Current Affairs

[Mervyn and Trish]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the evidence clearly is that the vast majority have decided that they have had enough and are getting on with life.
Thousands on the beach
Thousands on protests
Thousands in the streets celebrating football

A spike is inevitable.

The high risk group have no opinion but to remain isolated.
The rest will take the chance.

You might be right, though I'm not so sure because of the way the media works, as we've discussed before. Yes there are thousands on the beach. Thousands in demos. But there are tens of millions in the population and those behaving sensibly and staying away from crowds don't make it into press photos. My feeling is it is still a minority being idiots. I hope so.

[barney]

I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that it’s over just that we know so much more about the risk.

If you look at the evidence and statistics, covid is basically an old person and vulnerable group disease.

There have been hardly any young people badly affected and even fewer children.

If we assume that it will be with us until a vaccine is found, can we really expect the country to remain is lockdown to protect a minority.
It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

[Manoverboard]

.... Oop's "we" meaning me and the wife

My old dad used to tell me to take care when choosing a ' Breakfast Partner '

[Manoverboard]

It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

They will indeed Barney and with our blessing even though they cannot, as yet, come to see us two ' vulnerables '.

[barney]

It’s such a shame Moby but that will become the new normal until a vaccine is produced.

[david63]

It’s such a shame Moby but that will become the new normal until a vaccine is produced.

But there is no guarantee that a vaccine will be found - hopefully there will but it is not a foregone conclusion.

[Jonty S1]

The questions in my mind are numerous. Why are the infections and deaths falling? Is it due to social distancing or the warmer weather reducing the potency of the virus? Answer, probably a combination. However what would be most interesting to discover is, of recent hospital deaths, how long had those patients been hospitalised. Has distancing brought about smaller doses of the virus? If that were the case then the future, to me, appears pretty bleak as a fresh wave will begin sooner rather than later.
Anybody got a stats source re timescale for hospitalisation and deaths?

Jon

[towny44]

Why do all these alternative scenarios to the Govt SAGE advice seem to be populated by a majority of people who are ultra conservative in their approach to this pandemic. The virus is definitely not dead, but unless we explore ways to get the economy going in a relatively safe manor, then there is no doubt many peoples lives are going to be permanently devastated even if they never get Covid19.
Someone on here pointed out that Carnivals bonds are now classed as junk status, well unless we can restart the economy then the UK is going to be heading for the same rating. And it's no good thinking, well so will lots of other countries, because once the dominoes start to fall no one will be prepared to lend money to failing countries, and the end result will be a massive long lasting depression with poverty levels ike no one in the World has ever seen.

[barney]

The death rate and infection has dropped because people stayed home , as instructed.

Given that lockdown is over in all but name, the infection rate will go up.
Whether the death rate goes up with it is unknown, because there is a possibility that most who were initially susceptible have already gone.

Cast our minds back.
The lockdown was not imposed to stop infections, it was imposed to stop the hospitals being over run as they were in France, Italy and Spain.
On that point, we were successful.

There are now dozens of studies and statistics available.
An individual is going to have to do their own risk assessment on the situation.

If I fell into the vulnerable group, I'd probably stay home as much as possible and have little social interaction.
Fortunately, I'm not in that group so have to hope that if/when I contract the virus, I'll be a bit poorly and then have antibodies.

Many young healthy people will contract it and not even know they have had it.
The Premier league and Championship league have been screening for quite a few weeks now with it showing of cases where exceptionally fit footballers proved positive with no symptoms whatsoever.

This will be with us for some time to come yet, so we've just got to make the best of it.

[david63]

Why do all these alternative scenarios to the Govt SAGE advice seem to be populated by a majority of people who are ultra conservative in their approach to this pandemic.

On the basis that there are 50+ members of SAGE then there will always be extremes of views, at both end - we never hear of those who think we should go faster though!

What I fear about these "cautious" views is that they are saying them now so that if things go pear shaped then the will turn round and say "told you so", whereas if nothing happens they will just disappear and never be heard from again. There is also the possibility that they are playing politics for when the inevitable inquiry takes place.

[Mervyn and Trish]

I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that it’s over just that we know so much more about the risk.

If you look at the evidence and statistics, covid is basically an old person and vulnerable group disease.

There have been hardly any young people badly affected and even fewer children.

If we assume that it will be with us until a vaccine is found, can we really expect the country to remain is lockdown to protect a minority.
It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

That's not completely true in that anyone catch it. It is certainly true in terms of mortality though, depending on your interpretation of old person. Those from 45 upwards are still almost 50% as likely to die as those over 75 The death rate from 45 to 64 is not much less than that from 65-74. Only those under 45 have a much better chance of survival (Worldometer figures). So the number vulnerable is far from a minority.

But with that proviso are we back to advocating herd immunity? Send out the young people to party and take their chances until the virus burns itself out and we oldies can be safe again?

[towny44]

I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that it’s over just that we know so much more about the risk.

If you look at the evidence and statistics, covid is basically an old person and vulnerable group disease.

There have been hardly any young people badly affected and even fewer children.

If we assume that it will be with us until a vaccine is found, can we really expect the country to remain is lockdown to protect a minority.
It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

That's not completely true in that anyone catch it. It is certainly true in terms of mortality though, depending on your interpretation of old person. Those from 45 upwards are still almost 50% as likely to die as those over 75 The death rate from 45 to 64 is not much less than that from 65-74. Only those under 45 have a much better chance of survival (Worldometer figures). So the number vulnerable is far from a minority.

But with that proviso are we back to advocating herd immunity? Send out the young people to party and take their chances until the virus burns itself out and we oldies can be safe again?

That may be one answer Merv, and we might find out from the USA or Brazil if it has any validity.

[Onelife]

Why do all these alternative scenarios to the Govt SAGE advice seem to be populated by a majority of people who are ultra conservative in their approach to this pandemic. The virus is definitely not dead, but unless we explore ways to get the economy going in a relatively safe manor,The solution to exploring a compromise is to make the upcoming rules compulsory.... and a knee on their throat if they don't. then there is no doubt many peoples lives are going to be permanently devastated even if they never get Covid19.
Someone on here pointed out that Carnivals bonds are now classed as junk status, well unless we can restart the economy then the UK is going to be heading for the same rating. And it's no good thinking, well so will lots of other countries, because once the dominoes start to fall no one will be prepared to lend money to failing countries, and the end result will be a massive long lasting depression with poverty levels ike no one in the World has ever seen.

The solution to exploring a compromise is to make the upcoming rules compulsory.... a knee on their throat if they don't.

[Onelife]

.... Oop's "we" meaning me and the wife

My old dad used to tell me to take care when choosing a ' Breakfast Partner '

My dad used to tell me if you're having breakfast with someone you don't know then there's a pretty good chance you've been up to no good

[Manoverboard]

It’s such a shame Moby but that will become the new normal until a vaccine is produced.

Your reply prompted me to remind ourselves that it’s not just us old bu**ers in quarantine who are missing our Grand Children but that we should also remember that they are missing us.

Two of ours are fully grown and without any prompting phone most weeks to tell us what they have been doing at work or at play, one of them didn’t tell us that she’d been to Burnham (?) beach but her Mum did but what do we tell them about our lives during the previous week ... “ Hey, guess what, the Sainsbury’s delivery was 15 minutes late on Tuesday “. I even tell them about the Virtual World Cruise on here and they’re loving it and always ask “ Where are you today Granddad “.

As you said it’s a shame ... a real shame and that’s a fact cos we may never actually meet up again as we used to do. It’s a very sobering thought is that

[Gill W]

As you said it’s a shame ... a real shame and that’s a fact cos we may never actually meet up again as we used to do. It’s a very sobering thought is that

I think that's a very difficult thing to face up to, and I'm not sure that people in general have thought of that yet.

I think most people have finally got the message that the rest of the year will be restricted. But I have a feeling a lot of people think things will be more normal next year and it is very tempting to think of the current situation as temporary.

I think a restricted life will be with us for a long time to come. I've given up thinking about a vaccine. If there ever is one, its got to be properly tested, manufactured and rolled out - it would be a massive task. my favourite thought is that the epidemic just ends, like SARS did, or the Spanish flu. But even that could take years.

The way I'm coping is by trying to live each day, and not think too much about the future. I have modest hopes of of a couple of days out in the autumn, when the current madness is over, and then hunker down for a likely second wave.

Whatever happens, returning to the life we had before is years and years away. In fact, I don't think it'll ever be quite the same.

[barney]

I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that it’s over just that we know so much more about the risk.

If you look at the evidence and statistics, covid is basically an old person and vulnerable group disease.

There have been hardly any young people badly affected and even fewer children.

If we assume that it will be with us until a vaccine is found, can we really expect the country to remain is lockdown to protect a minority.
It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

That's not completely true in that anyone catch it. It is certainly true in terms of mortality though, depending on your interpretation of old person. Those from 45 upwards are still almost 50% as likely to die as those over 75 The death rate from 45 to 64 is not much less than that from 65-74. Only those under 45 have a much better chance of survival (Worldometer figures). So the number vulnerable is far from a minority.

But with that proviso are we back to advocating herd immunity? Send out the young people to party and take their chances until the virus burns itself out and we oldies can be safe again?

I was quoting U.K. stats Merv, not worldwide.

[Manoverboard]

As you said it’s a shame ... a real shame and that’s a fact cos we may never actually meet up again as we used to do. It’s a very sobering thought is that

I think that's a very difficult thing to face up to, and I'm not sure that people in general have thought of that yet.

I think most people have finally got the message that the rest of the year will be restricted. But I have a feeling a lot of people think things will be more normal next year and it is very tempting to think of the current situation as temporary.

I think a restricted life will be with us for a long time to come. I've given up thinking about a vaccine. If there ever is one, its got to be properly tested, manufactured and rolled out - it would be a massive task. my favourite thought is that the epidemic just ends, like SARS did, or the Spanish flu. But even that could take years.

The way I'm coping is by trying to live each day, and not think too much about the future. I have modest hopes of of a couple of days out in the autumn, when the current madness is over, and then hunker down for a likely second wave.

Whatever happens, returning to the life we had before is years and years away. In fact, I don't think it'll ever be quite the same.

Just reading one or two of the postings on this site suggests, to me, that people are unrealistically expecting their cruising lives to return to some sort of normality next year but I have serious reservations about that aspect of escapism. I also suspect that the magnitude of this Virus has caught us all on the hop, we knew about it and yet we didn’t know about it. Perhaps we shut our eyes and hoped it would just go away when we wanted it to. I agree that our lives could be forever tainted by the threat and memory of it’s scale but unlike your good self I think that somebody within this large World of ours will be able to come up with a vaccine in a relatively short period of time if only because we will all need something to look forward to in the not too distant future. Economic needs will dictate success of finding a way out of the paper bag we are presently in, of this I am confident ( fingers crossed ).
.

[barney]

Necessity is the mother of invention

[Mervyn and Trish]

I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that it’s over just that we know so much more about the risk.

If you look at the evidence and statistics, covid is basically an old person and vulnerable group disease.

There have been hardly any young people badly affected and even fewer children.

If we assume that it will be with us until a vaccine is found, can we really expect the country to remain is lockdown to protect a minority.
It will be up to the vulnerable to protect themselves.
Basically, stay home as much as possible and avoid young people including your own family members, because they will be going out.

That's not completely true in that anyone catch it. It is certainly true in terms of mortality though, depending on your interpretation of old person. Those from 45 upwards are still almost 50% as likely to die as those over 75 The death rate from 45 to 64 is not much less than that from 65-74. Only those under 45 have a much better chance of survival (Worldometer figures). So the number vulnerable is far from a minority.

But with that proviso are we back to advocating herd immunity? Send out the young people to party and take their chances until the virus burns itself out and we oldies can be safe again?

I was quoting U.K. stats Merv, not worldwide.

I quoted Worldometer as it is regarded by many on here as a reliable source. It may be slightly different here but not wildly. In fact if you look at ONS figures the death rate increases steadily above 40. Yes the very old are most vulnerable. But then they are most likely to die anyway. All I'm saying is if I was 45 I wouldn't be going about my life without a care assuming I'm immune.

[Mervyn and Trish]

We are never going to agree on the virus, for the same reason the experts will never agree. We have science experts, medical experts, economic experts, etc. They are each expert in their own field but no-one is expert in everything. Even the experts in each field don't agree with one another. And we all have different viewpoints too.

For example, for hitting the virus as sole aim the best advice at the beginning would have possibly been total lockdown for a fortnight. No-one leaves their home other than emergency services workers. Some would have starved at home, but maybe fewer than have subsequently died of the virus. Food would have rotted on supermarket shelves. But the virus would have been in retreat after two weeks with no-one to feed on. But you can't take it in isolation. That wouldn't have worked.

We've since had advice from various people to open the lockdown earlier/later/not at all for a whole lot of reasons including economic. Let's quarantine anyone who arrives here for 2 weeks. maybe good medically but shrieks of horror from the travel industry and airlines suing the government. For example.

There is no right answer. It's the government which has to try to balance all the arguments and reach a compromise. And they can't win. We can't even agree in this small group. What chance is there in the wider community. That's even before you take into account the people for whom Boris can do nothing right, even if he'd wiped out the virus and given us a £10,000 bonus each.

So now the country is slowly unlocking. Does that put lives at risk? Undoubtedly. But what is the alternative. 40,000-50,000 have died, maybe more. Maybe we could have reduced that by 10,000 or 20,000 with a different approach to lockdown. Maybe not in the longer term, because many who have died were older or had underlying conditions. So maybe they have died earlier but perhaps over a year or two the excess deaths will not be as great as we see in the short term snapshot.

I'm not going to diminish a single one of those losses. But there is a balance the government has to consider and I don't envy them. We've seen today Intu Shopping Centres collapse. The latest in string of closures. One study suggests 6,000,000 could lose their jobs through Covid. Of course that's worst case and it hadn't happened yet. But we will certainly be paying for this for years to come and I can already hear the shrieks about Tory austerity warming up. How does the government balance the idea that maybe 10,000 or more people might die in the future if they relax too soon against 1,000,000 or more families facing poverty for the next 5 years if they don't? So of course relaxing lockdown is an economic decision and that shouldn't be a dirty word.

Many of us in this group are privileged. I include me in that. A lot of us are retired so lockdown hasn't hit us so hard economically or even socially as those of a working age. We've not seen out income slashed. The worst we seem to have to worry about financially is whether we'll get our cruise deposit back or what our Cunard shares might be worth next week. We've missed a holiday or two. If lockdown is released we have the choice to stay home anyway. No-one says we have to go out.

But for those desperate to get back to work, or get their businesses open again, at least a relaxation gives them a choice and a chance.

So those who want to stay home, by all means do so. We will be. No beach for us yet. But let's not assume that is the only correct point of view. And let's not knock the government who have a dreadful job to do knowing whatever decision they make will be wrong for many.

[screwy]

Excellent as always Merv.

[Stephen]

Too much time on his hands if you ask me.

He'll be looking for a publisher next

[Mervyn and Trish]

Just being my usual conciliatory self. Though I am poised awaitng the brickbats.

[Stephen]

Just being my usual conciliatory self. Though I am poised awaitng the brickbats.

Whatever that is