Coronavirus - Strange times

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Martin Phillp
Posts: 1469
Joined: Wed 11 May, 2011 01.28

Everyone registered with a GP will receive an email or SMS from the NHS urging them to download the Test & Trace app.

SMS' will be sent to people who haven't given their surgery an email address.
TVF's London Lite.
cdd
Posts: 2607
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 14.05

My suspicion is that we will see rapidly changing attitudes to locking down society now there isn't a furlough scheme to keep things ticking over. In some ways, this is a good thing. The economy has always needed to be balanced against the health benefits of locking down, and too many people seem divorced from the economic implications of just closing down sectors of society, to the point of arguing that their own jobs are nonessential. Of course there needs to be a balance and it's important not to veer too far the other way.
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m-in-m
Posts: 259
Joined: Sat 05 Apr, 2008 22.26
Location: West Suffolk/Cambs

Andrew wrote: Sat 26 Sep, 2020 21.32
Whataday wrote: Wed 23 Sep, 2020 19.58 Pret skews middle class London based journalists pretty highly.

See also the way every journalist spoke about Greggs sausage rolls as if they were from another planet, the last time they were in the news.
Yes if they wanted to be less London centric they’d focus on Greggs rather than Pret, and probably Costa rather than Starbucks as well.

I think there is about 4 in Leeds but then non anywhere else in West Yorks. There are probably about 50 Greggs in the county, whereas I’m not even sure there is a Greggs in central London
There is (or was recently opened) a Gregg's in the heart of Westminster. I remember the excitement either on TV or Twitter when it opened.
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tillyoshea
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Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
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m-in-m wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 14.47There is (or was recently opened) a Gregg's in the heart of Westminster. I remember the excitement either on TV or Twitter when it opened.
There’s one in Westminster tube station.
thegeek
Posts: 858
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 12.35

cwathen wrote: Sat 26 Sep, 2020 18.48 Did they not start out specifically as a London-based chain though? Certainly it wasn't *that* long ago that the only one I knew of in the entirety of the south west was in Bristol (and at the top of Park Street at that), and lunch from Pret was an essential part of a trip to London as they seemed a bit of a London curiosity to me.
It did take them some time to expand out of London - I remember visiting in the late 90s and finding it a bit of a novelty.

I'm reasonably sure that they'd opened in Glasgow before I left in 2005. They were certainly there by 2008, which is the earliest street view image I can find for Sauchiehall Street.
Martin Phillp wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 00.32 Everyone registered with a GP will receive an email or SMS from the NHS urging them to download the Test & Trace app.

SMS' will be sent to people who haven't given their surgery an email address.
the Radio X newsletter (which I've not opened in donkey's years, but have been receiving since the Xfm days) appears to be this week entirely dedicated to the app too. Is that happening across Global's brands?
cwathen
Posts: 1309
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

cdd wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 13.13 My suspicion is that we will see rapidly changing attitudes to locking down society now there isn't a furlough scheme to keep things ticking over. In some ways, this is a good thing. The economy has always needed to be balanced against the health benefits of locking down, and too many people seem divorced from the economic implications of just closing down sectors of society, to the point of arguing that their own jobs are nonessential. Of course there needs to be a balance and it's important not to veer too far the other way.
I think the university halls lockdown which many universities participated in yesterday will be a big factor in this. TBF this wasn't mandated by the Government so isn't their fault directly (Nicola Sturgeon asked students to spend a weekend in but didn't mandate it, and outside of Scotland nothing) but what (has reportedly) happened last night was illegal imprisonment and yet there has been next to nothing said about it by the government, and not much more by the opposition either.

MMU are now trying to row back and claim that it was only advice, but in that case who deployed the security to (reportedly) prevent students leaving? Who (reportedly) asked for police attendance? Of course MMU were complicit in this and tried to lock the students up against their will. They might well have felt they were doing the right thing but they have failed entirely to understand the other side of the coin and the strength of feeling against what they have done.

As you say, a balance is needed but that balance isn't there. It's all very well to be 'led by the science' but that puts us in a situation where nothing can ever outrank the virus in terms of risk to society. Personally, I believe the prospect of 4 million unemployed (which could easily be double that in terms of number of people affected when you consider dependants) and pushed out onto the worst jobs market in living memory is going to damage the country far more than the virus. The potential death toll from that is incomprehensible.

Polling suggests that attitudes to measures are turning, with drastic measures no longer holding any majority support at all and support for all measures gradually declining but when we've got the combination of BoJo likely carrying PTSD from his personal experience of having Covid, and Hancock acting like a snarling school governing under a system where they can essentially rule by decree on this matter we are likely to sleepwalk into a second lockdown. Hopefully either the Brady amendment or the Labour alternative gets passed and we get back to being a democracy.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/ ... l-lockdown

On a different matter - anyone else a little bit unsettled by how every business has decided that Zoom is an acceptable long term solution for meetings? If Zoom ever failed (even if only for a day) the consequences for business not getting done is rapidly becoming dire.
Nezzac1
Posts: 18
Joined: Mon 25 Apr, 2011 16.32

cwathen wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 20.38
cdd wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 13.13 My suspicion is that we will see rapidly changing attitudes to locking down society now there isn't a furlough scheme to keep things ticking over. In some ways, this is a good thing. The economy has always needed to be balanced against the health benefits of locking down, and too many people seem divorced from the economic implications of just closing down sectors of society, to the point of arguing that their own jobs are nonessential. Of course there needs to be a balance and it's important not to veer too far the other way.
I think the university halls lockdown which many universities participated in yesterday will be a big factor in this. TBF this wasn't mandated by the Government so isn't their fault directly (Nicola Sturgeon asked students to spend a weekend in but didn't mandate it, and outside of Scotland nothing) but what (has reportedly) happened last night was illegal imprisonment and yet there has been next to nothing said about it by the government, and not much more by the opposition either.

MMU are now trying to row back and claim that it was only advice, but in that case who deployed the security to (reportedly) prevent students leaving? Who (reportedly) asked for police attendance? Of course MMU were complicit in this and tried to lock the students up against their will. They might well have felt they were doing the right thing but they have failed entirely to understand the other side of the coin and the strength of feeling against what they have done.

As you say, a balance is needed but that balance isn't there. It's all very well to be 'led by the science' but that puts us in a situation where nothing can ever outrank the virus in terms of risk to society. Personally, I believe the prospect of 4 million unemployed (which could easily be double that in terms of number of people affected when you consider dependants) and pushed out onto the worst jobs market in living memory is going to damage the country far more than the virus. The potential death toll from that is incomprehensible.

Polling suggests that attitudes to measures are turning, with drastic measures no longer holding any majority support at all and support for all measures gradually declining but when we've got the combination of BoJo likely carrying PTSD from his personal experience of having Covid, and Hancock acting like a snarling school governing under a system where they can essentially rule by decree on this matter we are likely to sleepwalk into a second lockdown. Hopefully either the Brady amendment or the Labour alternative gets passed and we get back to being a democracy.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/ ... l-lockdown

On a different matter - anyone else a little bit unsettled by how every business has decided that Zoom is an acceptable long term solution for meetings? If Zoom ever failed (even if only for a day) the consequences for business not getting done is rapidly becoming dire.
I have to say that to see university students effectively being treated like prisoners is one of the most unbelievable events of this whole situation. Actually facing the possibility of not being allowed to see family at Christmas is horrific. Being stranded hundreds of miles away in a strange city with people they don't know smacks to me of an episode of "Banged Up Abroad" I'm hopeful common sense will prevail.

I supported the initial lockdown and I'm sure most of the country did but as the months slipped by and more people died then I started asking was it working? The answer to me is no and to be brutally honest the situation in this country is disgusting.

Yes I understand about the economy (I've just returned to work) but to me the humanity is more important. I wear a mask because I'm in one of the at risk groups even though I feel physically uncomfortable doing so and I check every day for news of the WHO giving a vaccine the green light. I'm sure that when that happens most of us will go mad with relief.

Johnson, Hancock and the rest have been totally useless in the way they've handled this and its not surprising that MP's on all sides are beginning to oppose what is going on. Do I believe we should come out of lockdown totally. No there has to be some restrictions until we get a vaccine but with our humanity first and foremost.
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m-in-m
Posts: 259
Joined: Sat 05 Apr, 2008 22.26
Location: West Suffolk/Cambs

cwathen wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 20.38 On a different matter - anyone else a little bit unsettled by how every business has decided that Zoom is an acceptable long term solution for meetings? If Zoom ever failed (even if only for a day) the consequences for business not getting done is rapidly becoming dire.
I think the impact would differ from business to business. I suspect we would manage by reverting to telephone conference calls.
james2001
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 23.10

cdd wrote: Sun 27 Sep, 2020 13.13 My suspicion is that we will see rapidly changing attitudes to locking down society now there isn't a furlough scheme to keep things ticking over. In some ways, this is a good thing. The economy has always needed to be balanced against the health benefits of locking down, and too many people seem divorced from the economic implications of just closing down sectors of society, to the point of arguing that their own jobs are nonessential. Of course there needs to be a balance and it's important not to veer too far the other way.
That's the problem, the balance just isn't there right now, it's too skewed towards stopping the virus entirely, without thinking of the other consequences of locking down and stopping society which may well end up being even worse. And what I really hate is when you point out the other severe consequences of locking down, as well as the fact there's many, many more times as many people dying from other causes that we don't, and can't, stop the world to prevent (as it stands, covid doesn't even rank in the top 20 causes of death in the UK right now), you get accused of being heartless, not caring about other people, wishing people dead, having a blase opinion to people's lives etc. which just isn't true.

If anything, the effects of repeated lockdowns and restrictions would likely kill more people over time than covid itself, just think about the effects of companies going bust left, right and centre, the mental health effects of lockdown, isolation and millions of people losing their jobs and not being able to pay the bills, the residual deaths caused from cancelled and delayed medical attention for non-covid problems etc. The people who think covid's the only problem really do need to see the bigger picture. Covid illnesses and deaths are a tragedy, but it's not the only bad thing out there, people are suffering and dying all the time from countless things (my grandmother's dying from kidney failure as I type this- is her illness and eventual death any less a tragedy than a covid one?) and focusing too much attention on it is just working to build up potentially even worse problems elsewhere.

Of course we can't let the virus rip through the country like it was earlier in the year because it would cause chaos, but suppressing it too much just creates countless other problems, and in the end we really have to accept that you can't stop it without extreme measures which end up causing more problems than they solve, then find the viru ends up coming back when you try and restore normality anyway. I think it would be better we'd at least allow a situation where we'd allow a number of people falling ill that was managable without tipping over the health service, and hopefully slowly building up some level of immunity in the population which will hopefully over time have an effect on slowing the spread and allowing further dropping of restrictions, rather than just jumping into panic mode and pulling down the shutters every time the case numbers start to rise. The current mentality could just leave us in this limbo for years, with a crumbling economy and increasing societal problems, especially if a vaccine never emerges.

Of course we can't return to true normality until we reach a point where the virus stops spreading so fast it leaves hospitals overflowing, but we need to be allowed to live some sort of life, without the constant threats of more restrictions or another lockdown hanging over us. At least letting the virus spead at a managble rate would hopefully get us slowly to that point, especially if a vaccine ends up being a long time coming or never emerges, rather than trying to keep infections as close to zero as possible, which just leaves the population vulnerable and the return of exponential spread every time people start mixing again.

Also been hearing an increasing amount of suggestions recently that we're going to have to keep masks, social distancing, bans on mass gatherings etc. possibly anywhere from a few months to a couple of years even AFTER being vaccinated, which I can't help but think will tip many people who've been happy to comply with restrictions over the edge as well.
Andrew
Posts: 330
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.18

I think we are still a long way away from any leading politician, of any party, who is seen as mainstream and not a back bench nutjob, not supporting restrictions and suggesting there should be fewer.

We know that if anything Labour in Wales and the SNP actually support further measures, and Labour in England will dodge the question and focus on a particular failing (like test and trace last week)

The university situation is one of those situations where there is no clear solution. There were three options, go ahead as they have done, do it entirely online, or just don’t open universities at all. Neither is a great option and any would receive complaints but no solutions
all new Phil
Posts: 1965
Joined: Sun 13 Feb, 2005 00.04
Location: Next door to Hell

Is there any merit in my idea of making everyone quarantine for 2 weeks? Absolute emergency services only can leave home, everyone else must buy in enough shopping beforehand to see them through, and essentially you stay in your home for 2 weeks. No exceptions, no popping to the shop, no daily exercise.

Could be some creativity in entertaining people or teaching them new skills during it - a 2 week tv course in learning a new language, a free 2 week course in coding, cook along with Mary Berry on the telly, all sorts of stuff that I think were missed opportunities first time round.
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