You are in my thoughts and prayers
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Bullet point: Brtain needs a new Chief Medical Officer.
But to make policy on that basis is to impose an epidemiological judgement on to what is a social, ethical and political issue…
The fact is that for most British people, 20,000 people or so dying each year from flu is just one of those horrible facts of nature…
But that does not mean all or any of us will or should accept as a fait accompli that 100,000 or more have to die, so that we can acquire the “herd immunity” I cited earlier today as the government’s goal…
The evidence from around the world is that people will accept coercive social distancing - painful restrictions on our precious freedoms to go where we want and when we want - to save the lives of our loved ones…
And even if that were to cause the worst recession since the war, most of us would give up any amount of money to protect those we love…
The evidence of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore is that we are NOT powerless to slow and halt the spread - and will pay almost whatever is necessary…
The response from Whitty and Johnson might well be that halting the virus in that way is not a cure, that it would return with a vengeance as and when we leave our quarantines…
But at least we will have bought precious time to invest in better testing and treatments - till that desperately needed vaccine arrives.
Firday before Patrick’s Day and DUB is deserted here. This will have disastrous consequences for the over-priced pubs in Templebar
Well, it’s an ill wind and all that malarky
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what’s Malarkey saying?
I’m wide awake here and I don’t need to be up till 7.15 
… Got steamed up on Leffe last night, for medicinal purposes , and I was pissing half the night.
Fuck most of the pubs in templebar. Theyve been ripping us off for years.
Get your arse out of the bed and get to work early. You’ll be in the better of it
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I’m working from home. Only a lunatic would venture out of the house during the current climate… How did you get on in Douglas? I would have met you for a coffee but for the point I made above.
Place was like Christmas eve. By 9.30 the queues were half way down the aisles. Went up to Tesco in Mahon point then and it was worse.
Mad cork cunts
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If you need a good laugh go back to the start of this thread and read the first few pages of lads making a holy show of themselves. Only myself and some lad called Anonymous were on the ball from the beginning.
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May God help me. Im out the door now andheading to see the Biffos. Itll be carnage.
Be safe guys.
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Will pan out as one of worst decisions of all time potentially. But what could our government have done?
Lobbied harder for it to be cancelled? Probably
Cancel all travel to the UK? Unlikely
Refuse return entry to those who went? Impossible
For all their tally ho for the last few years around protecting their border etc etc the brits have done the exact opposite here with an abysmal response to this crisis
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They’ll Be on their hands and knees begging to get back into the EU when this is over
Make them work the summer. Wont be long changing their tune
It’ll be interesting to see if the UK trends more like southern or northern Europe. Even if you leave out Italy, Spain and France have about 4,500 cases combined and 100 dead, or 2.2% mortality. Germany, Benelux and the Nordics have roughly the same number of cases but only 12 dead. Their mortality rate so far at least is not that different to the seasonal flu.
Yeah there’s an obvious divide there and it is almost going down stereotypical lines. You’d expect Italy, Spain and France to have a bit of a laissez-faire attitude. And for Germany and Scandinavia to be regimented in their response. The UK response is what I’d do if I wanted the most amount of dead pensioners.
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LEADING ARTICLE
The Times view on Boris Johnson’s handling of the coronavirus crisis: No Immunity
The prime minister is gambling that allowing the virus to spread now will protect the economy in the long term. But Britain cannot shield itself from a global crisis
There are some things that a political leader hopes never to have to say. Yesterday Boris Johnson was obliged to deliver the kind of message that a prime minister delivers only in time of war. “I must level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time,” he told a press conference to update the public on the government’s latest response to the coronavirus pandemic. He delivered this message at a time when official figures showed that, so far, 596 people in Britain have tested positive for the virus and ten people have died from it. But Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said it was likely that between 5,000 and 10,000 people were already infected, and that number would rise sharply in the coming weeks. The government reckons the peak will not come until June.
Yet Mr Johnson’s response has not been to lock down entire cities or even the whole country as China, South Korea and Italy have done. He has not ordered the closure of schools, as Ireland and Denmark did yesterday. Nor has he ordered the cancellation of large public events, as France and even Scotland have done, nor ordered the cessation of flights from other countries affected by the outbreak, as President Trump did yesterday. He hasn’t even ordered health checks on those arriving at British airports from overseas. Instead, his response was to announce that Britain would stop testing all but those exhibiting the most severe symptoms of the virus while advising those with milder symptoms, including fever and a persistent cough, to stay at home for seven days. The elderly and those with health conditions have been advised to cut social contact.
This is a remarkable gamble by Mr Johnson, albeit one that the government insists is informed by science. Essentially, the prime minister has concluded that there is little the government can do to stop the virus spreading widely and that, ultimately, there is little point in trying to prevent it from doing so. The best way to protect the public from the virus in the long term, the government has calculated, is for most of the population to get it, thereby giving it “herd immunity” to further waves of the disease. The government’s priority, instead, should be merely to try to slow the spread of Covid-19 to avoid the NHS becoming overwhelmed during the coming months.
The consequence of Mr Johnson’s gamble is that many more families will indeed lose loved ones than might have done if the government took more extreme measures to stem the spread of the disease. There is the clear risk that by doing so little to halt the spread, the NHS will become overwhelmed, as Italy’s health service has been, forcing doctors to make invidious choices about who receives treatment. Nor can the government know for sure that those who have had the virus will acquire immunity to it or future strains. If Mr Johnson’s gamble fails and the approach taken by other countries is perceived to have saved more lives, he will pay a heavy political price.
Of course, his approach is likely to have been determined in part by concern to limit the economic damage from the virus. The reality is that Britain, as a services-dominated economy with a large financial sector, is particularly vulnerable to this crisis. The FTSE 100 was already the world’s worst-performing significant market over the past two years even before yesterday’s slide, the biggest since Black Monday in 1987. Yet, as was clear from the global sell-off in response to President Trump’s botched travel ban and a disastrous press conference by Christine Lagarde, the European Central Bank president, Britain can do little to immunise itself from global financial contagion either. Mr Johnson will in due course have to level with the British public again. Before this crisis is over, many families are likely to lose their livelihoods and their savings too.
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There’s lots of factors I suppose. Health care in France in particular is very good, Spain and Italy can’t be that bad. Are northern Europeans healthier? We were always told that the Mediterranean diet kept southern Europeans in good nick.
Mother of god.
Literally the exact opposite response to the rest of the world
It’s some roll of the dice
I think there’s been a certain head in the sand attitude in most western countries up to now. The reality is this virus is highly contagious, is now very widespread, and most carriers (80%?) have mild symptoms or think they have a normal cold/flu.
On the Johns Hopkins map there are a total of 128,000 confirmed cases worldwide, 81,000 of them in China. The number of confirmed cases in Ohio is five (5) with nobody in ICU or dead. Here’s Dr Amy Acton today, director of the Ohio department of health. She estimates that there are 100,000 cases in Ohio alone, that’s almost the same number as the combined confirmed world total.
This thing has been and is sweeping the globe and the best we can hope for is to slow down it’s exponential growth, or flatten the curve. Shut schools and businesses, work from home, stop going to pubs and restaurants, cancel all gatherings, and stay at home if you are sick.
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