Generic Virus Thread

[mjmooney]

19 hours ago, Awol said:

Fine.

The UK government isn’t doing very well. Lots of people have died. If they’d acted sooner it’s likely fewer people would have died. Boris is a bad man. No one has posted this information before so it shouldn’t resemble 60% of other posts in this thread, with slight alterations in grammar.

Permission to post about something now, Sir? 

In other words, "You've been allowed your little leftie whinge, now you have to shut up and support the establishment". 

No. 

[markavfc40]

18 minutes ago, PaulC said:

True but life is depressing enough so I have no problems with a newspaper reporting something positive 

I'd rather they focused on real heroes then and report on a nurse or doctor who has recovered after actually needing to go on a ventilator or maybe go with a photo of a baby who survived whilst the mother died of coronavirus.

Johnson is being portrayed as some kind of hero by these rags. Given he didn't need ventilation it seems he survived symptoms that thousands of people have had to cope with coming through at home.

I do get it though and it is zero surprise. These are distractions most likely orchestrated by Cummings. Release a photo of Johnsons latest child, give an interview about how plans were made to announce your death. All at the same time the country you are leading has the highest death toll in Europe and is heading for highest death rate in the world.

Edited May 3, 2020 by markavfc40

[bannedfromHandV]

3 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I'd rather they focused on real heroes then and report on a nurse or doctor who has recovered after actually needing to go on a ventilator or maybe go with a photo of a baby who survived whilst the mother died of coronavirus.

Johnson is being portrayed as some kind of hero by these rags. Given he didn't need ventilation it seems he survived symptoms that thousands of people have had to cope with coming though at home.

I do get it though and it is zero surprise. These are distractions most likely orchestrated by Cummings so release a photo of Johnsons latest child, give an interview about how plans were made to announce your death. All at the same time the country you are leading has the highest death toll in Europe and is heading for highest death rate in the world.

Exactly.

 

[PaulC]

1 minute ago, markavfc40 said:

I'd rather they focused on real heroes then and report on a nurse or doctor who has recovered after actually needing to go on a ventilator or maybe go with a photo of a baby who survived whilst the mother died of coronavirus.

Johnson is being portrayed as some kind of hero by these rags. Given he didn't need ventilation it seems he survived symptoms that thousands of people have had to cope with coming though at home.

I do get it though and it is zero surprise. These are distractions most likely orchestrated by Cummings so release a photo of Johnsons latest child, give an interview about how plans were made to announce your death. All at the same time the country you are leading has the highest death toll in Europe and is heading for highest death rate in the world.

Yes I agree to be honest I couldn’t care less about him having a child. I’m glad he recovered because I don’t want anyone to die. They’ve got to be made accountable after all this is over. I am shocked that the amount of new cases are so high over the last two days. I know they have stepped up the testing big time but something is going wrong people aren’t respecting the social distancing anymore. I see it where I live, groups of people together drinking and having barbecues. 

[VILLAMARV]

Watching a documentary on netflix called 'crip camp'.

There's a bit where Nixon vetoed a bill on disabled rights based on cost vs amount of people it affected. 

Mrsvm just turned to me and said, this is the same shit they are spouting about coronavirus.

[blandy]

9 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

In other words, "You've been allowed your little leftie whinge, now you have to shut up and support the establishment". 

No. 

It's not, or shouldn't be, party political at all in terms of at least half the "story". The questions in the surveys they've been asking people "do you approve or disapprove of the way the government has handled the pandemic" is sort of fascinating, because there's layers to the answer, but the survey just says approve/disapprove.

I mean that there's where we started from, and that is political - as a result of political decisions to make swingeing cuts over the last decade, plus the lunatic focus on no deal Brexit planning, we started off with a weak infrastructure - NHS, PPE, all the rest. Terrible.

The second part is how quickly the gov't acted following WHO warnings and the situation in Italy etc. Again, terrible, but less political, more absence of competence of individuals.

The third part is given the first 2 failings, how has the gov't then acted, and here it's arguably not too bad at all. They have done "OK". With testing, the Nightingale hospitals, Cash for businesses and workers and what have you. They've clearly effed up other areas, and they've clearly lied and weaselled about things, too. No government anywhere has got everything right, though a handful have been outstanding, but back to point 1, they also had better starting points.

So I kind of think the most political aspect is the starting point the UK had - the consequence of the Tory's decisions over a decade. The second part is about the fitness of the current individuals to take wise decisions, and that's been lacking when it mattered. The third part, about ability to get the system working to address the mess, is where it's gone best - and that's the area where people and organisations outside the government have been the drivers of much of the action and implementation.

I wonder if the survey responses sort of focus on the third area, and leave the first 2 areas out of the thinking of a lot of people.

Not really a response to you Mike, you just got me typing. 

[Awol]

18 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

In other words, "You've been allowed your little leftie whinge, now you have to shut up and support the establishment". 

No. 

Eh? The point was about being allowed to post something that wasn’t the same as 60% of all posts on this thread.

I don’t disagree with the attacks on government incompetence at all, but they’re not the only thing related to Covid worth discussing. 

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, Awol said:

Eh? The point was about being allowed to post something that wasn’t the same as 60% of all posts on this thread.

I don’t disagree with the attacks on government incompetence at all, but they’re not the only thing related to Covid worth discussing. 

Yeah, there was absolutely nothing wrong with your post on this and the conversation since has been baffling.

[HanoiVillan]

Talking about people not rating the government though, kind of weird how out of tune with the polling the Gogglebox participants are:

 

[Awol]

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Yeah, there was absolutely nothing wrong with your post on this and the conversation since has been baffling.

I think the gist is that if you deviate from a certain line (the government are crap) by pointing out and discussing the Chinese cover-up, for example, it’s interpreted by more partisan posters as somehow seeking to distract from things the UK has got wrong. 

Like saying “voting to leave the EU was voting to be ruled by China”. The two things are artificially joined together to try and make a political point. It’s pretty inane stuff. 

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, Awol said:

I think the gist is that if you deviate from a certain line (the government are crap) by pointing out and discussing the Chinese cover-up, for example, it’s interpreted by more partisan posters as somehow seeking to distract from things the UK has got wrong. 

Like saying “voting to leave the EU was voting to be ruled by China”. The two things are artificially joined together to try and make a political point. It’s pretty inane stuff. 

The bolded is the issue though. It can clearly both be true - in fact it is - that the British government have handled the crisis terribly, *and* that the Chinese government covered it up initially.

I think I'm a pretty 'partisan' poster myself, but we have to be able to talk about more than one thing at a time.

[chrisp65]

58 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

@chrisp65 having an extremely busy day at his new job then :

 

 

It’s the timing of it that made it so much funnier. I did congratulate them last night on their late night drunken tweets. Much better than their timid daytime sober tweets.

It would be such an easy game to grow a pair and have the first minister read up on what his powers actually cover, rather than waiting for Labour London HQ to tell him what to do.

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

One thing about this pandemic that doesn't get enough attention is how arbitrary the spread is. Thailand recorded the first case outside China, and then did nothing at all to stem the flow of Chinese tourists, yet has had a small outbreak. Iraq is another country - poor, terrible healthcare system - that had an outbreak early in the crisis that hasn't turned in to much. Maybe that sounds like climate, but why has Cuba had a tiny outbreak while the Dominican Republic has had a big one? The NYT has quite a good article today looking at five possible reasons for the weird discrepancies in how countries and regions are hit: demographics, 'cultural distance', climate, time of lockdown and pure chance, and they find them all wanting to some extent:

The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?

'The coronavirus has killed so many people in Iran that the country has resorted to mass burials, but in neighboring Iraq, the body count is fewer than 100.

The Dominican Republic has reported nearly 7,600 cases of the virus. Just across the border, Haiti has recorded about 85.

In Indonesia, thousands are believed to have died of the coronavirus. In nearby Malaysia, a strict lockdown has kept fatalities to about 100.

The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.

The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left others relatively untouched is a puzzle that has spawned numerous theories and speculations but no definitive answers. That knowledge could have profound implications for how countries respond to the virus, for determining who is at risk and for knowing when it’s safe to go out again.'

more on link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/world/asia/coronavirus-spread-where-why.html

[foreveryoung]

Strange we have heard nothing from Russia.

[VILLAMARV]

5 hours ago, snowychap said:

 

So you're saying opinion polls say different things depending on the political views of the news organisation that commissioned them?

No way.

Who'd have thought it.

[VILLAMARV]

4 hours ago, Straggler said:

When the scientific evidence can be altered to suit your policy wants your country is FUBAR.

What about when your entire society is built upon the fallacies of social sciences?

[HanoiVillan]

23 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Strange we have heard nothing from Russia.

It's been a really big outbreak, with more than 130,000 cases. I agree with you that it doesn't seem to have been mentioned much in the news.

[Jareth]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

I think the gist is that if you deviate from a certain line (the government are crap) by pointing out and discussing the Chinese cover-up, for example, it’s interpreted by more partisan posters as somehow seeking to distract from things the UK has got wrong. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Like saying “voting to leave the EU was voting to be ruled by China”. The two things are artificially joined together to try and make a political point. It’s pretty inane stuff. 

The thing is with this (example) Brexit was sold as one thing and planned by those selling it as another thing entirely. The sides doing the selling never advertise the downsides (obviously). That goes for remain as well as leave, (in this example). And because the actual actions have consequences, and those consequences are if not wholly, then at least in part, entirely predictable, what most people voted for under some slogans (either way) and what they get are not only different, but predictably different. It was always going to be the case that as links and trade etc. with the EU would reduce, then they would have to increase to compensate (to some extent), with the likes of the USA, China and so on. There was an element of that in the "selling" of Brexit, but only an element. It was sold as "we can trade, as an independent nation, with the whole world, unrestrained by EU red tape and beaurocracy, while keeping all our trade and links with the EU" - the reality is that this is bollex on multiple levels. In doing trade with anyone you lose some sovereignty - you have to meet their standards and rules, submit to their ethics. With the EU, our and theirs were the same, with us and China or the US they are already different, and have been getting more so because of Trump and because of China's aggressive expansionism.

As to how this plays out with the Covi pandemic, well we've seen how China's government is fundamentally dishonest to its core. Its system is set up to be that way. it's a monolithic, undemocratic (far, far, more so than the EU) control freak, actively involved in human rights abuses, widespread IPR theft, industrial espionage, cyber-hacking, disinformation and so on. The virus has brought some of that out into the public eye a bit more, but it was entirely certain that leaving the EU would/will lead to a need to submit more to Chinese influence.

[snowychap]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Talking about people not rating the government though, kind of weird how out of tune with the polling the Gogglebox participants are:

 

I like C4's new current affairs programme.

Suck on that Peston and Keunssberg.