Coronavirus

[ardcarp]

There was recently an EXCELLENT programme on BBC World Serivice in their 'Forum' series.
Three experts* (contributing from different countries) talked mainly about the effects of the Spanish Flu 1918 pandemic, but compared it with our own Covid crisis.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjv8

An interesting fact, en passant, was that Lenin introduced the first ever free national health service!

* One, a Norwegian, chaired last years WHO committee which warned of pandemics.

[MrGongGong]

If the choice is between repeated national lockdowns, or targetted local measures, isn’t checking what is in place for wherever we travel, and checking where the borders are , a reasonable price to pay ?

The senior members of the Tory party in here would be a "reasonable" price to pay IMV
It will make the crops grow and heal the nation. The "science" is as credible as much of what comes out of Whitehall (and it's part of our long tradition of blood sacrifice). But who is to be Lord Summerisle ?



and i'm sure everyone in here knows the song

[Count Boso]

Well at least 'Stay alert' is grammatically correct, unlike 'Stay home'.

Idioms don't have to be grammatical, do they? 'Go home'? But in both cases 'home' is an adverb meaning to or in your home.

As for Stay Alert' - I see Nicola Sturgeon says she'll stick with #StayHome/SaveLives for Scotland - and England may do as it pleases.

[oddoneout]

As far as I can see whatever the PM chooses to say this evening has no significance in terms of what the public will do. The 'Stay(at) Home' message has gone is what people will have seen from the media this morning and that is what will be acted on or indeed has already been, judging by what I saw in my neck of the woods yesterday.
It's difficult to know what is incompetence and what is deliberate.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Idioms don't have to be grammatical, do they? 'Go home'? But in both cases 'home' is an adverb meaning to or in your home.

As for Stay Alert' - I see Nicola Sturgeon says she'll stick with #StayHome/SaveLives for Scotland - and England may do as it pleases.

Channel 4 has changed 'Stay Home' to StayAtHome.

[MrGongGong]

It's difficult to know what is incompetence and what is deliberate.

Getting drunk and shagging a work colleague = incompetence
Walking out on your wife after she was diagnosed with cancer = deliberate
Going to court to try and prevent the truth about your behaviour coming out and taking responsibility for your recklessness = deliberate

Is this what you are referring to ?


One could add (for balance)

Deliberately sticking to a party leader who has no credibility and refuses to say what he thinks about the most important issue of the day = incompetence (and probably deliberate as well)

Ahh well
The rain has come which will help the allotment

[Dave2002]

In any case, I'm not sure that the figures for countries' deaths v population are on their own any more meaningful than the raw 'number of deaths' on their own. Population distribution and density, percentage urban population, median age, geography etc all have to be factored in when considering the number of deaths. The UK being an island should theoretically be able to contain a spreading outbreak more easily than contiguous countries, or places like N. Korea where guards have been given orders to shoot anyone seen attempting to cross the border into the country.

Yes - up to a point. There is no real point in doing international comparisons if we are not going to either benefit from them, or pass on our findings to other countries. The graph which is usually shown "demonstrates" that the USA is in a worse situation than almost any other country that we know about - but if it's done with a proportionate scale, then the rankings change quite considerably. That is useful in so far as it might make us think about what the different countries have done, which gives them these different outcomes. It's not a competition that any country really wants to win.

Sometimes one wonders whether the politicians really want to concern themselves with trying to solve and overcome the problems, or merely to present a view and deflect criticism to others.

Unfortunately it does seem to be the case that some sections of the UK population will be more susceptible to this disease, and have a much greater risk of dying or bcoming seriously ill. Up to now, even with the somewhat flawed messaging, and uncertain (mostly because of newness) science, the risks have been reduced. Is it very selfish and undesirable for older and vulnerable people to curb the activities of younger people who may already have had CV-19 and feel that they are immune from going out and "having fun", because it may significantly increase their own personal chances of affliction? Or is it very selfish of the younger people who act in such ways that other people really are going to suffer - and probably in the fairly near short term.

Note that although many older people are more susceptible, that younger people have been ill, and died, and now we hear that even a young baby died of this disease.

The herd immunity strategy would be OK if it were going to work, but all the evidence to date is that despite the virus being a nasty disease, and easily transmissable, that there aren't enough cases for such immunity to build up in a short time, and its lethal nature seems not to have abated. Even if there are 20,000 new cases per day (estimated and quoted somewhere recently), if that rate is fairly constant, it would take 50 days for a million people to be infected, and thus around 3500 days for a population of nearly 70 million people to have been exposed once each.That's around 9-10 years. Herd immunity wouldn't build up until a significant proportion of the population had experienced the disease - or that's my understanding anyway.

Of course, relaxing all measures could get the new cases per day up in a short time, but the health service would be swamped very quickly, and that would really not be desirable at all, IMO.

[Padraig]

Channel 4 has changed 'Stay Home' to StayAtHome.

Slogan Alert!

[ardcarp]

Stay (at) home.
Play (the) piano.

Why am I reminded of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lczHvB3Y9s

[Count Boso]

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick [he who … ] has defended the government's change in messaging from "stay at home" to "stay alert" ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's lockdown speech later.

So what does "Stay Alert mean, Mr J? "Stay alert will mean stay alert by staying home as much as possible."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52605819

So, what then is the difference between "Stay alert" and "Stay home"? While at home, do not doze off?

[Petrushka]

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick [he who … ] has defended the government's change in messaging from "stay at home" to "stay alert" ahead of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's lockdown speech later.

So what does "Stay Alert mean, Mr J? "Stay alert will mean stay alert by staying home as much as possible."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52605819

So, what then is the difference between "Stay alert" and "Stay home"? While at home, do not doze off?

When the inevitable second wave comes the Government can blame 'the will of the people' instead of their own failings. Shifting the blame.

What is clear, however, is that somehow before too long there is going to have to be a trade off between the economy and public health otherwise the economy will face complete collapse.. Judging that moment will be a very difficult decision and we need a more competent person than Johnson to make it. If only Johnson had called an enforceable lockdown in early March we could well have been out of it by now and saved thousands of unnecessary deaths.

[oddoneout]

Getting drunk and shagging a work colleague = incompetence
Walking out on your wife after she was diagnosed with cancer = deliberate
Going to court to try and prevent the truth about your behaviour coming out and taking responsibility for your recklessness = deliberate

Is this what you are referring to ?


One could add (for balance)

Deliberately sticking to a party leader who has no credibility and refuses to say what he thinks about the most important issue of the day = incompetence (and probably deliberate as well)

Ahh well
The rain has come which will help the allotment

Well if there was a single postholder PM then the answer would come down on the side of incompetence, but considering there appear to be two people in the role then an element of malice aforethought creeps in as far as I'm concerned.

[johnb]

Can posters please suggest some aspect of coronavirus that the government has handled correctly. (The NHS doesn't really count.)

This is a genuine request.

Please.

[LMcD]

'Stay alert' is anagram of 'stale tray' - something to look out for on the occasion of your first post-crisis meal in a fast-food outlet.
I suppose you could congratulate the government on not following the example of certain American (N and S) presidents, but that's about it, I would say.

[Dave2002]

Now we are hearing that the infection rates in Germany are rising - again - so this is evidence that things aren't going to be easy.

I suppose HMG will try its "own" experiment, since it probably won't believe that. Actually that's perhaps a bit unfair - maybe it'll really suggest that we shouldn't just all rush out. We'll have to wait and see I suppose.