that the tube has over 5 million users per day... the maths move fast.
We could of locked down then , we could have closed all borders (try not to see the irony and turn in to a brexit/racist competition) ....we chose not to....and in line with all other countries at this point....it probably hasn’t helped.

I’ve read this morning that there has now been unrest and clashes with the police in Italy and even China....this is a big concern...like the STAYING IN, it will only take a very small number to ruin it for everyone....I think we know how the Chinese will “manage” it....my biggest concern is that over here we probably need to be exactly has hard....so it stops it dead and doesn’t circulate, I’m not scaremongering but I think if there is the slightest grumble of civil unrest turning to violence then shots will have to be fired..it’s not nice but if not I genuinely fear for us going forward.

Finally there is the elephant in the room....I am not trying to offend in anyway, lord knows this week I’ve felt it, my brothers best mate lost his dad to it, my best mate from school lost his dad and now his mom has been admitted with pneumonia....but....if there is no cure, no vaccine and no real end in sight.....do we at some point have to say.....back to normal from a week on Monday .....do we then tell the vulnerable to stay in for 10-12 weeks so any contamination can be almost drip fed and managed and do we let the people in the “relatively safe” groups just get on with it?
It’s a very difficult question, but parking the euphoria of Rishi,s bailouts and trumps very strange speeches ....lockdown will not build a strong future, and whilst everyone is really feeling like they will change their mindset and be nicer/fairer/more sharing when this is over....it’s taken less than a week for many to show their true colours.
6 months of this.....and we (humans) may never recover..

I hope you all stay safe and see the baggies lift that trophy this bloody summer....but it may be wishful thinking .

We all have a view point.
Yours seems to be sensible too.
As you say...
Easy to snipe and score points.
I am in the at risk group.
I would like it to be that only the vulnerable are allowed to have home deliveries from the supermarkets.
The so called fit and healthy can go in person to the supermarkets as they used to.
The "Oh you vulnerable people can go at 9am" statement is stupid.
Becasue we are vulnerable... Why should we queue with others who are in the same boat and make us more susceptible to catching Covid19. We are being put at a very strong disadvantage.
It is like giving a person with no legs a free bike. It might sound generous, but, really useless.

[PartisanBaggie]

To be fair....it’s a very stressful situation.
People are scared, panicking and in some cases angry.

There is much to consider
I dont think anyone truly got it (as in understanding) and many still don’t, when it first filtered on to the news people were still shaking hands ....laughing about it even...and carrying on with life (driving and standing at Swansea away), the players did that gesture of not shaking hands....then shaking hands at the end of the game...oh how twitter laughed.
The govt of (insert any country) could not have foreseen or planned for it....you may have various strategies for x and y , but the cost of prepping for each makes it unrealistic...the millions you invest in a “could happen” scenario would be immediately unpicked by the opposition, Boris would become “wasteful” his term brought to an early end .
For me personally I think the government really have ...and are trying with the best intentions of everyone....now is not the time for sniping, it’s certainly not the time for YouTube selfies of one person moaning he’s not going to get as much as his neighbour....every bloody news bulletin.

2 weeks before our lockdown....17 planes came in to Heathrow on direct flights from Italy, assuming each one had 100 people on board, assuming half used some form of the tube system in the next seven days .....and knowing that the tube has over 5 million users per day... the maths move fast.
We could of locked down then , we could have closed all borders (try not to see the irony and turn in to a brexit/racist competition) ....we chose not to....and in line with all other countries at this point....it probably hasn’t helped.

I’ve read this morning that there has now been unrest and clashes with the police in Italy and even China....this is a big concern...like the STAYING IN, it will only take a very small number to ruin it for everyone....I think we know how the Chinese will “manage” it....my biggest concern is that over here we probably need to be exactly has hard....so it stops it dead and doesn’t circulate, I’m not scaremongering but I think if there is the slightest grumble of civil unrest turning to violence then shots will have to be fired..it’s not nice but if not I genuinely fear for us going forward.

Finally there is the elephant in the room....I am not trying to offend in anyway, lord knows this week I’ve felt it, my brothers best mate lost his dad to it, my best mate from school lost his dad and now his mom has been admitted with pneumonia....but....if there is no cure, no vaccine and no real end in sight.....do we at some point have to say.....back to normal from a week on Monday .....do we then tell the vulnerable to stay in for 10-12 weeks so any contamination can be almost drip fed and managed and do we let the people in the “relatively safe” groups just get on with it?
It’s a very difficult question, but parking the euphoria of Rishi,s bailouts and trumps very strange speeches ....lockdown will not build a strong future, and whilst everyone is really feeling like they will change their mindset and be nicer/fairer/more sharing when this is over....it’s taken less than a week for many to show their true colours.
6 months of this.....and we (humans) may never recover..

I hope you all stay safe and see the baggies lift that trophy this bloody summer....but it may be wishful thinking .

Good post.

[Adder]

We all have a view point.
Yours seems to be sensible too.
As you say...
Easy to snipe and score points.
I am in the at risk group.
I would like it to be that only the vulnerable are allowed to have home deliveries from the supermarkets.
The so called fit and healthy can go in person to the supermarkets as they used to.
The "Oh you vulnerable people can go at 9am" statement is stupid.
Becasue we are vulnerable... Why should we queue with others who are in the same boat and make us more susceptible to catching Covid19. We are being put at a very strong disadvantage.
It is like giving a person with no legs a free bike. It might sound generous, but, really useless.

Yes fully agree with that. I've been trying to get home delivery slots for my parents who are both in their 80s and with serious health conditions. In this exceptional climate those in the at risk groups and over 70 should have priority for home delivery and not the usual office workers who use home deliveries for convenience and to save time in their day. As you say there's a danger that older or vulnerable people who should stay at home, think the 8am or 9am slots are safe for them to use when of course they are not.

[Droitwich Baggie]

How many times do people have to be told?
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-police-break-up-massive-karaoke-party-during-covid-19-lockdown-measures-11965352
Beggars belief.
Total disregard for others.
They are not only puting themselves in danger (serves them right, I hear a lot say).
It is the innnocent ones who happen to touch something which they have handled.

[boinging_along]

The contradiction is clear - he was criticising the Government for not doing enough to tackle the epidemic despite them knowing about the virus in January. He has commended the WHO who stated in January there was no evidence of human to human transmission. His views at the time are entirely in line with the Government.

Now he is doing some retrospective mud slinging.

The other points within the article are worth a discussion however, I comcede there are questions to be asked on that front.

I don't think it's retrospective though.  The science changed pretty quickly towards the end of January.  The tweet you mentioned was on the 24th Jan.  Later that day we had the first published report of patients with coronavirus, then the first evidence of human-to-human transmission. and then he posted an updated article on the emerging understandings. 

On the 25th he tweeted...
"The challenge of 2019-nCoV is not only the public health response. It is clinical capacity. A third of patients so far have required admission to ICU. 29% developed ARDS. Few countries have the clinical capacity to handle this volume of acutely ill patients. Yet no discussion."

And the 26th he tweeted...
"It’s now imperative to recall WHO’s IHR Emergency Committee to review once again the evidence for and against declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The needle is moving towards the affirmative."

It seems a bit disingenious to go back to a tweet when information wasn't known to make it look he's being contradictory.  He's not saying the government should have locked down in mid-Jan when he held the views quoted, but that we should have started to prepare by Feb, and we certainly shouldn't be saying on the 20th MARCH that we have enough PPE.   In the article he published he specifically mentioned that we should have started preparing in February.   

I don't know a single NHS worker, and they don't know any of their colleagues, who thinks that we were adequately prepared or that there was nothing we could do.

For the record, since we changed approach on the 16th March the government have been doing a decent enough job.  It's just those 6 (six) weeks previous to that that we wasted.  We weren't the only country to waste them but that doesn't make it feel better when you see the number of people dying per day go up and you have relatives who probably wouldn't survive if they got it.

[boinging_along]

How many times do people have to be told?
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-police-break-up-massive-karaoke-party-during-covid-19-lockdown-measures-11965352
Beggars belief.
Total disregard for others.
They are not only puting themselves in danger (serves them right, I hear a lot say).
It is the innnocent ones who happen to touch something which they have handled.

Police should be breaking up all karaoke parties anyway.  It's just stupid though, you're right, it's not that themselves are in danger but they're putting others in danger.

[Droitwich Baggie]

Strange lot these foreigners. (Jingoistic or what?)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52084121

[kc56wba]

Exercise Cygnus was a simulation exercise carried out in 2016 to estimate the impact of a hypothetical pandemic on the United Kingdom. The exercise showed that the pandemic would cause the country's health system to collapse from a lack of resources.

LET THAT SINK IN. 

[johnny Cash]

Exercise Cygnus was a simulation exercise carried out in 2016 to estimate the impact of a hypothetical pandemic on the United Kingdom. The exercise showed that the pandemic would cause the country's health system to collapse from a lack of resources.

LET THAT SINK IN.

I could run a simulation that a nuke would flatten Birmingham. Doing something about it is completely different.

I think expecting tonnes of resources to be have been directed to this, when there were  a million other calls for them is a little unfair.

[The Black Pearl]

Exercise Cygnus was a simulation exercise carried out in 2016 to estimate the impact of a hypothetical pandemic on the United Kingdom. The exercise showed that the pandemic would cause the country's health system to collapse from a lack of resources.

LET THAT SINK IN.

That's why you run exercises Kev, to learn from them, the lockdown will be difficult to maintain long term, the government knew that, that's why the held off as long as they could, they tried to achieve social distancing by a degree of friendly compliance, unfortunately, some of us took the the guidance, I've been isolating for two weeks now, some chose to carry on as normal, that's not the  governments fault, that's just people not being able to see the obvious and continuing to spread the virus.

[tuamigos]

If you have an exercise  ( Exercise Cygnus ) that exposes the difficulty that our country would experience during a pandemic, surely to god you would act on it straight away. Not wait till it hits us.

You would if you had the financial clout to react.
We were in the midst of austerity so the money wasn't there.
Ahhh, I hear you say, but we've found the money now. We have indeed, and we will be paying that money back for decades.

PS. anybody having trouble sleeping, my default time for getting up is 4.45 and I can't shake it off

[tuamigos]

Why are we getting a letter from Boris?
The average, sensible person among us are aware, I think, that things will get worse before getting better, the rest are too thick to understand and won't even bother reading the damn letter anyway

[BoingFlyer]

Why are we getting a letter from Boris?
The average, sensible person among us are aware, I think, that things will get worse before getting better, the rest are too thick to understand and won't even bother reading the damn letter anyway

Morale boosting, at some time next week cabin fever will start to creep in especially for those who live alone and resolve for self-isolation will start to break down.

If we don't break the back of this spike in cases all bets are off on total morality rates. On average 1400 people die every day, by the end of the week 800 people could be dieing on top of that figure. 800 is currently the Italian daily death toll from CV-19.

[boinging_along]

I think the letter is more just to make sure he's tried every avenue he can to get the message across about this pandemic. 

[mulliganstired]

I could run a simulation that a nuke would flatten Birmingham. Doing something about it is completely different.

I think expecting tonnes of resources to be have been directed to this, when there were  a million other calls for them is a little unfair.

I don't think its about tons of resources, surely the PPE equipment can't be expensive to make and store, and contingency plans are about time as much as money, things like being ready to throw up field hospitals quickly in identified locations .  This was pretty much a racing certainty to happen one day and in fact we are probably lucky this one has quite a low mortality rate overall, we need to be ready for the next one being worse - like we pay house and car insurance, nobody likes it but we understand why we do it.  Trade between nations can't exist without insurance, we need to beef up the WHO.

All politicians, ours, the EU, the Americans, all of them seem to just want to get into power/stay in power for the next short cycle, there doesn't seem to have been proper contingency planning in place anywhere, and far too much concentration on the "optics" when it was starting off.

If it sounds like being wise after the event, fair enough, but it will be about next time soon enough, and now we know.

[kc56wba]

That's why you run exercises Kev, to learn from them, the lockdown will be difficult to maintain long term, the government knew that, that's why the held off as long as they could, they tried to achieve social distancing by a degree of friendly compliance, unfortunately, some of us took the the guidance, I've been isolating for two weeks now, some chose to carry on as normal, that's not the  governments fault, that's just people not being able to see the obvious and continuing to spread the virus.

John even NHS staff could be spreading the virus cause they haven't got enough PPE now that is the governments fault.

[tuamigos]

Just popped out to the local Sainsburys to get a few supplies and some low life(s) have put every single window through.
Mindless burkes.
Glaziers just doing the repairs but the shop will be out of commission for the rest of the day.
I did read in the press last week that soldiers were on standby to 'guard' supermarkets and the like, I never believed we would need that.
Now I do.

[wbastrollers]

Just popped out to the local Sainsburys to get a few supplies and some low life(s) have put every single window through.
Mindless burkes.
Glaziers just doing the repairs but the shop will be out of commission for the rest of the day.
I did read in the press last week that soldiers were on standby to 'guard' supermarkets and the like, I never believed we would need that.
Now I do.

Government’s fault!!, Tuamigos, they should have thought this through and surrounded the Store with the Army and a tank at every Supermarket, long ago.
In all seriousness the Government are trying to take the people with them , Softly, softly, they are testing the people’s response to every measure they take.
Whilst controlling the situation with the Country’s consent.
Already, Supermarkets have been attacked at night. Can you imagine the response if the government had imposed a full lockdown much earlier - possibly soon after the Chinese lockdown.
Btw,it is not clear at this stage what the outcome will be after the Chinese lockdown. There is a possibility the virus will return with a vengeance should the Chinese decide to ease the restrictions too quickly. Our Government will look very closely at the Chinese results and act accordingly (depending that we can trust the Chinese to release the true results?).

[zippyandbungle]

Just popped out to the local Sainsburys to get a few supplies and some low life(s) have put every single window through.
Mindless burkes.
Glaziers just doing the repairs but the shop will be out of commission for the rest of the day.
I did read in the press last week that soldiers were on standby to 'guard' supermarkets and the like, I never believed we would need that.
Now I do.

I said earlier in the thread....I strongly believe shots will need to be fired.
Some people only understand one message.....it’s a shame.

[johnny Cash]

I said earlier in the thread....I strongly believe shots will need to be fired.
Some people only understand one message.....it’s a shame.

I can’t see shots being fired at unarmed citizens in any circumstance. The government / police would get slaughtered for it. The might have to use other unprecedented measuress though, water cannons maybe.

[Droitwich Baggie]

Possibly in the future, all the shops will have their shutters closed and we shall have rationing, thus allowing everyone to have equal shares.
It showed up when people started loading their trolleys up and hoarding.
Extreme measures for this extreme situation.

[kc56wba]

I can’t see shots being fired at unarmed citizens in any circumstance. The government / police would get slaughtered for it. The might have to use other unprecedented measuress though, water cannons maybe.

Think Boris Johnson's water cannon's shouldn't have been sold for scrap at £300k loss .