COVID-19

Yes, it's in The Guardian, so some of you will automatically dismiss it. But this balanced and insightful article written by a public health expert from Edinburgh University is worth reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/12/tories-lockdown-social-distancing-testing-second-wave-coronavirus?CMP=share_btn_fb

 

Having read that i'm still none the wiser. Social media is just an endless stream of 'experts' with their graphs and pie charts, all which point to contradicitng outcomes. Its clear there should have been a lockdown far earlier, but then as we see now people complain about their civil liberties. Maybe the government should pick their 'experts' better, the info they went with has been torn apart by academics in that field of expertise. One thing we can take from this is that although the NHS is staffed by wonderfully intention staff on the frontline, being used as a political football over the decades has reduced it to ramshackle shell of an organisation at the mercy of the private sector and abused by backhanding multi national contractors running the show. Thousands have stood and clapped every thursday but they haven't really clapped th NHS, they're really clapping the thousands of frontline staff left exposed by a shitshow of governments past and present only interested in their own agendas.

 

Palpably good news.

But we shouldn’t be using this as a scorecard measure to arbitrate the government’s success/failure on the main issue at hand. Funding it was a complete no brainer on any measure of cost/benefit analysis.

We have a world class bioscience research industry, grading the government on that industry winning or otherwise the vaccine race is a farcical measure. Just as being let down by PPE supply chains is probably not a fair reflection of the government’s ability to manage the situation either.

We seem to have very quickly got back to petty political scoreboard journalism.

 

Will you be getting one if offered?

 

I would think all Bradford City fans will be getting a shot, it could be classed as having underlying health issues.

 

We'll take any positives going at the moment .

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8333513/Several-lessons-learnt-handling-Covid-19-MPs-say.html

Time to blame the scientists now by the government.

 

@Dennis - never mind waiting for a vaccine, just follow the example of the pussy grabber in Chief and start taking a drug for malaria. Be sure to chase it through with an injection of disinfectant though. Seriously, the man is, well, I'd better not say.

 

Only in this 3rd world, backwards shithole of a country could pubs open before schools.
This dump deserves everything that’s coming its way.

 

As Mrs Brown would say..."That's nice..!!"

 

Just seen that Thorpe Primary school have said they have decided not to reopen June 1st

 

Economist is now the priority it seems. Press harassing teachers with front page headlines. Sunak saying it’s going to the the worst recession ever etc etc.
If you die, so be it. They don’t care

 

They were always going to be the scapegoats. More fools them for joining in hoping there would be a gong in the Queen's Honours List.

 

I feel that the government feel that the lockdown was a mistake or the stay at home message was too strong.

At this minute we are all over the shop.

Airport Quarantine 14 days... no quarantine
No face masks ... face mask
Kids back to school .. kids not back at school
Economy will bounce back quickly..... economy won't bounce back quickly
Vaccine possible.....no vaccine

The government is a joke.. it's a mess. Clueless in every department at the minute. No leadership whatsoever.

 

Not just the NHS. The Public Health infrastructure of this country has been decimated by the Cameron and May governments.
People keep banging on about the government 'following the science'. But this BMJ article makes clear that the medical scientists they listened to (and appointed in the first place) were not Public Health experts. And they had their political advisers sitting in meetings that were supposed to be scientifically independent.

I know that you tend to cynically regard all politicians as the same, but they aren't. This government is (with the exception of the USA and Brazil) uniquely unsuitable to deal with a national public health emergency. All of its instincts are to privatise, fragment, rely on the market to deliver, diminish public sector bodies and cut costs. The exact opposite of the planning, cooperation and local public sector capability required in such times.

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1932

 

Clearly George Monbiot is coming from the left. But the points he makes here are, in my view, correct.
The government made all the wrong decisions, not because of bad luck or bad advice - there was plenty of good advice to be had if it had chosen to hear it - but because it's ideological DNA was in fundamental conflict with the necessary actions.

'The UK government was ready for this pandemic. Until it sabotaged its own system'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/19/uk-government-pandemic?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard