RicoS321

But one side of that argument is a monetary value, and the other side is death. What happens after lockdown is another decision, just like austerity was. It's economic illiteracy to suggest that the economy can only behave in one specific way, and if hitchens or Frederick Forsyth believe that then they're no less deluded than the followers of David karesh or any other cultists. It's not like being trapped between a tsunami and a forest fire, two natural phenomena. The economy is man-made. We've designed it, and if we've designed it so that it lacks any resilience whatsoever, then we change it. More importantly, why are guys as intelligent as hitchens not asking that glaringly obvious question? Why aren't they questioning why it's possible for banks and governments just to suddenly say that mortgages don't have to be paid, and loans can be ignored, but yet these artificial balances require payment in normal times, for example? Why would anyone's thinking default to siding with the fictional economy over human lives without the real challenge being posed? But all that aside, the NHS is currently struggling to cope and the number of people who will die because of this struggling, rather than the virus, is significant. That's the issue he skirts.

Agree with what you're saying, but not sure enty about this bit. The alternative was test test test. South Korea and China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Ireland etc all took this approach which means that they're total lockdown was/is only temporary, with a clear exit strategy i.e. managed lockdown. The fact is that there is no way round the virus. We're all practicing herd immunity, the key is simply how that's done. That's why I don't understand hitchen's point. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that the lockdown is only there to stop the NHS from being overwhelmed and he provides no solution to this. He does briefly mention that they would have coped, but with zero investigation and against current visible evidence. A managed lockdown gives us a clear way out and a coherent plan that informs the public. Lockdown until you and a large enough portion in your area tests as immune, national database that you're removed from when clear. Restricted travel throughout. International visitors quarantine. Show the public that you have a start, a temporary middle and a clear end. Give the NHS the information that they need and allow the population to very slowly gain immunity over time. There'll still be deaths of course, just not as many as there would have been by letting the health service become inundated.

The massive rise in consumer debt? Another house of cards that was just as likely to collapse as the CDO arrangement. On top of the fact that pretty much every tool a Tory government would consider using had been used up: austerity, interest rates etc. I'm not convinced it would have collapsed on its own, but there is always a disaster or fuck up on the horizon and the economy had zero resilience built in (just look at the interest rates over the last years). My own opinion is that it's a dying system, but that could take decades to happen. But we can see that it isn't a system that works when disaster strikes, so the effects of climate change or food supply shortages will be horrendous.

Do you really believe that we won't return to work as normal within a few months? Normal service will be resumed. With a fine excuse for the financial depression that was likely coming anyway.

Did it not turn out that she was shouting at open reach guys that had nothing to do with the 5G network? Or was it a different wifie? The one I read about was abusing open reach guys because 5G was spreading coronavirus. That's the type of bollocks that allows actual issues to fly under the radar. That lunatic wifie and her conspiracy are now the response to every genuine concern around it.

You're indeed preaching to the choir, but that's what the folks in charge believe about these technologies. It's a direct extrapolation of where we are now. That's how this economy is designed. Do you think that there's a different plan to prevent the insect die out or the heating planet?

Most folk, after independence, would leave England to struggle along with a shite excuse for democracy, but you'd selflessly destroy the house of lords for them on her way oot! Good stuff min. Agreed, it's a good post Tom. I'm very much with you on the insects, but I'd say that our food/farming industry is way ahead of the curve when it comes to destroying the living, pollinating creatures that their industry relies on compared to yer 4Gs. Although the nature study presents 5g as very risky without saying as much. The reason I kept saying "direct" impact is because of what you mention as the indirect impacts of massive insect loss on the food chain and especially cereal crops. However, alongside 5G, technology is giving us lab-grown meat and GM crops, thus negating the need for insects at all*. Once again, we don't vote for these things or this path. However, it is already borne out in our cities. Concrete (granite) monuments to humans with zero nature and zero life. We've paved over every inch of it, in order that we don't have to deal with it. It's so removed from the lives of the majority, that the next logical step in the highly complex system is to design and make our own food outside of it. Your kitchen example is great, but I don't see a single thing made today that could be sustained. "Sustainable" building sits within unsustainable cities, sustainable products in an unsustainable economy. *Unless yer in a poor country, in which case you're fucked.

That would only make sense if I'm advocating 5G, which I'm not. If you could add your explanation of "worthless if all the insects, birds, trees etc arer wiped out", it'd be helpful. Do you think that 5G has a direct effect on birds and trees? Do you have any evidence/articles to back that up? To clarify my position: I think 5G is a shite idea. The technology it enables is neither required or progressive. From reading the nature article, I think it could have an unknown effect on insects, which isn't worth the risk in case that effect is life threatening. My flippant comment was because there are already a number of known impacts on insects from the farming industry, building stadia on greenbelt etc that we're already ignoring that have reduced insect populations overwhelmingly. We're fighting the next battle before the previous one is resolved.

Direct impact, not impact. I haven't read your science times article, so perhaps it's saying something different. I'm basing my logic on the fact that we've had 4G for some time now, with no associated issues for humans or birds. The differentiator between 4 and 5G is frequency. From the article I linked, the frequency is too insignificant to affect anything bigger than insects. Or, at least, power absorption rate correlates along size/frequency lines. More than happy for someone more sciencey than me to debunk.

Here's a good one, with some of the research done in Aberdeen, so it must be ace. Bit in depth, but it basically measures the power absorption of insects at the 5G frequencies and concludes that those could result in increased body temperature, thus affecting the insect's behaviour. That doesn't sound good, but difficult to know. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22271-3 I'm still no further forward! Although I'm fairly certain that the direct impact on birds and humans will be insignificant, the indirect impacts through further insect loss could be significant. That would really only speed up an existing phenomenon though. As I said at the start, it's the lack of debate that's the issue. Where does 5G take us, what does it give us, what is "progress" if it has no goal and so on.

Exactly. I haven't seen/read anything that I would class as credible that suggests it is harmful to birds. I've read a lot of shite a few months back about birds dropping dead, but it was - as far as I could tell - horseshit. Hence why I was asking for links. I'm not that well read on the subject.

Aye, I ken about internet searching, I just wondered if there were a specific article(s) that shaped others' opinions.

Ha ha, apologies, I was being sarcastic about the necessities, but reading it back it doesn't come across that way at all. I'm in total agreement with you. That's what I meant when I said I wish we could have a rational debate about these things. Because we're heading toward a world of autonomous vehicles and 5G whether we like it or not. None of us will get to vote for it of course. There won't be an opt out eventually either. I wasn't aware of anything that suggested 5G itself would be detrimental to insects and birds however. Have you any links?

Harmless to humans according to all the stuff I've read, but rife with conspiracy. I think it would be fantastic if the British public could have a rational debate about the introduction of this type of technology. It brings with it such necessities as self driving cars, projected VR, and humongous volumes of data collection and surveillance. The conspiracy nut jobs are there to distract as always. People with genuine concerns about the logic, the requirement and the bigger picture in terms of societal direction will deliberately get lumped into the same bracket.

I suppose that you have to look at South Korea or Iceland (I think it was Iceland) who have done extensive testing. I agree, that testing is - and always has been - the key to it. It seems to be that the mortality rate will not be anymore than normal flu assuming that yer hospitals can cope with the influx, but if your hospitals get overwhelmed then lots more people die. Sweden will be an interesting case in point, as they have put few measures in place and are not testing in huge volumes either. But at the moment, we have data from Italy, which suggests that an unrestricted virus will infect enough people that hospitals will not cope and tens of thousands will die. We have data from South Korea that says testing and isolating based only on the results of those tests will allow people some level of freedom, whilst others remain isolated and significantly less die. What we may be able to say is that in Italy and probably the UK, we may end up with a similar number of deaths than if we hadn't bothered, because the health service(s) are/will be overwhelmed, and I expect that'll be used to make the: "it wouldn't have made a difference what we did" case, which of course ignores South Korea's approach. I suppose the one thing that we have to remember about the hospitals being overwhelmed, is that it really isn't very long since the English NHS had a small child sleeping on their floor covered in jackets being ignored by the Prime Minister. Arguably the NHS has been overwhelmed for some time and people will already have beeen dying because of this over the last decade, so perhaps this virus just give it a convenient package.

Yep, the LA area might be okay (I don't know), but the US as a whole isn't way ahead of the UK. It's vastly behind on testing and very short on supplies, much like the UK. Obviously comparing the US and the UK is a little unfair on the US, but Europe, collectively, is ahead of the US in terms of testing and preparedness, with massive variations country to country of course. I'm guessing the state to state outcomes will be similar. I'd be interested to know why you think the US is faring better LA don?

More importantly, does Andy Considine lose his appearances that get him very close to top 5 all-time appearances? I'm guessing not. These games did actually happen. They'll just count towards a league that was declared void.

I just saw the headline and assumed it was a heap of bollocks. I also read that they were talking about amending the recorded deaths to include those that occurred out with hospital settings, but I can't find where I read it. Were we seriously not recording deaths in homes? That seems a little negligent. Not that I'd expect the volumes to be huge, but they're likely to be going forward as hospitals become overcrowded and people are forced to stay at home. Anyway, I'm guessing lower admission to hospitals are because nae cunt wants to go near the Corona-ridden places and fancy their chances at home

Yep, I think the Guardian ran something on Boris' ever changing positions. There have been a lot. Even in the last 24 hours, Gove has downgraded his 10,000 per day to "the capacity for 10,000 test per day". I appreciate that it is very difficult for journalists to be completely on top of the current position, given the pace at which things are moving, but it's almost like they haven't prepared any follow up questions whatsoever when they speak to politicians (or football managers for that matter). Ask question -> get response -> thank interviewee for response. Rather than have data to hand ready to raise the pertinent questions as soon as they begin their pish. As Rocket has mentioned a few times, the channel four guys are significantly more prepared and better at asking questions.

It's a shame there weren't some proper examples and substance in there. It's not exactly wikileaks level whistleblowing if you see what I mean. Good though, I suspect most doctors would just quit their post. Must have been difficult to put their name to it.

It's weird, because they originally said 6ft, but then changed to metres. Not a huge difference of course, but just another thing to confuse the masses. Two metres is difficult in most shops, and impossible on most pavements. I was shopping just now and other than at the tills, the two metre rule wasn't really applied. Which is fine. On a couple of occasions, myself and another customer weren't far away but had our back to one another, thus no risk. Either of us could have made a deal of it, but neither did. It was good to see some basic common sense.

Jesus. I never thought I'd ever wish Boris a speedy and full recovery

What's the protocol if he dies? Have we had a dead serving prime minister before? I assume they'd just continue to shuffle his corpse out for the daily updates.

We don't know exactly how it's spread, but we do know that it spreads like a motherfucker. It would seem unlikely that a family in the UK (mine/yours/other folks') would be less likely to spread it than anywhere else in the world or the UK of today. I'm guessing there's only a couple of degrees of separation between us, being local loons, so you would expect a fair number of folk to be infected in this region alone. To the extent that it would have registered you'd have thought? Or to the extent that at least one person would have died from it and some form of testing done on them? Or do we not test if it's an al' or ill person?

I was absolutely floored in January with the flu. Like nothing I've ever experienced. 5 days of being wiped out, and another 5 to recover. Was still struggling sporadically for a couple of weeks after. As was my daughter. Wife, not so much but a few days off work. In-laws too. If it turns out we were Corona'd, then I'd be pretty happy. Of course, it doesn't make sense that it would be unless the number of infections are exceptionally high (which the article suggests), as like all good heroes, we were all back at work infecting folk well within any 14 day period. That being said, I probably took at least 3 days off longer than I normally would as I was pretty concerned that I might pass what I think/thought was the flu to anyone else as it was whooring bad. It seems negligent if it was Corona Virus like, that's a lot of folk infected and - presumably - a lot of folk with an incorrect classification on their death certificates?