Nope it's not in Free For All. I wrote this elsewhere and not ashamed of it, so I thought I'd repost here for sensible and polite discussion in the spirit of keeping the forum active. Contrary views are welcome. ============ As a Brit, I follow the UK news more closely than other countries. My take is this. I think the UK Govt initially wanted to go the herd immunity route. Shelter the vulnerable, allow the virus to spread among the healthy (the majority of whom have no symptoms at all, and those that do largely fight it off) until the infection rate (R0 value) is less than 1. Whereupon it eventually dies out and the vulnerable do not need to be sheltered anymore. The UK media got into a frenzy, stirred up hysterical Facebook doom mongers, who created panic among the less well-informed. The UK U turned. In the UK many hospitals are empty, staff are being sent home because there is nothing for them to do. People are at home (the safest place to be statistically), there are next to no traffic accidents, far fewer work related injuries, no sports injuries and people with minor issues are not clogging up ER rooms. The vast feral youth of Inner Cities are not stabbing each other. People with scheduled operations are having them postponed, to allow for the influx that isn't happening. A temporary hospital was built in London with 4,000 beds. With the current numbers at or passing their peak just 16 beds are occupied there. There are other temporary hospitals around the country that are yet to see a single patient. The 'curve' has so far not put the UK overall healthcare capacity under severe pressure. In individual places it has, but across the country as a whole - not at all. Turning to Cancun, we have 200 positive cases and a total of 15 deaths over one month. A similar amount are killed by the cartels in Cancun in a normal week. Probably the same amount die in traffic accidents every 'normal' week. Many more are injured by both and require hospitalization. But there is next to no traffic now and even the cartels seem to have taken some time off. Lives saved ? Meanwhile, we have hundreds of thousands out of work. Receiving nothing or half pay if they are lucky. People who live week to week and, in desperation, may turn to looting or robbery. Little to no Govt support here. A good friend of mine is paying his 150 staff half pay to stay at home and do nothing. His business has zero income yet his salary bill is around $40K USD a month. How long is that sustainable? It's either herd immunity or everyone stay at home and wait for a vaccine that could take a year, by which time the economy has disintegrated. Cancun will not exist as you know it. If the lockdown in the UK lasts for 3 months it is facing the deepest recession since 1709. That is a long time - such a long time the US didn't even exist then. People simply won't obey lockdowns for extended periods of time. We're already seeing rebellions in the US after one month. How will it be if everyone waits at home for a year until a vaccine? Yes, people will die from the virus. They will die either way. Many of those, sadly, would have died from other causes anyway. The death toll may well be greater by dragging things out waiting for a vaccine than it might be getting back to some kind of normality while protecting those who need to be protected. It may take decades to recover economically, all for something that I think may end up being proven as the biggest overreaction ever known.
I agree. But because of the media and the public to a large extent no matter which way the government chose it was going to be wrong. Can you imagine what the advisory meeting must sound like to world leaders. Then throw in that China was probably no reporting accurate data. And the world is a cluster F*ck.
Based in UK , Steve's view was initially the same as mine BUT no one was clearly aware of how contagious the virus could be or it's differing impacts on people. All anyone was saying was "don't shake hands, just fist bump", three weeks later people are 2 metres apart, with masks, queuing at super markets and at one stage running out of loo roll (totally down to bloody social media !!) . The UK hospitals are under pressure but are coping well ( yes, non-important operations have been deferred) but normal medical procedures are being continued and we're encouraged to attend/phone or go to A & E if necessary. The media are (in my option) looking for scape goats to blame. Funny how they're still out and about reporting and their newspapers were promoting flights and vacations right into mid -March... how come they didn't see it coming.... did you see any saying we needed vast quantities of P.P.E. back in January ?, no, all I heard during Brexit was industry needs product "JUST IN TIME" well this is what you get when you don't hold stocks...now your fucked.... If anybody, the media should be under closest scrutiny and the WHO being questioned on China's health standard's that has allowed another crap virus to spread through the world.... just my 3 pennies worth from the UK.... and yes, I was going skiing in Italy/France in late March , had it been a few weeks earlier would have been in the epicentre NO JOURNALIST told me to cancel in February…. BUT so glad to hear Cancun isn't massively effected and hope that continues.... stay safe Steve, Jannett and family.... p.s Just to advise TUI are still today advertising TTR availability for September onwards... hope remains !!
Couldn't agree more with Steve. I think we are going to find out that this moved through populations earlier than thought and most people never had symptoms. The death rate will probably end up being like a bad flu year. My bigger concern is how people blindly follow government and the media. Nobody seems to question any of this. In our state(Wisconsin), our governor just extended the "safer at home" order for another month. Local media then had local politicians parrot the governors views. Not one dissenting view at all. No questioning it. Critical thinking be damned! People die from viruses. People also die from other things. They also die from poverty, depression, hopelessness, mental health, drug use, alcoholism and suicides when the economy is shattered. Nobody seems to give a flying fuck about this. We've put 25-30 million out of work in the US when less than .21% of our 320 million people have confirmed cases. This can't continue much longer without the "cure being worse than the disease".
I get all of that. The UK sounds pretty much like what we are getting in the US. I also agree on this being over blown, and numbers will play that out. Just trying to figure out how to square all that up with the mass graves being dug in New York? There seems to be more people dying than normal. I would really like to see some chart that shows the number dead each day from year to year, and see how that compares. I don't remember mass graves even during 911, but gruesomely maybe there weren't that many bodies left....?
We see most of you are in places where there isn’t a large number of cases or deaths. Here in New York that isn’t the case, there have been over 13,000 deaths in a little over four weeks from COVID 19. That number is with businesses shut, schools closed, and people adhering to the social distancing guidelines with masks on! Everyday there’s more than 2000 more cases, more hospitalizations. What would those numbers look like without these precautions? That’s a hard question but we probably all agree it would be much higher. The September 11th comparison? Did you know that 2753 people died on that horrible day? Without getting into specifics it’s obviously a very different situation.
That was my point. Maybe it happened, but wasn't reported, but I don't remember mass graves being built then. How were they able to deal with that many bodies at once, but can't now? This is certainly hitting New York harder than most anywhere else. Probably mostly because of population density. As bad as it is, still not sure Cuomo ever needed the 30,000-40,000 ventilators he was asking for in the beginning. Not sure there would even have been enough beds for that many. Seemed like a dramatic request.
Vents and beds were based on projections from the science community. I’m not a scientist or a doctor but I like to think that all we’ve done to stop the spread has been working. Being prepared for the worst case scenario was smart and in the public’s interest. At the World Trade Center DNA needed to be used to identify victims. Obviously different.
There's an inherent fallacy in looking back after stay-at-home orders stopped the spread and saying "See? The risk of the pandemic was overstated, we didn't need those stay-at-home orders". The failure of North American governments to pay attention to what was going on in Asia and get testing in place early left us with the blunt tool of stay-at-home orders.
