Quote from Shane D.

I could care less if infected.

Ok, but take care. Take some HCQ and zinc first.

Quote from Alan Smith

based on our projections we do

not expect to see significant resumptions in activity for ~70 days.

what are the projections for the UK resumptions?

Quote from oldguy

what are the projections for the UK resumptions?

There are no projections (that we are told). And we are told "it is too early to think about exit strategy". Strange, I thought the whole point of government was to plan such things and make arrangements in advance, like, in the Uk at least, was not done for mass testing and PPE.

The government has some cover in that everyone was hoping a different model would work at first. But now, when exit strategies require public to agree with what is being asked and where everyone must make personal plans, a "don't talk about the future" approach seems weird.

Quote from oldguy

what are the projections for the UK resumptions?

If this can be of interest, in Italy the activities deemed essential for primary needs never stopped. Strategic industries including aerospace could restart if organized so that social distancing and PPE were proven to local authorities. It took a couple weeks (of forced holidays) to settle in my company, including negotiation with the unions, but 100% workforce is now operational either teleworking or on site working in shifts, with no overlap and disinfection in the intervals. Of course productivity is impacted by shorter working hours and no overtime but efficiency will gradually resume. It is possible that a good portion of non essential, non strategic activities restart on May 4, i.e. after less than 8 weeks of lockdown, if the number of active cases drop to the number we had prior to March 11, which is the current trend. This can only be achieved with social distancing which is the only weapon we have so far.

I read the protests of religious people complaining for the restrictions on Mass services. I am an agnostic but how can one not feel that worshiping at home has the same value in such circumstances: Pope Francis complied without a complaint to the restrictions in Italy (he had the power not to in the Vatican state) and resorted to media technology. Risking your own life as a martyr isn't your right if for the sake of your creed you spread the contagion to others.

Stiff upper lip attitude doncha know? Just isn't cricket to complain about the 'Eton mess' we're in. We'll just self isolate and social distance until we are all bored with that and then move on to the next calamity, there isn't any plan or logic behind any of the government's moves, really just knee-jerk reactions to desperate situations. The exit strategy will be 'right we have had just about enough of this, time to move on chaps' like the WW2 or Falklands War mentality which is all part of the hangover from the days of the British Empire. Only this now feels like the begiinning of WW3 which if we are going to be honest has been raging in cyberspace over the globalised internet for at least the last ten years. Economic war between nations. Just takes Kim Jong un, Xi Jinping, Vladimir P, Donald T or good old BJ to lose their rag and set the tinderbox on fire. Those Satan 2 rockets with ten separate nuclear warheads will fry an area the size of France. Followed by nuclear winter. Better crank that HCQ out then, don't you think, or are you still worried about a few side effects?

Quote from Shane D.

Governors needlessly going well beyond their authority. The push back begins.

The example given here is a governor who banned church services. He "also threatened arrest and criminal penalties for anyone who dared violate his order" and "justified this by saying it was 'to save lives.'" In the 19th century and earlier, such actions were quite common in serious epidemics, in the U.S., in England where our common law originated, and in Europe. The laws permitting this are still on the books. No court has found them unconstitutional. They were last invoked on a wide scale in 1918, because they were last needed in 1918. There have been no uncontrolled, novel epidemics since then. They were frequently invoked during polio epidemics until 1955 when the first polio vaccine was deployed. I do not recall reading they were invoked for churches, but swimming pools, parks and other places where children gathered were often closed. Polio affects mainly children. This is described in biographies of FDR and in histories of polio.

This action definitely saved lives.

This author does not know the first thing about the history of public health, or the laws pertaining to it. These laws have saved millions of lives. In this epidemic, today, if governors and mayors had not invoked these laws, and forcibly enforced them sometimes, the number of cases would have continued to double every three days. That is the natural course of this epidemic when uncontrolled. That is shown in the data from several countries and the U.S. If that had happened, millions of people would have died. The same way hundreds of thousands died in 1918, adjusted for the total population. So, yes, this and other actions did save lives, and these actions were fully justified and legal. It would unthinkable not to take them.

If we "push back" against these essential steps, or if we "re-open" business too quickly, it will be because we are ignorant of history, and ignorant of biology and epidemiology. We will inadvertently cause the deaths of ~100,000 people, or more. This will destroy the economy. Instead of a 2-month shut down, the economy will end up being shut down for 6 months, or a year, or however long it takes to deploy a vaccine. Or until millions of people die and acquired herd immunity is established. You cannot actually re-open the economy, because people are not suicidal idiots. Take the Smithfield Foods factory where 293 workers are infected. It produces 5% of pork in the U.S. It is shut down for at least 2 weeks, or "indefinitely." How would you propose to open it up? Are you going to force the workers back under gunpoint? Who would risk his life, or risk weeks of painful, debilitating disease and possibly a lifetime of respiratory problems, just to make pork for other people? Every factory, restaurant, company, law firm and school in the U.S. will be faced with a similar impossible choice, if we let this epidemic get out of hand. The only way to reopen the economy is to first bring the epidemic under control, and then with testing and monitoring keep it under control, as they have done in Korea. Letting it kill millions -- as it must do in the normal, natural course of events -- is not an option in the 21st century. We had no choice in 1918, but today we do have a choice.

Quote from Max Nozin

Dr Richard are you also watching Fox News these days? How about RT?

RT is a major vector of dangerous misinformation, and a long-term attack on U.S. and EU science. See today's N.Y. Times:

Putin’s Long War Against American Science

A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…n-health-coronavirus.html

Quote from JedRothwell

The example given here is a governor who banned church services. He "also threatened arrest and criminal penalties for anyone who dared violate his order" and "justified this by saying it was 'to save lives.'" I

Suppose these people who want to hold services were members of a strange religious cult. Suppose that instead of gathering in a building, they insisted that God has instructed them to gather on bridges over highways, and drop cinder blocks on passing cars. Would it be justified to arrest them? Would that be saving lives? Yes, it would, and no sane person would dispute it. Because we are in the middle of the worst, most deadly epidemic since 1918, gathering together in large groups has exactly the same effect as dropping cinder blocks on passing cars. It is likely you will end up infecting and killing innocent people outside the church by doing this.

Quote from Max Nozin

I know but RT is an excellent pairing with Fox like chloroquine and zink.

Like winter and foul weather. ("As You Like It")

RT, Aljazeera, CNN, Fox, Sky News are all just entertainment news vehicles to promote their own political viewpoints. I only believe BBC radio 4 newscasts approach anything near news reality. Two new computer games which simulate pre and post nuclear war prepping activities are Far Cry 5 and New Dawn. Enjoy!

Quote from Max Nozin

I know but RT is an excellent pairing with Fox like chloroquine and zink.

Max,

You seem like a smart guy.

Don’t appear to me to be the kind of person who walks under a flock of seagulls and is surprised to find himself covered in sh...t

Anyone who goes to CNN or Fox News for their info deserves exactly what they get.

I am getting confused on the conspiracy theories during this non-pandemic thing, that may, or may not, be occurring.

So on the one hand we are being told that the number of Covid deaths are being exaggerated. That it is including elderly people who would have died anyway (andrea.s points out that should be easy to fix statistically since we know how many die each year from each age group).

But also now that insurance companies pay more for a Covid ICU death so there is a motivation to fudge the figures!

So the actual fatalities are allegedly lower than stated.

Then from sources in the same part of the political spectrum we are told that the figures in China are manipulated and should have been allegedly much higher!

So which is it? Is the pandemic overblown or understated?

Personally I would not be surprised if the Chinese government had massaged the figures. The regime likes to control everything and does not want to look too bad. But the CFR changes from one country to another depending on factors such as pollution, effectiveness of health service, average age, etc.

If the US is similar to the UK the figures for Covid deaths is based on hospital figures and do not include deaths in care homes or at private residences.

There is no conspiracy here just that we do not have enough tests available to do much about this discrepancy.

So just down to lack of preparedness.

Which in turn is down to political idiocy.

Therefore it would point to the real fatalities being higher than what is reported for the UK at least.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

I am getting confused on the conspiracy theories during this non-pandemic thing, that may, or may not, be occurring.

So on the one hand we are being told that the number of Covid deaths are being exaggerated. That it is including elderly people who would have died anyway (andrea.s points out that should be easy to fix statistically since we know how many die each year from each age group).

But also now that insurance companies pay more for a Covid ICU death so there is a motivation to fudge the figures!

So the actual fatalities are allegedly lower than stated.

Then from sources in the same part of the political spectrum we are told that the figures in China are manipulated and should have been allegedly much higher!

So which is it? Is the pandemic overblown or understated?

Personally I would not be surprised if the Chinese government had massaged the figures. The regime likes to control everything and does not want to look too bad. But the CFR changes from one country to another depending on factors such as pollution, effectiveness of health service, average age, etc.

If the US is similar to the UK the figures for Covid deaths is based on hospital figures and do not include deaths in care homes or at private residences.

There is no conspiracy here just that we do not have enough tests available to do much about this discrepancy.

So just down to lack of preparedness.

Which in turn is down to political idiocy.

Therefore it would point to the real fatalities being higher than what is reported for the UK at least.

Display More

You are in a war with one of the most sophisticated groups in the history of the world. The conspiracy fact is that a major deep group - with front line players like Gates - is operating behind the guise of a real virus to create new business models (world wide IDs, world wide vaccination business) and enact more population control. The evidence for that is in, and I mean hundreds of thousands of datapoints.

As for the numbers, we just don't know what this disease looks like - because the numbers are askew, the tests aren't actually being done (population testing), the tests we need only are recently available (antibody), and so the fact - not conspiracy. China absolutely has an agenda to make themselves look good.

On the point of freedom to continue to have religious services one of the most notorious episodes from the 1918 Spanish Flu occurred in the deeply pious Spanish city of Zamora, where the local bishop defied the health authorities by ordering a novena – evening prayers on nine consecutive days – in honour of Saint Rocco, the patron saint of plague and pestilence. This involved churchgoers lining up to kiss the saint’s relics, around the time that the outbreak peaked. Zamora went on to record the highest flu-related death rate of any city in Spain, and one of the highest in Europe.

In 1918 germ theory was still not appreciated widely and perhaps people were less educated.

So here we are 100 years later, surely things will be better.

The Vatican seems to have learned some lessons.

A friend of mine who is a priest is basically saying mass, over Easter, in an empty church while some churches are broadcasting services on the Internet.

However some religious groups are not doing themselves, or their communities any favours.

The South Korean cluster of Covid-19 seems to have spread via churches. To be fair the general awareness was not widespread in the early stages but at least one religious group refused to provide names to the Korean authorities to assist in tracing cases.

Meanwhile pilgrims in Iran have posted videos of themselves defiantly licking the Fatima Masumeh shrine in the city of Qom.

Also I read one story of a pastor in the USA who was defiant about the pandemic and boasted that his congregation would lick the floor of the church if he asked them.

Quote from Navid

You are in a war with one of the most sophisticated groups in the history of the world. The conspiracy fact is that a major deep group - with front line players like Gates - is operating behind the guise of a real virus to create new business models (world wide IDs, world wide vaccination business) and enact more population control. The evidence for that is in, and I mean hundreds of thousands of datapoints.

As for the numbers, we just don't know what this disease looks like - because the numbers are askew, the tests aren't actually being done (population testing), the tests we need only are recently available (antibody), and so the fact - not conspiracy. China absolutely has an agenda to make themselves look good.

Navid,

As conspiracies go, I prefer this one.

China engineered and purpose built this virus. Sure, they had to “sacrifice” a couple hundred thousand of their citizens in doing so, but that okay, looks better this way,

“Hey we suffered also”, kinda thing.

They are poking the west with a stick seeing how far they’ll go and what the reactions will be. Learn from this event, rinse, repeat.

Eventually the US military and political systems will be so incapable of action,

(See aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt).

China then rolls into Taiwan, South Korea and eventually Japan while the west does nothing.

If only Tom Clancy we’re still alive.

A prophecy?

Beijing may be using the coronavirus pandemic to advance its interests in the disputed South China Sea

Quote from Max Nozin

there is no global conspiracy

I always thought the only conspiracy is incompetence