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Awol

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Everything posted by Awol

  1. His survival has definitely irked quite a few people.
  2. Now I understand what happened to the “absolutely nothing to do with China, virus” thread.
  3. As dumb as the Brits suggesting Johnson wasn’t really ill and faked the whole thing - including the Europe Editor of the Economist! Deranged people.
  4. Of the 300,000 applications made by businesses for Covid business interruptions loans (through Treasury scheme), the banks have only approved 4,200 in almost four weeks of operation ~ per Sophie Ridge on Sky. The banks are not playing their part very well (quelle surprise) and weeks have been lost that should have been used to save 1000s, maybe 10s of 1000s businesses. Monday the Treasury need to be finding another vehicle for lending, I reckon the banks will sit on every penny they can to try and ride out the coming storm - while paying lip service to saving the economy.
  5. Out of interest... were all those 100s of 1000s of life-long Labour voters who just voted Tory actually heartless mongrels all along? Or is it possible these caricatured generalisations don’t really exist outside your own imagination?
  6. Boris’ new video statement on twitter has very much the look of a bloke who just walked away from a car wreck not really knowing how he’s still alive. If he was ever going to have an epiphany about public services, it doesn’t hurt to have received it while he’s got 5 yrs to push as PM and the majority to do something about it.
  7. Same, No.2 son picked it up at nursery early December and was ill for about 4 days, then wife and I both had it, her for about 2 weeks and me for 5-6 weeks - also no drinks on Christmas Day! Couldn’t shake it off for ages and cough persisted into Feb. I wondered if we’d had it, but she pointed out if it was spreading widely then the pneumonia cases would be been hitting our hospitals at the same time, which they obviously didn’t. Think it was just a nasty winter flu bug, unfortunately.
  8. I haven’t the first clue mate. The level 4 bio-security research lab is definitely there in Wuhan, but as to what was going on inside you’d need a job with a 3 letter agency to answer. Chances are they aren’t clear on that either.
  9. For sure. I’m not absolving our lot for a minute, but we need to remember how, why and where this started, including the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party in making it exponentially worse.
  10. Agree with the first part, but the bit in bold has been a major part of the problem. China behaved appalling, literally lying to the WHO in late Jan about human to human transmission, and clearly lying about their death rates giving public health professionals a false picture of what they were dealing with.
  11. That’s my take, too. I think they executed our pandemic flu plan perfectly. When this virus turned out to be far more serious than flu, the path-dependency established by the early response measures was hard to turn around, i.e. it was already too late. That, combined with the failure of Cameron and Osborne to learn the lessons of the 2016 exercise has put is in a bad place. I hope those two cop for a greater amount of personal blame in the inquiry than was pinned on Blair by the Chilcot Report. Any politician suggesting more ‘austerity’ coming out this mess should be immediately strung up.
  12. Still noticing two things the medical briefers are saying during daily press conferences that the press miss completely: first we’re still in the early stages of the pandemic, and second they are trying to slow the rate of infection so the NHS can cope. They are not trying to eradicate the virus but let it burn more slowly. The casualty rate top trumps seems a bit premature at this point, everything indicates this bring a long haul. I’d be very surprised if that only applies to the UK.
  13. 19 NHS staff have died as of yesterday. I didn’t know that number until it was announced by Matt Hancock, at a press conference. Is that what ‘hiding in plain sight’ means?
  14. Awol

    U.S. Politics

    Im not sure that’s right. Instead of having an internal debate about what they got wrong and how to fix it, they’ve focused on the “orange man bad” narrative (obviously true but also irrelevant) and attempts to discredit him, rather than make themselves credible. That’s my take anyway - no expert on the US centre-right party!
  15. Yes exactly, was saying I hope they have accurate and current figures from internal reporting to use for their own modelling.
  16. Eh? I’d imagine that as part of standard reporting hospitals would record and submit the figures for who has died and of what on a daily basis to the ministry. As long as that’s happening the MoH will have a pretty accurate set of figures to do their real time modelling, which was my point.
  17. Awol

    U.S. Politics

    I don’t understand how the Democrats got themselves into a position where they were choosing between Sanders and Biden. ‘Ole Joe isn’t mentally fit and Sanders wasn’t electable nationally. Can’t help thinking they’d have been better off concentrating on getting a decent candidate rather than an impeachment that was never getting through the Senate anyway. Trump will monster Biden in the debates, horribly. It’s like they‘ve learned nothing from the Clinton disaster.
  18. Just on how sketchy the NHS figures are for giving accurate daily totals, BBC reporting 720 of the deaths announced today occurred between the 1st and the 8th of April. Won’t make any difference in the final totals, but in terms of tracking the curve/peak situation you’d hope they have the real figures to hand - rather than those they can officially release once the administrative hurdles are crossed.
  19. No democracy is also a police state, no police state is also a democracy. The two ideas are mutually exclusive.
  20. Not a goer. Was only stopped under Blair last time when MI6 pointed out it would compromise all of their NOC agents. Nothing has changed on that front, this is just news creation services from Sky Views.
  21. Genuinely think they got caught out by the Chinese test scam (like many other countries), but the desperation to say something positive made them reckless. As someone else said, it’s always over-promise and under-deliver. Not a good combo. The strategic communication has been dogs**t from day one and that’s entirely on them.
  22. Antibody tests. No one has millions of antibody tests.
  23. 1) it’s not here yet, and 2) the answer was in the other part of the post you quoted from. In my view they’re doing the best they can now with the situation in front of them, but as I’ve posted repeatedly in this thread... the shortages in ventilation and PPE were highlighted in the 2016 pandemic exercise and instead of addressing those the Cameron government buried the report. Johnson will be judged on the corners cut after this is over because the music stopped on his watch so he is ultimately responsible. That’s right and proper. The inquiry will come. Careers will be killed. I thought the advice they were getting not to introduce border closures/mass quarantine for incoming travellers in combination with early social distancing were crazy. I said as much on here and took my own kids out of school 10 days before the closures came in. I don’t think Johnson, the CMO, SAGE or anyone else has acted in bad faith but they have made serious mistakes - in my unqualified opinion. Having been caught out with insufficient stocks of PPE they are now involved in the intergovernmental knife fight as countries scrap to get what they need at each other’s expense. There’s a finite manufacturing base for this kit and those who own it are looking to their own needs first. Fair enough. I’m not criticising government for failing to deliver tests that haven’t been invented yet (ones that work), or other things that aren’t currently within their gift. The mistakes we are living with now are baked in from previous administrations, so where they are trying to rectify them I don’t see the harm in at least acknowledging that.
  24. Very decent of the Bundeswehr and every little helps, but the requirement defined by government was about 8000 units. The only way we can get hold of those numbers quickly is to build them ourselves, not from the open market where everyone is competing. The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium is the best chance of meeting anticipated demand (or most of it). The Dyson and Babcock ventilators will put us miles over the top for capacity if and when there’s a second peak - like the extra field hospitals that won’t be ready for the first peak but will for the second. The government needs to focus now on getting manufacturers converted to making PPE, which is in similarly short supply globally.
  25. Boris is going to turn down the chance of a lifetime to deflect blame.
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