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 Ouze wrote:

 DalekCheese wrote:
[This, uh.... this didn’t age too well.

I don't think most of the posts from January did, and it's a bit unreasonable to call people out on it when there was so much unknown at the time. I myself also was in the "the flu is worse" camp because, well, we had been through so many false alarms in the States - SARS, MERS, Monkeypox, H1N1, Ebola, and so on. I was totally wrong and so were many other people.

Oh, most certainly. I was reading through the posts back then, it just reminded me how optimistic everyone- myself included- was.

Surprised theres been no post on dexamethasone yet. Apparently it's a cheap steroid and could reduce deaths of folks on ventilators by a third.

Not posting a link because I'm lazy. Google it yourselves folks.

 Pacific wrote:

 Overread wrote:
And that's why track and trace is the only way to police modern nations with the virus at large. At least until we either hit herd immunity or vaccine or at least gain medical drugs that reduce the worst of the condition.

You can lockdown like crazy, but in the end people move around (this is nothing new even in cave-man days humans moved around a LOT and traded items across vast distances). Goods move, people move and so much of the infrastructure of most countries relies on things from outside.

Yes agree 100%. I think that's why, in part, the UK approach is rather flippant and there is a danger to relieving lockdown while the track and trace system is not working adequately (at least, from the reports I have read about it).

I'm not quite sure who benefits from this approach. Absolutely - open the economy again, get people back to work. But if we now end up with another spike of infections (which, I think going off occurrences in other countries, who saw this happen even with a much lower infection rate, you have to think is likely) then they will end up having to close shop again. Which will cause even more disruption, and with lockdowns arguably far less effective as public confidence will have been eroded.

Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

And in other news Florida has restaurants closing up week after opening. No surprises there when you open up too soon for political reasons.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/florida-bars-restaurants-close-coronavirus-spike-outbreak-a9568631.html

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Surprised theres been no post on dexamethasone yet. Apparently it's a cheap steroid and could reduce deaths of folks on ventilators by a third.

Not posting a link because I'm lazy. Google it yourselves folks.

Read about it this morning...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53061281

It certainly appears to improve the chances of recovery for some.

tneva82 wrote:


Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Surprised theres been no post on dexamethasone yet. Apparently it's a cheap steroid and could reduce deaths of folks on ventilators by a third.

Not posting a link because I'm lazy. Google it yourselves folks.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53077893?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/coronavirus&link_location=live-reporting-story

1 in 8 on ventilators, 1 in 25 on oxygen.

No idea where you got 'a third'

Explaing it on behalf of the lazy:

There's this bit in that link:

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Going from 40% (4/10) risk of death to 28% (<3/10) is 30% (~1/3) better.
The article doesn't explain its stats very clearly.

 DalekCheese wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Fearmongering of the highest order?

Probably.

I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/12/flu-activity-high-least-2100-deaths-season

This, uh.... this didn’t age too well.

Yeah, no kidding! Now I am one of the "true believers" that we are not taking this seriously enough and have completely failed as a Nation to do proper testing and tracing.

Like I have said a few times. I was part of the problem!

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.

I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.

 Easy E wrote:

 DalekCheese wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Fearmongering of the highest order?

Probably.

I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/12/flu-activity-high-least-2100-deaths-season

This, uh.... this didn’t age too well.

Yeah, no kidding! Now I am one of the "true believers" that we are not taking this seriously enough and have completely failed as a Nation to do proper testing and tracing.

Like I have said a few times. I was part of the problem!

We all were, and that's because whether we like the individuals involved or not, the messages from our leadership influenced our thinking. Go to any internet cesspool now and you'll still see the same garbage being regurgitated. Just a flu, kids can't get it, will go away in the summer, only old people are at risk, etc. Minds get made up quickly, and when the initial information is bad, it's a real obstacle.

 ScarletRose wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.

I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.

I've already made my points refuting it every other time he's posted it. So now I'm just going to point it out and call it the bs that it is.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 ScarletRose wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.

I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.

I've already made my points refuting it every other time he's posted it. So now I'm just going to point it out and call it the bs that it is.

We have made posts pointing out your flagrant disregard for safety of others and your complete refusal to even try to adhere to safety guidelines.

What is your point?

The promised "world beating" Track & Trace ap the UK govt decided to develop and initially tested out on the Isle of Wight , will now roll out/be ready "for the winter".

TBF they never claimed how it would be world beating ...

What's going to take all those months to develop for a track and trace app? Esp when the likes of Google and such already have tracking technology built into pretty much every single phone. Surely all the back end requires is data collection and distribution, not small feats by any means, but months and months? Especially when several other nations already have such applications running.

When has a government IT project ever been delivered on time, on budget and fit for purpose? I'm not remotely surprised.

Crispy78 wrote:
When has an [Redacted] IT project ever been delivered on time, on budget and fit for purpose? I'm not remotely surprised.

FIFY!

If we ran it more like a business..... it still would be late, over budget, and not do what was initially asked for.

Dukeofstuff wrote:
I had intended to let the matter drop, but now feel I have to post at least one source about the woman. Like I said, I think its a better study in media bias on both sides than it is a study in something real inside government data collection and reporting.

An unfavorable listing is here,
https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/05/20/rebekah-jones-firing-is-the-covid-clickbait-the-media-dreams-of-but-its-all-fake/
I don't really have intel on the source but it appears to be a wire service of some sort providing data to local newspapers in florida. appears. They make rather more of her being a sexual predator with a history of bad judgement and a failed PhD student than the next article does.

A fairly balanced listing here.
( meaning not the most partisan in either direction and abc news is at minimum a recognized media source.)
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ousted-florida-virus-data-curator-history-violations-70853281

I could give a multiple page long analys of what I do and don't believe about this particular case, but I don't want to bring politics into this thread. Suffice to say, its wise to consume multiple viewpoints of media.

Thank you! The first article is obviously bias-crap (though I think we all knew that just from the title) but interesting reading nonetheless. Nothing compared to that second one, which makes everyone involved seem more normal and the whole story less sensational... Exactly the sort of thing that viewers aren't interested in, so no wonder media wants to process it into something else for their customer base. Fortunately this is not a facet of a major disaster with large numbers of lives at stake...

Edit. Don't care.

 reds8n wrote:
The promised "world beating" Track & Trace ap the UK govt decided to develop and initially tested out on the Isle of Wight , will now roll out/be ready "for the winter".

TBF they never claimed how it would be world beating ...

We were just discussing yesterday about what had happeneed to the app. Quite frankly I'm almost at the point of complete despair about the absolute shambles that has been the UK response to this.
I mean, it's just an absolute joke. What on earth is going through the minds of the Executive? It's like they've fallen into total panic mode and are just randomly, reflexively reacting to stimuli.
Johnson and his cabinet are pretty far from my ideal to be running the show, but I was willing to give them a fair bit of leeway to deal with this and have been determined to try and keep partisanship out of it, but they're making it very hard to have any faith in them whatsoever.
I've never known anything to be handled this badly, I'm genuinely confused and exasperated by the lack of leadership and clarity. They seem to have completely abandoned any pretence at following the science and have started to openly make decisions based on political expediency.

I think that this thread will start to inevitably become a political one and be closed, certainly wrt the UK. Which is a shame.

There have been some oddities in the UK response - such as not imposing quarantines at the airports. Something that I think most of the population assumed was happening and wasn't until very late. More worryingly was a bit on the news talking about airport firms complaining about the draconian measures for the quarantine and how it would affect trade - even though its now pretty much standard practice the world over in some form or another.


UK has its good points, but over the last weeks the UK government does seem to be doing odd things. Even to the point of trying to cover up bad behaviour with childish excuses (driving to see a castle and trying to say it counted as some form of eye-test). There's almost a feeling that, having hit about the worst the world over in terms of deathrate, the government has almost thrown its arms up and given up.


That said when there's also been the population swarming to the countryside, beaches and raves at every chance they can get, the public are not without blame as well. Then again this seems to be a fairly standard problem for a lot of nations that haven't had SARS or other major outbreaks run rampant through their populations in living/recent memory. I think the early reports of "its not a threat to those under 60" was very damaging and has left an influence on the population where a large portion believe it to be true.

Although thus far the UK hasn't had the huge backlash that the US populations have against lockdowns - if anything I'd say the mood is somewhat that the population in the UK actually expected far more draconian lockdown measures and didn't get them; or didn't get them as swiftly as expected. I think perhaps giving a false impression that it isn't as bad as it might be. Which of course makes people far more lax.

I think the idea that it's our fault is something that is definitely being pushed, but tbh it's to be expected.
If you give people an inch there are some who will take a mile and others who will just blithely ignore the inch and do whatever they want anyway.
QAR is an example of exactly that mentality, railing against any restriction whatsoever and determined to criticise and challenge it, no matter what.
But the Govt hasn't exactly helped itself. They have done almost exactly the opposite of what's required to deal with a pandemic and the results are what we're living through now.
We have now managed to get ourselves into the situation where almost any action we take is futile, have hemorreged our economy and have a huge casualty rate and for what?
On Jeremy Vine today I listened to commentators who said that we should be prepared to live with the virus, just like we did with Polio and comments on conservativehome which say that the old should be prepared to "take one for the team" to allow the rest of us to prosper.
It's like we've just given up, and are just going to lie back and take it.

It’s when autumn and winter rolls around that’s really worrying me. As terrible as everything’s been so far I have this horrible feeling that it’s only the eye of the storm.

I've kept a close eye on what the Government here in the UK has been up to through the entire response. Kept on top of things through a variety of media, from the BBC to Private Eye. And altogether, taking absolutely everything together, I reckon they've done...alright. Alright as in, they've been absolutely cack-handed in some things and pretty quick off the mark in others.


Emergency hospital deployment? Quick off the mark and relatively efficiently done. Funds no issue, army deployed, and the whole thing generally well managed.

Ventilators and CPAP equipment? Their equipment sourcing and collaboration with the private sector to get third party variants designed and rolled out across the NHS was genuinely impressive.

PPE? Much, much less so. They relegated it to third rank priority; believing they had enough when they saw the number 'millions' in stock and didn't realise how quickly hospitals burned through it. So they put some third rankers with no procurement experience in charge of it and it bit them in the arse.

Slow testing limitations was nobody's fault. There was a production bottleneck in the chemical compounds and machines required along with a global shortage. There was nothing any government could do to speed that up if they didn't already have suitable production lines.

Initial lockdown speed was...iffy. They could have locked down a week earlier, but in all fairness, the medical advice at that stage was conflicting enough it wasn't clear cut. They flipped a coin, hoped for the best, and got it wrong. That happens sometimes. To their credit, when fresh modelling emerged from Imperial a week later showing how bad things were going to get, they slammed things down pretty sharpish rather than doubling down on the initial error.

Economic measures have been decent. Sunak has spent more money than anything bar a major war to try and keep the economy pumped up. Frankly, it's an amazingly socialistic response, and demonstrates just how little this government actually cares for Tory ideology as opposed to pure popularism. At the same time, more selectivity could have also been applied to big companies like Tesco or the big 4 consultancy firms who took the money and then paid out huge dividends off the back of it. But hindsight is 50/50 and I think they were more worried about getting money out.

Contact tracing has been a massive clusterfeth. They didn't get round to it until it was too late, it was poorly organised, and largely left to some of the big firms (coughsercocough) who have milked it and provided nowhere near good enough capability. The whole app thing also looks like it'll fall into that category.

Lockdown on the whole was well handled at initial implementation with the law/police. They went a little heavier than I'd have liked at first, but the sheer bloody minded selfishness of some people shows it was probably warranted. When it comes to lifting it, they've a muddier record. They're lifting it faster than some medical specialists recommend, but slower than a lot of other European countries; who I think they're keeping an eye on to see what happens there first. I think it's largely a matter of judgement though, and it's hard to penalise on this one until the results are in.

Quarantining the country has been a bit of a joke. You can see why they want to do it (ala New Zealand) but they're facing such a corporate backlash I don't think they have the backbone to fight it. Too many angry donors.

Shielding and emergency supplies for the vunerable during lockdown was poorly done at first. It picked up a bit as they got their act together, but they implemented poorly initially.

Cash for research into vaccines and collaborative centres/schemes with universities were quick and fast. Points on that score.

Care homes were basically abandoned. A big black mark there. Did they have capacity to do better? Probably not by much, but better attempts should have been made. They basically left those with Alzheimer's and the like to die.


And so on. Things done well, things done poorly. Some stuff was their fault, some stuff wasn't. Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.

I should say that broadly speaking the UK public has been with the idea of lockdowns in theory - I think its practice and personal application and understanding where its lacked - coupled to a lot of youthful ignorance/invulnerability and the issue of everyone having the same bright idea at the same time (eg everyone going to visit the countryside and often the same places in the countryside).


I'd also say that the UK is dragging its heels in regard to masks, but that seems to be somewhat linked to PPE and trying to stop the public hoovering up supplies that should go to the medical teams first. However at the same time mandated government restrictions on sales (heck Amazon already does this for some products) could have allowed the goverment to say "mask up" whilst protecting the higher tier masks for hospitals and the like.

That said masks has been another scientific battleground where there's arguments for and against, esp when considering public reaction and understanding (eg I have mask - I'm safe when in actuality its closer to; I have mask, others are safe from me).



The UK certainly hasn't behaved the worst of nations and our almost abandoning of the aged coupled to an advanced aging population has left the UK (and indeed a lot of EU nations) in a very weak position. At the same time countries like Germany have managed remarkable results.

 Ketara wrote:
... Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.

Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.
Raab was the definition of terrified rabbit in the headlights, it was frankly something of a relief to get Johnson back after Raab's brief tenure in the big chair.
I have some symphathy for Hancock, but I'm afraid to say that the results speak for themselves somewhat.
Sunak is yet to be proven as far as many are concerned, a chancellor who makes it rain is always going to be popular.

But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.

I was hopeful that at least with a Govt with a comfortable majority that we might at least have some sound leadership and clear direction, I have been quite frankly horrified by the shambles that has been produced. Some good things, yes I agree, but the fact that we're third for fatalities, only having recently been overtaken by the absolute shitshow that is Bolsano's Govt is absolutely unacceptable.
It seems that we have needlessly made things worse for ourselves, and I'm not entirely sure why. I admit I was never a fan, but this Govt's response is and has been just bloody awful, empirically so.

 r_squared wrote:

QAR is an example of exactly that mentality, railing against any restriction whatsoever and determined to criticise and challenge it, no matter what.

You misspelled 'able to think for themself'

 Future War Cultist wrote:
It’s when autumn and winter rolls around that’s really worrying me. As terrible as everything’s been so far I have this horrible feeling that it’s only the eye of the storm.

See I don't think that will bear out. I think it will continue to fall, then peter off.

I'll never say never obviously. All we can do is wait out.

 r_squared wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
... Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.

Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.
Raab was the definition of terrified rabbit in the headlights, it was frankly something of a relief to get Johnson back after Raab's brief tenure in the big chair.
I have some symphathy for Hancock, but I'm afraid to say that the results speak for themselves somewhat.
Sunak is yet to be proven as far as many are concerned, a chancellor who makes it rain is always going to be popular.

But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.

I was hopeful that at least with a Govt with a comfortable majority that we might at least have some sound leadership and clear direction, I have been quite frankly horrified by the shambles that has been produced. Some good things, yes I agree, but the fact that we're third for fatalities, only having recently been overtaken by the absolute shitshow that is Bolsano's Govt is absolutely unacceptable.
It seems that we have needlessly made things worse for ourselves, and I'm not entirely sure why. I admit I was never a fan, but this Govt's response is and has been just bloody awful, empirically so.

Some interesting comments here by both yourself and r_squared.

I think you are both correct. The government has certainly got some things right - Nightingale hospital, the initial communication and instruction around the lockdown (when it did finally come), the economic efforts to help with furloughing and at least allowing the social welfare systems to cope with the additional people that were out of work (although I realise a lot of this leads something to be desired).

However, I think some of the failings have been so utterly egregious, and been responsible for so much death and suffering, that they eclipse any credit that can be bestowed.
- The delay in lockdown. Most commentary now seems to indicate that this has cost possibly an additional 10-20k deaths, if not more. Nearly all of the advice was leading to the necessity of lockdown. Apparently it takes the Premier League and a phone call from Macron about the UK being quarantined to actually force the governments hand. If I was able to come to a conclusion to call my sister, advise her not to take her children into school that week, tell my parents (one of whom is highly vulnerable) to start booking food deliveries a week before the lockdown (based on just a few hours of reading around the internet), why could the government not come to the same painfully obvious conclusion?
Do you blame negligence or incompetence? The input of advisers such as Cummings? The complete lack of transparency is quite telling, I think quite obviously if there wasn't damning evidence involved we would already know about it.
- The care home situation. It seems that there were several sizeable failings at a govnermental and organisational level. The damning element here is not that it happened in the UK, but that other countries, Germany, Singapore, Korea, managed to manage the influx of Covid cases and have almost no additional deaths. Thousands upon thousands of old people forcibly alone in their rooms, gasping for breath and dying, their attendants and family not able to be with them in their final moments. Reading an article about this, it seems a rather personal thing to say about this to people I don't know personally (and perhaps that makes it easier) but for one of the few times in my adult life it reduced me to tears. It is such a horrible thing to contemplate and it feels to me the most horrendous of shortcomings that we are not holding anyone to account for what has happened.
- There are a couple of lessons I remember from childhood; one is that wishing for something does not make it so; the second is that you don't run before you can walk. Were these lessons not learned by the policy makers? We are existing lockdown at a rate of infection that is higher than it was when we entered it (late!) in the first place. The tracking and tracing systems, which have been shown in numerous countries to be an effective foil to spread, we are now told will not be fully operational until for some time and so in the meantime the virus will continue to spread virtually unchecked. Beijing has just shut down over an outbreak of around 30 new cases, while the UK goes ahead with the re-opening of retail and returning people to work.
I don't blame the people for behaving as they have done over recent weeks. I blame a massively confused public message (compounded by the Cummings affair, which essentially translated to 'do what you want') and a media that has largely failed to hold the government to account over the magnitude of its failings, and for serious the situation still is.

As for Hancock, I had some sympathy for him (Charlie Brooker described him as your sister's first boyfriend that owned a car) until I read about the lobbying donations he receives from the horse racing industry - possibly to the tune of around £100k.
Suddenly, the decision to delay lockdown and not stop mass events (when all of the advice was pointing towards their cancellation) and in particular the Cheltenham racing festival to go ahead, gets seriously brought into questin. Note that the racing industry was also one of the first to get going again.
There is absolutely a need to have a transparent enquiry of the conversations and minutes that took place, the advice from the SAGA group at that time, and why the UK was an outlier and lockdown delayed for that key week. If there was a vested interest there, I honestly think he needs putting in a locked room with some of the families of the many additional thousands of people who died as a result of that decision.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:


Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.

I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.

Tough luck. If you can't see the obvious that's your fault. BJ needs scapegoat to divert blame on his actions in about half a year. This provides nice one.

If you are blind then problem is in your eyes. Tough luck and I feel pity on you. Truly. Wouldn't wish for anybody to suffer from what you are suffering from.

 r_squared wrote:

Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.

There definitely is something to that as a counterpoint, but it's not quite as bad as that. Johnson as Prime Minister did a stint as Foreign Secretary, and to be honest, Prime Minister isn't so much a departmental affair. Raab's been popping in and out of state office since 2018 (Secretary for Brexit, etc). Priti Patel has also held a number of more junior posts. But Hancock...no, he's fresh, as is Sunak relatively speaking.

That all being said, the rest of the Cabinet (Gavin Williamson, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, etc) does have more than a degree of experience. If we'd had a Corbyn government, the majority of the cabinet would have only been elected in 2017, let alone had any experience working with the civil service or running departments. We're wandering into politics now though, so I'll stop speculating there.

But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.

The issue is that it is no longer a scientific issue. Science only works so far as you're looking for a simple question and equation. So if the question is 'How do we get minimum possible deaths from coronavirus', the answer is simple. We just maintain strict lockdown for a year or two until coronavirus is gone (then seal the borders) or a vaccine appears.

The problem is that strict lockdown kills other people in other ways. People killing trapped vulnerables in domestic abuse? They go up. Suicides from people losing jobs? They go up. People not taking conditions seriously enough to call medical help and dying? It goes up. And that's just death. Once you throw lesser problems of misery and suffering into the fray which are exacerbated by lockdown, how do those balance? How many people need to be miserable and suffering to equate to one death? And how intense does it need to be? These are the problems where there frankly is no scientific answer. There's no simple clear cut equation, and whatever you do, people are going to die and suffer.

The Government, from what I can tell, has become really quite timid over the whole thing. They're popularists, and the downside to chasing the popular vote is that you don't want to piss too many people off. They only want to take a step when they think it will be successful. So that means that they're following in the wake of everyone in Europe when it comes to lockdown. Some European countries have a 1m distance? Tough. They're doing 2 metres. Other countries are opening stores? Great. Wait two weeks until doing the same here. Their strategy is just to wait for someone else to do what they want to do, watch for a fortnight then follow.

Which is not necessarily the worst path to follow. But it makes them start looking a bit timid and afraid to take any chances or responsibility. Which, I suppose, they are at this stage. They don't want this to turn into anything more of a clusterfeth than has already happened and get blamed for it.

I wonder if the massive backlash in America has made the UK government worried that they can't push for longer lockdowns least they risk similar issues bubbling up in the UK. We've already got copy-cat protesting going on in many European nations which has spilled out from events in America. It wouldn't be a shock to think that anti-lockdown issues could arise as well. Even without the potential risk of outside elements trying to influence the country to encourage such problems.