WHY ARE WE IN THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE

[k979aaa]

Well to cut a long story short because people at the top took their eye off the ball but with hindsight but they had hindsight and the best scientists but you know what they ignored them here https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme ... ik-2020-04" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[circles]

They're fkn liars...

And the quicker you get your head out your arse and realise it the better it'll be for all of us.

[Murdoch]

The premise of that article is correct, the tendencies of people will not change in the slightest because of this pandemic.

Take a current example, Apple and Google are trying to "help", by building a tracking system into their phone's operating system, that will soak up all the data of who you've been close to, to "contact trace". Their go to mindset is, "we need to harvest more of your data". China will respond with more authoritarianism. The globalists will call for more supranational responses, i.e. world governance. The racists will blame the Chinese. The xenophobic will blame the immigrants. Royal Mail will claim letters are down, and try and strip back the service. And so it repeats...

[AngardWolf]

Because public services are run as flimsily as possible for the benefit of shareholders, because the system doesn’t allow for any slack (spare capacity in the NHS is written off as waste), because ultimately the economy growing by a few tenths of a percent each quarter is of more value to the state than your life, and because belief in British exceptionalism (too many people watched the horror unfolding in Italy and Spain, shook their heads, and said “it couldn’t happen here”) is a disease that infected this country long before Covid 19.

[k979aaa]

Latest is you can contract it again and it could spread more than 13 feet 4 meter's and apparently according to this report https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... id-19.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; we probably already have it had it or have passed it on. But it still does not excuse the lack of testing in this nation we knew this was a potential issue in January of this year why did the Government not set up these lab's for testing there and then we could have mitigated the spread of this virus if these measures were taken then. It is a piss poor show when we act on what could and should have been done before hand, It is up to the rest of us to ask the questions of the 9875 who cannot do so!

[terry2972]

Hindsight is a brilliant thing I would have been perfect with it lol

[SpacePhoenix]

They shouldn't have stopped doing contact tracing. Is testing now really doing that much good - someone could be tested and not have it, then catch it the next day so really people need to be tested every day or at least once a week

[Aardvark]

Because public services are run as flimsily as possible for the benefit of shareholders, because the system doesn’t allow for any slack (spare capacity in the NHS is written off as waste), because ultimately the economy growing by a few tenths of a percent each quarter is of more value to the state than your life, and because belief in British exceptionalism (too many people watched the horror unfolding in Italy and Spain, shook their heads, and said “it couldn’t happen here”) is a disease that infected this country long before Covid 19.

Spot on.

When we all saw what was happening in those countries our Government did nothing. Prompt shutting of borders and other measures would have put us in a much better place at the moment. Instead our Government did nothing till it was to late.

[PostmanBitesDog]

Prompt shutting of borders and other measures would have put us in a much better place at the moment.

It's not quite as easy as that. Viruses don't recognize borders, so they'll still enter territories no matter what. It's especially difficult when people are already carrying a virus before it's even detected, or the information about a novel virus is not shared from the first country to other countries. There's also the tourism factor to consider. Travelers returning home can't be easily quarantined in an airport. It's easier to keep them on a cruise ship, but even then a quarantine station needs to be built on land.

One way to contain or at least slow the spread of a virus brought into a country once it crosses the border is to impose a mandatory self-isolation period to returning travelers, and in an approved accommodation such as a hotel set aside for the task. This is what countries like New Zealand and Australia have done: a fourteen-day self-isolation program. Others are listed here, too: I.A.T.A. Timatic

[PostmanBitesDog]

Well to cut a long story short because people at the top took their eye off the ball but with hindsight but they had hindsight and the best scientists but you know what they ignored them here https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme ... ik-2020-04" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An interesting article. And I've been just as concerned as those about the advantage some world leaders are taking when it comes to accumulating more power during the pandemic. Viktor Orbán is one. Donald Trump is another.

This is a notable piece from Adam Serwer of The Atlantic:

The Atlantic (April 8, 2020) - The Coronavirus Has Not Halted Trump’s Power Grab

In the midst of all this, Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal government from an entity meant to serve the public interest into a mere subsidiary of the Trump Organization meant to serve Donald Trump have continued uninterrupted.
On Friday evening, Trump fired the intelligence-community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, in a blatant act of retaliation for forwarding the whistleblower complaint to Congress that led to Trump’s impeachment. The complaint accurately described how Trump tried to extort Ukraine into publicly implicating his prospective Democratic rival Joe Biden in a crime that never took place, in an attempt to rig the 2020 election in his favor.
[...]
The target of the president’s purge of independent watchdogs is clear: those officials who put the public interest above their loyalty to Donald Trump. Officials who uphold their duty to the American people, or even give the slightest impression of doing so, will find their careers in danger. They exist not, as their jobs have previously been understood, to provide the public with vital information about the functioning of the government, but to conceal inconvenient facts and exalt the divine foresight of the president. If the truth does not glorify the leader, it must be changed or suppressed. Even more important, where the law conflicts with his will, the law must be disregarded—and those who are unwilling to do so are not fit to serve.

[Gasman11]

Prompt shutting of borders and other measures would have put us in a much better place at the moment.

It's not quite as easy as that. Viruses don't recognize borders, so they'll still enter territories no matter what. It's especially difficult when people are already carrying a virus before it's even detected, or the information about a novel virus is not shared from the first country to other countries. There's also the tourism factor to consider. Travelers returning home can't be easily quarantined in an airport. It's easier to keep them on a cruise ship, but even then a quarantine station needs to be built on land.

One way to contain or at least slow the spread of a virus brought into a country once it crosses the border is to impose a mandatory self-isolation period to returning travelers, and in an approved accommodation such as a hotel set aside for the task. This is what countries like New Zealand and Australia have done: a fourteen-day self-isolation program. Others are listed here, too: I.A.T.A. Timatic

The UKs death rate is, per 100k of the population, 2.5 times greater than the Republic of Ireland who instigated lockdown measures sooner than we did. Coincidence?

[PostmanBitesDog]

Prompt shutting of borders and other measures would have put us in a much better place at the moment.

It's not quite as easy as that. Viruses don't recognize borders, so they'll still enter territories no matter what. It's especially difficult when people are already carrying a virus before it's even detected, or the information about a novel virus is not shared from the first country to other countries. There's also the tourism factor to consider. Travelers returning home can't be easily quarantined in an airport. It's easier to keep them on a cruise ship, but even then a quarantine station needs to be built on land.

One way to contain or at least slow the spread of a virus brought into a country once it crosses the border is to impose a mandatory self-isolation period to returning travelers, and in an approved accommodation such as a hotel set aside for the task. This is what countries like New Zealand and Australia have done: a fourteen-day self-isolation program. Others are listed here, too: I.A.T.A. Timatic

The UKs death rate is, per 100k of the population, 2.5 times greater than the Republic of Ireland who instigated lockdown measures sooner than we did. Coincidence?

And the virus still entered Eire, right? Ireland's National Public Health Emergency Team was already monitoring the spread of COVID-19 around the world as far back as early February before the country recorded it's first confirmed case.

The first case was recorded on February 27th - a woman from Northern Ireland traveling back from overseas and passing through Dublin airport.

As it currently stands, there are now 320 deaths in the Republic of Ireland.

[AngardWolf]

Ireland’s response has been excellent.

Likewise, Germany’s. This is an interesting read: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardell ... son-merkel" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Unfortunately it does look like we’re going to have the worst statistics in Europe and yet most people will say our government did a good job - in understanding why we’re in this mess it’s worth exploring why that might be. A quick scan of the papers and the homepage of BBC News would be a good place to start.

[Tman]

The UKs death rate is, per 100k of the population, 2.5 times greater than the Republic of Ireland who instigated lockdown measures sooner than we did. Coincidence?

Too soon to tell. The worst area in the UK is London where there are obviously many more people per square mile/kilometre than largely rural Eire, then there's the West Midlands, the North East, North West etc all with far higher population densities. There are many factors to be considered and factored-in when the pandemic ends and the inquiry begins.

[Gasman11]

Copied from twitter - check out the density in HongKong, Singapore, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai & Tokyo and compare the outcomes. Wreck-less British government decision making has got the U.K. to the position it’s in. It had time to prepare, these cities did not!