O/T. The Government's handling of Covid

[MadAmster]

The "alternative thinkers" are already pushing the next pandemic, I see.

It's called the Marburg virus (MVD) which will be "launched" by the elite next year, they say. Already looking to create a vaccine rumour has it. The new vaccine, when given to fully Covid vaccinated people will cause quick and severe illness. 9 out of 10 will die and it all starts with fever, muscle pain, throwing up and very quickly has you bleeding out through every orifice. Billions of deaths in a short period of time. Of course "they" won't release it until "they" themselves have been vaccinated against it. Only "they" will get the vaccine so that "they" can go back to ruling a much less populated planet and not have to worry about the "plebs".

1. Marburg is not a new thing. The first known outbreaks were in 1967 in NL, Germany and Serbia. High death rates. More recent ones were both in Uganda. 2012, 23 cases and 15 deaths. 2014, 1 case, 1 death.

2. They mention "already trying to create a vaccine" as if it's something highly suspicious. Wouldn't it be more suspicious if they weren't looking to create a vaccine for a killer disease that's been known about for more than 50 years?

3. The "symptoms" they attribute to the vaccine are exactly the ones the virus produces.

[Geoff Parkstone]

If its from back in the mid sixties there probably are still loads of the MVD virus sitting around in the biological warfare stores in both the former USSR and the USA. Logically there will probably be a similar amount of vaccine in said bio weapon stores.

The piece of the jigsaw that doesnt quite work for me is that the culling of a few billion people will not necessarily help the illuminati get even richer, as there are less people to exploit and gain wealth from. Sure it would help slow climate change, and so one could argue may be applauded, but I dont imagine said illuminati are that altruistic: and certainly I doubt that they worry about the plebs one way or another.

Got to love these conspiracy theories though. I'll never believe one until it happens though, and by then it will be too late

[ramAnag]

When this 5h1tstorm broke the predicted deaths worldwide were many times more horrific than they ended up being. It was right to lockdown and do the necessary to keep deaths as low as possible and to avoid having worldwide health services crippled.

What has happened is a huge focus on Covid patients to the detriment of everybody else. Looking at the current rates of new cases, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths and the demographics of those figures, in NL anyway, the majority of new cases are in school age children and the 25 to 30 age group.

Out of interest MA...do Dutch secondary school kids have to wear masks in school? From what I’ve seen they do in Spain though not in the UK, although I hear Suffolk CC has sensibly just reintroduced them as mandatory after half term and suspect more will follow.

I know Spain is much less densely populated than either the NL or the UK (holiday hotspots in summer apart) but their figures are infinitely better than either of ours and they are correspondingly much stricter on mask wearing.

P.S. On the subject of Marburg...the big difference is...I don’t think it’s airborne. Avoid fruit bats, unprotected s ex with infected people and infected blood and you’ll be okay.

[Geoff Parkstone]

This depends on how carefully you select your stats to suite your agenda rA. And by that I dont mean YOU specifically but "one" in general.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

will give you loads to choose from. The one that I find particularly useful is "deaths per million population" where we are below Italy and only a bit worse than Spain, to take an example.

Yes we have had an above average number of cases but given that we have done way more tests per capita than anyone else, thats probably not a surprise. You tend to do a test because you think you may have COVID, so when we have done more than double the number of tests per million of population than France, three times as many as Italy and Spain and five times as many as Germany, are you surprised we have detected more cases?

At one level the number of detected cases is a negative, but actually could it not equally point to the fact that we have acted more responsibly and have identified our covid victims. perhaps these other lower testing countries just have a vast number of undetected cases?

Let me pose a theoretical question - it you lived in a country with no detected cases because no testing was ever done, but there was an average covid death rate per capita, would you be comfortable to go out unvaccinated with no mask because there had been no detected cases?

My point is, the more you test, the more you find. We can easily get those stats down by stopping testing - but would that be responsible? Based on those stats, the average Brit has been tested almost 5 times across the pandemic. No citizen of any other country in the top 30 has come anywhere near that.....

[Trickytreesreds]

This depends on how carefully you select your stats to suite your agenda rA. And by that I dont mean YOU specifically but "one" in general.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

will give you loads to choose from. The one that I find particularly useful is "deaths per million population" where we are below Italy and only a bit worse than Spain, to take an example.

Yes we have had an above average number of cases but given that we have done way more tests per capita than anyone else, thats probably not a surprise. You tend to do a test because you think you may have COVID, so when we have done more than double the number of tests per million of population than France, three times as many as Italy and Spain and five times as many as Germany, are you surprised we have detected more cases?

At one level the number of detected cases is a negative, but actually could it not equally point to the fact that we have acted more responsibly and have identified our covid victims. perhaps these other lower testing countries just have a vast number of undetected cases?

Let me pose a theoretical question - it you lived in a country with no detected cases because no testing was ever done, but there was an average covid death rate per capita, would you be comfortable to go out unvaccinated with no mask because there had been no detected cases?

My point is, the more you test, the more you find. We can easily get those stats down by stopping testing - but would that be responsible? Based on those stats, the average Brit has been tested almost 5 times across the pandemic. No citizen of any other country in the top 30 has come anywhere near that.....

Which was my point exactly. There are those in this country that use the fear figures for other political gains.
We are no worse than anyone else, but really probably better than the average.
But that doesn't sell papers or give politicians moaning time, in their point scoring attempts.
COVID is a religion for some and must be in the news all the time.
The NHS never got swamped, but the NHS is now failing other patients, out of the COVID panic.
Time to give up with the screaming and wailing and add it to the list of all ailments.

[MadAmster]

Out of interest MA...do Dutch secondary school kids have to wear masks in school? From what I’ve seen they do in Spain though not in the UK, although I hear Suffolk CC has sensibly just reintroduced them as mandatory after half term and suspect more will follow..

Yes and no. Not in the class. They do have to when moving around inside school though. Kids don't have to distance from one another but staff do have to distance from pupils.

[ramAnag]

Yes and no. Not in the class. They do have to when moving around inside school though. Kids don't have to distance from one another but staff do have to distance from pupils.

Interesting...can’t quite understand the logic of having to mask up when moving around rather than sitting in class. As regards ‘distancing’...suspect it actually isn’t really possible for kids to socially distance given the usual constraints of class sizes and classroom dimensions.

P.S. I don’t really have ‘an agenda’, GP other than to see the end of a Covid dominated world asap.
I acknowledge all the points you make and they are reasonable imo, but the thread title is what it is, our figures are very concerning and, anecdotally I have noticed a huge difference in mask wearing elsewhere in Europe compared with the UK.

[Geoff Parkstone]

"Interesting...can’t quite understand the logic of having to mask up when moving around rather than sitting in class."

But that was exactly what happened in restaurants and pubs as they reopened - if you were sat at your table, no masks but if you went to the bog or otherwise moved around the premises, then masks on.....

The thread title is very broad, its just that you narrow it down by addressing the angles that support your perspective of governmental failure. Those figures I referenced/linked to specifically relate to our government handling of covid, and compare that to the outcomes of other governments' performance. We have tested massively more than our peer group - is that no indicative of a UK government success story in its own? We have identified many more COVID cases, and dealt with / are dealing with them. Is that not a positive too? or would you reallt prefer the "dont test/cant treat" approach that gives better statistics?

For sure it seems that there is a greater incidence and spread of COVID within our population, and some or all of that could be down to masks - but scientific opinions vary. On balance I'm with you on the maintenance of masks and social distancing in public areas indoors, if not more. But I doubt compiiance (or fear anarchy in your terms!) if this happens.

There is little doubt that UK Government was slow to react in the early stages in March 2020 and that measures subsequently imposed could have been brought in 2 weeks or so earlier - but remember at that time noone really knew what the hell was going on. Notwithstanding this excuse, our performance in the early stages was poor.

[ramAnag]

"Interesting...can’t quite understand the logic of having to mask up when moving around rather than sitting in class."

But that was exactly what happened in restaurants and pubs as they reopened - if you were sat at your table, no masks but if you went to the bog or otherwise moved around the premises, then masks on.....

The thread title is very broad, its just that you narrow it down by addressing the angles that support your perspective of governmental failure. Those figures I referenced/linked to specifically relate to our government handling of covid, and compare that to the outcomes of other governments' performance. We have tested massively more than our peer group - is that no indicative of a UK government success story in its own? We have identified many more COVID cases, and dealt with / are dealing with them. Is that not a positive too? or would you reallt prefer the "dont test/cant treat" approach that gives better statistics?

For sure it seems that there is a greater incidence and spread of COVID within our population, and some or all of that could be down to masks - but scientific opinions vary. On balance I'm with you on the maintenance of masks and social distancing in public areas indoors, if not more. But I doubt compiiance (or fear anarchy in your terms!) if this happens.

There is little doubt that UK Government was slow to react in the early stages in March 2020 and that measures subsequently imposed could have been brought in 2 weeks or so earlier - but remember at that time noone really knew what the hell was going on. Notwithstanding this excuse, our performance in the early stages was poor.

I think you’re maybe looking for an argument where there isn’t one.

It’s really hard to compare classrooms and restaurants. I certainly would be reluctant to visit a restaurant, or pub, which had around thirty people crammed into the same space as the average classroom and it would seem a little counter productive to enforce mask wearing in a restaurant or pub when people are there to eat and drink.

The thread title is ‘The Government’s Handling of Covid’, and that is what I’ve commented on.
Some of it, eg the original vaccine roll out, has been good. Some of it, eg the current reluctance to enforce mask wearing, has been bad. That is my opinion.
You recently described the PM as an ‘ass’. I agree with that too.
There are certain aspects of the Government’s handling of Covid, eg Furlough, which I would expert you to be more expert on, and there are others, eg Gavin Williamson’s behaviour last January, where I probably understand more.
Either way we should both share a common aim of overcoming Covid...and at the moment, imo, I’m not sure we’re going about that the right way.

My only reference to ‘anarchy’ was in the context of the Government appearing to be afraid/reluctant to impose rules about mask wearing because they were afraid people wouldn’t comply. Ultimately, which I think is the word I used, if we stop enforcing rules because we fear that people won’t comply, it does lead to ‘anarchy’ doesn’t it?

[Geoff Parkstone]

I thought I described him as a **** (twa t)?

Me? I never look for arguments - I thought that was you

Interesting you should raise furlough and other financial support: it will be very interesting how the "audit" report emerges into the undoubted high levels of fraud perpetrated in both, but particularly the phony applications for bounce back loans which probably has cost the chancellor, but more importantly the fight against covid, into the billions from what I hear. Maybe those perpetrating such acts could perhaps be given covid as part of their punishment