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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

  • Total voters
    97
Matt N said:
The government and the scientists are human too. They don’t want to keep us distancing and masking for any longer than they have to.
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I am no conspiracist, and in this case would probably support a few additional weeks of caution myself, but your immediate sympathy and respect towards any governing body is so frustrating. There's a difference between being a human and having a soul, or more importantly in government, a sense of public duty or integrity. I know you're young and lead forward with what many on here see as refreshing optimism, but I expect it might be difficult to maintain that perspective or tell yourself those stories as you progress into adulthood. Without balance, the choices are a cold slap in the face from political reality, or self-delusion.

Apologies if this seems too personal. I feel I have a sense of your background and upbringing from other posts that have offered some perspective as to your position, but you're otherwise too smart not to apply this kind of critical thinking.
 
In my view the lack of people following the rules has been the biggest issue in the UK.

Of course the government has made mistakes but I cannot believe a Labour government would have done any better.








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shakey said:
In my view the lack of people following the rules has been the biggest issue in the UK.

Of course the government has made mistakes but I cannot believe a Labour government would have done any better.








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Except for the evidence of the multiple left of centre governments across the world that all had a better Covid response ?
 
Plastic Person said:
Apologies if this seems too personal. I feel I have a sense of your background and upbringing from other posts that have offered some perspective as to your position, but you're otherwise too smart not to apply this kind of critical thinking.
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No, it’s OK. I should apologise myself, as I understand that my take can often be frustrating to most, and as much as I do try to please people, I know that most would prefer for me to go on an all-guns-blazing attack on Boris/the Conservative Party.

However, my mind always tries to look at both sides of the story whenever presented with a thing like this, and tries to find a justification for why people and companies do what they do. Personally, what I do is try to put myself in Boris Johnson’s shoes, and I often think to myself; if I were Boris Johnson, would I have the courage to do a lot of what he’s had to do in this pandemic? And honestly, a lot of the time, my answer would be no, so for that, I do have a certain amount of admiration for Boris Johnson and the government officials, in spite of the fact that I wouldn’t personally vote for Boris/the Conservatives if given the choice in a general election.

I’ve also always liked to live by a principle of having respect towards my “elders”/those above me; regardless of who’s in power, I feel as though it’s my duty to respect them and trust them. They’re in place to make our lives better and make us safe.

The way I’ve personally lived my life is to try and look at the positives as opposed to dwelling on the negatives, and to think the best of things. As much as certain things do make me very anxious (the Delta variant makes me very anxious, for one) and make my mind leap to the worst case scenario and worry about it, I’ve always preferred to think of a more positive scenario for why things have occurred.

I know I should probably build a more cynical mindset, but I’m afraid that’s not really how my mind seems to work.

I’d be interested to know, though @Plastic Person; what do you mean by my posts having given you a look into my upbringing and background?
 
shakey said:
Of course the government has made mistakes but I cannot believe a Labour government would have done any better.
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This is moot. We don't have a Labour government, and the good/bad news is that all signs suggest that we won't have one for the foreseeable future.

Just mad to me that anyone can look at the last year of corporate cronyism, shifting goalposts, exposed inequality, mass deaths, evidence of a prime minister who didn't even bother turning up to discuss the thing for a month after the rest of the world did and their overriding response is, "But mate, imagine if Labour were in power!" And for reference, I voted for Corbyn to be prime minster reluctantly.

The Tories have always been great at manipulating divide and rule amongst society, which they've renewed with great vigour in the age of the 'culture wars'. Under Thatcher, they promoted the idea of hard work and self-sustainability. This has since been proved as patently false, so the current idea is the blame game, and beyond that, just absolutely numbing the public to have such low expectations that they seemingly can't even imagine a more productive political environment. Politics is absolutely poison these days.
 
Davezilla said:
Sorry I should have been a bit clearer (I'd had a couple when I posted last night) but I meant once all vulnerable have had both doses, I didn't mean now as I do understand that some are only just having the 2nd. But realistically by some time in July we should be pretty much risk free and can therefore get back to pre-covid normality.
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If the lifting is delayed, it does look like the government only want to extend it by 4 weeks just to give the 2nd jab a chance to work on the over 50's and vulnerable.

delta79 said:
I would add to it a push on keeping up hand hygiene for all and the catch it, kill it, bin it NHS campaign from a few years ago.
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Especially with my recent experience of using the public loo's and witnessing people still not washing their hands after going despite being in the middle of a global pandemic
 
tayspru said:
Except for the evidence of the multiple left of centre governments across the world that all had a better Covid response ?
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We only have a first hand account of our own country. I am sure every other country will be criticising their governments for mistakes they have made.

Some countries have done better in terms of deaths, some have done worse. Probably a mix of government types.

I really don't think our numbers could have been much better unless the public had followed the rules better. And in many cases they simply didn't follow the rules at all.



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The thing is people keep kidding themselves that the UK has done so badly, I said along time ago look at the figures in at the end not halfway through.
We are in a far better place now than nearly every other major economy in Europe, France and even the great Germany are slowly but surely catching us up in the term of deaths even before we start looking at how those deaths are recorded and then adjusted.


Plastic Person said:
Under Thatcher, they promoted the idea of hard work and self-sustainability. This has since been proved as patently false.
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I can’t let a statement like that pass by, when has this been proved false? I was brought up during Thatchers time as PM by a builder and bank clerk as parents, we didn’t have a lot, modest house and one holiday a year but they worked hard as I did when I left school.
Worked my backside off in actual fact, started and subsequently sold my own business and now live a very comfortable life as a middle manager in an engineering company taking nothing, and I mean nothing from the state.
Nearly everyone I know from that time who has worked hard has done very well for themselves, some better than others granted but all own their own home and none have to worry about where the next meal or holiday is coming from.
It’s not rocket science, work hard and the rewards will always come in the end.
 
BigT said:
I can’t let a statement like that pass by, when has this been proved false? I was brought up during Thatchers time as PM by a builder and bank clerk as parents, we didn’t have a lot, modest house and one holiday a year but they worked hard as I did when I left school.
Worked my backside off in actual fact, started and subsequently sold my own business and now live a very comfortable life as a middle manager in an engineering company taking nothing, and I mean nothing from the state
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Like you, I was brought up by working class conservative parents, albeit in the nineties, rather than the eighties. They also worked hard and pulled themselves into the aspirational lower middle classes, although incidentally, neither of them would now dream of voting Tory. Both of them had jobs as civil servants and so until they were unlucky enough to endure their final working years observing the incremental decay of what has now become ceaseless austerity. They're ultimately compassionate people, and it left a bad taste in their mouths.

I also work hard, although perhaps a degree of mollycoddling that arose from the freedom that their climb up the social ranks has meant probably not as hard as I could or should! I don't take anything from the state either, but I don't feel that to be a personal badge of honour, just a reality, at least until I fall down the stairs or have my entire industry collapse underneath me... Something that was very recently nearly a reality. As successes such as your own attest, we are still living in Thatcher's Britain, and so we all know the value of money and hard work. Unfortunately, as cuts to the NHS, education, the arts and almost everything else highlight, people might soon not realise the value of anything else.

Anyway, we're drifting away from COVID, but if people are or have been largely ignoring the rules, that's another byproduct of our every person for themselves ideology. You can't plant a flag on your yacht for the power of individualism and then be surprised when nobody gives a toss when it's time to stand collectively against an international killer virus.
 
I find myself repeating the point - what restrictions are we actually delaying? Seriously? I know there is a list of restrictions that are technically in place, but the reality is almost no one is following them.

So in the real world, the only "restrictions" we are delaying are the restrictions on the economy and jobs. If things get so bad again that there's a need for another lockdown, these dates won't make a blind bit of difference as everyone is mixing and doing what they want anyway. It's late last summer all over again, it's lockdown or nothing I'm afraid. I'm sure many of us here are treating it seriously but I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I've seen following "the rules" in past few weeks.

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Plastic Person said:
Like you, I was brought up by working class conservative parents, albeit in the nineties, rather than the eighties. They also worked hard and pulled themselves into the aspirational lower middle classes, although incidentally, neither of them would now dream of voting Tory. Both of them had jobs as civil servants and so until they were unlucky enough to endure their final working years observing the incremental decay of what has now become ceaseless austerity. They're ultimately compassionate people, and it left a bad taste in their mouths.

I also work hard, although perhaps a degree of mollycoddling that arose from the freedom that their climb up the social ranks has meant probably not as hard as I could or should! I don't take anything from the state either, but I don't feel that to be a personal badge of honour, just a reality, at least until I fall down the stairs or have my entire industry collapse underneath me... Something that was very recently nearly a reality. As successes such as your own attest, we are still living in Thatcher's Britain, and so we all know the value of money and hard work. Unfortunately, as cuts to the NHS, education, the arts and almost everything else highlight, people might soon not realise the value of anything else.

Anyway, we're drifting away from COVID, but if people are or have been largely ignoring the rules, that's another byproduct of our every person for themselves ideology. You can't plant a flag on your yacht for the power of individualism and then be surprised when nobody gives a toss when it's time to stand collectively against an international killer virus.
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Well you see we are not that different, except my parents don’t have a gold plated civil service pension.
That’s why I don’t understand your comment but like you say we are moving off topic.

Incidentally the flag on my yacht has nothing to do with nationalism or individualism, it’s a Red Ensign which is flown to show the yacht is registered in the UK.
 
Matt N said:
The over-50s were always part of the JCVI top 9 priority groups, released at the start of the vaccination program. The top 9 priority groups are where 99% of hospitalisations occur, so once all of the top 9 groups are protected, we should be in a substantially better position, but we’ll have the best protection once all adults are at least partially vaccinated.

I’m aware that the government’s original target was the top 4 priority groups, but I think this was merely to start easing lockdown, as if you remember, we were in a substantially worsened position in Jan/Feb this year, so to remove everything once those groups had been done would have been extremely dangerous.

In fairness, the government did begin to ease the lockdown shortly after the top 4 priority groups were completed, so they did technically meet that promise; the top 4 groups were done in mid-February, and Boris set out the roadmap and announced the reopening of schools on 8th March shortly after.

The government and the scientists are human too. They don’t want to keep us distancing and masking for any longer than they have to.
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By the middle of February, if things go well and with a fair wind in our sails, we expect to have offered the first vaccine dose to everyone in the four top priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

That means vaccinating all residents in a care home for older adults and their carers, everyone over the age of 70, all frontline health and social care workers, and everyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable.

If we succeed in vaccinating all those groups, we will have removed huge numbers of people from the path of the virus.

And of course, that will eventually enable us to lift many of the restrictions we have endured for so long.


Please insert goal post moving
Its June and we are still potentially delaying.
At some point we have to measure the risk/benefits and learn to live with it


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I hope when restrictions are lifted, people continue some of the new habits going forward like having hand sanitiser readily available in shops & venues, hand washing and feeling less hesitant / self conscious about wearing a mask in public when you catch a cold.
 
shakey said:
In my view the lack of people following the rules has been the biggest issue in the UK.

Of course the government has made mistakes but I cannot believe a Labour government would have done any better.
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Disagree. The problems all stem from an unwillingness to do anything which could be harmful to business in the short term.

Remember that 2 weeks when the news was full of grim statistics from Italy and that country along with the rest of Europe was locked down, but there was no UK lockdown, no plan to lockdown, no restrictions, and worse there was mass panic buying, Cheltenham superspreading Festival went ahead... it was utter madness.

Labour was calling for a lockdown weeks before the government finally did what the rest of world was doing.

Never forget the absolute farce of events last Autumn as well - the combination of a useless "tiering system" which was supposed to allude to normality while pulling more and more people further and further away from it and the November lockdown which was both too late and too lax to bring down the R number effectively.

Labour called for a circuit-breaker lockdown (and delivered one in Wales) and called out the tier system as failing weeks before the government tacitly admitted the same.

The government scored a massive goal with the expedition of vaccines - but be under no illusion, the reason the Winter was quite so painful was because the government had resolutely failed to adequately apply restrictions throughout the autumn in a timely manner.

And that hesitancy to do what was clearly the right thing has reared its head once again with the hesitancy surrounding restriction travel to India.

I get the argument that there wasn't a playbook that could be followed - and to a large extent that is true, but when you have a prime minister who idealises the mayor from Jaws who kept the beaches open (and isn't meant to be a hero in that film at all), you must surely see with hindsight that a lot of what has happened has been somewhere between 'risky compared with what other leaders bar Trump are doing' and reckless.

0.2% of the UK population has been lost to this pandemic.

In the Republic of Ireland, a country that locked down at the right time and with demographics broadly similar to our own, that figure is 0.1%.

Reflect on that, because that is many tens of thousands of people who died from this who needn't have, because of a Prime Minister who idealised a flawed character from a film about a killer shark.
 
WillPS said:
Disagree. The problems all stem from an unwillingness to do anything which could be harmful to business in the short term.

Remember that 2 weeks when the news was full of grim statistics from Italy and that country along with the rest of Europe was locked down, but there was no UK lockdown, no plan to lockdown, no restrictions, and worse there was mass panic buying, Cheltenham superspreading Festival went ahead... it was utter madness.

Labour was calling for a lockdown weeks before the government finally did what the rest of world was doing.

Never forget the absolute farce of events last Autumn as well - the combination of a useless "tiering system" which was supposed to allude to normality while pulling more and more people further and further away from it and the November lockdown which was both too late and too lax to bring down the R number effectively.

Labour called for a circuit-breaker lockdown (and delivered one in Wales) and called out the tier system as failing weeks before the government tacitly admitted the same.

The government scored a massive goal with the expedition of vaccines - but be under no illusion, the reason the Winter was quite so painful was because the government had resolutely failed to adequately apply restrictions throughout the autumn in a timely manner.

And that hesitancy to do what was clearly the right thing has reared its head once again with the hesitancy surrounding restriction travel to India.

I get the argument that there wasn't a playbook that could be followed - and to a large extent that is true, but when you have a prime minister who idealises the mayor from Jaws who kept the beaches open (and isn't meant to be a hero in that film at all), you must surely see with hindsight that a lot of what has happened has been somewhere between 'risky compared with what other leaders bar Trump are doing' and reckless.

0.2% of the UK population has been lost to this pandemic.

In the Republic of Ireland, a country that locked down at the right time and with demographics broadly similar to our own, that figure is 0.1%.

Reflect on that, because that is many tens of thousands of people who died from this who needn't have, because of a Prime Minister who idealised a flawed character from a film about a killer shark.
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To compare us with the Republic with "broadly similar demographic" is hardly fair, though I don't wish to be seen to support "King Wanker Boris".
The Republic has a smaller, younger, more rural population, with far fewer urban areas where the virus takes hold.
It also has far fewer residents with an eastern heritage.
 
WillPS said:
0.2% of the UK population has been lost to this pandemic.

In the Republic of Ireland, a country that locked down at the right time and with demographics broadly similar to our own, that figure is 0.1%.
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Demographics nothing like our own....

Ireland have a population density of 72 people per square kilometre.
England have a population density of 432 people per square kilometre.
(most of whom are incapable of following rules)

It's easy to find statistics to support many arguments. I could point to Sweden and say they have a much lower death rate than the UK but didn't have a full lockdown at all.
 
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