Current Affairs

[oldbluefox]

A lighthearted cynical reflection on our media borrowed from another site........

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[Mervyn and Trish]

That's about right

[Ranchi]

OBF you say the article is lighthearted but I saw a closed system video lecture with quite a lot of the bigwigs both academic and clinical just as this was unfolding - it was the time that they decided to call it Covid-19 rather than allow a location name to be given to it to avoid stigma. One of the speakers was Chris Whitty and he said more or less what the BBC quote in your post says but that his criticism would probably come from the govt. The jist of his statement was that at the end of all this he will either be taken to task for spending so much money when the effects of covid-19 were so slight on the population or if casualties are high that his strategies were wrong.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I heard an idiot in the supermarket queue saying he didn't know why we'd had the lockdown as there had not been that many deaths anyway. A bit like those who claimed the millennium computer bug preparations had been a waste of time because there hadn't been any problems.

[Frank Manning]

OBF, spot on with that,. Also, Express and/or, the Daily Wail is likely to celebrate the successful development of a vaccine with the leader; Daily Mail Campaign leads to Vaccine Success.

[Manoverboard]

What would we have done without them

[david63]

Where was the announcement that self isolation has been lifted for this weekend so that families can visit one another?

Neighbours on both sides have had family round for three/fours hours this weekend

[Gill W]

Where was the announcement that self isolation has been lifted for this weekend so that families can visit one another?

Neighbours on both sides have had family round for three/fours hours this weekend

There’s lots of anecdotes like that around.

Over the last few days, when I’ve been out on my walk, the roads seem busier. It felt like an ordinary Saturday today.

I get the sense the the lockdown is not holding

[screwy]

And reporters why the Govt are treating the British like children.....stop acting like children.!

[Happydays]

Neighbour across the road has had visitors arriving everyday in fact sometimes two different cars arrive at the same time. Even had her young granddaughter arrived with the son who is a taxi driver (using taxi) I think he has visited more since the start of lock down than for the previous six months.
Gets me very annoyed. Where we live I can count on one hand(beside ourselves) the people that are obeying the guide lines.

[Stephen]

Serves them right if they then catch it. Silly people

[Kendhni]

On holiday I read a headline that reported that, in the UK, there had been 133 (I think) deaths from COVID-19 and the medical director (Stephen Powes??) said that a 'good result' would be if the deaths could be kept below 20,000. At the time I thought, those numbers are terrifying. Sadly last night it was reported we have now passed the 20,000 mark ... and we have barely touched the peak of this.

Scary and sad.

[david63]

Serves them right if they then catch it. Silly people

Not bothered about them. If they are that stupid they deserve all they get.

What annoys me is that there are people literally putting their lives on the line for these stupid people and the more they do this the longer we will all be affected by the lockdown.

and we have barely touched the peak of this.

Whilst we are nowhere near out of it yet the statistics appear to show that we are starting on the downward slope.

[Kendhni]

Whilst we are nowhere near out of it yet the statistics appear to show that we are starting on the downward slope.

Which is why I used 'barely', there is still enough slack in the stats that they could equally start going up again ... 'plateauing' may be a better description - this first wave has not been fully crested yet.

[towny44]

We must live in a very peaceful and law abiding area, because I have not seen any of our neighbours with visitors and on the few occasions I have been out for exercise, everyone observes social distancing and you have to be quick to step off the pavement as someone approaches, or they will beat you to it.
Clearly Huddersfield does have something going for it after all.

[Manoverboard]

We hardly see a car let alone a person, the only vehicles that are about are delivery vans various.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Most people round here are behaving well. Odd exceptions but they are a small minority.

[colin parry]

Does anyone else agree that Priti Patel has had a sincerity by-pass?

[Mervyn and Trish]

I'm frustrated that because someone suggested fewer than 20,000 deaths would be a good result the question the hacks are now asking have we failed?

No we haven't. Failure would be the 500,000 deaths suggested a while ago. And if those suggesting lockdown has failed decide to ignore it we could still go that way.

[Onelife]

Does anyone else agree that Priti Patel has had a sincerity by-pass?

I'll sit on the fence with that one Colin only because it's hard to be sincere when you are being told what you can or can not say

[Frank Manning]

I'm frustrated that because someone suggested fewer than 20,000 deaths would be a good result the question the hacks are now asking have we failed?

No we haven't. Failure would be the 500,000 deaths suggested a while ago. And if those suggesting lockdown has failed decide to ignore it we could still go that way.

I despair of the media Mervyn. The problem is that politicians need the oxygen of publicity, and to some extent they are in hock to them. Consequently they go largely unchallenged. Sue and I have been on the wrong end of their search for a headline. In our experience they often do minimal research, and try to put words in your mouth to suit their narrative.

[Gill W]

On holiday I read a headline that reported that, in the UK, there had been 133 (I think) deaths from COVID-19 and the medical director (Stephen Powes??) said that a 'good result' would be if the deaths could be kept below 20,000. At the time I thought, those numbers are terrifying. Sadly last night it was reported we have now passed the 20,000 mark ... and we have barely touched the peak of this.

Scary and sad.

That's just the deaths in hospital. The figures in the community and care homes have to be added to that, and nobody seems to have an accurate figure for those deaths yet.

I look at the ONS figures each Tuesday. For the week ending 3rd April there were approx 6000 deaths over the five year average for that week, and for the week ending 10th April there were approx 8000 excess deaths. I'm waiting with some trepidation for the figures for W/E 17th April, they could be very grim indeed.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I share that concern though because the most serious cases are in hospital that will probably still be the majority. Care homes are tricky because of course people there are often very frail. The home where my daughter works has only had one patient die with Covid but he was in his last few days in end of life care before he caught it. He will be recorded as a Corvid death but that is misleading as he would sadly have died within days anyway. So not really what they call an excess death. Statistics are a nightmare and we won't really know a meaningful total for a long time.

[Kendhni]

I have got to the point of not worrying about idiots that think 'self isolating' means allowing the family to visit. Miners used to have canaries to protect them, we have stupid people that don't self isolate. You could say they are doing us a favour by continually checking if the air is safe.

In the fight against COVID-19 the most prolific ally that COVID has is human stupidity.

[Ranchi]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Chief Medical Officer is expecting to be in a lose-lose position. This is happening in Germany

Q: Germany will start to lift its lockdown gradually from Monday. What happens next?
A: At the moment, we are seeing half-empty ICUs in Germany. This is because we started diagnostics early and on a broad scale, and we stopped the epidemic – that is, we brought the reproduction number [a key measure of the spread of the virus] below 1. Now, what I call the “prevention paradox” has set in. People are claiming we over-reacted, there is political and economic pressure to return to normal. The federal plan is to lift lockdown slightly, but because the German states, or Länder, set their own rules, I fear we’re going to see a lot of creativity in the interpretation of that plan. I worry that the reproduction number will start to climb again, and we will have a second wave.