Coronavirus Pandemic

[KlaxonCow]

I think it is more about asking the Government to hurry up buying the stuff and/or getting it made.

Yes. And there have also been questions about the government's procurement strategies.

In today's press briefing, the Sky correspondent talked about having been contacted by businesses who wanted to join efforts to produce PPE, but when they contacted government, there was a "nah, we're alright, mate. We've got it handled" response. The minister responded that if there were such companies then they needed to get in touch with the government - thing is, this is not the first time the question has been asked, and not the first time a minister has said "please get in touch"... only for this question to still keep coming up.

This seems to be a pattern with this government so far, as that was also an issue with why testing was initially slow to ramp up, as the government insisted on only using government labs - I think there's about 8 of them - and controlling it all centrally. But, like, NHS labs, university labs, even private industry labs were offering up their services and weren't being taken up on it.

(Then there's the fact that the government got their testing capacity higher, but then weren't testing enough to actually meet that capacity. The other day, they tested just under 20,000 people - but claimed they had capacity to have done 38,000 that day. So questions about their administration of these things, as it's ridiculous to increase capacity and then not coordinate NHS staff to actually get tested, up to that available capacity. So that 18,000 key workers could have been sorted out that day, but it just never happened. In Cardiff, the main Welsh testing facility actually closed for Bank Holiday Monday.)

They like to name drop that they've got Burberry helping to make PPE. Which is great. But, for fuck's sake, let everyone who's capable and willing to do their bit, because we're needing to operate at extremely massive scales here. Every hand on deck.

There's also been questions about how the Nightingale hospital has been kitted out with ventilators and PPE and all the rest of it, while it's actually treating very few patients, while regular hospitals are packed and struggling, and could desperately use all that kit that's barely being touched at the Nightingale. They could be, for example, distributing new patients across hospitals to balance it out, instead of packed hospitals struggling, while the new facilities aren't actually doing much, because few patients are being sent there.

Basically, there have been many questions relating to the government's organisational competence in this, and their habit of wanting to centralise and control it all and have big "showcase" projects, when this is a fucking emergency situation and we need "all hands on deck" and every inch of help offered should be being snapped up, as the scale of things absolutely requires national-level crowd-sourcing of, frankly, everyone.

I guess the problem is that, being a central government, they tend to think of things in "central authority" terms, when this shit is too big for that sort of paradigm. Publish the specs - the regulatory requirements - and then say "whoever can match these specs and can produce these things, do it and we'll buy from you".

[Daniel]

We had our first fatalities a week earlier than Sweden. Since there's exponential growth a small time shift like that can have a big difference. A week ago we had 154 deaths per million vs 228 now. Sweden is at 150 today.

It's worth taking into consideration but yeah, even if you do the death rates are that disimiliar right now though that may not be true further on down the line.

I wouldn't say that was a validation of lack of social distancing though. We're doing a shit job and if your curve doesn't flatten you'll be in the pool of hardest hit countries just like us.

Fair point about the care home deaths though.

The starting point in the graph I posted is the day when the number of dead reached 1 in a million in the respective country, so its adjusted for the time difference already. But its not a perfect comparison for many other reasons.

Today the Swedish health agency announced that the death rate seem to be levelling out. It may be a temporary slowdown, or maybe not. Time will tell.

[Rubisco]

I think government ministers should be held accountable for their actions when they cause mass death. Do you not?

There is IMO a serious case for Misconduct in Public Office here, and I've discssed it with a <major newspaper> journalist. Max sentence life term.

Are you criticising the Tories for failing to implement a German-style health system where the rich can opt out of paying for the plebs when they go private because I'm sure they'd love to do that if the public would let them.

[PFVA]

Regarding the lockdown maybe Sweden is right for one thing, it's impossible to keep everybody in lockdown for a while. Here i'm seeing people getting togethers something like 8 people having a barbeque in a very small backyard, no way they are keeping themselves a meter from each other, and people are doing so inside each other houses too.

Speaking of social distancing has anyone made a video game about trying to walk down the street dodging other people and keeping 2 meters away, passing pharmacy lines, groceries stores lines, tobacco and lottery lines, and other obstacles?

The mosquito looking thing in the picture is the municipality drone. It's generally used for beach safety and rescue, and it's now being used to go around telling people to stay home due to the virus:


The Covid 19 Drone


Note: officially 191 cases in this municipality

[KlaxonCow]

So far, there is no lock-down here in Sweden. People are advised to work from home if they can, avoid unnecessary travel and to keep their distance to other people. But you can do as you like.

Thing is, these recommendations are, in practice, not that much different to the UK.

However, gatherings of more than 50 people are not allowed. Elementary schools are still open, but all higher education is done remotely now.

These are different to the UK. No more than 2 people are allowed to gather together - unless from the same household - and all schools are closed.

What I'm getting at is that though there may not officially be a lockdown in Sweden, if everyone is largely working from home where able, avoiding unnecessary travel and are "social distancing" from each other in public then, in practice, that achieves broadly the same on-the-ground results as an official lockdown anyway.

The difference is that Sweden is asking people to voluntarily choose to lock themselves down and "socially distance", in their own interests, rather than legally mandating it.

Truth is, as Andrew Cuomo has said, his official policies actually mean nothing, unless 19 million Americans actually choose to do the right thing and follow them off their own backs, because there's simply no way he - or anyone else - can enforce 19 million people to do anything, if they refuse to do it. And he's quite right.

So, you know, the difference between "official lockdown" and "voluntary lockdown" is a semantic and legal thing, really. Because, you know, if millions of people don't voluntarily choose to follow an official lockdown, it's not as if there's realistically any chance of physically enforcing it upon them. And if folks are doing pretty much the same things in "voluntary lockdown" as you'd get in an official one, then what's really the on-the-ground difference between them?

A law is only as good as its enforcement. But the scales here are too gargantuan for realistic physical enforcement or even attempting to fine everyone in breach. If everyone chose not to voluntarily agree to the guidelines, there's realistically nothing useful that anyone could do about that.

In practice, the on-the-ground difference is not actually that different at all. Whether it's official or not, is just a legal stamp and the possibility of fines being imposed here and there.

Even Fox News understands this:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-polit ... he-economy

Yes, I don't typically agree with Faux News but the gist of the point here is sound, and what I suggested earlier.

You can officially re-open the economy, but if no-one actually goes back to the cinemas, the cafes, the stadiums, etc. - as they're not confident that they're safe from infection - then it's a somewhat pointless gesture.

I gave the example of Boris not initially banning mass gatherings, but then all mass gatherings banned themselves the very next day anyway. Because, truth is, it's not commercially viable - the Premier League could re-open a stadium to play a match, but if only 100 of the most dedicated fans show up, then that's not going to be enough ticket sales to pay for it all, so they'd be losing money anyway.

The above article gives a similar example but from the American context:

It wasn't until March 15 that LA, Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati and New York City officially announced that bars and restaurants could only do takeout orders and deliveries. But sales at those restaurants were already down more than half, compared to the previous year, the day before this anyway - because people were already choosing not to go crowd into a place where they might catch the global plague that's doing the rounds right now. Understandably so.

We can all desperately want the economy to restart but it's absolutely not going to go back to operating at full tilt until the health situation is under control first. It's not "health vs. the economy" - the economy requires people to remain healthy and not be at constant risk of a global plague, or employees / customers are not really going to go anywhere (and, even if they do, it's under duress - if I could get a supermarket delivery slot, so I never had to leave the house at all, that's exactly what I'd do).

And, as I say, if you force all your employees back into manning the restaurant, and then they all catch coronavirus, then you'll be shutting down your restaurant anyway because you can't operate it without any staff. So you're either paying that "a few more weeks" that way, or you're paying the "a few more weeks" by a lockdown extension. Your choice. But the latter should be preferred, I'd say, because a longer lockdown should reduce the numbers across the board, allowing the whole nation to get things under control and, hopefully, getting to a point where we can lift the lockdowns safely - with maybe some minor modifications to how we go about things, to catch any "second wave" immediately before it gets going, as I hope governments have now learnt the lessons of taking this seriously and being prepared to jump on it as fast as possible, before it gets out of control again - and the economy can then reasonably, to a large extent, get back to operating at full tilt once more. "More haste, less speed" / "Slow and steady wins the race".

[tufty]

You can officially re-open the economy, but if no-one actually goes back to the cinemas, the cafes, the stadiums, etc. - as they're not confident that they're safe from infection - then it's a somewhat pointless gesture.

It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim.

Let's suppose I'm a cinema owner. I get the all-clear to open, which is effectively an *order* to open, as the government stop paying my employees to be off work. So I call my employees back, and start paying them. I open up my cinema, start paying fees to the distributors, incur advertising and heating costs, and …

… nobody turns up.

I'm now losing money hand-over-fist where previously I was merely not earning anything. So I temporarily shut down a screen or two, let a few employees go, in the end I have one screen and it's me and my wife running things. My employees have all lost their jobs, I've remortgaged my house to try and keep things running until it's all better.

[KlaxonCow]

Let's suppose I'm a cinema owner. I get the all-clear to open, which is effectively an *order* to open, as the government stop paying my employees to be off work. So I call my employees back, and start paying them. I open up my cinema, start paying fees to the distributors, incur advertising and heating costs, and …

… nobody turns up.

I'm now losing money hand-over-fist where previously I was merely not earning anything. So I temporarily shut down a screen or two, let a few employees go, in the end I have one screen and it's me and my wife running things. My employees have all lost their jobs, I've remortgaged my house to try and keep things running until it's all better.

Indeed.

Similar to my example of a restaurant owner keen to "re-open the economy" (a la Trump), so forces all his staff to come back - and, at that point, they ain't furloughed, so he's paying them, not the government - and then opens the doors. Does anyone show up? Even if they do, what if someone shows up with covid-19? The waiting staff catch it and then bring it back into the kitchens.

Soon enough, all your staff are off sick in self-isolation. Well, you can't run a restaurant with zero staff. So you're forced to close again, due to sickness, and wait a few more weeks for everyone to recover - and let's hope that all of them do actually recover, and you don't end up with your chef dying.

And the point is that wouldn't it have been better to have paid that "a few more weeks" with a longer lockdown instead? Because then your staff are protected - both in terms of health from staying at home and somewhat economically so from government furlough schemes - and the whole nation can keep bringing those numbers right down, so there are less folks wandering about with covid-19, able to knock out entire businesses by just coughing in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

So, yeah, there's a whole host of situations like this that you can hypothesise that make one thing very clear. Until the health situation is brought under control, the economy isn't really going to be capable of going anywhere. It's not "health vs. the economy" - people run the economy, people are the economy, people pay for the economy (because customers are people too, of course) so those people need to be generally alive and healthy for the economy to exist.

But, yeah, what you're touching on is the reason why all those sports leagues and cinemas and theatres and other "mass gatherings" all banned themselves anyway, even when Boris wouldn't do it. Because it's not commercially viable to run these things, if no-one's actually going to turn up. You always need "bums on seats", as it were, to pay for it all. It makes abundant commercial sense to just say "okay, the football season this year is happening at the end of the year now". Postpone it until it's a valid commercial proposition again.

So these governments - such as Trump - pushing for the economy to be reopened way too soon are, indeed, probably going to help kill off innumerable businesses, in the way you've just illustrated. First, get rid of this virus, then the economy can go back to how it was before, with no impediments, and audiences returning.

Or, more realistically, get it down to small numbers, like South Korea, where an aggressive "test, trace and isolate" campaign is perfectly practical to keep what little remains under tight control (and, yes, it might sometimes fail to catch everything and there's the threat of a "second wave" - but hopefully now all governments comprehend that you don't fuck about doing sod all for a month or two, and they go into "test, trace, isolate" immediately and maybe have to bring back some lockdown measures again, to get back on top of it once more. The capacity we're building now to deal with this wave will at least be fully in place for any possible future "waves" to come. So we are better prepared, and not caught on the hoof again, desperately trying to chase an exponential curve.

That, again, it's not "health vs. the economy" but that you have to get on top of the health problem, to allow the economy to keep going. So, hopefully, they know understand - if you have to shut down all international flights, or implement some "everyone has to spend 2 weeks in quarantine before we let them into the country", then you do that. Because though it might be economically painful to the airlines to be impeded by such regulations, better that than having to go into full lockdown and the entire world economy is fucked for several more months. Shut down the flights, and pay off Richard Branson for the inconvenience. That's way, way, way cheaper than the alternative, as we're directly experiencing right now. If only they'd realised that the first time around, eh?).

[KlaxonCow]

I just spotted a brilliant YouTube comment on a video that nails it:

Stopping the lockdown now is like saying "Ok, the parachute has slowed us down enough now, we can take it off".

[Rubisco]

Truth is, as Andrew Cuomo has said, his official policies actually mean nothing, unless 19 million Americans actually choose to do the right thing and follow them off their own backs, because there's simply no way he - or anyone else - can enforce 19 million people to do anything, if they refuse to do it. And he's quite right.

Slightly different in America because they have the First Amendment to deal with.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now you can reasonably argue that under a strict interpretation of the text that it remains constitutional to enforce all kinds of social distancing measures, but courts have historically had a loose respect for punctuation, and many Americans have no respect for punctuation whatsoever. Their belief in their right to strut around doing what the hell they want whenever they want is ingrained into their identity, and any challenge to this for whatever reason is interpreted as a veiled attempt at tyranny. And if they feel aggrieved then they will peaceably assemble which they are explicitly allowed to do.

Just as gun deaths are collateral damage in the pursuit of "freedom", so will Coronavirus deaths be.

[Little stoned kiwi]

The New Zealand government is going to announce if they are cutting the 'shut strings tomorrow. I get the feeling they will, right when we are close to eradicating it. No one believes they have a handle on contact tracing to control it. At least businesses don't have to open as the wage subsidy scheme was for 12 weeks, so they aren't forced to open and start paying staff (but still want to make profit and pay expenses).
The factory I work at is going to install wash-stations, enforce distancing, etc. to get government approval. The problem is the schools and daycare centres. People will be shunting their kids off to them so they can go to work. Apparently they are going to be in 'bubbles of ten'. But can you imagine trying to keep kids in restricted groups with minimal contact? It's a farce. They'll probably be psychologically damaged by the experience.

[gilesgoat]

I was telling Jeff yesterday that now my feeling is that "overall around the world" people are getting really tired of the lockup and they are going to break the rules and go out regardless, in some places in some forms this is already happening.

I already heard more than once people saying things along the lines "fuck this lockdown, I can't stand it any longer, I take my chanches I'll go out risking whatever".

The problem is if this happen too soon "hell knows what's going to happen" .. my biggest concern/worse case scenario is that "for a little while looks like NOTHING is happening and all it's good" and then .. VA BLAM .. maybe this is the time we'll see - again - 2/3 of the world population die ? ( black pleague ).

Thing is "even if any authorithy X" is going to tell me "tomorrow you can go out it's all over" personally we agreed to "stay locked up a couple of weeks more and see what happens" .. literally "let's see if/who dies first".

Certainly "lockdown out" it will pass quite some time before I personally will be again into "hugs and such" .. fuck me .. "I don't know, for at least 3 months more just wave at me I am not going to hug/shake hands" .. kisses .. never been into kisses, NO FRAKING WAY !!

@Tufty : PRECISELY even if lock down ends tomorrow NO FRAKING WAY I am going into "assembly in public places with random people X who know in what state they are" !! Cinema ? I *LOVE* Cinema but I AM *NOT* GOING THERE, not for a good other 3 .. 4 months after lockdown is totally over .. as I said "let's see what happens first".

Thing is "is it totally finished this virus thing ?" .. is it going to go away "in 1 month because someone says so ?" .. the answer is no and I think ending the lockdown too soon is to admit defeat and "leave people die hopefully some will remain".

Which maybe in the end will turn out "it's the only thing we can do ?" .. I don't know but as some said here "looks like you can't really control people more than X" then at some point it's just "chaos/survival of the fittest/luckyest ?"

As I said "maybe this virus is too binary" .. in the sense that "or you have not and everything seems as good as normal, or you have it and you die" .. there's no "middle ground" that would make LOT of people think "actually it's nasty it's better not to catch it anyway".

For those that did not get it I think it's still a feeling like "all those deaths are distant, it's not me, it's not going to happen to me" it should feel like "I am going out I may get a bomb dropped on my head or get shoot from some sniper" but it doesn't, it just feel "I am stuck home I can't get out because someone says so where's the real danger ?".

I think overall most people can't really see/feel the real danger, unless maybe those that had some relative died from it, and think that they are just tired to stay at home.

Mind you it's true that "a lot of homes are not designed to stay comfy at home", could be LOT worse but "nobody ever tought/ever been prepared for worse".

Which makes me think "if a real war/worse war would happen in the west people will die of crazyness before to even be hit by something" .. we are "too much used to things going only/always the way we want" and we take too many - precious - things for "absolutely normal and granted".

Which they aren't.

[KlaxonCow]

You've been listening to Alex Jones on the radio again, haven't you?

[gilesgoat]

You've been listening to Alex Jones on the radio again, haven't you?

No but seriously what do you think of all that ?

I think makes perfectly sense !

[edit] I would like NOT that after all this lockdown and such that seems it's working, we go all out "kisses and hugs an parties" and 2 weeks later we are all sick throwing in the SHIT all the lockdown we did.

I would NOT do anything like that until there's "strong medical and factual evidence" that we are really safe.

[Harlequin]

What I'm getting at is that though there may not officially be a lockdown in Sweden, if everyone is largely working from home where able, avoiding unnecessary travel and are "social distancing" from each other in public then, in practice, that achieves broadly the same on-the-ground results as an official lockdown anyway.

The difference is that Sweden is asking people to voluntarily choose to lock themselves down and "socially distance", in their own interests, rather than legally mandating it.

I think this was in practice mostly the British Government's initial approach, with legal restrictions only being implemented after it became clear that too many people were ignoring distancing advice.

You can officially re-open the economy, but if no-one actually goes back to the cinemas, the cafes, the stadiums, etc. - as they're not confident that they're safe from infection - then it's a somewhat pointless gesture.

It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim.

Let's suppose I'm a cinema owner. I get the all-clear to open, which is effectively an *order* to open, as the government stop paying my employees to be off work. So I call my employees back, and start paying them. I open up my cinema, start paying fees to the distributors, incur advertising and heating costs, and …
… nobody turns up.

Now there is a question that had not occurred to me.

Daniel: Is the Swedish Government compensating people and/or businesses for loss of income over this period?

[KlaxonCow]

The difference is that Sweden is asking people to voluntarily choose to lock themselves down and "socially distance", in their own interests, rather than legally mandating it.

I think this was in practice mostly the British Government's initial approach, with legal restrictions only being implemented after it became clear that too many people were ignoring distancing advice.

In fairness, during the week that Boris didn't lock things down, I watched the press briefings and he did repeat that Britain is a "liberal democracy" and, yes, did also give me the impression that what he wanted to do was obtain a "voluntary lockdown", a la Sweden. So I agree with that assessment.

Problem was, we were already too late to act at that point and Boris was clearly not persuading much of anyone of the gravitas of the situation - from those images of folks all going on a nice beach holiday over that weekend - so the full lockdown had to be brought in.

Basically, if the government had not wasted the previous week talking bollocks about "herd immunity" and how Boris happily shakes the hands of covid-19 patients, they could instead have been preparing everyone for what was to come and impress on them the need for the coming lockdown, maybe they could have been persuasive enough to obtain a "voluntary lockdown" from the public and done it the "liberal democracy" way.

But, in truth, the time to act was already very much negative at that point anyway. Boris should have been going to those Cobra meetings in February and those should have been all about ramping up our PPE stockpiles, obtaining ventilators and increasing our testing capacity for the coming storm. We didn't hit the ground running on this one at all, and this is rather indisputable, as we've been watching the government running to catch up throughout this.

Imagine where we'd be now, if we'd started our run in February and were beginning to do the things we're doing now a month in advance.