Re: We're all doomed! Doomed I say- the Corona virus thread for panicking in!

[Lancebloke]

" But you cant separate the two unfortunately because political decisions kill people. " Mrs Figg

I feel she's right....

I feel like the point of that part of my post was totally missed.

The problem is completely that it is a political decision and it is the "people" who get caught up in all the hyperbole and name calling that enable that to happen.

It seems very few people actually know any facts because they are happy to take whatever the spin version of it is as fed via MPs or the various media outlets that are clearly aligned with those parry ideals.

I have even heard that fucking Project Fear slogan rolled out again recently!!!

Johnson is controlled by Cummings. Corbyn is a commie. Trump is controlled by Putin, so is Biden, oh and Clinton was too. The EU is the new Nazi party. The Chinese are evil. Socialism = Venezuela.

That is all someone has to say these days to discredit any person or parry at any time to half the population while the other half rolls up their sleeves ready for a fight.

People talk about the government dividing and conquering while at the same time apouting the party line from the "other" side, perpetuating the whole thing.

Point is, how about people do their own research to understand the detail and form a view so they can start holding these officials to account? This pandemic is a good start where I have read things on here that seem very loosely informed yet seem to form a core belief.

Petty - agree with most of that other than the Trident bit.

[Pettytyrant101]

agree with most of that other than the Trident bit.- Lance

{{ Ah well its not on your doorstep is it, or right next to the densest populated part of your country either (all the more galling when you then find out the official reason Portsmouth was not choosen to house the nuclear fleet was 'to close to a population centre'- 'English Lives Matter- more than scottish ones'). I've got most of NATO on my doorstep right now, outside my front door right now is enough fire power floating, submerging, flying, and walking about the hills to blow the entire planet up ten times over, some big NATO exercise going on.
And I distinctly remember that every member of the Scottish Parliament, bar the Tory MSP's (when they had almost no MSPS's anyway), voted not to have this stuff on our doorstep, ideally not at all, but definently not here, which is in line with public opinion polls on it in Scotland too. And luckily, what with the promises made during the independence referndum, that we were equal partners in the Union, with an equal say and weight and that from then on we would be listened to, and so the UK government agreed to remove them...oh no wait, they totally lied their arses off to us and completely ignore everything or Parliament does, says or votes for, my mistake.   Yeah, they're still here }} }}

[Lancebloke]

Yes.. EQUAL weight. Not overpowering weight.

And we do this every time. We have them in the UK too.. nukes aren't just in Scotland!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[malickfan]

If/when Scotland does go independant (or perhaps even if they don't) I'd assume Trident and the nuclear submarines would probably be moved to Portsmouth which is only 10-15 miles (depending on which route you take) from me, although the idea of have nukes on my doorstep isn't an entirely happy one, to be honest I wouldn't particularly care if they were moved here, it would bring lots of jobs and if an accident or nuclear strike were to happen...well in all likelihood I probably wouldn't live long enough to worry about it, it's a moot point as I doubt the Government would move them...nor scrap them...they are likely gong to carry on being an expensive waste of time for years to come.

I've not really sure how i feel about Trident...do we really need a nuclear deterrent in this day and age? (And in truth did we ever? the UK has been punching far beyond its weight for decades, we aren't the major imperial power we were 50 years ago anymore, our relative handful of subs wouldn't make much a difference in a world wide nuclear conflict) In theory I'm opposed to nuclear weapons entirely...but would you really trust all countries to disarm and hold true to their word?

Trident is expensive to maintain, but would probably be nearly as expensive to scrap, and I doubt the money saved would me moved from the defence budget to other areas more needed anyway.

[Mrs Figg]

" But you cant separate the two unfortunately because political decisions kill people. " Mrs Figg

I feel she's right....

I feel like the point of that part of my post was totally missed.

The problem is completely that it is a political decision and it is the "people" who get caught up in all the hyperbole and name calling that enable that to happen.

It seems very few people actually know any facts because they are happy to take whatever the spin version of it is as fed via MPs or the various media outlets that are clearly aligned with those parry ideals.

I have even heard that fucking Project Fear slogan rolled out again recently!!!

Johnson is controlled by Cummings. Corbyn is a commie. Trump is controlled by Putin, so is Biden, oh and Clinton was too. The EU is the new Nazi party. The Chinese are evil. Socialism = Venezuela.

That is all someone has to say these days to discredit any person or parry at any time to half the population while the other half rolls up their sleeves ready for a fight.

People talk about the government dividing and conquering while at the same time apouting the party line from the "other" side, perpetuating the whole thing.

Point is, how about people do their own research to understand the detail and form a view so they can start holding these officials to account? This pandemic is a good start where I have read things on here that seem very loosely informed yet seem to form a core belief.

Petty - agree with most of that other than the Trident bit.

I base my opinions on research, and i try not to make swinging comments. I have some evidence to back up my admittedly subjective opinion, because nobody in the country apart from the inner circle of the Tory party knows the truth, but from what I have read from reputable sources, which does Not include the Murdoch press, I have come to the conclusion that Cummings does indeed 'control' the narrative, because that's what he was fucking paid to do, control the narrative. He controls his own narrative, in the Rose Garden. So when I say Cummings is controlling Johnson it is based on all the available evidence.

[Pettytyrant101]

EQUAL weight. Not overpowering weight. - Lance

{{When is it equal? If the people of Scotland vote in a Parliament, and the majority of parties in that Parliament stood on election on a remove Trident platform, then voted in the Chamber for that, but what's the point when England can just ignore it?
Scotland voted to remain in the EU, but Enlgand said no were leaving. The Scottish Parliament voted against the Brexit BIll and refused to endorse it, and as such legisaltion is supposed to require the backing of all devolved adminstration as it cuts across devolved areas, that should have been taken into account, but it was ignored instead.
Its same with a 2nd referndum, the people have voted twice now to elect a party who stand promising to hold one, there is a majority in the Parliament to hold one and the necessary legislation has already been passed, but England says no. And apparently even if we vote for pro-independence parties again at our next election that will be ignored too. We've already been told so.
We have no representation at the Brexit fishing talks, depsite the vast majority of UK fishing waters being in Scotland. And its just the start of a very long list of not being heard, listened to, or taken seriously bt Westminster. It doesnt feel very equal. }}

[Lancebloke]

I've not really sure how i feel about Trident...do we really need a nuclear deterrent in this day and age? (And in truth did we ever? the UK has been punching far beyond its weight for decades, we aren't the major imperial power we were 50 years ago anymore, our relative handful of subs wouldn't make much a difference in a world wide nuclear conflict)  In theory I'm opposed to nuclear weapons entirely...but would you really trust all countries to disarm and hold true to their word?  

Trident is expensive to maintain, but would probably be nearly as expensive to scrap, and I doubt the money saved would me moved from the defence budget to other areas more needed anyway.

I think we can only look at facts. There hasn't been a major war between the kinds of "powers" that had the same impacts on the world since WW2. Lots of proxy wars that haven't been pretty, but nothing on that global scale which would in all honesty make the horrors of WW2 look like a picnic, as the horrors of the Great War were 40 years later.

I personally think that these weapons have stopped lots of situations over the years from becoming major escalations in which one side or the other could win by making them no win situations.

I also don't get the "immoral" part of the argument against like somehow other bombs or missiles or bullets or knives ARE moral? People still die by them and, as WW2 proved, they die in the 10s of millions.

I honestly believe that the "West" and the Soviets (possibly with Chinas assistance to get back at the Japanese) would have gone to war at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives if the deterrent did not exist.

Also, 1 trident sub could wipe out most of Russia. Not a nice thought, but a true one.

[Lancebloke]

EQUAL weight. Not overpowering weight. - Lance

{{When is it equal? If the people of Scotland vote in a Parliament, and the majority of parties in that Parliament stood on election on a remove Trident platform, then voted in the Chamber for that, but what's the point when England can just ignore it?
Scotland voted to remain in the EU, but Enlgand said no were leaving. The Scottish Parliament voted against the Brexit BIll and refused to endorse it, and as such legisaltion is supposed to require the backing of all devolved adminstration as it cuts across devolved areas, that should have been taken into account, but it was ignored instead.
Its same with a 2nd referndum, the people have voted  twice now to elect a party who stand promising to hold one, there is a majority in the Parliament to hold one and the necessary legislation has already been passed, but England says no. And apparently even if we vote for pro-independence parties again at our next election that will be ignored too. We've already been told so.
We have no representation at the Brexit fishing talks, depsite the vast majority of UK fishing waters being in Scotland. And its just the start of a very long list of not being heard, listened to, or taken seriously bt Westminster. It doesnt feel very equal. }}

Sigh

[azriel]

[Lancebloke]

This doesn't surprise me and is along the lines of what I had tried to explain above.

We don't want people to get covid, but the impacts of that are going to be more people dying of other, more serious things that we CAN intervene in.

So it is all very well blaming the government every 5 seconds (and whoever is in power and whatever they do would get the same treatment) but the actual body of science and data behind this is also split.

https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-and-politicians-split-over-how-to-tackle-rising-covid-infections-as-northern-leaders-say-restrictions-are-not-working-12096597

[Pettytyrant101]

[azriel]

[Mrs Figg]

Pie is genius as usual. Brace for impact! fuq me sideways its bad.

[halfwise]

In Europe I'm seeing this:



from this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/14/923727094/paris-under-curfew-europe-reacts-as-countries-see-highest-ever-coronavirus-numbe

And I'm confused because in my go-to site https://covid19.healthdata.org I see nothing like this. So what's the actual story? Is my favorite site bogus?

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ yeah its second wave hitting europe pretty bad - winters comng in, but its mainly down to relaxing of rules to keep economy going, students going back to schools and unis, and people simply ignoring rules- for example in England Liverpool is being put under stricter lockdown than other areas due to its much higher levels of covid, and growing daily, including closing bars as they are being hit hard- heres  what happened when the pubs closed-



the other major source is house parties. So hardly suprising its spreading again. There are growing calls for a full lockdown again lasting a few weeks to act as a circuit breaker and give some  time to NHS to cope but Boris is resisting it, though not ruling it out. }}

[Lancebloke]

Yeah, we are all starting to see it again albeit the number of cases back in March/April before testing was likely much higher than on the graphs.

Apparently we have a similar number of hospital admissions in the UK as we had pre-lockdown but with concentrations in the north east and north west... a little bit in the Midlands.

France has imposed lockdowns in a number of places too. I am sure others will follow.

Getting in to very sticky territory now. The long term impacts of a second full and sustained lockdown I think would be pretty devastating here so the PM and other leaders are rightly trying to avoid it as much as possible.

The "circuit breaker" style lockdown may be a good option if it really is limited to a 2-3 week full lockdown and then not repeated for a couple of months.

If we do it though, we need to do it properly... which we won't and therefore it will just be to hopefully give the NHS a bit of a breather (pun was not originally intended).

[Mrs Figg]

A circuit breaker is inevitable at this rate, but yet again Johnson is dithering and fannying about with useless tier systems. Here this week they have made masks compulsory in all outdoor spaces to add to the compulsory one indoors, so everyone is wearing one in the streets, the only exception is for sports people jogging and running, biking. The only good news is that because there is massive testing they have obviously found more cases, and there are much less deaths and hospital admissions, there is no comparison to March in that respect, but we are on a knife-edge, if things are not controlled it could spiral out of control. At least we have a functioning government here, and they get the job done with efficiency. Who knew that Italians were super efficient and compliant, it must be residues from the Roman Empire when order and discipline were all.

[azriel]

Maybe its because the Italians respect home life & family ? Maybe their strength is in their bond with their loved ones ? Here, in the UK, it feels like the price of the dollar is the main thing. Boris has shown his colours & will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. How would the UK be today as this virus is going on if Maggie Thatcher was PM ? The puppet 'Spitting Image' has created has more going for it than the real thing.

[Lancebloke]

The infection numbers wouldn't suggest that Italians being "super efficient and compliant" has made much difference.



It suggests that without completely eliminating the virus, these kinds of actions just prolong the problem.

Infections seem to be spreading around in young people everywhere at the moment, as is expected with schools and universities etc opening up, but that is starting to spread in the wider population now so hospitalizations and death rates are starting to go up again, Italy included.

Boris is a dickhead, but I really, really do not understand what more people expect in any country that is a densely and highly populated as the UK or France or Italy.

To support all of this, government borrowing between April and August was the highest on record (aka since 1993). Who is going to pay for that? Everyone complained about austerity last time around but we have to pay for it... maybe taxes.

Oh, hold on... everyone is on furlough and businesses have been getting tax relief so there is much less tax income now. What about "afterwards"? Ermm... unemployment is going up and entire industries are on the brink of collapse so tax income will be down and welfare will be up.

Increase taxes for the top earners/businesses? OK, I am sure most won't mind too much, but when entire industries are already on the brink is that the best idea... many of those are corporations and will likely have to add to the unemployment numbers anyway without the additional burden of more tax.

So cuts then? When we already have social unrest and probably will have more of it?

And when we already have a long term public health crisis of mental and physical health, missed vaccinations for routine diseases, missed scans for potential cancer patients as well as many other things that we have treatments for if they are caught early? We probably need to spend more on this over the next 10 years.

Maybe education? No... we already potentially have a generation of kids who have missed key parts of their developmental process. We probably need to double down and spend more here.

Scrap the nukes? Well, whichever side of the fence you sit on those, I am pretty sure that defence is a key priority with things as they are in the world. Also, the fact that this industry supports about 30,000 jobs and so we probably want to invest in other areas of defence and keep most of those jobs.

So what should the government do then? Regardless of who the government is, what should they do?

One thing is for sure, whatever they do you are going to complain about it so I guess they should stop listening and do what they want because they will get torn down for it anyway.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ There has been serious talk of, and I think it will probably happen by end of this just because there may be no other choice- every country is in same boat- of a total global economic reset- wiping of debts and more. It could in fact be a golden opportunity in the long term to have a more balanced and fair global finance system. }}

[Lancebloke]

I would be super surprised if that ever happens. Lots of government debt is owned by non-government bodies. Not sure how that would work? Also, I am not sure how that would impact currency... could itself trigger a global economic meltdown.

Would obviously need to be thought through incredibly carefully and everyone would need to sign up.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{It may be inevitable depending how long this needs to go on. And a reset is not a bad idea in general given a countries worth, productivity and size of debts has long since ceased to bear any real relation to its wealth, acrtual productivity or the likehood any of the debts will ever actually be called in or paid back if they were anyway.
And we're sure as hell going to need it seeing as Boris is now telling us to prepare for a no deal Brexit. Thats going to be a nightmare for business on top of whats already going on, and particualrly bad for Scotland as the vast bulk of our trade with the EU is in fresh food, sea food in particular. As it is right now seafood harvested in Scotland of a morning is on European restruant tables in the evening. You cant leave a lorry of salmon or shellfish in a carpark in Dover for days. Not to mention the extra tarrifs that will be on all our exports. }}

[Lancebloke]

The debt market often works because by the time it comes to paying it back, inflation has taken care of what was a huge amount and is now a much more manageable amount. With interest, those buying bonds get more than their money at less of a cost to the loanee.

If everything was reduced to 0, that market would collapse and things like credit ratings for future borrowing would be all over the place.

Alongside a number of countries having huge sovereign wealth funds and little to no debt, it just resets things in favour of those with massive economies and further puts back those with weak ones, while completely shafting those that have actually been living to their means!

After the years if austerity that the likes of Greece have had, I would expect them to tell everyone else to fuck right off.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Surely if your a small country with big debts- like many African countries seem to be for example, wiping their debts would help not hurt them? }}

[Lancebloke]

You would think so if you look at it like that. But then you have to compete against huge, now debt free countries that can borrow afresh to build on an already stark advantage. They can subsidise their own industries, because they will want to create jobs at home, forcing smaller countries to lower their own prices even more than though do already.

The strong get stronger, the weak cannot compete.