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

The reason that the entrance to the former cop-shop is in Shrubbery Road and not the high street, is that at some stage of the building process someone turned the drawings through 90 degrees, and too much building progress had been made before anyone noticed. My niece was briefly stationed there just before it shut.

Yup, dinner and dance places were (for me) part of its unique vibe because they seemed so out of place. How that becomes ‘Worst High Street’ bad, I don’t know.

Pratts (John Lewis) closing down and Sainos building a new supermarket half a mile south of the main high street were supposedly contributory to its demise. I get the impression that there's something more of a community spirit these days, more than there was in 2002.

More community spirit = more ukeleles?

.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/19/covid19_nhs_data_store_open_letter/ basically there is no good data protection, still.

Palantir is involved and is funded by a USA fund that has direct links to the NSA. Hopefully that is just my 3-2 tesco tinfoil hat, after all, they could not do any damage if they just write the software, right?

With the UK leaving the EU, GDPR may also be thrown out of the window.

I do love a bit of London Smoke and Cure

I really hope so.

There was some discussion that some countries were just preventing the inevitable e.g. New Zealand, South Korea. If there isn't a second wave, is there a chance countries that prepared properly and stoped the spread from the start will never see a wave if the virus mutates to a less deadly strain? That would almost make our governments failings even worse.

That was good. He wasn’t asked whether he believes the likely size of the second wave is manageable.

A (the?) counter to his position is that now is the time to suppress the infection to a point where either track and trace can happen (probably unworkable) or just to delay/reduce/make-manageable a second wave.

Totally.

Lack of leadership on the way in, lack of leadership on the way out.

According to my vaguely conservative colleague New Zealand is non-comparable with the UK. I asked how-so? Our economy, culture and societies are pretty similar in character. “We have Americans, Irish and all sorts flying in, there’s nothing that could be done” ...

:-/

How are the NZ and UK economies comparable?

I think it's fair to say that a small nation of islands in the Pacific with a population about half the size of London, a population density which is a fraction of the UKs (let alone London's), and which has no where near as much international travel going to or through it, is not comparable.

I am very much not a conservative.

One story that has made the headlines about the situation in India is the plight of migrant labourers in the big centres whose work has dried up and who want to return home:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/19/my-angel-man-who-became-face-of-indias-stranded-helped-home-by-stranger-coronavirus

(This has been going on for weeks, of course.)

Majority service sector. First world liberal democracy.

has no where near as much international travel going to or through it

Per head, I’d have thought this was about the same. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

mushroom farms use a lot of energy

More or less than meat or importing out of season fruit/veg, or running a bitcoin miner, driving, flying?

Leave mushrooms alone! ;)

Classic :)

Wait...
...you are running a bitcoin miner?
;)

Shrooms wise to run a comparison against imported food is pretty hard unfortunately. If it's greenhouse grown yeah it's bad, but food planted and harvested by hand grown using sun which is then put on a ship may not be as bad.

Fish wise I guess Scottish mackerel would be best as it's caught close by and can be MSc.

you are running a bitcoin miner?

Don't be silly.

I bought into bitcoins well before needing to mine them :P

Pension fund sorted! ;)

I don't know if it's equal proportionally, but I doubt it. London is an international travel hub, global financial centre, incredibly popular tourist destination, and very easily accessible to a huge number of people comparatively. But even if it were, it's a question of opportunity to transmit as much as (more than?) proportion. Absolute numbers matter in this case. Especially once density is added to the equation. You drop 10 ill people into a city vs 1 you'll have a much more difficult time responding. Now make that city 10x larger. Now increase the density n times.

Edit - a quick Google says there were fewer than 4 million international visitors to NZ in 2018. 11 million passengers used Eurostar the same year.

You drop 10 ill people into a city vs 1 you'll have a much more difficult time responding.

I don’t see how this supports leaving the border open, no checks at airports etc - the UK policy.

NZ were proactive. For their (different but comparable) situation, this has worked well.

I don’t see how this supports leaving the border open, no checks at airports etc - the UK policy.

Don't recall saying that. I agreed with your colleague, despite them being a Tory, that you can't compare the UK and New Zealand.

Ha, yeah, those goalposts got moved pretty quickly on you

It's just terrible how Mrak always supports the most lackadaisical, sloppy use of statistics.

#amIdoingthisright?

#amIdoingthisright?

I'm really not sure