Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Intrigued as to what these special measures for over 50s are.
How do you plan to keep 1/3 of the population away from the 2/3?

He didn't say "shite", "wank" or "cuntish" once, did he? So probably not.

I just dropped by after a few days absence and everyone is getting livid at a troll that's already been nuked by the time I get here? Not sure what the troll was on about, but from the responses I can see that someone is finally catching onto the Canadians.
Good! Sneaky fuckers the lot of 'em.

A little bit of thread resurrection, but it may still be useful.

Our 5 Year fixed deal with YBS expires the end of July, YBS allow you to reserve a new deal 120 days before your current deal expires(I'm guessing other lenders are similar). We opted to stay with YBS as we didn't want the hassle of moving provider and going through the whole application process.

We selected our new deal online on the 8th April, letter arrived today 7 business days later, mortgage approved.

The problem is we as a society place too much importance on 'life' rather than 'quality of life'. There has been too much focus on preventing short term deaths rather than a long term view of what the post Covid-19 world is going to look like as a result of the measures we've put in place to contain things.

I realise it's not a popular view and losing loved ones is hard but many people who have died will have welcomed death and I know many of my parents elderly friends stuck in care homes who have openly said they wish they'd catch it so it could finish them off. My Grandma always told us 'never leave it too late to die', she always regretted the fact she ended up in a care home. Maybe we'll finally start to have open discussions about euthanasia after this is all over.

Send all over 50s on Saga run cruises?

I think some people can’t recognise a strong economy is good for shareholders and health outcomes.

I would suggest we (as a society) already do aim to protect life ‘within reason’. There will be quiet decisions in care homes every-day that demonstrate that logic. I’m not a life preserving absolutist (that sounds like someone with a life-jacket kink).

I agree. I think everyone is aware there is a huge and unknown cost to this lockdown.

However, and this is what I fear is being missed ... there was an observable normalcy bias prior to lockdown, against lockdown. It conveniently aligned with myopic profit making, ruling-class arrogance and manifested in the over stating of certain science. Cherry picking ‘herd immunity’ gave plausible deniability of a problem. A poor basis for policy. It probably almost certainly cost lives in my (idiot) opinion.

There is likely a new bias now. Now that completely mega numbers of people are in a similar, familiar, shared situation. Everyone is frustrated by our unprecedented lack of freedoms. That mass of share experience is huge and very unusual. So this I think is a factor. Other factors;
It’s economically important to lift the lockdown,
It’s increasingly politically expedient to lift the lockdown. I’m sure you can see the danger here?

If we lift restrictions in 2.5 weeks time then beforehand I would like to hear why this is manageable. I’d like to hear it from someone credible and those likely directly effected (there are many, but those in the care sector are in the forefront of my mind).

@ffm and your posts all seem to miss the fact that quite a number of the deaths are not of very old people, or people with significant underlying health conditions.

A big risk area is men over 60. They may be slightly overweight, a bit out of shape and perhaps are or were smokers, but they could well die from this disease, or have it so bad that they never recover similar lung function. They could previously have happily lived another 20 years. You happy to open things up so all these people are at significantly increased risk of getting it? Plenty younger than 60 have also died, many with no significant health conditions (i.e. about to die anyway).

Also, letting it sweep though the population will overwhelm the hospitals - you content for all the doctors, nurses, paramedics and care home workers to deal with that?

I don't think it's as clear cut as you think it is in terms of who is dying from this disease.

You realise there's no shortage of volunteers? It's medical equipment that we need, not untrained young people.

Your idiotic strategy would increase the risk to old people that you're concerned about, not decrease it. And loads of young people would die in the process, though that doesn't seem weigh especially heavily on you.

You are dangerously misinformed at best

Maybe this explains our differences as generally I agreed with your points, I don’t see this as being the only lockdown we’ll have.

Unless I’m very much mistaken ... if we get this right; learn to deal with endemic C19, test, trace, quarantine and solve the airline issue ... then we shouldn’t need another mass lockdown. A shorter lockdown increases the 2nd and subsequent waves of infection.

I realise this depends heavily on the effectiveness of government.

We’re fucked aren’t we?

I wonder if whoever is prime-minister next year will be allowed to continue dismantling the NHS, given the veneration of the present moment?

The people clapping for the NHS are the same people who voted this bunch of cunts in, in the first place.

I would be surprised if anything changed post this, when it comes to the tories hard on for fucking the NHS.

Given that we seem to be fairly blasé about failing to prepare whilst Italy was a stark warning, I think you are right.

Which suggests that Sunak (or whoever is his chancellor, if he is the new PM) will pivot to austerity as soon as the economy is staggering along again. I'm wondering if we will reach some sort of crisis point in the next few years as the capacity of the state is relentlessly stripped away - in much the same way that we couldn't handle the Lewisham riots today (if the situation were normal, not with C19) because we have lost so many Police officers since then, and even then it was a stretch with vans racing through Forest Hill with "Hedlu" written on the side.

The UK has been comprehensively outperformed by every nation that we habitually mock - the Italians are a great example as their death rate (at the same point in the infection curve) was lower than ours is. At what point in the future do we simply lose the ability to cope with something like C19 at all?

test, trace,

That before or after we hit 100k tests next week?

This is all well and good but you're assuming that the 2% is only coming from the elderly or infirm, when there's plenty of evidence it attacks young, healthy people too...

It's a lottery, and if people appreciated that more there would less inclination towards easing lockdown.

Send all over 50s on Saga run cruises?

Well, if you really want to go on one

My partner has asthma, covid could kill him.

But, I do understand also that cancer patients cannot get treatment (but perhaps only a vaccine will sort that...) and that some people now have no money and are stuck in small apartments with no access to good outside space and are really stressed. Domestic abuse deaths are up, some people are not going to their GP/A&E with diabetes problems which can kill them, the list goes on.

Perhaps opening up medical centres, dentists, businesses / areas first that have a lot of people that are really struggling while keeping vulnerable people in and given vulnerable workers the option to keep working from home, make us all wear masks and give shop workers PPE too is some form of compromise, but I am thinking out loud here.

And that will require very good test and trace to be somewhat safe, which the UK doesn't have. I can see volunteers do that (I am happy to go out and swap people in the area), and many areas now have volunteers that can bring food. But you also need the tests and the tracking systems, links with healthcare professionals etc. so the government has to pull its weight on that.

me and the missus are already dividing up the house.

I am keeping the crossbow

I do understand also that cancer patients cannot get treatment

Some can, my dad has had some chemo.

But yeah, generally a shit time to be unhealthy.

I politely disagree- it’s been effective otherwise but we’re now going to be shutdown for two months. I’d say Taiwan, HK and to South Korea (if it wasn’t for some religious morons) are far better examples.

@ffm and your posts all seem to miss the fact that quite a number of the deaths are not of very old people, or people with significant underlying health conditions.

We're learning about this all the time, and of course deaths aren't limited to the over-70s, but my impression is that the vast majority of deaths still fall in that demographic.

You happy to open things up so all these people are at significantly increased risk of getting it?

Of course I'm not happy. Nobody is happy in this situation, because all the decisions in this situation are shit, but that doesn't mean that we should always default to minimising the short-term pain, without considering the long-term implications. It's not less valid to ask whether you're happy to damage the long-term wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of children. We've entered lockdown and it feels like people expect that there will be some sort of eureka moment when somehow this all gets sorted and we can go back to life as normal; however, while we're waiting for that to happen we may quietly pass the point where the negative effects of the lockdown surpass the positives.

Also, letting it sweep though the population will overwhelm the hospitals - you content for all the doctors, nurses, paramedics and care home workers to deal with that?

This is also important. In addition, the problem of the NHS not being able to treat non-Covid patients has to be factored in.

The spike in cases detected is also looking ominous given the deaths usually follow 12-18 days behind.