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Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 12:40 pm
by FlammableFlower
Hell's teeth - Brazil

Now at 1,000 deaths a day and they reckon they are still weeks away from a potential peak - and that will be if Bolsonaro manages to stop himself from hampering efforts...

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 1:16 pm
by Little waster
FlammableFlower wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:40 pm
Hell's teeth - Brazil

Now at 1,000 deaths a day and they reckon they are still weeks away from a potential peak - and that will be if Bolsonaro manages to stop himself from hampering efforts...
Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro.

Alt-right populists are a bit sh.t at this governing malarkey, aren't they?

It's almost as if a general sense of grievance and only a passing acquaintance with the truth are insufficient for competently dealing with reality.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 1:22 pm
by sTeamTraen
Little waster wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:16 pm
Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro.

Alt-right populists are a bit sh.t at this governing malarkey, aren't they?

It's almost as if a general sense of grievance and only a passing acquaintance with the truth are insufficient for competently dealing with reality.
You forgot Putin, who might not meet the strict definition of an alt-right populist so much as an owner of alt-right populists, but who certainly is also in charge of a country that seems to be f.cking up pretty badly.
FlammableFlower wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:40 pm
Hell's teeth - Brazil

Now at 1,000 deaths a day and they reckon they are still weeks away from a potential peak - and that will be if Bolsonaro manages to stop himself from hampering efforts...
Well, at least it's good news for Liam Fox, who tweeted proudly (!) yesterday that the UK doesn't have the highest death rate per million, just the fourth highest. The UK will certainly overtake Italy before the end of this week and probably Spain by the end of next, so he needs Brazil and Russia to have really catastrophic outcomes to "ride to Britain's rescue". :roll:

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 1:22 pm
by Opti
I'm prolly going to nick that. Word for word.

LW, that is.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 2:12 pm
by lpm
US, Brazil, Russia and UK stand out as the incompetent populist countries who've failed massively.

Turkey could join them. The Philippines, in contrast, seems little impacted. Likewise Egypt, Poland and Hungary.

Iran is the example of an incompetent dictatorship with a terrible outcome. Ecuador is an example of a country with nicely improving human rights and democracy, yet hit badly.

China is the example of a competent dictatorship that had a miraculous save (even if true figures were many multiples higher, it was still an amazingly good outcome).

It's too early to say, but I suspect the outcome will steadily trend to incompetent=death, competent=saves, rather than measures of popularism or autocracy.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 2:38 pm
by Bird on a Fire
lpm wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:12 pm
US, Brazil, Russia and UK stand out as the incompetent populist countries who've failed massively.

Turkey could join them. The Philippines, in contrast, seems little impacted. Likewise Egypt, Poland and Hungary.

Iran is the example of an incompetent dictatorship with a terrible outcome. Ecuador is an example of a country with nicely improving human rights and democracy, yet hit badly.

China is the example of a competent dictatorship that had a miraculous save (even if true figures were many multiples higher, it was still an amazingly good outcome).

It's too early to say, but I suspect the outcome will steadily trend to incompetent=death, competent=saves, rather than measures of popularism or autocracy.
Mexico has an incompetent populist government, but a nominally left-wing one. So far it hasn't gone completely to sh.t, but the national health service there is already overstretched and under-resourced so if they start getting a bunch of cases coming in from the USA they'll probably be pretty f.cked.

So that's one to watch.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 2:39 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Little waster wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:16 pm
FlammableFlower wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:40 pm
Hell's teeth - Brazil

Now at 1,000 deaths a day and they reckon they are still weeks away from a potential peak - and that will be if Bolsonaro manages to stop himself from hampering efforts...
Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro.

Alt-right populists are a bit sh.t at this governing malarkey, aren't they?

It's almost as if a general sense of grievance and only a passing acquaintance with the truth are insufficient for competently dealing with reality.
It's almost as though the economic demands of the business-owning class are in direct conflict with the wellbeing of the working masses.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 2:45 pm
by EACLucifer
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:39 pm
Little waster wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:16 pm
FlammableFlower wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:40 pm
Hell's teeth - Brazil

Now at 1,000 deaths a day and they reckon they are still weeks away from a potential peak - and that will be if Bolsonaro manages to stop himself from hampering efforts...
Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro.

Alt-right populists are a bit sh.t at this governing malarkey, aren't they?

It's almost as if a general sense of grievance and only a passing acquaintance with the truth are insufficient for competently dealing with reality.
It's almost as though the economic demands of the business-owning class are in direct conflict with the wellbeing of the working masses.
While I've no disagreement with that sentiment at all, it's not even that; all the evidence so far shows that it is in the interests of working and capital owning classes alike that this disease be swiftly and effectively contained.

The failures of Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson are likely because they are used to dealing with spin and propaganda, and frankly, the coronavirus doesn't care what you can trick people into believing about scapegoated groups via dishonest facebook ads.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 2:55 pm
by Bird on a Fire
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:45 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:39 pm
Little waster wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:16 pm


Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro.

Alt-right populists are a bit sh.t at this governing malarkey, aren't they?

It's almost as if a general sense of grievance and only a passing acquaintance with the truth are insufficient for competently dealing with reality.
It's almost as though the economic demands of the business-owning class are in direct conflict with the wellbeing of the working masses.
While I've no disagreement with that sentiment at all, it's not even that; all the evidence so far shows that it is in the interests of working and capital owning classes alike that this disease be swiftly and effectively contained.
I think I'd refine this a bit, and say that it's in their long-term interests.

Businesses that operate on fast turnaround with an expendable labour force, from meat-packers to Amazon, have been fighting to stay open despite evidence of dangerous working conditions. Businesses that have made a longer-term investment in training their workforce, or that would find workers harder to replace, are those that have been allowing work from home etc.

Workers are just treated like any other commodity.

No disagreement on your second paragraph.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 5:46 pm
by jimbob
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:38 pm
lpm wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:12 pm
US, Brazil, Russia and UK stand out as the incompetent populist countries who've failed massively.

Turkey could join them. The Philippines, in contrast, seems little impacted. Likewise Egypt, Poland and Hungary.

Iran is the example of an incompetent dictatorship with a terrible outcome. Ecuador is an example of a country with nicely improving human rights and democracy, yet hit badly.

China is the example of a competent dictatorship that had a miraculous save (even if true figures were many multiples higher, it was still an amazingly good outcome).

It's too early to say, but I suspect the outcome will steadily trend to incompetent=death, competent=saves, rather than measures of popularism or autocracy.
Mexico has an incompetent populist government, but a nominally left-wing one. So far it hasn't gone completely to sh.t, but the national health service there is already overstretched and under-resourced so if they start getting a bunch of cases coming in from the USA they'll probably be pretty f.cked.

So that's one to watch.
The Mexican President so was discouraging distancing and holding mass events when coronavirus had taken hold in the US.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 6:08 pm
by shpalman
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:22 pm
... at least it's good news for Liam Fox, who tweeted proudly (!) yesterday that the UK doesn't have the highest death rate per million, just the fourth highest. The UK will certainly overtake Italy before the end of this week...
By my calculations, that just happened.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 6:09 pm
by Bird on a Fire
jimbob wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 5:46 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:38 pm
Mexico has an incompetent populist government, but a nominally left-wing one. So far it hasn't gone completely to sh.t, but the national health service there is already overstretched and under-resourced so if they start getting a bunch of cases coming in from the USA they'll probably be pretty f.cked.

So that's one to watch.
The Mexican President so was discouraging distancing and holding mass events when coronavirus had taken hold in the US.
Yeah, I had high hopes for AMLO when he get elected but he's turned out to be a total pendejo :(

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 6:14 pm
by sTeamTraen
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:08 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:22 pm
... at least it's good news for Liam Fox, who tweeted proudly (!) yesterday that the UK doesn't have the highest death rate per million, just the fourth highest. The UK will certainly overtake Italy before the end of this week...
By my calculations, that just happened.
Worldometer has UK on 526 and Italy on 535 this evening, but there are many different sources of statistics. I use ECDC.eu because they have a URL that downloads everything in one place for later nerdification.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
by shpalman
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:14 pm
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:08 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 1:22 pm
... at least it's good news for Liam Fox, who tweeted proudly (!) yesterday that the UK doesn't have the highest death rate per million, just the fourth highest. The UK will certainly overtake Italy before the end of this week...
By my calculations, that just happened.
Worldometer has UK on 526 and Italy on 535 this evening, but there are many different sources of statistics. I use ECDC.eu because they have a URL that downloads everything in one place for later nerdification.
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 7:07 pm
by AMS
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.
Horrifyingly, both countries are at the point where the Covid deaths alter that 4th significant figure for population.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 7:14 pm
by Vertigowooyay
Given the packed beach at Southend today, and presumably it’s not the only example, there’s a f.cking massive second wave on the way isn’t there?

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 7:16 pm
by Grumble
AMS wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 7:07 pm
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.
Horrifyingly, both countries are at the point where the Covid deaths alter that 4th significant figure for population.
Will this be significant enough to reduce the life expectancy figures for this year?

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 7:19 pm
by EACLucifer
AMS wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 7:07 pm
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.
Horrifyingly, both countries are at the point where the Covid deaths alter that 4th significant figure for population.
Going by the excess death method of counting it, it's altered the 3rd one too for the UK

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 9:11 pm
by Fishnut
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 7:14 pm
Given the packed beach at Southend today, and presumably it’s not the only example, there’s a f.cking massive second wave on the way isn’t there?
Yep.

I'm worried that the government won't do a second lockdown when it comes though. They're so set on the idea that we need to 'get back to normal' that all the evidence in the world that it's too early for that isn't going to dissuade them from that path.

Listening to Rees-Mogg this afternoon talking about how MPs who can should be coming back to parliament without giving any specifics of how they'd keep the place safe other than 'there won't be as many people around' was quite terrifying. If an organisation like parliament, with all its resources and access to expertise is struggling to work out how to safely get back to normal during a pandemic, how are other organisations supposed to be able to work it out? And his threat that after the recess MPs who refuse to return to parliament won't get a vote is blackmail that's going to put lives at risk. Companies around the country now have precedent to say to staff that if you can't do your job effectively (however they choose to define that) you either come in or find another job.

They can't seem to grasp that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Just because they're bored of it doesn't mean they can give up. They're putting the cart before the horse at every stage - telling people to go back to work before figuring out how to do that safely, telling schools to reopen before figuring out how to do that safely. Saying they're going to do x number of tests a day without working out how they're going to achieve that. It's been a shitshow from the very beginning and people are dying every day as a result.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 9:54 pm
by sTeamTraen
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.
World-O-Meter has 67,845,213 for the UK population "based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data". The ONS has an estimate for mid-2019 of 66,796,807 here [XLS].

I normally enjoy nerdy stuff like this immensely, but in current circumstances I find it hard to get excited about proving Liam Fox wrong. Maybe that's the point of him talking shite.
Fishnut wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 9:11 pm
They can't seem to grasp that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Just because they're bored of it doesn't mean they can give up.
This, multiplied by pretty much every commentator --- even those who aren't "lockdown skeptics". The whole thing has been reported since the beginning like some kind of football league, with every previous day's "results" being treated as definitive acquisitions in a "season", and countries "jostling for position", and now I get the feeling that we're "in the home straight". The idea that this will never end (until there is a viable vaccine or the equivalent of the anti-viral therapy that got HIV under control) doesn't seem to be in anyone's mind at the moment.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
by EACLucifer
There seems to be very little understanding of the two key points;

1) Though lockdown reduces numbers, it won't eliminate the disease. Without very heavy social distancing or an alternative method of control, it will start quadrupling every week again.

2) There should no longer be any debate on whether or not it is possible to at least keep the virus mostly contained by testing, tracing and isolating. It's been done by a number of countries.

About one Briton in a thousand has already died before their time, and we are unlikely to be much more than a tenth of the way to herd immunity. The continued lying and incompetence is, at best, morally manslaughter on a grand scale.

For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing. Perhaps through sheer incompetence, or perhaps in order to reinforce that lie, testing capacity was not increased or used in a sensible way - for example by using private testing capacity to at least test health workers and care home residents.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 12:59 am
by Millennie Al
sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 9:54 pm
The idea that this will never end (until there is a viable vaccine or the equivalent of the anti-viral therapy that got HIV under control) doesn't seem to be in anyone's mind at the moment.
Actually, it seems very likely it will end. The Black Death ended. The 1918 flu ended. But the cost of letting it end naturally is high.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 1:05 am
by Millennie Al
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 2:55 pm
Businesses that operate on fast turnaround with an expendable labour force, from meat-packers to Amazon, have been fighting to stay open despite evidence of dangerous working conditions. Businesses that have made a longer-term investment in training their workforce, or that would find workers harder to replace, are those that have been allowing work from home etc.
Really? Why isn't it that meat packers have been staying open because food is essential? Why isn't it that Amazon have been staying open because people still need essential goods?

What businesses have not been allowing people to work from home where that would have been possible?

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 1:11 am
by Millennie Al
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 7:14 pm
Given the packed beach at Southend today, and presumably it’s not the only example, there’s a f.cking massive second wave on the way isn’t there?
It's quite possible, but not certain. The rules for lockdown are our best guesses as to what matters in spreading the disease. We have possibly missed things which should have been included, and we have surely included measures which haven't had a significant effect.

Based purely on people going out and sitting in the sun, that might be pretty harmless, unless they pack together on transport or in queues. However, it seems quite likely that the people who went out were much less fearful of the disease and therefore much more likely to be generally careless, so the behaviour is a symptom of an attitude which could be disastrous rather than being disastrous itself.

Re: COVID-19

Posted: Thu May 21, 2020 1:32 am
by Millennie Al
Fishnut wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 9:11 pm
They can't seem to grasp that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Just because they're bored of it doesn't mean they can give up. They're putting the cart before the horse at every stage - telling people to go back to work before figuring out how to do that safely, telling schools to reopen before figuring out how to do that safely. Saying they're going to do x number of tests a day without working out how they're going to achieve that. It's been a shitshow from the very beginning and people are dying every day as a result.
The problem is that many people do not have a science based attitude to life. By that I mean recognising that there is an objective reality out there and we need to accept that, adapt to it, and manipulate it.

The opposite attitude is one in which what matters is your subjective inner world. What you want and how much you want it. Your thoughts and feelings. That anyone can succeed if they only try hard enough. That the extent of your desire for something influences whether or not you can get it. That your thoughts influence the world (typically seen in prayers, healing energies, etc). Bad management is particularly prone to this. They worry about saying the right things, setting the right targets, incentivising people and all sorts of stuff when all that really matters is getting things done. They think that if they want something badly enough they can have it (e.g. when Malcolm Turnbull said "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,").

Harsh reality means we cannot always succeed, even if we do the right thing. It also means we can sometimes succeed even if we do stupid things. But facing up to reality is still very valuable. It gives us that extra edge to succeed in more cases.