Red-Robbo

Which is what I said. However as to your first question, the Editor of the Lancet is an eminent virologist who specialises in pandemics. So, actually a lot more experience than other "swinging dicks". He's been consistently critical of the speed of the government's response.

To be fair, a number of other eminent virologists and pandemic experts had criticised the UK's approach - including the Editor of The Lancet, and the World Health Organisation. And to be even more fair to Chris Witty and Patrick Vallence, we don't know for sure that government policy was shaped 100% by their advice, or if they deliberately delayed the more draconian measures because they thought it would damage the economy too much. There are a lot of things we'll only know after all this blows over. My criticism is muted until then. But I think we can safely say that most people - B Johnson included - didn't take it really seriously until it was too late. The virus was here and circulating when Bongo told everyone he had shaken hands with everyone in a hospital which housed Covid-19 sufferers. Of course, like most things he claims, he hadn't actually done that, but it was a daft thing to say nonetheless and shows our early complacency.

Could be worse I suppose. Trump and his cronies had an even slower response to this and as a result the US infection rate per capita has just overtaken ours. Worried about my family out there. Thanks for this info, Ed. I genuinely didn't know this - and have been turning down flu jabs for years. Will take it next time it's offered. On another point, the panic buyers are still at it and silly things are scarce now. Fresh veg, eggs, meat - even bloody pickles. Supermarkets I've been to are permanently rammed and the shortages mean you often have to go to more than one to get basics. Meaning you probably encounter about 1000 times the number of potentially infected people than if the pubs were still open. I wonder if it's time to start scoping bringing back ration books? This is a war. Just against an invisible enemy.

Mate of mine sent me a pic of 5 regulars from my old local out tonight. All with arms around each other's shoulders. so not exactly 2 metres apart! Two are over 70; two others have heart conditions and my mate is about 8 stone wet through and lives with his 70+ parents. Er, stupidity like THIS is why they have to close.

The trouble is LB: how many medical crises are we storing up from mental stress and extreme anxiety, how many suicides because of financial ruin and loneliness, how much long-term damage is being done by reduced exercise , poorer nutrition and just general unhappiness? To my mind, the idea I'm kicking about falls down if we think we cannot totally isolate both the most vulnerable - and those who work in healthcare and social care and their families. It would probably only work with a lot more state intervention; a command economy as operated in wartime. TBH I was thinking out loud rather than making a big case for herd immunity. But I am starting to think the way we are operating now is not only not halting the spread, but is simply unworkable for the whole of 2020. @Maesknoll Red was ridiculed for saying that much of the economy operated during the last war despite extreme risks, but he was right. We need to weigh up the risks presented by this different sort of challenge. BTW did you get the figure of 150,000 deaths among the "non-vulnerable" population from an official source? Chris Whitty was talking about 400,000 possible deaths overall earlier. It seems unlikely that more than a third of them would be from young people or those without pre-exisisting conditions.If you look at this data - assembled from WHO sources - the likelihood of death from infection falls dramatically with age. Children are 80 times less likely to die than the over-80s for example. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

It's a still from Hot Fuzz. In the film a shadowy cabal of local worthies act as a vigilante hit squad removing "undesirables" from a West Country town while chanting the mantra "for the Greater Good",

Might be best avoiding the phrase "for the greater good" though...

That was sort of my thoughts on my first post on this thread. Huge numbers of companies wouldn't survive 6 months of this: not just your local Dog n' Duck, but national chains. Anyone not working in food retailing or medicine basically. I'm interested in what the benefit claimant figures will be soon. It was 1.6m before this I think (from memory), but I can see it getting above 10m or more. And with a much smaller tax-base, you wonder where the cash for these benefits is coming from. A prolonged virus lockdown will break entire national economies. Maybe it IS time for the experts to factor this in and think if there is a way those of us who aren't over 70 or with underlying health issues can all live as normal while keeping strict isolation for those that are. It'll spread, we'll take our chances, but then it'll peak and eventually those isolating can emerge to a world that might look a bit similar. It's clear from the large numbers who think they have the disease but haven't been tested (I know of three in Bristol alone) that the genie is out the bottle. Containment has failed. Providing it stays with the healthy and young(ish) population, the NHS may not have to be overwhelmed. Is this mad? Thoughts?

I think this is correct. As I wrote earlier, this crisis has exposed just how threadbare the NHS has been allowed to become. We're stretched to the limit by 3,000 active cases (as of yesterday) not all of whom are even in hospitals. That's 0.0005% of the population. Iceland is staggering on with 0.1% of the country infected. It's gonna get worse.

Italy and Spain have more old people - per head of population - than China. That's my theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age

Is it true he ordered Casualty and Holby City off air so that the staff could help with the virus outbreak?

At least bat might be off the menu... https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia/china-coronavirus-wildlife-consumption-ban-intl-hnk/index.html

No new cases reported yesterday in Wuhan and Hubei Province. My one hope is that that fact indicates that perhaps the gloomy general predictions might, just might, be too gloomy. ??

This is the best one, although it's a day behind when it's updated. It's the gov.uk one. It doesn't go down to district level alas. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14

If only they could also develop a vaccine for stupidity. The world would run a lot more smoothly, eh.

It isn't particularly a "left-wing blog". Saying taxation should be fair isn't a "left-wing" thing. We should all want that. I tagged it, because I didn't have time to set out in full why Sunak's measures sound great, but are much less practical than the measures taking in other countries. The writer does. Rather than launch an ad hominem attack on it as "left-wing" why not read it and if you have some arguments against what he's saying make them. I don't think getting struggling small businesses into large debts that will ultimately only benefit the cocooned banking sector is much of a response. It'll certainly hamper any recovery once the virus lockdown ends. Small firms will be too busy paying off this loan to expand and grow.

They're finally stepping up testing capacity. Something that should've been done as priority one, but at least is happening now. Must've been reading my angry social media posts Good news. Businesses need more clarity and more grants/less loans if they are to keep paying staff as orders dry up. The other option is a surge in benefit claimants that will be unprecedented in history and likely be as unmanagable as if everyone got sick at once. I read about efforts to develop a test to see those who HAD Covid-19 but are now recovered. Be interesting to test all of us here who had Covid style symptoms before the virus "arrived" in the UK and see whether it was about before early Feb. Also, if we knew we'd caught it and recovered, we'd likely have a high degree of immunity and could be very valuable to society, taking on tasks that are currently being undertaken by those who have not caught the virus.

Amounts of grants less. But all countries have slightly varying policies. For those laid off, not having to pay utility bills - as is happening in France - would be good. Our main failing I think is in our lax testing regime. Stories like this suggest that may be dwn to years of systematic underinvestment. https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/03/18/nhs-scotland-staff-to-be-tested-nhs-england-does-not-have-the-capacity/?fbclid=IwAR2w7zokKmJZmeZ80OSijL0ZgN1obj3nOglTV4nLHB2mt2A0NUMUAThaTEA

That UK figure includes amounts available at loans. Loans that businesses prevented from trading by the virtual lockdown will have to repay when things get back to normal. assuming they haven't gone to the wall by then. Here's someone explaining why Sunak's help package for small businesses is, like many things we've seen heralded in the past, more window-dressing than real help: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/03/17/rishi-sunaks-business-support-package-fails-at-almost-every-single-level-not-least-because-it-will-be-illegal-for-many-businesses-to-even-apply-for-it/

I guess there were "normal" fluey viruses about, as ever, but there certainly seemed to be a lot more yuckyness around this winter than normal.

I'm the same myself. Felt like bleeding shyte mid-January with a persistent cough, high temperature, muscle aches and wheezing. Luckily no other family member got it. This could be a situation like Aids, where research has indicated that it was likely present in the US from the mid-1960s and Africa from the 1930s: Yet it wasn't identified as a "new" virus until 1981 and not given its name until 1982.

It's not ideal. But these aren't ideal times. At present, we hold one zoom meeting a day, the rest of the time it's on messaging or phone calls.

As a former journalist, I'm amazed when I see the packed room of journos at Bongo's daily virus briefings. All held in virus hotspot London. Hasn't the government and media heard of video conferencing? They advise us all to take loads of precautions then ignore them themselves.

Because those countries did what we aren't doing - tested anyone with a temperature and then traced their contacts and tested them. It is madness that we say there is no need to test people who've self-isolated with all the symptoms. Those people will have been wandering about for days without knowing they had the virus. Folk who have been in contact with them deserve to know and be tested then they can self-isolate accordingly. In this piece, an NHS surgeon who thinks he has the virus writes of how health-workers are not being tested and are potentially spreading the disease around hospitals. It's time the government stopped trying to fight this on the cheap. Even the business support is largely a cheapo loan scheme that will benefit the banks at the expense of affected SMEs. We need to ramp up testing and tracing as has been used in the Far East. It brought South Korean virus figures down from being the world's most infected country to being below many European and Middle Eastern ones. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/there-is-a-policy-of-surrender-doctor-on-uks-covid-19-failures?fbclid=IwAR2fvjtsLT2zOnYZ7NPIfhJl_kjQE_GOiRdZds26fZBBiCBEdsjDF37prTA

My heart bleeds at the thought of them having to relocate to a house costing less than £3m if they are not doing their job for a protracted period of time. Those of us with more modestly priced homes also face difficulties if the side-effects of this virus stop us from working as normal. Why should footballers be insulated?