Wuhan Killer Sneeze (thanks Tea)

[baboon2004]

i'm taking a unilateral decision on that front

 

[baboon2004]

The thing that concerns me is that if it all goes pears.....well there's a time when it would have caused the PM to resign. But we don't live in that time. Nonetheless there will be a lot of angry people, to put it mildly. I think this could take the UK to a dark place.

I think this could topple the government, or at least Johnson, tbh. Very soon he is going to be a punching bag from all sides, and look at the people he surrounded himself with. Treachery is standard.

 

[comelately]

The office workers are going to work from home and basically self-isolate anyway (which is what ppl do a lot of the time when they are slightly ill anyway), but the self-isolation protocol pretends that much of the country can live off £94 a week SSP and have managers that will necessarily be sympathetic to taking a week off work because you have a runny nose - obviously some will be, but not all by any means.

 

[comelately]

I think this could topple the government, or at least Johnson, tbh. Very soon he is going to be a punching bag from all sides, and look at the people he surrounded himself with. Treachery is standard.

One wonders if there comes a point when he himself thinks 'I could be in some sunny part of the world this time tomorrow demob happy'. He might even be thinking it now.

 

[entertainment]

Honestly wouldn't have guessed that the world, especially developed countries, were this ill-prepared for a pandemic. Experts just got it wrong, plain and simple.

"Very little chance of infection happening in Denmark" said the leader of the authoritative health institute here in Denmark. Now we've been forced to shut the whole country down. Apparently he based that assertion on 'gut feeling'.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for when a novel virus ala spanish flu appears again.

 

[baboon2004]

Hard to know in a world where further austerity is likely to follow the global recession that seems likely (and seemed likely to hit sometime soon even without coronavirus). I imagine they'll make some superficial gestures towards it, but many governments won't follow that up with hard investments in hospital capacity etc

 

[chava]

Honestly wouldn't have guessed that the world, especially developed countries, were this ill-prepared for a pandemic. Experts just got it wrong, plain and simple.

"Very little chance of infection happening in Denmark" said the leader of the authoritative health institute here in Denmark. Now we've been forced to shut the whole country down. Apparently he based that assertion on 'gut feeling'.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for when a novel virus ala spanish flu appears again.

Fellow Dane here. Denmark made some grave mistakes in the early phase, but everyone in the West did. As the Western world mostly escaped SARS our collective immune system is not up to speed.

UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden still going about as usual it seems. Hmm.

 

[droid]

I think this could topple the government, or at least Johnson, tbh. Very soon he is going to be a punching bag from all sides, and look at the people he surrounded himself with. Treachery is standard.

Corbyn is technically still Labour leader isnt he?

 

[droid]

Honestly wouldn't have guessed that the world, especially developed countries, were this ill-prepared for a pandemic. Experts just got it wrong, plain and simple.

"Very little chance of infection happening in Denmark" said the leader of the authoritative health institute here in Denmark. Now we've been forced to shut the whole country down. Apparently he based that assertion on 'gut feeling'.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for when a novel virus ala spanish flu appears again.

It's kinda obvious that our societies and economic systems aren't built for this and this has been a major worry for a lot of people, if you keep up with this kinda thing you would have heard alarm bells ringing for years.

As it turns out, creating systems obsessed with profit above all and then allowing sociopaths to manage our societies in favour of these systems is actually a fairly bad thing.

Hopefully this will bring about some lasting behavioural and attitudinal change without causing too much carnage.

 

[Slothrop]

Oh and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds The UK has even less hospital beds per capita than Italy, and a fraction of those in Germany and France, let alone Japnan and South Korea.
It's not only about Coronavirus and the complications from that, but about all the other people who won't be able to/will struggle to access healthcare while the virus is ongoing. And if they get to hospital, how are they not going to get infected?

The long-term systematic underfunding of the NHS is fucking criminal on all levels, and even without a global pandemic people should be getting strung up for it.

But in the short term, what should the UK be doing, what other country can we see that's doing it right, and what quantitative impact is it going to have?

 

[droid]

Social distancing, closure of all non essential businesses, shutdown of all cultural and sporting events, lockdown, widespread & free national testing, massive investment into healthcare, research and mass manufacture of test kits.

A mix of these measures is whats worked in Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam and to a lesser extent, S. Korea and China.

The UK is taking the opposite approach.

 

[droid]

I have almost total contempt for our government, but on this, they are, belatedly, doing the right thing.

 

[pattycakes_]

Happy Friday 13th, y'all

 

[Slothrop]

Closing schools and colleges isn't going to prevent a mass outbreak, though. It'll just delay it, at the same time as putting people in a worse position to deal with things when they really need to. I'm not normally one to miss an opportunity to criticize the UK government but here they really do seem to be following the best scientific advice.

 

[Slothrop]

Oh sorry, except that we can ignore government scientific advisors because they probably haven't considered something that us random internet people know all about based on a medium article last week.

 

[droid]

Yes, it will delay it and prevent the health service from being swamped. And in combination with other measures it will stop the spread.

Im amazed that you think a government that's adopting policies that fly in the face of almost every other developed nation, some of whom have managed to contain the spread and has openly talked about 'herd immunity' has any credibility.

 

[yyaldrin]

Fellow Dane here. Denmark made some grave mistakes in the early phase, but everyone in the West did. As the Western world mostly escaped SARS our collective immune system is not up to speed.

UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden still going about as usual it seems. Hmm.

it's not a coincidence that exactly those countries are going on about as usual. they're also the countries that always fuck over the rest of europe with their financial rules. destroyed greece, suffocated italy and the rest of the south. every country is ruled by a government that obeys the economy but not as much as the protestant cunts in the north.

 

[droid]

But sure, a psychopathic regime that allows hundreds of people to die each month after cutting off their benefits is only following the 'best scientific advice' which coincidentally happens to favour economic interests over people.

 

[chava]

it's not a coincidence that exactly those countries are going on about as usual. they're also the countries that always fuck over the rest of europe with their financial rules. destroyed greece, suffocated italy and the rest of the south. every country is ruled by a government that obeys the economy but not as much as the protestant cunts in the north.

No doubt it's economy first here.

The main thing is that Europe didn't learn from SARS and are very reluctant to instigate something resembling to martial law (DK just put some very harsh restrictions into effect now).

Of course they are city-states, so it's a somewhat different situation, but Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau and Taiwan showed how to respond to this correctly:

https://time.com/5802293/coronavirus-covid19-singapore-hong-kong-taiwan/

 

[Slothrop]

But sure, a psychopathic regime that allows hundreds of people to die each month after cutting off their benefits is only following the 'best scientific advice' which coincidentally happens to favour economic interests over people.

You know what, we're just not going to be able to have a sensible discussion about this, are we?