Coronavirus

[AndyWolves]

569 additional hospital deaths reported today.

Matt Hancock will be out of isolation to do today's press conference. Are we all still watching them or is anyone like me becoming bored of the format whereby answers (or non answers) are given to questions and there is no right of reply?

Only three things im interested, ventilators, antibody tests and PPE for health care workers

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

569 additional hospital deaths reported today.

Matt Hancock will be out of isolation to do today's press conference. Are we all still watching them or is anyone like me becoming bored of the format whereby answers (or non answers) are given to questions and there is no right of reply?

I watch them (what else am I going to do), Peston absolutely boils my piss. Always asks 3-4 really vague scattergun questions, as much as I think the Tories are wankers there isn't really a proper answer you can give to them.

Despite normally having her tongue firmly up Fat Al's arse, Laura K has actually been ok.

 

[Boozad]

So this is fun.

Mother in Law currently on her own and has had some heavy dizzy spells and a few falls in the last 24 hours. She is utterly terrified as she is buggered f anything happens to her....so after a morning on the phone they think she may have had a stroke of some sort! Cue her going into panic overdrive and the wife losing it as she now thinks she is going to lose her Mum a few months after her Dad died!

Unfortunatety I think lockdown rules are going to be told to fuck right off today and looks like the wife is going to go and move in with her Mum for a bit (for starters she needs taking to Stoke for a scan in the next 48 hours). Fucking aces.

This is what really pisses me off, someone here is in desperate need of help so there's simply nothing you can do other than be with her, it has to be done. I've spent the last three days on the front scraping weeds and moss between the pavers on our drive ready for me to jet wash and some of the thing I've seen are incredible.

Both of our neighbours are elderly widows (most of street is elderly), they're both staying in to be fair but the one on one side has her son's dog during the day while he's at work and he's going round as usual and popping in when he drops him off and picks him up. The one the other side came out yesterday and was saying she's staying well away from anyone due to her asthma yet today a woman from over the road took her a fucking cake over she'd made, they talked through the porch door but you're going to EAT HER FUCKING CAKE. She also said that she couldn't have her gardener round yet lo and behold today he turns up and they stand talking for five minutes not two feet apart then she lets him in. Puddled.

Widow over the road has her sons round every single day.

Saw a woman I sort of know earlier walk down our road with her two kids and laden with shopping bags, her mom and dad live further up our street and her dad's not well. She shouts over to another resident that she's doing her mom and dad's shopping as they can't go out. Fair enough. But when she gets there she goes in for half an hour. Fuck me backwards.

A kid rides past our house (never seen him before, must have been about 11) and fucking gobs in my direction. Wouldn't have hit me in a million years as I was halfway up our drive and he was on the road (plus the wind blew it back at him) but what the fuck?

I see all of this shit in one day and it makes me think this virus isn't going away any time soon. Loads more cars around as well. Some people just don't seem to give a fuck or are too thick to reailse what they're doing then you're suffering by trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation. Feel for you mate.

 

[Boozad]

Laura K has actually been ok.

Can't... compute...

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Funny how such a lot of words answers none of my questions at all. It's almost like Paul is right, the deeply socialist element on here want people to die from this virus so they can say the government has handled this terribly.

Thus telling the world socialism is great and Tories are scum.

That is a load of unadulterated inflammatory garbage.

 

[Johnny75]

I watch them (what else am I going to do), Peston absolutely boils my piss. Always asks 3-4 really vague scattergun questions, as much as I think the Tories are wankers there isn't really a proper answer you can give to them.

Despite normally having her tongue firmly up Fat Al's arse, Laura K has actually been ok.

I watched Peston's show last night and he was interviewing the Deputy Chief Medical Officer who put him firmly in his place when talking about the tests and procedures for getting them to front line staff. None of that interview stopped the nonsense on the front pages of the newspapers this morning.

I think we need a long hard look at press freedoms when this is all over, particularly click bait stories, fake news (even Piers Morgan told the Express to take down a false story yesterday) and reporting unverified stories without retribution.

 

[Johnny75]

That is a load of unadulterated inflammatory garbage.

Illuminating.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Can't... compute...

Think of it as like when I said Seyi had a good game.

Once stunned Kenny with that coming out of the ground. He went on a mini-rant about him (can't remember which game it was) and I said "meh, I thought he was alright today". He was and all. Save the rage for when he's pirouetting his way out of challenges, getting outjumped by Jay Tabb or watching the ball roll across the six yard box and the net is unguarded.

 

[Boozad]

Think of it as like when I said Seyi had a good game.

Once stunned Kenny with that coming out of the ground. He went on a mini-rant about him (can't remember which game it was) and I said "meh, I thought he was alright today". He was and all. Save the rage for when he's pirouetting his way out of challenges, getting outjumped by Jay Tabb or watching the ball roll across the six yard box and the net is unguarded.

To be fair I've stayed away from Kuenssberg ever since she left ITV and I hated watching her then so I haven't seen anything she's had to say/do regarding the current situation. Matt Doherty managed to change my opinion of him but I doubt that'll ever happen with her.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Illuminating.

Just like your post was. All you are doing is being aggressive against everyone again. Why I have no clue but it adds nothing. I don't personally give much concern about the colour of the ties of those involved in this. I care about them getting the strategy and path right. There has been a shift change to what I hope is the right direction. The whole thing is so damn serious it simply has to transcend party political tropes. Things like that can come back into play in the clear up and sort out when the worst of the very immediate crisis is behind us.

So why you are flinging "deeply socialist" and "Tory scum" around is utterly beyond me.

 

[Dire Wolf]

Last time you didn't have any kind of reasoned comeback in this discussion and instead responded with immature ad hominem, I left it at this - I hope neither you, nor anyone you know or love, is affected by this.

Gonna leave it there again.

Edit: 2nd thoughts.

 

[Johnny75]

Just like your post was. All you are doing is being aggressive against everyone again. Why I have no clue but it adds nothing. I don't personally give much concern about the colour of the ties of those involved in this. I care about them getting the strategy and path right. There has been a shift change to what I hope is the right direction. The whole thing is so damn serious it simply has to transcend party political tropes. Things like that can come back into play in the clear up and sort out when the worst of the very immediate crisis is behind us.

So why you are flinging "deeply socialist" and "Tory scum" around is utterly beyond me.

If it transcends political tropes why are people having a pop at a government saying they should've been more prepared when nobody else on the planet was? We have had others saying it is because the NHS is criminally underfunded, how you can see that's not political I don't know.

Everything is political as has been written every few pages by at least a few people.

And leave out the aggressive nonsense when you've just posted what you have eh?

 

[Rui_CostCo]

If it transcends political tropes why are people having a pop at a government saying they should've been more prepared when nobody else on the planet was? We have had others saying it is because the NHS is criminally underfunded, how you can see that's not political I don't know.

Everything is political as has been written every few pages by at least a few people.

And leave out the aggressive nonsense when you've just posted what you have eh?

So you don't have any answers to the questions and have decided to strop off. Good one.

You're taking all of this far too personally.

No one is attacking yours or anyone elses right to vote Conservative, the people on here questioning the Governments response to a national crisis are genuinely concerned for the precarious position we find ourselves in, how we got there and the fact that academics, independent bodies, world authorities and economists are showing greater concerns than even we are.

My personal politics sit somewhere between having a cupper with Leon Trotsky and being slightly to the right of Atillla the Hun, and most points between. One thing I cannot abide is politicians of any leaning lying to the public.

If you dont see the relevance of looking at Government published reports and summaries, WHO statements and computing experts modelling predictions and see them as ' a bunch of articles' then we could discuss a bunch of articles and whether you agree that they are factual or not

Claim: UK coronavirus testing will reach 25,000 per day
Reality: Amid criticism that the UK was lagging badly behind other countries, Boris Johnson declared in March that coronavirus testing would increase to 25,000 tests a day, with NHS frontline staff being among the first to benefit.

At the start of April, testing was well short of the interim goal of 10,000 tests a day, with only 2,000 of about half a million NHS frontline workers having been tested. As a result, scores of NHS staff have been self-isolating without knowing if it was safe for them to return to work


Claim: testing is being held up by a shortage of reagents
Reality: As nations scramble to scale up testing, the global suppliers of key chemicals called reagents are struggling to meet demand. According to the British In Vitro Diagnostic Association, companies are working flat out to boost their supply but are having to prioritise where the mixtures are sent.

The reagents needed are specific, and different ones are required for different PCR machines – the equipment used to test for the virus by detecting its genetic material. Smaller companies are being consulted about other virus testing strategies. A better pandemic preparedness plan might have foreseen the surge in demand for testing materials and arranged to act swiftly, critics say.

To add to the confusion, the Chemical Industries Association, which represents the UK’s very substantial chemicals industry, told ITV News on Tuesday that it had contacted its members who said there was no shortage of the relevant reagents.

Claim: home test kits will soon be available
Reality: The government has bought millions of home test kits that can show if someone has had the virus and so, hopefully, developed some immunity. But no one has been able to say when the kits will be in circulation.

At the end of March, Prof Sharon Peacock, the director of the national infection service at Public Health England, told MPs on the science and technology committee that the finger-prick tests would be evaluated within the week, and that mass testing could start days after.

The government later backtracked, saying it would be some time before the tests were available and that blood samples would need to be posted to a laboratory for analysis. The tests look for antibodies to the virus, not the virus itself, so cannot pick up new infections.

On another note, My cousin got a long awaited call today to tell him he needs to isolate himself for 12 weeks. Thats 13 days after it was announced 1.4m people in the highest risk groups would be contacted. Nearly 2 weeks, during which time he could have been out shopping etc at massive risk to his health. Luckily he has only lost a portion of his brain, most of his stomach, a kidney, some of his throat, and sizeable chunk of his immune system and not the ability to realise that in his state he really shouldn't be leaving the house.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

It's fair to criticise the Government when they blame not being part of a procurement scheme as they "missed an email". 1) That would be outrageously incompetent and 2) it's a brazen lie anyway.

If the Tories don't want people to stick the boot in, then they shouldn't be so relentlessly shit all the time. They should also not have formed a Government that is effectively a personality cult and where there's such a lack of ability almost uniformly across the board. I'd rather have Tony Hancock doing today's presser and he's been dead for 50 years.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

If it transcends political tropes why are people having a pop at a government saying they should've been more prepared when nobody else on the planet was? We have had others saying it is because the NHS is criminally underfunded, how you can see that's not political I don't know.

Everything is political as has been written every few pages by at least a few people.

And leave out the aggressive nonsense when you've just posted what you have eh?

I will leave off what I want to thank you very much.

This is not about political parties. It is about when and how preparation could maybe have been better when this started kicking off in China. There was a different path available that could have made preparation more practical, but the government and their advisors at that time were following scientific advice that looked like herd immunity was the best path. And now they have changed that path because the scientific advice very clearly changed in very early March (I can't remember the exact date so that is my estimate). Of course because we have now steered on to what looks like the better path there is a bit of a "we missed the boat" reaction because of a few lost weeks.

Now, that isn't the fault of the government. It really isn't. It is an unfortunate result of going down a different path for the eight to ten weeks where herd immunity was the preference, but that decision was based on sound scientific advice.

We are where we are, and the government now have to manage their way to the final result that they believe is the best out there. To be honest, the financial stuff announced by Sunak is the most generous state help I could imagine at the time he was saying it, this side of Universal Basic Income. When I was listening to him I was sitting there thinking "is this really a Conservative chancellor?" If the Conservative party can shift that dramatically away from what would be their core precepts to navigate through difficult times, the least we can do is sit back, do as we are asked and hope for as good an outcome as we can get. I think I would be saying similar about the government on this were it a labour government, or indeed another party.

What I objected to in your original post was your claim that this "deeply socialist" forum wanted the government to fail just to be able to shout "Tory scum" at them. That really is inflammatory nonsense. I would like to think we all want the same - the strategy to work and keep as many people alive as possible.

 

[Paul]

What I objected to in your original post was your claim that this "deeply socialist" forum wanted the government to fail just to be able to shout "Tory scum" at them. That really is inflammatory nonsense. I would like to think we all want the same - the strategy to work and keep as many people alive as possible.

How is that any more inflammatory than "these bunch of self obsessed cunts in government are going to kill us." or several similar veined posts ?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Neither are great are they? Maybe that is the issue I have from both sides here. We are in a pretty unprecedented shit hole here and I don't think political point scoring from either side of the fence is beneficial.

Sure, the government has made some mis-steps, and they can be criticised for that, but it is the tone of that criticism. I really doubt that any mis-steps globally are being made for self-serving purposes outside the White House, which is a totally different kettle of fish.

And then saying that the posters of this forum want the policy to fail (which means thousands die) just to shout Tory scum is inviting a row isn't it?

 

[Paul]

Agreed and perhaps It appeared that way because I'm not as erudite as some, it was harsh to accuse people of wanting people to die, but you still get the impression that people are trawling the internet and whether the source is unbiased or not , you do get the impression of brains ticking, thinking 'more ammunition - must type !

 

[Rui_CostCo]

I don't think anyone in this thread wants anything other than the absolute best outcome for the Nation as a whole with the absolute minimum of caualties inflicted.

And you're almost certainly right Paddy, outside of the Whitehouse no one is trying to be self serving and no one is making mistakes on purpose. But they've been and are being made though and scrutinizing that is an essential part of democracy.

Views and opinions are individual and everyone should be able to express almost any of them, unless it's my belief that Frankowski would be a hit, which surely should have been punched out of me as soon as aired it.

 

[Tredman]

How is that any more inflammatory than "these bunch of self obsessed cunts in government are going to kill us." or several similar veined posts ?

Harsh man, harsh