bear66
Well-known member
Quite an interesting view of how our policy progressed. Some surmise, but a lot of quotes, some even attributed!
Story of UK Covid-19 crisis
The Highest Excess Mortality Rate in Europe
- Thread starter 1finny
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Story of UK Covid-19 crisis
Laughing
Well-known member
Bear reading that article fills me with dread and anger. I am begining to loathe this government and the twitterati wealthy who are trying to lay blame at anyones door but the governments.
I don't understand why we are not all angry, regardless of political leanings. It really does astound me.
Randy
Well-known member
Yes the government will fall, mass resignations etc for this and a general election will be called followed by a full public enquiry. I'm all for this.
Unfortunately that isn't going to happen whilst this crisis is still going on.
Out of curiosity though when should we have implemented these special measures or enforced a full on lockdown? January 31st when we had two cases or a later date?
Unfortunately that isn't going to happen whilst this crisis is still going on.
Out of curiosity though when should we have implemented these special measures or enforced a full on lockdown? January 31st when we had two cases or a later date?
So, you're saying the care home owners should be hammered, but are saying they have enough PPE? Make your mind up, are they doing good or bad in your opinion? With regards to the PPE, is that the owners saying they have enough, or your missus thinking they have engough? Whose definition of "enough" are they using?
Our James Cook staff are being told that they have enough PPE, but in reality when they go to put on what they think they should be wearing, based on advice from those most experienced in the world, it doesn't exist.
I could say I've got enough PPE to work on a covid ward (I don't of course), but in realty that means I've got a box of runbber gloves and a mask for spraying paint. I could think, or be told that's great, and "enough", but the experts would say it's nowhere near enough.
Yeah, sorry if I got that wrong, I only saw one post, but the way it was worded didn't read great, sounded like Tory fanboy stuff for the most part.
I don't think China is anywhere near what the tin foil hat brigade think it is, as the maths just would not work, nowhere near. If the death rate was massive the infection rate/ R0 would need to be also, which would have infected the world and local nations much earlier, quicker and heavier. They also would be nowhere near containing it now, their hospitals would still be flooded and none of the cities would be open. I've got a couple of mates and a few people I've met/ friends of friends that live there, and they all portray that the lockdown was fast, heavy and ruthless, and they had their temperature checked when they went out. They're all back at work now and riding bikes around whenever they like. The death rate can't have been worse/ or much worse, as this would change all of the maths and the R0, and their curve is what nearly every nation followed, other nations just didn't recover as well as they were not experts and not ruthless with the lockdowns and testing people/ taking temperatures when they left or entered buildings or on the street.
ticker_tape
Well-known member
Maybe their voter realise theyre as much to blame as the Govt for the deaths.
bear66
Well-known member
In the link I put up, the experts inputting into Sage regarding behavioural aspects of the lockdown didn't believe fatigue was an issue at all, yet that was the reason given for delaying the lockdown. The reason fatigue was mentioned was because Whitty had experience that people tired of completing medicine prescriptions, a strange comparison with a lockdown.
Hancock was for suppression measures but the hawks were against. There's an interesting comment that Cummings became a useful ally when he believed a lockdown was necessary.
Coronavirus have probably been round even longer than that, probably around as long as birds and bats have been, which is millions of years.
I am sceptical of China, and I'm sceptical of almost anything numbers related, but I know maths, stats and graphs as it's pretty much what I do all day. I know people over there that were locked down quickly and are now pretty much back to normal(ish). If this started so early and with 10x as many deaths in china, then the world deaths would be miles and miles higher as it would have started in other countries miles earlier, undetected and we would have had deaths really early.
Yeah, they did possibly did lie, but I think a lot was maybe they were just trying to get a grip on something they thought they could get a grip on or were not even sure if it was actually that bad. It's really hard when you're the epicentre, or you think you're the epicentre, and what every other nation did was just as bad, if not worse as they had more notice and a rough idea what they were up against. The likes of the UK were/ are still letting in flights without testing, tracking or tracing, and tlaking about herd immunity ina way that they want everyone to catch it quickly it's crazy.
Everyone/ country has done it or something similar. I tried to catch a falling plate that fell out of a hot oven once, I know it was stupid, really, really stupid and looking back it was stupid and I thought I would never do it intentionally, but the first thought that came to mind was "don't let it hit the floor or that's gonna be a right mess". Yeah, it burnt like a motherfcucker, but it seemed a good idea for that split second.
I think you're actually serious.
When 27 people were hospitalized with a mysterious pneumonia Wuhan in early December 2019, eight doctors tried to warn their colleagues on social media. When the online posts went viral, they were deleted by censors. Then, local police summoned the doctors for a verbal warning, requiring that they sign a statement promising not to engage in any more “rumour mongering.”
In its initial report confirming the presence of a new virus outbreak, the Wuhan Health Commission originally stated that the first patient exhibited symptoms on Dec.12, 2019. The commission later revised the date to Dec. 8, without explanation. But a study based on data from Wuhan hospitals published in The Lancet medical journal revealed that the first patient presented symptoms on Dec. 1. The Wuhan Health Commission didn’t reveal the outbreak to the public until Dec. 31. According to the South China Morning Post the first case was actually detected on November 17th.
In a Jan. 10 interview with the CCP’s mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily, Wang Guangfa, one of China’s top respiratory specialists within China’s National Health Commission, assured the public that the disease could be contained. Since no measures to contain the virus had been introduced at this point, it is likely that several hundred thousand people were infected.
Despite having infection in the city as early as December 1st, the government did not insist on checks on travel until January 14th. Around the time they were still saying (as were the WHO) there was no human to human transmission. But the CCP doesn't just not care about overseas citizens, they don't care about their own. On January 18th a large scale dinner was held with over 40,000 families. Scores of people contracted the virus at that dinner. Up until the time they closed down the city on January 23rd some 5 million residents had left the city. Many to travel abroad. Even after the shutdown, international flights were still leaving Wuhan.
So we've established that as early as December 8th Chinese authorities knew there was person to person infection, but they did nothing for weeks. They finally shut down Wuhan on January 23rd. Not because it was part of some plan, but because they couldn't suppress the facts anymore. Around that time they went public on the virus, and the WHO was forced to make an announcement about virus transmission, though they still claimed it wasn't a threat to the world, and refused to announce a pandemic until March 11th by which time it was too late for most countries to react.
During a Jan. 28 press conference, the Party boss of Wuhan, Ma Guoqiang, said the central government didn’t allow the Hubei CDC to diagnose the disease until Jan. 16; previously, patients’ samples had to be sent to Beijing for testing. Even then, the Hubei CDC only had enough capacity to run about 300 tests per day, he said. Similarly, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang blamed his superiors for mismanaging the crisis. During a news program that aired on state broadcaster CCTV on Jan. 27, Zhou said the central government made the decision to withhold information about the outbreak. “Disclosures about the outbreak were not timely. ... As the leader of a local government, I could only publish information after I received permission from the authorities [central government],” Zhou said.
What is patently clear is that for whatever reason, the Chinese Peoples Party machine knew there was a major outbreak, but either did not notify senior leaders until it was too late, or those same leaders decided to try and suppress the virus and keep everything quiet. In both cases they breached WHO rules, which provides set limits for notifiable diseases. Instead of the WHO going public with this non-notification, the leadership of the WHO effectively transmitted propaganda provided to them by the CCP until January 20th when China finally came clean. As late as January 14th the WHO were still saying this was not transmitted person to person despite them having been in China in late December. Both Tedros and the prior Director were appointed at China's request, and effectively have been doing the CCP's bidding ever since. No doubt there are some dedicated professionals working for the WHO, but their leadership is corrupt.
If we can assess all this from information China has allowed to become public. Imagine what is really true. The CCP is now running a global PR campaign trying to offload blame onto others. They had an Arabic video blaming the US for example. And they're publishing ads on social media platforms. They're using everything they can to suppress the truth. They're leveraging economic power over US media organisations to suppress negative press about China, and I don't believe a thing I read out of Bloomberg news. Bloomberg is exposed financially in China and stands to lose billions. As do Comcast the owners of NBC and MSNBC.
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Depends where people traveled. Anywhere with links to Wuhan saw the virus in mid January. Tens of thousands of Chinese textile workers live in north Italy for example. Chances are they infected people arriving at airports, and those people went on to infect others. I have a friend who was in New York on January 14th and he's pretty certain he had the virus a few days later. If you compare the scale of the virus in New York with elsewhere in the US it would make sense. It does just look like viral pneumonia. I did hear they're going to check some how died in January to check if the virus was present.
International borders are effectively a barrier to disease transmission. Taiwan is only 130 miles or so from China, but shut down it's borders early and therefore had little transmission. Similar is true for New Zealand. In the US the west coast (most infection from China) has faired pretty well, but New York (infection from Europe) has been decimated.
bear66
Well-known member
It wasn't mysterious pneumonia. It was pneumonia. There were 41 cases of pneumonia some of which were with people who had links to the meat market, but not all. The proximity drew attention. There may well have been later covering up but suddenly finding the 7th coronavirus in humans is a big step for a medical professional to make.
The first case in the USA on 5 February was before the USA admitted to it. Were they lying? No, linking a heart attack to the novel coronavirus to a heart attack was beyond the US medical capability. A postmortem, much later, found the person's heart had 'exploded' and the presence of the coronavirus.
Our poor response wasn't because we were totally in the dark about the virus. We had the genetic code by mid-January and Oxford started to work on a vaccine straight away. It was politicians asleep on the job.
The first case in the USA on 5 February was before the USA admitted to it. Were they lying? No, linking a heart attack to the novel coronavirus to a heart attack was beyond the US medical capability. A postmortem, much later, found the person's heart had 'exploded' and the presence of the coronavirus.
Our poor response wasn't because we were totally in the dark about the virus. We had the genetic code by mid-January and Oxford started to work on a vaccine straight away. It was politicians asleep on the job.
Laughing
Well-known member
Overly critical Cutherbert, are you serious? Would you be so glib if you had lost a loved one?
I really do despair of some people who either are gullible enough to buy the spin, or actively don't care.
Did you see Keir Starmer in Parliament?
If it was as easy to navigate through this situation as some of the political experts on here seem to think, then I Starmer would have slammed the government. He didn't. I thought it was a good insight. I was impressed with him actually.
As for the bit about losing a loved one. Obviously I'd be gutted, but I wouldn't blame the government - whatever it's party. (I generally distrust politicians, so maybe I have super low expectations)?
If it was as easy to navigate through this situation as some of the political experts on here seem to think, then I Starmer would have slammed the government. He didn't. I thought it was a good insight. I was impressed with him actually.
As for the bit about losing a loved one. Obviously I'd be gutted, but I wouldn't blame the government - whatever it's party. (I generally distrust politicians, so maybe I have super low expectations)?
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Randy
Well-known member
I asked her to ask her boss at work what the situation with PPE was as we have two young kids at home who I would like to bring up as a full family. I've told her the first sign of a shortage of PPE she is not to go to work, call me selfish I don't care, my family is more important than anybody else. She was told that the homes the company run in the north east area has a plentiful supply and did not envision running out anytime soon and her boss has been assured by the company should they need any it will be supplied. Now I get that not everyone care home in the country will be in the same situation but I can't work out how people can blame the government fully if private care home operators aren't on the ball too?
My wife's place of work now treat every resident as been covid-19 positive regardless of test or symptoms or not. Touchwood no residents in the home my wife is working at have tested positive or are showing any symptoms. Given she works in an assisted living care home, I wonder if that makes a difference compared to other ones?
Laughing
Well-known member
Cuthbert no one is saying it is an easy job, but you make it much easier if you get the basics right. Yes I saw PMQ, I have no idea what Starmer is doing and why. I don't see that as relevant to a government that has systematically made one bad decision after another. Starmer is free to deal with this in anyway he chooses. I would bet my house against a pinch of **** that when this is over he is crying for an enquiry, perhaps he thinks now is not the time. I can't speak intelligently about what is going through Starmer's mind
Starmer showed exactly how you operate in opposition. Apply pressure, but not in a way that turns off that portion of the population you need to vote for you.
As things stand, the government has taken some form of scientific advice at every turn. And in an enquiry that's exactly what will come out. So why would Starmer have done any better? Had Labour won the election in December, they'd have faced exactly the same conditions as the Tories face now. You couldn't fix what they thought was wrong in 3 months. Sir Keir knows this and is being very canny. Which is why Raab was increasingly losing his cool, because he knew politically Starmer was hitting home with the viewers.
So that pretty much puts the start of it around early January, just like they said and would make China's quoted number of infections and deaths seem totally plausible, considering they're pretty much all back to work now. It's impossible for it to have been much worse, much earlier and for them to have have 10x the deaths. The numbers elsewhere and the graphs would look completely different.
I know tons of people claiming "they have had it", people just like to say stuff like that, I've no idea why. Jesus, even I had the worst flu I've ever had back in early December, with 100% the exact , main symptoms of covid-19. It was worse than swine flu, which I actually did have. Do I think I had Covid-19 in December, not a chance, as if I had there would have been thousands dead in the UK by Christmas and the UK would have noticed it, the numbers just don't work.
Thing is, how many people are in China, 1.4 billion? How many posts like this are "censored" every day, for illnesses that doctors can't figure out? There are probably hundreds every day, trying to pick out the needle of real virus in the haystack of possible viruses can't be easy, especially when you're completely blind and with no notice.
I totally agree with that. It was why I was impressed with him. He was calm and assured. Much better than someone standing in opposition and screaming.