Coronavirus

[Glyn_Wigley]

no and that backs up what I said at no stage in that article in the guardian do sage advise him to lockdown, you would expect them to have done that really that’s what I don’t understand, yes it’s down to Johnson ultimately but I doubt very much he knows that much about corona virus and needed proper advice

And at no stage in that article in the Guardian does the Government ask them to suggest different coping mechanisms (including lockdown), which is what a competent Government should do. Especially one that you admit that you doubt knows much about coronavirus and therefore needs to ask for as much advice as it can get from anybody - including from outside SAGE if necessary. Stuff not being mentioned in that article works both ways.

[SydneyRover]

Wilts that Greenwich speech is very important becasuse it shows the line of thinking coming from the bizarro world of No10 at the time, Britain was going to be masters of the universe and show everyone how it's done, or not.

In the enquiry about this whole mess in around 2050 .....................

[BillyStubbsTears]

How can a Government allow this to happen after all we have seen in the past 4 months?

https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f

That is what happens if you get the easing of lockdown wrong. They have only just over 1000 additional ICU beds available in the whole state. And new cases are still rising exponentially.

EDIT: Link doesn't take you to the page I intended. Hit the "Hospitals Statewide" tab lower centre.

[SydneyRover]

Australia has managed the situation well despite a couple of setbacks but in Victoria a persistent outbreak is causing headaches and shows how dangerous it is to become complacent or to not cover all the bases. You may think 20-30 new cases in a country relatively covid free is nothing to worry about but ............

They have thrown the army into the area to ensure testing exposes as many of the asymptomatic cases as possible and Saturday with 41 new cases this

''Victoria, Australia considering roadblocks and checkpoints

Ben Smee Ben Smee

In Australia, the Herald Sun reports this morning that roadblocks and checkpoints are being considered by Victorian authorities, should coronavirus continue to spread from multiple suburban clusters.

Victoria has a number of suburbs where authorities have recorded high rates of community transmission. The state reported 41 new cases on Saturday, amid fears the state was experiencing a potential second wave of coronavirus.

In its efforts to curtail a second spike in the infection rate, the state has ramped up its testing efforts.

But the Herald Sun report raises concern that people in “hotspot” suburbs continue to travel around Melbourne, and that more drastic action could include roadblocks designed to restrict people from leaving their suburb without good reason''

Tasmania implemented road closures and ID checkpoints during an outbreak of coronavirus in that state’s north-east in April.

[tyke1962]

On a more positive note Starmer's overtaken Johnson on approval ratings on who would be the best PM .

Which to be fair is a bit like asking the public who would win an FA cup third round tie between Manchester City and Rochdale at the Ethiad .

[drfchound]

To be fair it is a hypothetical question.
How can anyone have a clue how good Starmer be as PM when he actually hasn’t been PM.

[SydneyRover]

Johnson hadn't been PM before either .............................

[BillyStubbsTears]

Johnson hadn't been PM before either .............................

No, but anyone who studied his form had more than a clue what he was going to be like as PM.

Lazy. Disorganised. Inattentive to detail. All front and no content. Blustering. Lying. Putting his own needs and wants before anything and everything else.

[tyke1962]

To be fair it is a hypothetical question.
How can anyone have a clue how good Starmer be as PM when he actually hasn’t been PM.

It's a poll that reflects whether the electorate have the confidence in Starmer to be PM more than anything else .

Having the electorates confidence is where it's at because that should in reality transfer to votes .

This is how it played out with Blair and the landslide victory in 97 .

Although we've a bit to go before Labour see those kind of numbers .

At the rate the Tories are hemorrhaging votes and confidence right now  in 18 months time they may have a mountain to climb in 2024 .

[Glyn_Wigley]

To be fair it is a hypothetical question.
How can anyone have a clue how good Starmer be as PM when he actually hasn’t been PM.

It's because people now do have clue what Johnson is like as PM. Which isn't hypothetical.

[drfchound]

To be fair it is a hypothetical question.
How can anyone have a clue how good Starmer be as PM when he actually hasn’t been PM.

It's because people now do have clue what Johnson is like as PM. Which isn't hypothetical.

That isn’t up for debate.
No one knows whether Starmer would be any better, unless he gets an opportunity to prove so.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

Of course not.

But that's not what the poll is asking, is it?

[drfchound]

No, of course it isn’t, but is is hypothetical.

I posted the other day that I wished that Labour had won the GE so we could see if they could have handled the Covid situation better.
I got shot down and told that no one can say what Labour could have done.

Hypothetical also?

[IDM]

That would have been labour under Corbyn though.  You would hope that labour under Starmer would be better.!

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

You are doing the BB thing of arguing about the process of arguing.

By your position, every decision that anyone ever makes is hypothetical, because we don't know what the future will bring.

The point about that polling question is that it canvasses people's OPINIONS  of who would be better as PM. Not their certain knowledge.

We make decisions on which political party to support based on our opinions of what we know about them. That poll is very important, because it shows that the Labour leader has bridged a chasm which existed on this question just two months ago. THAT is the substantive point that is worth discussing, not some navel gazing argument about a question that isn't being asked.

[drfchound]

That would have been labour under Corbyn though.  You would hope that labour under Starmer would be better.!

Yes you would expect Labour under Starmer to be better but that wasn’t in the response I got.
The response was that no one can say what Labour would have done.
Just supposing the Conservatives win again, would the same argument stand if Starmer had been the leader that lost?

[drfchound]

Hound.

You are doing the BB thing of arguing about the process of arguing.

By your position, every decision that anyone ever makes is hypothetical, because we don't know what the future will bring.

The point about that polling question is that it canvasses people's OPINIONS  of who would be better as PM. Not their certain knowledge.

We make decisions on which political party to support based on our opinions of what we know about them. That poll is very important, because it shows that the Labour leader has bridged a chasm which existed on this question just two months ago. THAT is the substantive point that is worth discussing, not some navel gazing argument about a question that isn't being asked.

As we all know though, the polls aren’t always reliable.
I remember the comments on here when the polls were showing that Labour were going to be close or even possibly win the GE.
Look what happened.

I actually put my point over to invite discussion but of course it isn’t what happens on here if Labour supporters don’t like it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

So let me get this right. You introduce ANOTHER argument that doesn't address the central point and then blame people who disagree with you for not addressing central points?

[drfchound]

You are saying that, not me.
I simply said that no one can know how good Stammer would be as PM because he hasn’t held that position.
Other people have expanded into that.

[drfchound]

Hound.

By your position, every decision that anyone ever makes is hypothetical, because we don't know what the future will bring.

BST, you post comments almost every day about decisions that the government has made and tell us how wrong the decision is.......without knowing for certain what the future will bring.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

Yes, and I cross the road every day without knowing for certain that a maniac won't come round the corner at 100mph and knock me over.

I'm just wild, aren't I?

[drfchound]

That makes two of us then BST because you suggested I do the same thing.
Nice deflection though.

[BillyStubbsTears]

God this is exhausting.

Hound. I'm saying that people, all through their lives, every moment of every day, make judgements about how they expect the future to pan out. They do so with imperfect information, but they do the best they can.

So, in the case of that poll,people are weighing up what they know of the alternatives and making their best judgement.

It's got nothing whatsoever to do with them KNOWING whether Starmer would be any good. Saying that people can't know that is simply stating the bleeding obvious.

The really substantive issue is that Starmer has closed a gap of about 40% on people's OPINIONS in 3 months.

[Glyn_Wigley]

It makes you wonder how any new PM whose never been PM before ever gets to win an election when the voters have no idea what they're voting for!!

[tyke1962]

It makes you wonder how any new PM whose never been PM before ever gets to win an election when the voters have no idea what they're voting for!!

We could bring the old ones back Glyn and make the polls more authentic .

Major , Blair , Brown , Cameron and May .

   

[BillyStubbsTears]

Back to the topic of this thread, someone posted this on Twitter 2 months ago in the USA.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TraderMikeH/status/1277346396220411907


This is their current graph as of today.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JSEllenberg/status/1277318596528607233

That's what happens when you get easing of the lockdown wrong. They are looking at an impending second wave of deaths very soon.

[SydneyRover]

This is an example of how serious a small cluster is and how it's being dealt with we are not getting any infor regarding whether the app is playing any part of tracking.

What we know from Victoria

So what we know from the Victorian tests in the last 24 hours:
•   More than 15,000 tests
•   75 people tested positive for Covid-19
•   37 from “routine testing” – people who went to clinics
•   23 under investigation
•   14 linked to an established outbreak
•   One returned traveller in hotel quarantine
•   Six considered community outbreak (this could change depending on how those cases under investigation or picked up through routine testing are categorised)

•   
•   Victorian lockdowns to be considered 'over the next couple of days'

•   Victoria’s chief health officer, Prof Brett Sutton, is also at this press conference.
•   He says the number of cases picked up in the last 24 hours is “absolutely concerning” and says the question of whether a lockdown is necessary is one which will be answered in the next couple of days:
•   Clearly big numbers today. Absolutely concerning, and a lot of these, all of the settings we have seen in recent days, outbreaks occurring across multiple households, across work and other settings, but we know what will turn this around, and it is people stepping forward for testing, but also isolating when they have symptoms.
•   What we are seeing is transmission across settings because people are still going out with symptoms.
•   So whether or not a legal direction I think is a conversation to be had over the next couple of days. We are not there yet. But we do know that the solution is there already. With these people not having unnecessary contacts across multiple households, across multiple settings. That will control transmission.

Added

The headline is a bit over the top as it may wll be a low rate of infections that makes the app largely redundant, the SMH has recently been purchased by a commercial tv network further concentrating the media and thus we get more headlines like this.

'''Dishonest': COVIDSafe app has not detected a case despite 6 million downloads
The federal government's COVIDSafe app has not identified any close contacts of a person infected with coronavirus who had not already been found through manual contact tracing, despite being downloaded by more than 6 million Australians in two months''

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dishonest-covidsafe-app-has-not-detected-a-case-despite-6-million-downloads-20200627-p556s7.html

[Donnywolf]

Johnson hadn't been PM before either .............................

No, but anyone who studied his form had more than a clue what he was going to be like as PM.

Lazy. Disorganised. Inattentive to detail. All front and no content. Blustering. Lying. Putting his own needs and wants before anything and everything else.

Yep I think you summed him up pretty well there BST - and to be fair if he was appointed head of the Tories (in their election to replace May) the electorate must be highly delighted as he is bang "on message"

[SydneyRover]

Yep, thanks for filling in the blanks for me, I get fed up typing out the same descriptions.

[SydneyRover]

A pandemic primer on excess mortality statistics and their comparability across countries

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-excess-mortality