China Coronavirus

[HiMucker]

Armaghniac, I'm mystified that you're trying to drop the "you want everything in black and white" hammer on me, when fundamentally what I'm doing is challenging science to be reflective and honest in what has happened to date.


But I guess it's largely explained by your other comment. It's an exceptionally common trait in those who blindly follow science, to decry the intelligence of those who don't.

Enjoy your superior knowledge kid.

This is a cracker. Maybe if the car industries weren't blindly following science we would all be driving hover cars by now. Maybe if NASA wasn't doing the same we would have colonised Mars by now. Maybe we could have increased live expectancy, lower infant mortality rates and so on.   Jesus Christ how could you have any reasoned discussion when your coming out with that.

[HiMucker]

I'm just mystified as to what you scientist-skeptics think SHOULD have happened.

Look these things are much easier with hindsight than foresight, but I'd think that this would have achieved similar outcomes, but with less potential for economic destruction:

- keeping schools and universities open.
- enforced, paid furlough for those aged 55+ and those with respiratory issues, only.
- enforced quarantine/house arrest for those aged 70+, or with any substantial medical condition, only.
- blanket quarantine of care homes.

Along with social distancing, and significantly reduced trading conditions for bars, cafes, restaurants, hotels.

Even if you didn't think this virus would have been as bad as predicted without lockdown measures. The question you need to ask is would it have been acceptable to have our health service professionals completely overwhelmed, never mind the moral dilemma of allowing our most vunerable to bear the brunt of it? Surely you have even all videos of nurses doctors, care home staff in tears at what they are facing. And that's with measures taken to stem the flow in to the hospitals. Would you consider it acceptable to increase that carnage on them to reduce the economic impacts?

[J70]

I'm just mystified as to what you scientist-skeptics think SHOULD have happened.

Look these things are much easier with hindsight than foresight, but I'd think that this would have achieved similar outcomes, but with less potential for economic destruction:

- keeping schools and universities open.
- enforced, paid furlough for those aged 55+ and those with respiratory issues, only.
- enforced quarantine/house arrest for those aged 70+, or with any substantial medical condition, only.
- blanket quarantine of care homes.

Along with social distancing, and significantly reduced trading conditions for bars, cafes, restaurants, hotels.

Assuming for the sake of argument that that protocol would have been a successful response (not obvious to me), at what point was it or should it have been an option based on the evidence available at the time?

[armaghniac]

- keeping schools and universities open.
- enforced, paid furlough for those aged 55+ and those with respiratory issues, only.

the problem here is that you have just removed one third of the staff in the schools and universities.

- blanket quarantine of care homes.

A lot of people would agree with this. Let's hope lessons were learned.

[thewobbler]

Armaghniac, I'm mystified that you're trying to drop the "you want everything in black and white" hammer on me, when fundamentally what I'm doing is challenging science to be reflective and honest in what has happened to date.


But I guess it's largely explained by your other comment. It's an exceptionally common trait in those who blindly follow science, to decry the intelligence of those who don't.

Enjoy your superior knowledge kid.

This is a cracker. Maybe if the car industries weren't blindly following science we would all be driving hover cars by now. Maybe if NASA wasn't doing the same we would have colonised Mars by now. Maybe we could have increased live expectancy, lower infant mortality rates and so on.   Jesus Christ how could you have any reasoned discussion when your coming out with that.

Now if you can use that scientific brain of yours to see the "blindly" part of "blindly following science", you should immediately begin to feel more foolish about what you're written.

If not, let's have a look at the Y2K bug for a while.

Science, by the way, is brilliant. Blindly following any path though, that's not so clever.

[bennydorano]

BBC News - Coronavirus: France's first known case 'was in December'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52526554

[imtommygunn]

The Y2K bug?? What has it got to do with anything?

[LeoMc]

I'm just mystified as to what you scientist-skeptics think SHOULD have happened.

Look these things are much easier with hindsight than foresight, but I'd think that this would have achieved similar outcomes, but with less potential for economic destruction:

- keeping schools and universities open.
- enforced, paid furlough for those aged 55+ and those with respiratory issues, only.
- enforced quarantine/house arrest for those aged 70+, or with any substantial medical condition, only.
- blanket quarantine of care homes.

Along with social distancing, and significantly reduced trading conditions for bars, cafes, restaurants, hotels.

Perhaps you are right, hopefully We can get the answers to all this sooner rather than later and get back to normal. I also hope that the belief in science is not diminished by the ineptitude and self interest of politicians with one eye on elections and their funding nor the sensationalism of some elements of the media who were more interested in clicks than facts as clicks and likes pay the bills.

However the question is how sure are you? Would you be willing to bet your life, your parents lives that you are right?
How sure would you have been 8 or even 5 weeks ago?

[thewobbler]

I'm just mystified as to what you scientist-skeptics think SHOULD have happened.

Look these things are much easier with hindsight than foresight, but I'd think that this would have achieved similar outcomes, but with less potential for economic destruction:

- keeping schools and universities open.
- enforced, paid furlough for those aged 55+ and those with respiratory issues, only.
- enforced quarantine/house arrest for those aged 70+, or with any substantial medical condition, only.
- blanket quarantine of care homes.

Along with social distancing, and significantly reduced trading conditions for bars, cafes, restaurants, hotels.

Assuming for the sake of argument that that protocol would have been a successful response (not obvious to me), at what point was it or should it have been an option based on the evidence available at the time?

Based on conversations had on this thread in early March, it would have been largely assumed (though still patchy) at that stage that older people and those with respiratory conditions were exceptionally high risk, compared to the rest of the population.

Closing down the schools largely forced the closure of the economy, for without grandparents to call upon, all too many of us would have been forced to choose family over work.

I can't emphasise this enough as enjoying the luxury of hindsight, but as we now expect schools to be closed until September, plus the turmoil over grades, transfers and graduations, I would also expect the governments now regret closing schools.

The scientific recommendation at the time was for a full lockdown.

Based on the death rates demographics, it was possibly a recommendation too much.

[J70]

The Y2K bug?? What has it got to do with anything?

It's another example of a large scale response to a problem taking place and, after the corrections were made, a segment of people turning around and saying, after the fact and after the solutions being brought to bear that there was no real problem in the first place.

Not sure that's the way he meant it though!

You get the same shit with anti-environmentalists pointing to SO2 reductions from power plants or the Montreal Protocol and their subsequent effect for the better as proof that neither acid rain or stratospheric ozone depletion were ever problems to begin with.

[thewobbler]

The Y2K bug?? What has it got to do with anything?

Do you just pick out words, or do you read threads?

I've been pointing out repeatedly that blind faith in science can impair judgement. HiMucker has decided I'm an oaf. I'm merely pointing out here that the Y2K bug cost billions, fixing a problem that did not exist, because of a blind faith in science.

[Smurfy123]

Wobbler has summed it all up brilliantly
Spot on in everything he says
The UK government are a shambles
Boris locked us down for 3 weeks and then another 3 weeks which ended yesterday but he isn't making a statement until Sunday. 6 extra days that seem to be brushed aside. Where has those 6 days gone?

[RadioGAAGAA]

It's an exceptionally common trait in those who blindly follow science, to decry the intelligence of those who don't.

If you'd care to look back through the thread, you'll observe that those you are accusing of "blindly following science" were outraged at the UK response which was supposedly "following the science".


Feb 26th #142

The context is that the Chinese have completely isolated vast areas of the country. The Western world will absolutely not be as quick to do that - both between govts not ordering it and people not accepting it. At this point, I assume its out across Europe and indeed within Ireland (the ski-trippers at midterm will have brought it back and spread).

Italy probably has in excess of 1000 people with it (between diagnosed and yet to be diagnosed) - and there are discussions about maybe closing the border. By the time they do decide to, that horse will have long since bolted and foaled.

March 5th #389

But why stop there.... when you could close down a whole country  instead?

Except you can't.

People always need water, food, heat/fuel, shelter. They occasionally need medicine and medical care. They don't need human interaction (even broadband interaction might suffice) per se, but will slowly crawl up the walls without it, creating mental health issues. Education isn't essential, but childminding when schools are closed, is. And the sad reality of life is that you need to earn money to pay for all of the above.

When you're asking "why didn't they just shut down this single essential service?", it's not that simple. Is it the role of government to arbitrarily decide which services (and therefore jobs) remain fully open, partially open, or closed? How do they decide this? How do they decide which livelihoods to f**k with entirely, partially, or not at all? But more importantly, why would they set the wheels in motion for society falling apart?  For if you close air travel, you must close ports. You close ports, you kill haulage. You kill haulage, you kill every retail industry eventually, and some overnight. Who pays all the people affected? Can we really expect our lazy over-entitled public sector to stand up and make, then implement an emergency plan to ensure that families aren't financially destroyed? I mean they'll be the only ones left working within a few weeks. Except there's no fuel in petrol stations, no food in the shops. So even if they want to go to work, they can't. And at that point, why administer payments to anyone anyway? What are they going to buy?

12th March - Ireland goes into lockdown.
24th March - UK goes into lockdown.

[imtommygunn]

The Y2K bug?? What has it got to do with anything?

Do you just pick out words, or do you read threads?

I've been pointing out repeatedly that blind faith in science can impair judgement. HiMucker has decided I'm an oaf. I'm merely pointing out here that the Y2K bug cost billions, fixing a problem that did not exist, because of a blind faith in science.

You're very defensive.

I work in IT and I was interested to see how you correlated Y2K with any of this given I work in software.

[RadioGAAGAA]

I would also expect the governments now regret closing schools.

Absolutely not.

1 family contracts virus.

Their kid goes into school.

30 kids contract virus.

30 families contract virus.

The siblings of those 30 families go into school.

30^x kids contract virus

30^x families contract virus

Health service overwhelmed.