How do you think Boris has handled it so far ? 8th May

[Gwylan]

People rallying round the Government is usual in times of crisis such as this, however personally I'm sensing a change in the public mood. I'm seeing a lot of people who never express political opinions attacking the Government right now, and not just on social media.

In the last couple of weeks, the Tory-supporting Sunday Times, the Tory-supporting FT and, today, the Telegraph,.the Telegraph have put the boot in on the government. It won't be long before the Sun joins in.

I said a few weeks ago that Johnson wouldn't last till Christmas, I'm beginning to wonder whether he'll last till summer.

 

[peterward]

In the last couple of weeks, the Tory-supporting Sunday Times, the Tory-supporting FT and, today, the Telegraph,.the Telegraph have put the boot in on the government. It won't be long before the Sun joins in.

I said a few weeks ago that Johnson wouldn't last till Christmas, I'm beginning to wonder whether he'll last till summer.

Yep, agree. Todays pro Tory Telegraph was scathing: Here's the full article (as its behind paywall):

The Government’s handling of Covid-19 is a very British disaster

-Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2020

The Tory party knows that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes
Claims by Downing Street and Public Health England that they ‘got it right’ cannot be allowed to stand

British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome. We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.

Boris Johnson is in a sense right to resist calls for a premature lifting of containment measures. The fissures within the four nations of the union would become dangerous if he did otherwise. This determination to see it through is becoming his Churchillian test but it is not the fight he expected and it does not obscure the long list of errors that led to this unhappy pass. There should never have been a lockdown in the first place.

The British public have been remarkably forgiving. Emmanuel Macron has on balance done slightly better yet faces a blizzard of abuse and reproach. The Tory party knows full well that indulgence in this country cannot last and that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes.

Just how bad that will be depends on how far we have progressed towards national immunity – and therefore whether the case fatality rate is at the higher or lower end of the scale – if we ever get antibody tests worth using.

Personally, I have been a “Koreanist” from the start. (Perhaps because my only grand-child is a Korean citizen, is safely in Seoul now, and I am biased). They had the advantage of the SARS epidemic as a trial run. Even so, they had to mobilise their testing, tracing, and isolating regime without warning in the middle of a storm yet never lost more than nine people in a single day.

The Koreans have never had a lockdown. They have suffered a big economic shock but not the sort of deep freeze seen in Europe. But leaving aside the East Asian success stories, there were other options for Western states that lacked the testing/tracing infrastructure.

Prostrate Greece has done better than this country by orders of magnitude despite a decade of economic depression and deep austerity cuts to health care, hospitals, and the social welfare system, as well as having to cope with the burden of seething migrant camps on the Aegean islands.

Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus. That is 14 deaths per million. The UK has just hit 472. The Greeks pulled this off by recognising the danger immediately and acting. Their lockdown was enforced by roadblocks and document checks. They are now well on their way back to commercial normality.

I have been silent on Covid-19 for a while. There was little to be gained from harrying the Government once it had abandoned the misadventure of herd immunity and was at least trying to get a grip. Much of the belated media onslaught is reflexive gotcha-journalism (where were they in February when the mistakes were made?), or hides an ideological agenda.

But claims by both Downing Street and Public Health England that they “got it right” cannot be allowed to stand. Nor can the pretence that each stage of the containment policy is being fed out at just right time and at just the right calibration under the Jupiterian guidance of behavioural theorists.

There was never anything to be gained from delaying the lockdown once the brushfire had slipped control due to lack of testing/tracing. Each three days of prevarication meant a doubling of the infection case load. It was to sink deeper into the quagmire. Nor did the SAGE committee ever have a sufficient grasp of the basic facts to fine-tune the timing, let alone to play God.

The facts will out but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this secretive body – neither institutional fish nor fowl, with opaque responsibilities – gravely misjudged the speed of contagion long after the danger was obvious to virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists across the world, and indeed to anybody paying attention.

Why does it make sense to impose a two-week quarantine on foreign arrivals at this late stage (excluding Ireland and France), rather than having done so when imported cases were first causing an explosion of infections in a virgin host community?

Arriving passengers at the airport
All visitors to Britain will be ordered to isolate for 14 days in a bid to prevent a second wave of coronavirus Credit: Victoria Jones /PA
A Covid cardiologist at a top London hospital – friendly to Boris – has been so incensed by the daily charade of bogus omniscience that he vented his spleen in an email to me on Sunday night. It is a poignant indictment, so I pass along a few snippets.

Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made. He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.

“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.

“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes – and they didn’t (and still don’t). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor – denied GP visits – and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”

The public has yet to realise that the great quest for ventilators was worse than a red herring. The overuse of ventilators was itself killing people at a terrifying ratio and behind that lies another institutional failure.

“When the inquiry comes, it will show that many people died for lack of oxygen supply in hospitals, and this led to early intubation,” writes the doctor. “Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”

By all means let us clap our NHS staff but are we implicitly also being asked to clap the managerial and bureaucratic structure responsible for these policies? Is it henceforth taboo to raise a whisper of criticism against the edifice?

Downing Street has now gone “Korean” with apparent gusto, belatedly switching to testing/tracing/isolation. But when it pulls the policy levers, precious little seems to be happening. Bureaucratic inertia seems to thwart action.

“Where is the testing and contact tracing capacity we should have built?” asks my cardiologist friend. “Are there mass sampling systems to give daily infection figures in every ward of the country? No. Is there an army of contact tracers to act on the results? No. The advert to recruit tracers only went out today, incredibly. And only 15,000. At minimum wage.”

Yes, the R0 reproduction number has fallen to 0.6 or 0.7. Hurrah. But that in itself is not enough. The stock of infections must also be whittled down to a manageable level and the tracing apparatus must be in place.

We are not yet close to achieving a viable suppression strategy. That is why the Prime Minister could offer no more than partial and unsatisfying liberation on Sunday night.

“The striking thing is how consistently the government failed, in every single element of the response, everywhere you turn (the Army excepted),” writes the doctor. “This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country’s history.”

Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany – countries of greatly different wealth and different health defences – but instead it languishes in a lockdown limbo that is nearing the threshold of structural economic damage. The longer it lasts beyond six weeks or so, the greater the threat.

Other Western countries have failed too. Belgium is in the same boat. The Dutch don’t fully count care homes and community deaths. Thousands of Italian Covid-19 deaths slipped through the cracks and have not been recorded. Turmoil in New York matches London. Every nation faces the constant risk of a second wave.

Yet the UK is moving uncomfortably close to special status, with excess deaths above the seasonal average topping 42,000 up to April 24. It has undoubtedly surpassed 50,000 since then. We will breach 1,000 deaths per million before long, yet without reaching the safe uplands of herd immunity.

There is not much company – if any – at this Tibetan altitude. They are not all Covid deaths but they are all part of the Covid drama, all dating from the same original sin in February when the Government was asleep and temptress voices of behavioural theory went unchallenged.

These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.

 

[clapham_gull]

I also downgraded my initial assessment (previously good). It's still way too early to right Boris/HMG off in my view as this crisis will be with us for quite some time especially the economic fallout. The failings re the virus are many but the public seemed to have factored in plenty of countries have been found wanting (not being prepared, PPE, testing etc) which is why government electoral support is currently around 50%. This could change of course once the public inquiries begin. Also, paying the wages of 7.5 million workers and protecting their jobs is a good start if they can steer a path to economic recovery before the next election I doubt there is much Labour can do. Saying that Starmer has done well so far, played his cards well and the near-empty commons chamber suits his style. Not sure how he will cope if it goes back to the Punch and Judy bear pit. Plus It will be interesting seeing how Starmer manages the different factions in the Labour party and how he presents Labour as a party of change when it's the Tories doing the massive state intervention, running up huge debt and spending money on everything ... stolen all their clothes!

It's not a just Labour v Tory fight, this may turn into Tory v Tory. Since the small huddle around Boris have royally ****ed this up, we may have a longer wait to leave lock down that other countries, damaging the economy greatly.

Those neo-liberals that originally supported Johnson are starting to get restless. Some questioning the lock down at all.

They don't like him, just found him useful. He's a modern day Jeffrey Archer.

On comparison with other countries, when it becomes clear that even countries with a higher death toll were able to better control the geographic spread it won't look good for the Government or the scientists.

 

[Mr Banana]

Yep, agree. Todays pro Tory Telegraph was scathing: Here's the full article (as its behind paywall):

The Government’s handling of Covid-19 is a very British disaster

-Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2020

The Tory party knows that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes
Claims by Downing Street and Public Health England that they ‘got it right’ cannot be allowed to stand

British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome. We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.

Boris Johnson is in a sense right to resist calls for a premature lifting of containment measures. The fissures within the four nations of the union would become dangerous if he did otherwise. This determination to see it through is becoming his Churchillian test but it is not the fight he expected and it does not obscure the long list of errors that led to this unhappy pass. There should never have been a lockdown in the first place.

The British public have been remarkably forgiving. Emmanuel Macron has on balance done slightly better yet faces a blizzard of abuse and reproach. The Tory party knows full well that indulgence in this country cannot last and that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes.

Just how bad that will be depends on how far we have progressed towards national immunity – and therefore whether the case fatality rate is at the higher or lower end of the scale – if we ever get antibody tests worth using.

Personally, I have been a “Koreanist” from the start. (Perhaps because my only grand-child is a Korean citizen, is safely in Seoul now, and I am biased). They had the advantage of the SARS epidemic as a trial run. Even so, they had to mobilise their testing, tracing, and isolating regime without warning in the middle of a storm yet never lost more than nine people in a single day.

The Koreans have never had a lockdown. They have suffered a big economic shock but not the sort of deep freeze seen in Europe. But leaving aside the East Asian success stories, there were other options for Western states that lacked the testing/tracing infrastructure.

Prostrate Greece has done better than this country by orders of magnitude despite a decade of economic depression and deep austerity cuts to health care, hospitals, and the social welfare system, as well as having to cope with the burden of seething migrant camps on the Aegean islands.

Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus. That is 14 deaths per million. The UK has just hit 472. The Greeks pulled this off by recognising the danger immediately and acting. Their lockdown was enforced by roadblocks and document checks. They are now well on their way back to commercial normality.

I have been silent on Covid-19 for a while. There was little to be gained from harrying the Government once it had abandoned the misadventure of herd immunity and was at least trying to get a grip. Much of the belated media onslaught is reflexive gotcha-journalism (where were they in February when the mistakes were made?), or hides an ideological agenda.

But claims by both Downing Street and Public Health England that they “got it right” cannot be allowed to stand. Nor can the pretence that each stage of the containment policy is being fed out at just right time and at just the right calibration under the Jupiterian guidance of behavioural theorists.

There was never anything to be gained from delaying the lockdown once the brushfire had slipped control due to lack of testing/tracing. Each three days of prevarication meant a doubling of the infection case load. It was to sink deeper into the quagmire. Nor did the SAGE committee ever have a sufficient grasp of the basic facts to fine-tune the timing, let alone to play God.

The facts will out but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this secretive body – neither institutional fish nor fowl, with opaque responsibilities – gravely misjudged the speed of contagion long after the danger was obvious to virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists across the world, and indeed to anybody paying attention.

Why does it make sense to impose a two-week quarantine on foreign arrivals at this late stage (excluding Ireland and France), rather than having done so when imported cases were first causing an explosion of infections in a virgin host community?

Arriving passengers at the airport
All visitors to Britain will be ordered to isolate for 14 days in a bid to prevent a second wave of coronavirus Credit: Victoria Jones /PA
A Covid cardiologist at a top London hospital – friendly to Boris – has been so incensed by the daily charade of bogus omniscience that he vented his spleen in an email to me on Sunday night. It is a poignant indictment, so I pass along a few snippets.

Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made. He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.

“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.

“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes – and they didn’t (and still don’t). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor – denied GP visits – and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”

The public has yet to realise that the great quest for ventilators was worse than a red herring. The overuse of ventilators was itself killing people at a terrifying ratio and behind that lies another institutional failure.

“When the inquiry comes, it will show that many people died for lack of oxygen supply in hospitals, and this led to early intubation,” writes the doctor. “Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”

By all means let us clap our NHS staff but are we implicitly also being asked to clap the managerial and bureaucratic structure responsible for these policies? Is it henceforth taboo to raise a whisper of criticism against the edifice?

Downing Street has now gone “Korean” with apparent gusto, belatedly switching to testing/tracing/isolation. But when it pulls the policy levers, precious little seems to be happening. Bureaucratic inertia seems to thwart action.

“Where is the testing and contact tracing capacity we should have built?” asks my cardiologist friend. “Are there mass sampling systems to give daily infection figures in every ward of the country? No. Is there an army of contact tracers to act on the results? No. The advert to recruit tracers only went out today, incredibly. And only 15,000. At minimum wage.”

Yes, the R0 reproduction number has fallen to 0.6 or 0.7. Hurrah. But that in itself is not enough. The stock of infections must also be whittled down to a manageable level and the tracing apparatus must be in place.

We are not yet close to achieving a viable suppression strategy. That is why the Prime Minister could offer no more than partial and unsatisfying liberation on Sunday night.

“The striking thing is how consistently the government failed, in every single element of the response, everywhere you turn (the Army excepted),” writes the doctor. “This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country’s history.”

Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany – countries of greatly different wealth and different health defences – but instead it languishes in a lockdown limbo that is nearing the threshold of structural economic damage. The longer it lasts beyond six weeks or so, the greater the threat.

Other Western countries have failed too. Belgium is in the same boat. The Dutch don’t fully count care homes and community deaths. Thousands of Italian Covid-19 deaths slipped through the cracks and have not been recorded. Turmoil in New York matches London. Every nation faces the constant risk of a second wave.

Yet the UK is moving uncomfortably close to special status, with excess deaths above the seasonal average topping 42,000 up to April 24. It has undoubtedly surpassed 50,000 since then. We will breach 1,000 deaths per million before long, yet without reaching the safe uplands of herd immunity.

There is not much company – if any – at this Tibetan altitude. They are not all Covid deaths but they are all part of the Covid drama, all dating from the same original sin in February when the Government was asleep and temptress voices of behavioural theory went unchallenged.

These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.

"Temptress voices of behavioural theory". In a way, fair play

 

[clapham_gull]

Sky special report about care homes, aired tonight.

https://youtu.be/2xVeRwX5v9U

 

[Jim in the West]

In the last couple of weeks, the Tory-supporting Sunday Times, the Tory-supporting FT and, today, the Telegraph,.the Telegraph have put the boot in on the government. It won't be long before the Sun joins in.

I said a few weeks ago that Johnson wouldn't last till Christmas, I'm beginning to wonder whether he'll last till summer.

The FT has a more nuanced stance. They are a fiercely pro-Remain organ (even though you can argue that the Remain/Leave debate is done). They are pro-business, which doesn't necessarily mean pro-Tory. However, they've been putting the boot into the Tories for the last few years. They are particularly anti-Boris and all he stands for. Personally I love the FT - one of the few UK-based media organisations where you still get quality, fact-based journalism.

I think the approach of the Sunday Times and the Telegraph is much more interesting, however.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Yep, agree. Todays pro Tory Telegraph was scathing: Here's the full article (as its behind paywall):

The Government’s handling of Covid-19 is a very British disaster

-Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2020

The Tory party knows that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes
Claims by Downing Street and Public Health England that they ‘got it right’ cannot be allowed to stand

British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome. We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.

Boris Johnson is in a sense right to resist calls for a premature lifting of containment measures. The fissures within the four nations of the union would become dangerous if he did otherwise. This determination to see it through is becoming his Churchillian test but it is not the fight he expected and it does not obscure the long list of errors that led to this unhappy pass. There should never have been a lockdown in the first place.

The British public have been remarkably forgiving. Emmanuel Macron has on balance done slightly better yet faces a blizzard of abuse and reproach. The Tory party knows full well that indulgence in this country cannot last and that there will be an almighty reckoning when the political post mortem comes.

Just how bad that will be depends on how far we have progressed towards national immunity – and therefore whether the case fatality rate is at the higher or lower end of the scale – if we ever get antibody tests worth using.

Personally, I have been a “Koreanist” from the start. (Perhaps because my only grand-child is a Korean citizen, is safely in Seoul now, and I am biased). They had the advantage of the SARS epidemic as a trial run. Even so, they had to mobilise their testing, tracing, and isolating regime without warning in the middle of a storm yet never lost more than nine people in a single day.

The Koreans have never had a lockdown. They have suffered a big economic shock but not the sort of deep freeze seen in Europe. But leaving aside the East Asian success stories, there were other options for Western states that lacked the testing/tracing infrastructure.

Prostrate Greece has done better than this country by orders of magnitude despite a decade of economic depression and deep austerity cuts to health care, hospitals, and the social welfare system, as well as having to cope with the burden of seething migrant camps on the Aegean islands.

Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus. That is 14 deaths per million. The UK has just hit 472. The Greeks pulled this off by recognising the danger immediately and acting. Their lockdown was enforced by roadblocks and document checks. They are now well on their way back to commercial normality.

I have been silent on Covid-19 for a while. There was little to be gained from harrying the Government once it had abandoned the misadventure of herd immunity and was at least trying to get a grip. Much of the belated media onslaught is reflexive gotcha-journalism (where were they in February when the mistakes were made?), or hides an ideological agenda.

But claims by both Downing Street and Public Health England that they “got it right” cannot be allowed to stand. Nor can the pretence that each stage of the containment policy is being fed out at just right time and at just the right calibration under the Jupiterian guidance of behavioural theorists.

There was never anything to be gained from delaying the lockdown once the brushfire had slipped control due to lack of testing/tracing. Each three days of prevarication meant a doubling of the infection case load. It was to sink deeper into the quagmire. Nor did the SAGE committee ever have a sufficient grasp of the basic facts to fine-tune the timing, let alone to play God.

The facts will out but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this secretive body – neither institutional fish nor fowl, with opaque responsibilities – gravely misjudged the speed of contagion long after the danger was obvious to virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists across the world, and indeed to anybody paying attention.

Why does it make sense to impose a two-week quarantine on foreign arrivals at this late stage (excluding Ireland and France), rather than having done so when imported cases were first causing an explosion of infections in a virgin host community?

Arriving passengers at the airport
All visitors to Britain will be ordered to isolate for 14 days in a bid to prevent a second wave of coronavirus Credit: Victoria Jones /PA
A Covid cardiologist at a top London hospital – friendly to Boris – has been so incensed by the daily charade of bogus omniscience that he vented his spleen in an email to me on Sunday night. It is a poignant indictment, so I pass along a few snippets.

Basically, every mistake that could have been made, was made. He likened the care home policy to the Siege of Caffa in 1346, that grim chapter of the Black Death when a Mongol army catapulted plague-ridden bodies over the walls.

“Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’,” he wrote. “You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did. We discharged known, suspected, and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.

“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes – and they didn’t (and still don’t). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor – denied GP visits – and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”

The public has yet to realise that the great quest for ventilators was worse than a red herring. The overuse of ventilators was itself killing people at a terrifying ratio and behind that lies another institutional failure.

“When the inquiry comes, it will show that many people died for lack of oxygen supply in hospitals, and this led to early intubation,” writes the doctor. “Boris survived because they gave him oxygen. High flow oxygen wasn’t available as a treatment option for all patients.”

By all means let us clap our NHS staff but are we implicitly also being asked to clap the managerial and bureaucratic structure responsible for these policies? Is it henceforth taboo to raise a whisper of criticism against the edifice?

Downing Street has now gone “Korean” with apparent gusto, belatedly switching to testing/tracing/isolation. But when it pulls the policy levers, precious little seems to be happening. Bureaucratic inertia seems to thwart action.

“Where is the testing and contact tracing capacity we should have built?” asks my cardiologist friend. “Are there mass sampling systems to give daily infection figures in every ward of the country? No. Is there an army of contact tracers to act on the results? No. The advert to recruit tracers only went out today, incredibly. And only 15,000. At minimum wage.”

Yes, the R0 reproduction number has fallen to 0.6 or 0.7. Hurrah. But that in itself is not enough. The stock of infections must also be whittled down to a manageable level and the tracing apparatus must be in place.

We are not yet close to achieving a viable suppression strategy. That is why the Prime Minister could offer no more than partial and unsatisfying liberation on Sunday night.

“The striking thing is how consistently the government failed, in every single element of the response, everywhere you turn (the Army excepted),” writes the doctor. “This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country’s history.”

Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany – countries of greatly different wealth and different health defences – but instead it languishes in a lockdown limbo that is nearing the threshold of structural economic damage. The longer it lasts beyond six weeks or so, the greater the threat.

Other Western countries have failed too. Belgium is in the same boat. The Dutch don’t fully count care homes and community deaths. Thousands of Italian Covid-19 deaths slipped through the cracks and have not been recorded. Turmoil in New York matches London. Every nation faces the constant risk of a second wave.

Yet the UK is moving uncomfortably close to special status, with excess deaths above the seasonal average topping 42,000 up to April 24. It has undoubtedly surpassed 50,000 since then. We will breach 1,000 deaths per million before long, yet without reaching the safe uplands of herd immunity.

There is not much company – if any – at this Tibetan altitude. They are not all Covid deaths but they are all part of the Covid drama, all dating from the same original sin in February when the Government was asleep and temptress voices of behavioural theory went unchallenged.

These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.

It is interesting to see the boot put into Johnson by the Tory press (or at least little bits of it, I suspect other Torygraph writers might be a bit more kind but I don't really read it since it went behind paywall). However, this early lockdown / no lockdown comparison with other countries isn't consistent across the world. It is quite possible that it matters not only who you are but where you are.

As an example I give you this article regarding South Africa that I posted on the "when will this shit end" thread. They have had a massively strict lockdown (evening curfew, complete ban on the sale of fags and booze (imagine that here!)) and the actions of Ramaphosa have been largely popular.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52619308

And yet, right now, their cases are increasing massively and the graph on the article looks like "a peak". No explanation is offered on the article. Over the weekend I pointed out someone else's poor thinking when it came to causation versus correlation, so I need to be careful here but two things are true; firstly we are heading into SA winter and the bug MAY be seasonal, a la flu, secondly, actually enforcing such a strict lockdown in a large and often lawless country in unlikely to be wholly successful. Are criminal gangs flogging moonshine and fags round the back? Can you properly socially distance in an overcrowded township? And that's ONE country. I genuinely don't think you can say yet why Spain, Italy, Belgium and the UK have done "badly" and Greece has done "well".

It sounds like I'm defending Johnson though and I'm not really. He famously doesn't do detail. That would be bad enough but he was also AWOL for much of the peak. Bit harsh blaming a man for nearly dying isn't it. Come on GB, you're beyond the pale. Except the ****wit spent more or less all day of March 3rd shaking hands with CV victims and then went on telly and bragged about it while Vallance quietly facepalmed in the background.

So as much as "listen to the science" has been repeated ad nauseam the government really hasn't. For much of the crisis they have been led by Cummings, Patel and Raab, three uber libertarians without a medical bone in their bodies.

So what am I saying. Well, IMHO, we could have handled this crisis far better, particularly when it comes to things like PPE and the care home scandal, as well as who was actually running things at times. And the new advice *is* muddled. Stay alert? How the hell does that protect you from a ****ing invisible virus?

But to simply compare lockdown strategies is wrong. Sweden has not done as badly as us. Belgium has. Greece may be a success story but, as we're seeing in that link above, South Africans may have suffered the toughest lockdown of all for nothing.

 

[Gwylan]

The FT has a more nuanced stance. They are a fiercely pro-Remain organ (even though you can argue that the Remain/Leave debate is done). They are pro-business, which doesn't necessarily mean pro-Tory. However, they've been putting the boot into the Tories for the last few years. They are particularly anti-Boris and all he stands for. Personally I love the FT - one of the few UK-based media organisations where you still get quality, fact-based journalism.

I think the approach of the Sunday Times and the Telegraph is much more interesting, however.

Yes, that's all true but when it comes to general elections, they still opt for the Tories - that's what I meant by Tory supporting.

But to simply compare lockdown strategies is wrong. Sweden has not done as badly as us. Belgium has.

That's a bit misleading: we're currently fourth in deaths per capita, Sweden is sixth (so while they are behind us, it's only just - and their death rate is continuing to rise, while ours is falling). Belgium is a bit misleading because they treated all suspected deaths as Covid-19 related so, as opposed to the UK, their figure is artificially high. If the ONS is correct and the UK's actual number of deaths is around 50,000 to 55,000 - then we're probably on par with Belgium

 

[Guinness Boy]

Yes, that's all true but when it comes to general elections, they still opt for the Tories - that's what I meant by Tory supporting.



That's a bit misleading: we're currently fourth in deaths per capita, Sweden is sixth (so while they are behind us, it's only just - and their death rate is continuing to rise, while ours is falling). Belgium is a bit misleading because they treated all suspected deaths as Covid-19 related so, as opposed to the UK, their figure is artificially high. If the ONS is correct and the UK's actual number of deaths is around 50,000 to 55,000 - then we're probably on par with Belgium

I think that more proves my point. If no two countries are reporting the number of cases and deaths in the same way then you cannot statistically compare the success of their lockdowns.

I'd still rather focus on the tangible. People in care homes have been effectively murdered. PPE has been in woeful supply and the government have lied about it (that Turkey shipment they said had landed took days and was then sub-standard when it got here) and Boris was asleep at the wheel thanks to ***kwittery, handing the country to people barely out of ministerial nappies. Factoids. But I don't blame the way he's handled lockdowns as any more than a small contributing factor (and, as we saw with the initial rush to second homes and the congaing on VE Day the Great British public have ignored it anyway).

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I have gone from superb to average and that is being generous. I think the bloke is not the same since he got ill. He looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him and all his confidence has gone

 

[ManOfSussex]

A disappointing turnout for your poll so far hopefully it's nothing personal .... I wonder if the 83 people who voted very poor/poor in your poll graphic are amongst the same as the 84 that voted very poor/poor in the first poll and would vote the same in any circumstances, shirley not.

The Conservative and Unionist Party is polling surprisingly well considering all the difficulties handling the current crisis. It's almost like the social media sh*tstorm surrounding the government's performance isn't particularly representative of the wider public mood ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

I'm with you now Footy Genius. We've all just got to back Britain and believe in Boris to get Covid-19 done. Then once no lockdown is better than a bad lockdown, we can all get on with the important things like delivering the exact NHS that the people voted for by the end of transition on March 30th and funding our Brexit means Brexit instead.

I hope you're okay anyway. Remember - only work from home if absolutely necessary, control The NHS, stay at the shops and always protect 2 metres apart with a open window made from an old T-Shirt and some scissors.

More information can be found here - https://www.gov.ua/ & https://www.michaelgove.com/

 

[Gwylan]

I think that more proves my point. If no two countries are reporting the number of cases and deaths in the same way then you cannot statistically compare the success of their lockdowns.

I'd still rather focus on the tangible. People in care homes have been effectively murdered. PPE has been in woeful supply and the government have lied about it (that Turkey shipment they said had landed took days and was then sub-standard when it got here) and Boris was asleep at the wheel thanks to ***kwittery, handing the country to people barely out of ministerial nappies. Factoids. But I don't blame the way he's handled lockdowns as any more than a small contributing factor (and, as we saw with the initial rush to second homes and the congaing on VE Day the Great British public have ignored it anyway).

Yes, it's a fair point that it's hard to compare rates - there are big discrepancies (although when there are more accurate figures, the UK is going to be lower) and there may be further waves to come.

But I would blame for the way that lockdown have been handled. First of all, he was late - other countries had implemented strict lockdowns and he hadn't. It was impossible for Atletico Madrid supporters to go to a match in Spain but it was all right for them to hop on a plane and come to Anfield - that was bonkers.

Second, yes people dashed to second homes ... and that was ignored. Why was Robert Jenrick not sacked when he was caught doing it? That would have given a strong message. The answer of course is that Johnson had sauntered off to Chequers himself. It's wonder that the British public ignore messages if cabinet ministers do.

Finally, why did the government give an off-the-record briefing to papers saying the lockdown was going to be lifted just a few days before a sunny bank holiday? What did they think was going to happen?

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

I have gone from superb to average and that is being generous. I think the bloke is not the same since he got ill. He looks like he has had the stuffing knocked out of him and all his confidence has gone

The specialists say it takes time to recover. He doesn't seem well. How can he keep his concentration all day for all the meetings he needs to attend.

We always needed more than confidence mind you.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Yes, it's a fair point that it's hard to compare rates - there are big discrepancies (although when there are more accurate figures, the UK is going to be lower) and there may be further waves to come.

But I would blame for the way that lockdown have been handled. First of all, he was late - other countries had implemented strict lockdowns and he hadn't. It was impossible for Atletico Madrid supporters to go to a match in Spain but it was all right for them to hop on a plane and come to Anfield - that was bonkers.

Second, yes people dashed to second homes ... and that was ignored. Why was Robert Jenrick not sacked when he was caught doing it? That would have given a strong message. The answer of course is that Johnson had sauntered off to Chequers himself. It's wonder that the British public ignore messages if cabinet ministers do.

Finally, why did the government give an off-the-record briefing to papers saying the lockdown was going to be lifted just a few days before a sunny bank holiday? What did they think was going to happen?

OK, good points. I don't necessarily disagree (Boris going to Chequers was a disgrace) but I would add that they were also briefing about lockdown starting the weekend before it did. I think this was in the psychological reaction phase and it did cause people to stay in and distance more in the two days before official lockdown. On the Thursday before I was in my office in London. I manage a team and I took them out for lunch on the premise it would be the last time for a good long while. Over that weekend I got a message from a source I trust saying the lockdown was coming and it would be jaw dropping (arguably it wasn't).

But, in hindsight, even this caused confusion. My wife runs training courses that are normally done face to face. They were already on a plan to transform them to Zoom, but could not fully enact it until Johnson had spoken, even though everyone knew what was coming. That was quite a busy night in the household!

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Yes, it's a fair point that it's hard to compare rates - there are big discrepancies (although when there are more accurate figures, the UK is going to be lower) and there may be further waves to come.

But I would blame for the way that lockdown have been handled. First of all, he was late - other countries had implemented strict lockdowns and he hadn't. It was impossible for Atletico Madrid supporters to go to a match in Spain but it was all right for them to hop on a plane and come to Anfield - that was bonkers.

Second, yes people dashed to second homes ... and that was ignored. Why was Robert Jenrick not sacked when he was caught doing it? That would have given a strong message. The answer of course is that Johnson had sauntered off to Chequers himself. It's wonder that the British public ignore messages if cabinet ministers do.

Finally, why did the government give an off-the-record briefing to papers saying the lockdown was going to be lifted just a few days before a sunny bank holiday? What did they think was going to happen?

Stanley Johnson travelling up from Somerset to see his new grandson, and Dominic Cummings visiting his parents in Durham. Both done last weekend.

 

[beorhthelm]

...But, in hindsight, even this caused confusion. My wife runs training courses that are normally done face to face. They were already on a plan to transform them to Zoom, but could not fully enact it until Johnson had spoken, even though everyone knew what was coming. That was quite a busy night in the household!

couldnt they changed to online training anyway? this is sort of thing thats on us, people, managers etc. to just make a decision. we dont need government to tell us to change how we conduct our business. our company went into soft lockdown the week before the official announcment, the business took view its better to work from home and directed everyone to do so.

 

[Guinness Boy]

couldnt they changed to online training anyway? this is sort of thing thats on us, people, managers etc. to just make a decision. we dont need government to tell us to change how we conduct our business. our company went into soft lockdown the week before the official announcment, the business took view its better to work from home and directed everyone to do so.

No. When you have people booked onto a face to face course that have paid for it you would have to offer a refund if it was cancelled. Like many other organisations they were not in a position to refund or close down until the government put in place actual lockdown laws.

 

[peterward]

It is interesting to see the boot put into Johnson by the Tory press (or at least little bits of it, I suspect other Torygraph writers might be a bit more kind but I don't really read it since it went behind paywall). However, this early lockdown / no lockdown comparison with other countries isn't consistent across the world. It is quite possible that it matters not only who you are but where you are.

As an example I give you this article regarding South Africa that I posted on the "when will this shit end" thread. They have had a massively strict lockdown (evening curfew, complete ban on the sale of fags and booze (imagine that here!)) and the actions of Ramaphosa have been largely popular.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52619308

And yet, right now, their cases are increasing massively and the graph on the article looks like "a peak". No explanation is offered on the article. Over the weekend I pointed out someone else's poor thinking when it came to causation versus correlation, so I need to be careful here but two things are true; firstly we are heading into SA winter and the bug MAY be seasonal, a la flu, secondly, actually enforcing such a strict lockdown in a large and often lawless country in unlikely to be wholly successful. Are criminal gangs flogging moonshine and fags round the back? Can you properly socially distance in an overcrowded township? And that's ONE country. I genuinely don't think you can say yet why Spain, Italy, Belgium and the UK have done "badly" and Greece has done "well".

It sounds like I'm defending Johnson though and I'm not really. He famously doesn't do detail. That would be bad enough but he was also AWOL for much of the peak. Bit harsh blaming a man for nearly dying isn't it. Come on GB, you're beyond the pale. Except the ****wit spent more or less all day of March 3rd shaking hands with CV victims and then went on telly and bragged about it while Vallance quietly facepalmed in the background.

So as much as "listen to the science" has been repeated ad nauseam the government really hasn't. For much of the crisis they have been led by Cummings, Patel and Raab, three uber libertarians without a medical bone in their bodies.

So what am I saying. Well, IMHO, we could have handled this crisis far better, particularly when it comes to things like PPE and the care home scandal, as well as who was actually running things at times. And the new advice *is* muddled. Stay alert? How the hell does that protect you from a ****ing invisible virus?

But to simply compare lockdown strategies is wrong. Sweden has not done as badly as us. Belgium has. Greece may be a success story but, as we're seeing in that link above, South Africans may have suffered the toughest lockdown of all for nothing.

Very balanced and objective reply GB

fwiw if you're interested, I've never bought the Telegraph, but read it and and a lot of other newspapers free with "pressreader" app on both apple and Android. http://www.pressreader.com it has just about every national and regional newspaper and 1000's of categorised magazines. It's usually £27 odd per month, but you can get completely free sponsored access if you have a library card from some library areas (not all) they have a library card sign in which makes it (and all conceivable publications) free.....

West Sussex library card is one of those who offer free sponsored access.

https://care.pressreader.com/hc/en-us/articles/211272703-Library-Card-Sign-In?mobile_site=true

I'm East Sussex, but my dad is in Worthing so I used his library card number and every paper full edition is all free.

If your West Sussex resident or know someone who is obtain West Sussex library card (or use another's number) and voila Daily Telegraph! And every newspaper and magazine you can think of is available at no cost!

 

[Guinness Boy]

Very balanced and objective reply GB

fwiw if you're interested, I've never bought the Telegraph, but read it and and a lot of other newspapers free with "pressreader" app on both apple and Android. http://www.pressreader.com it has just about every national and regional newspaper and 1000's of categorised magazines. It's usually £27 odd per month, but you can get completely free sponsored access if you have a library card from some library areas (not all) they have a library card sign in which makes it (and all conceivable publications) free.....

West Sussex library card is one of those who offer free sponsored access.

https://care.pressreader.com/hc/en-us/articles/211272703-Library-Card-Sign-In?mobile_site=true

I'm East Sussex, but my dad is in Worthing so I used his library card number and every paper full edition is all free.

If your West Sussex resident or know someone who is obtain West Sussex library card (or use another's number) and voila Daily Telegraph! And every newspaper and magazine you can think of is available at no cost!

Very interesting. Back in the day The Telegraph had one of the best sports desks in the business and I regularly took part in their fantasy cricket. A lot to do with our own Paul Hayward perhaps, who I heard is leaving. I read other bits and pieces too and it's fair to say I didn't always agree with their opinion writers, but it's always good to know what others think. I can't imagine a world where I ONLY read The Guardian so Pressreader would be useful. I used to sometimes read The Times (I know, Murdoch, boo hiss) on the train in the morning for the same sorts of reasons.

 

[Titanic]

Has "forensic" started trending on NSC yet today?