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Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#81

Post by uncledave »

ubercow13 wrote: post #72
uncledave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably because the moment someone looks at it objectively someone posts a headline along the lines of ”8 year old dies of covid” or ”Tory MP says N is an acceptable death count” . Both are useless headlines as quoted but the entire political system is a shit media popularity contest and literally the only objective is to come out looking less bad than thy neighbour. So the hard questions are never asked for…

It's unclear how cancer and mental health patients would be any better off with less sacrifices, that would lead to the health care system being more overwhelmed, not less.

I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference.

I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on.

These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital.

The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#82

Post by waterglassFull »

protoman3000 wrote: post #4

What are the reasons why we can’t have a very hard 4-week long Chinese style total shutdown?

It took Victoria, Melbourne over three months of a hard lockdown to get the numbers to Zero.

If you compare some of the attitudes in both policing and policy to Australia and the response between parties you'll understand why the UK can never get there.

Consider this:

- Victoria handed out 20K~ fines by August 26 [1]

- England & Wales handed out 25K~ fines between 27 March and 16 November [2]

- The UK has 120K~ police officers [3]

- Victoria has 21K~ police officers [4]

An Australian State which has only 10%~ of England's population (6M people vs 55M) and only 17% of England's Police Force size managed to get 20K~ fines by August.

The attitude there-in lies down to effective policing and policies.

Eg Melbourne made it a mandatory requirement to wear face masks in public - I don't think the UK could get close to that. Time will tell.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/26/victo...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55134562

[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Police

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#83

Post by burnthrow »

rusk wrote: post #70
qeternity wrote: post #11

In the UK, 95% of the deaths are people over 60. There are more deaths for people over 90 than under 70. When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush. We know that lockdowns are too blunt an instrument which is why most of Europe is having to engage in ever more draconian measures. We are mortgaging our future here,…

If you get a bad dose and you can’t get a respirator you’re in big trouble. Guess what happens when there are so many sick that respirators run out. What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. Do you need a picture drawn for you or something?

> Do you need a picture drawn for you or something?

And Reddit clapped.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#84

Post by djsumdog »

jeofken wrote: post #47

Uncountable seeds of friendship and love never take root, due to meeting people being banned. Untold numbers of ideas and plans never made between entrepreneurs. All due to people with power over government arms or mass media being caught up in a mass hysteria. Governments will print money Weimar-style to fund their debts and liabilities in the 2020s, as they kill commerce and free life. In my country we were spared…

By closing businesses and shutting down the means of people to provide for themselves, governments are also forcing people to depend on handouts. Printing money without increasing value will not last. It has already damaged our economy and made us dependent on states that have not shutdown (some with terrible human rights violations like the CCP government).

It should be clear it's a means of control, used as an excuse by World Economics Form to continue with their plans for debt reset (only for certain people of course; Bezos and Gates won't have their wealth affected to devalued, just everyone under a certain income range).

I agree. This is insane and it bothers me few people on HN see it as such. There is no room for discussion on this forum for the true weight and reality of what we are seeing unfold.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#85

Post by Someone »

sonotmyname wrote: post #2

Woohoo - more inconsistent and unscientific policies! * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned __ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat. * Amateur team sports are not allowed, but elite sport such as Premier League football can continue __ 'Elite' athletes, as is the case for the rest of the 'elites', should not h…

Takeaway alcohol sales run a real risk of alcohol consumption on the streets in the neighborhood of alcohol sellers. That, in turn, can easily lead to loose interpretation of social distancing rules.

The argument for allowing elite sports to go on typically is to give the population some distraction during lockdown (it’s a bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses)

As to golf: if you allow that, why wouldn’t a group of four people be allowed to kick a football around? Tennis be allowed?

Also, part of lockdown is the prevention of people mixing over longer distances. A local outburst of COVID-19 is bad, but if the infected move home over tens of kilometers (as, I guess, is quite normal for golf), you’re asking for a much bigger problem.

Having said that, it is safe to assume the government is far from an expert on what are the risky things to do. Nobody is.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#86

Post by waterglassFull »

monksy wrote: post #77
waterglassFull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still buy alcohol in stores; by take-away this means in a ready-to-drink fashion. Alcohol delivery to a house is fine unless you're assuming people are still having parties.

Limit the amouunt of pre-prepared alcohol that can be delivered to a house at one time. You shouldn't be an ondemand keg delivery at this point or delivering 2+ cases in one go. Also part of the delivery portion of this is about supporting the pub/bar. Not the access to alcohol. (Otherwise you'd just go to the store)

Yes, this would make sense.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#87

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

f6v wrote: post #76
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Limiting the consumption seems logical. Lots of "plans" seem logical and this is precisely why technocracy is a vexation on society. Unintended consequences. The presumption of knowledge and control. All of these elite presumptions are illusory and fundamentally hubristic. You know why "limiting the consumption" of alcohol is a dumb suggestion? We have tons of evidence that it was a massive failure: Prohibition and…

> The idea that we can force humans into acting against their fundamental instincts to socialize is folly. Do you really want to go down that road? Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? Didn’t think so. You see how folly your argument is?

> Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape?

This is non-sequitur.

A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV.

If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say.

This is why jail is jail. Isolation is unnatural. It's punishment. No one voluntary chooses this.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#88

Post by CodeGlitch »

lamplighton wrote: post #68

I live in Southwark, and it's always astonishing how people don't wears masks around here. Customers, Cashiers, Barbers... Iceland, Off-license, Asda... It's like people don't care at all. Only about 50% of people are wearing masks. Sharp contrast with France where people need to wear masks all the time, and it's heavily enforced. I don't expect the number of cases to go down TBH.

I live in Warwickshire - it's pretty unusual to see people not wearing masks. I even see them wearing them on my walks in the countryside (when they are on their own!). The only people I have see who have refused are some of the mums at my kid's school during dropoff/pickup.

Would be interesting to understand why regions differ so much on this.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#89

Post by flagrant »

jeofken wrote: post #47

Uncountable seeds of friendship and love never take root, due to meeting people being banned. Untold numbers of ideas and plans never made between entrepreneurs. All due to people with power over government arms or mass media being caught up in a mass hysteria. Governments will print money Weimar-style to fund their debts and liabilities in the 2020s, as they kill commerce and free life. In my country we were spared…

The citations do not support what you say. Citation [0] says only that excess mortality in specifically the third quarter of 2020 was not higher than previous years. It says nothing about the excess deaths for all of 2020.

Citation [1] is data for 2019, before COVID-19.

Why did you cite these articles and pretend they say something they don't?

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#90

Post by JohnCohorn »

JohnCohorn wrote: post #18
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make the same argument for top level ministers. eg. "well it's fine for the PM and the cabinet to ignore lockdown directives because they're only 0.001% of the uk population" It's still inconsistent, bad for PR, and puts the whole government into question.

I dislike sports, but I do see that making pro sports broadcasts continue could provide the entertainment needed for folks to be happier to stay inside their homes like they should.

“Why not let everyone else sports to stay healthy and strengthen their immune systems, as well as get outside (where it's warm enough) and get the vitamin D they need?”

I’m all for letting people be outside freely by themselves and in isolated social groups. I’ve spent huge amounts of time exercising in parks in the sun outside during this thing for the reasons you mention.

Team sports where you get a bunch of unrelated people together in one place breathing hard and folks probably socializing after the game afterward seems more problematic.

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