Coronavirus

[Saracen999]

No dispute about that. Recessions hurt the poor far more than the rich. Estimates are 500 Million people will be forced in to poverty by this shut down. If true, that means millions of premature deaths, and careers and futures ruined for a generation.

Trouble is, especiallly when you're talking about 500M people, that term "poverty" is a very slippery and unless defined, pretty meaningless term.

Poverty to someone on benefits in UK city has a different meaning than it does to a war-torn city in Yemen.

Also, even in the UK, thousands of people can enter "poverty" without their living standards changing at all, simply if others living standards went up and theirs didn't.

Poverty nearly always is used as "relative" poerty, which is often polititically loaded but does little to reflect actual hardship in the real world.

[DK2019]

Trouble is, especiallly when you're talking about 500M people, that term "poverty" is a very slippery and unless defined, pretty meaningless term.

Poverty to someone on benefits in UK city has a different meaning than it does to a war-torn city in Yemen.

Also, even in the UK, thousands of people can enter "poverty" without their living standards changing at all, simply if others living standards went up and theirs didn't.

Poverty nearly always is used as "relative" poerty, which is often polititically loaded but does little to reflect actual hardship in the real world.

Many people in this country, were already relying on foodbanks despite having full time jobs before....

[j1979]

No dispute about that. Recessions hurt the poor far more than the rich. Estimates are 500 Million people will be forced in to poverty by this shut down. If true, that means millions of premature deaths, and careers and futures ruined for a generation.

other than the lockdown, the virus has not had a massive effect on me so far (other than i think i had it), because I have worked from home for the last 3 years... but like many have elderly relitives and im worried.

There are many who will lose people before their time. Forum members no less... Speadie, sorry for your loss (( i didn't notice your post before.

TeePee your point of view is an opinion about the economy, an opinion that a lockdown is a balancing act of suffering and death vs economic damage and the repercussions, possibly with a non direct death toll too.. But the effects of here and now are very real and tangible.

But there is other evidence that without a lockdown, the economic effects are just as bad if not worse, but with higher death tolls.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ternative.html

[TeePee]

other than the lockdown, the virus has not had a massive effect on me so far (other than i think i had it), because I have worked from home for the last 3 years... but like many have elderly relitives and im worried.

There are many who will lose people before their time. Forum members no less... Speadie, sorry for your loss (( i didn't notice your post before.

TeePee your point of view is an opinion about the economy, an opinion that a lockdown is a balancing act of suffering and death vs economic damage and the repercussions, possibly with a non direct death toll too.. But the effects of here and now are very real and tangible.

But there is other evidence that without a lockdown, the economic effects are just as bad if not worse, but with higher death tolls.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ternative.html

The here and now are very real, but not nearly as bad as many people had been led to believe. With the disease turning out to be so much milder, it's time to start looking ahead and mitigating the economic damage sooner rather than later. Looking back in hindsight and saying the Government should have prepared for the virus better is easy. But we need to avoid doing the same thing in six months, or a year, with unemployment possibly racing through 30%, wondering why the Government delayed taking action.

[j1979]

Ecuador officially 315 deaths. Makes me really wonder why they are hiding the true number, especially as they apparenty didnt have a universal BCG vaccine (odd country out in south america). Sad times we live in.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/bodies-rot...084318759.html

https://www.channel4.com/news/bodies...th-coronavirus

[Saracen999]

Many people in this country, were already relying on foodbanks despite having full time jobs before....

Indeed. But my point wasn't about that. It was simply that "poverty" is an ill-defined and often misleading term that means different things according to circumstannce.

[DanceswithUnix]

The reality is that this virus simply isn't as bad as people have been manipulated in to believing.

I would say this is exactly as bad as I have been lead to believe. Perhaps the UK hospitals are, according to statistics, just about coping *because* most people are staying at home like they have been told to, and all it would take is enough people shouting their mouth off that things aren't all that bad to get people out of their homes just as things are getting better and kick the whole cycle of death off again.

OFC that assumes that the hospitals are actually coping. From what I'm seeing, they aren't. These are not a simple number of beds resource, doctors and nurses are dying from this so there must be an awful lot of staff who are sick. I don't see how we can let up the lockdown until our hospitals and their staff are recovered and in a better state.

[j1979]

The MPs sneaky backhanded payrise is not going down too well.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/coronaviru...032400059.html
----

Over 1/4 of a year too late.... the govenment plans a smart phone app.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/coronaviru...081410633.html
Should this not have already been done before a pandemic hits? like having PPE supplies. criminaly negligent on all counts.
----

Chinese society heading in a worrying direction
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/m/963d75cf...months-of.html

My friend out in China confirms this is happing on a massive scale. Many shops now have "No Blacks" signs.

While he is white british and faces some discrimination, an old school friend / facebook acquaintance of his, who is black british, who is also out teaching English in china has been told to leave the apparment that she rents there... the reason given is that she is "not clean"

He says the situation is spiraling there and not much been done to protect the rights of none Han Chinese.

[Saracen999]

I would say this is exactly as bad as I have been lead to believe. Perhaps the UK hospitals are, according to statistics, just about coping *because* most people are staying at home like they have been told to, and all it would take is enough people shouting their mouth off that things aren't all that bad to get people out of their homes just as things are getting better and kick the whole cycle of death off again.

OFC that assumes that the hospitals are actually coping. From what I'm seeing, they aren't. These are not a simple number of beds resource, doctors and nurses are dying from this so there must be an awful lot of staff who are sick. I don't see how we can let up the lockdown until our hospitals and their staff are recovered and in a better state.

A bloke teetering along a crumbly mountain path with a 1000ft drop either side and no end in sight is coping. But one mis-step at any time .....

My read of the NHS is that, never mind PPE important tnough that is, the real miracle is the beyond-Herculean efforts and endurance of staff and there comes a point where you can't overcome mind-numbing exhaustion with will-power and sheer grit and longer.

Sooner or later, the human body just't can't keep cashing the energy cheques that the conscious mind is writing.

How long before a critical number are simply too exhausted and long-term drained to keep going?

Even if you light a candle at both ends, sooner or later you hit the middle.


We're on a knife-edge, clock is ticking, fuse is lit, etc.

[j1979]

Also rest is vital if you are the one of the 1 n 5 that gets the bad immune responce from the virus.

Nurses that are exposed to higher viral loads, long hours and extremely stressful environment, are at greater risk.

Then you get home after 11 hours, turn on the TV, to see Pritti Patel and Matt Hancock blame you, your colleagues and not themselves for the crisis.

I couldn't do their job.



Then you read this story, and gulp.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/recovered-...161747233.html

[Saracen999]

.....


turn on the TV, to see Pritti Patel and Matt Hancock blame you, your colleagues and not themselves for the crisis.

I couldn't do their job.



Then you read this story, and gulp.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/recovered-...161747233.html

Yeah ..... I don't even want to thonk about the Patel/Hancock thing.

I've listened to a LOT of radio recently, and I heard exactly what they said, which has subsequently bee taken hugely out of context. It was a typical journalistic bear-trap by people that never provide the context, and often 'paraphrase' quotes as well.

Frankly, I don't care about the press antics.

I try to concentrate on what's happening, and not on press/politician's 'mating' rituals.

[MrJim]

My cousin died two days ago and his brother is showing symptoms - both are physically and mentally disabled - a DNR was issued in his case. Whether that his disability was a relevant factor, I don't know - my sister works for the NHS and says DNRs are widespread in general for CV.

I'm so sorry to hear that, Spreadie. It must be an incredibly tough time for you & your family.

The widespread use of DNRs is morally repugnant, if they go against the wishes of individuals & their families. I've expressly requested that I DO wish to have every treatment, therapy or intervention used to resuscitate me should it come to that, but who knows whether any attention would be paid to my wishes?

[Saracen999]

I'm so sorry to hear that, Spreadie. It must be an incredibly tough time for you & your family.

The widespread use of DNRs is morally repugnant, if they go against the wishes of individuals & their families. I've expressly requested that I DO wish to have every treatment, therapy or intervention used to resuscitate me should it come to that, but who knows whether any attention would be paid to my wishes?

My condoelces to Spreadie, too. Hard times, and thinking of you. And that'sone instance in thousands over COVID, none of wbich makes every single one less of a gut-shot to family/loved ones.


As for DNR wishes, good subject (IMHO) for a thread but not sure about in this one, or right now. I think I'll pass, right now.

[matts-uk]

My intent is for people to survive and thrive. The economic damage is more deadly than the disease.

You have considered that surviving and thriving are dependant. You must first survive before you can thrive.

You fly for a living don't you? You have been trained to manage a crisis. Aviate, communicate, navigate. When the infection curves turn horizontal, when health care workers stop crying out for PPE and Oxygen, we might have pulled out of the economic nose dive and can assess the situation. Until then the damage that is occurring to populations immediately needs to be minimised.

The scientists do not (yet) know enough about this particular virus for economists to say whether action or inaction would be the more costly path. Whichever path is taken there is a great deal of disruption, a large number of deaths and huge economic shocks. Economically speaking, we are into 'Scottish weather forecasting.' It is not possible to see very far ahead as there are too many inter-dependent variables changing too quickly. Planning is much more of a gamble. Resources may end up being committed towards events that never happen. A double loss as the resource is lost immediately and the future return never materialises.

Economies will adjust in the mid to long term but how they adjust is a political debate that will play out in the aftermath. Social cohesion was a commodity worth little in the West but it suddenly became a lot more valuable.

A virus certainly does respect individual choice, in that those who choose not to be in contact with other people are less likely to be infected with it.

It very much depends how you want to look at it. I take the view that viral infections attack species and it is a battle of magnitudes. What happens in real life is a magnification of what happens under the microscope. I am aware some people find the concept difficult to swallow. So yes, you can point to an outlier who is able to live entirely self-sufficiently off grid but they are so few and far between, they are insignificant amongst the species. In evolutionary terms it is not so long ago that leaving the tribe was frankly suicidal. The vast majority of us do need to go to the shops, queue in line for food and are further inter-connected in so many different ways. The procrastinating over social distancing suggests to me that social bonds between humans remain stronger than (some) people like to admit.

Within the statistics quoted by Channel 4 Friday night was the one I have been waiting to hear. Recorded UK deaths, collated by the ONS. The figure lags behind the virus stats by several weeks due to the time it takes to register deaths but it is a reliable figure for validation as very few deaths go unregistered. What actually happened in week 13 this year, between 21st and 27th March, is about 1000 more people died than is normal. An order of magnitude increase above the error margin(!) Up until then the figures were running a little below the 5 year average due to the mild winter.

To put some perspective on it. You mentioned that we accept a certain level of road deaths. In the UK during 2018 about 1800 people were killed in road accidents, on average about 35 people per week. In week 11 Covid-19 was mentioned on death certificates 5 times. Week 12, 108 times. Week 13, 539 times.

My sincere condolences to any one for whom those numbers are more than numbers. I will not pretend to know you but I sympathise no less.

[DK2019]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonard...johnson-merkel

"The Coronavirus Hit Germany And The UK Just Days Apart But The Countries Have Responded Differently. Here’s How."

A great article with a nice time line of events

[AC81]

I'm so sorry to hear that, Spreadie. It must be an incredibly tough time for you & your family.

The widespread use of DNRs is morally repugnant, if they go against the wishes of individuals & their families. I've expressly requested that I DO wish to have every treatment, therapy or intervention used to resuscitate me should it come to that, but who knows whether any attention would be paid to my wishes?

There must be a medical reason the DNRs are in place if they are that widespread.
Death tends to occour when oxygen can't pass from the lungs to the body as the infection and inflamation in the lungs is preventing it.
It would seem likely that this would make resuscitation unlikely to achieve any positive outcome. If the infection and inflamation are still present and not receeding.
All very sad to think about. I'm no expert, just thinking out loud. But, i don't believe the NHS would add DNRs without a good deal of thought behind that.