United Kingdom VI: Summer Lovin'

[Hirst]

It was pretty obvious to everyone in the entire country that we should have closed the borders months before they did, but not only did we not do that, we also did zero checks on incoming arrivals (even basic ones like temperature checks would have done something) and as the rest of the world has mostly closed their borders by then we were effectively saying "Fed up of lockdown in your country? Come here instead!" and actively encouraging it to come here.

[Neon Ignition]

I'd be wary of getting it but that's by the same measure as any vaccination - I hate injections
I'd get it, I don't have an issue with vaccinating in of itself but between the needle and the rushed nature of this vaccine I'd be happy to ride it out a bit first to see how others fare first

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/10/uk-coronavirus-live-news-covid-19-latest-updates-schools

Education Secretary puts his head on the line stating school are safe, infection barely happens and routine testing without symptoms won't be used (I love that the Government is still using the line of argument that symptoms aren't a point where testing is too late given how long the virus incubates first for).

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/10/two-thirds-adults-england-cycling-dangerous-safer

66% of cyclists say it's dangerous for cyclists on Britain's roads. There's so much about this statistic... least to say, infrastucture is good but only half the problem.

[teddymeow]

John Oliver trying to help convince those who believe in conspiracy theories to open their eyes

[teddymeow]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...angerous-safer
66% of cyclists say it's dangerous for cyclists on Britain's roads. There's so much about this statistic... least to say, infrastructure is good but only half the problem.

Do you know what might help? If cyclists followed the highway code and wore the correct safety gear when out and about. Weaving in and out of traffic, on pavement and then back on the road before swerving in front of moving cars without signalling sounds proper safe to me...

[Dogg Thang]

John Oliver trying to help convince those who believe in conspiracy theories to open their eyes

That's a good initiative and I enjoyed the John Cena video. I do hope it brings sense to a few people, although I imagine it won't be many. While I guess we knew this long before covid, it has become shockingly clear how conspiracy theories are generally a way for vastly-uninformed people to feel smarter than others. They are a way to assign an unknowable and unprovable higher power to events (not unlike religion) in order for them to process their lives and provide a scapegoat because they feel powerless. Conspiracy theories make them feel smart and like they have power precisely because they are lacking in both. And the current shape of the internet and social media allows these people to find each other on a scale just not possible decades ago.

[Hirst]

Social media is very irritating at how much influence it can have on people who aren't necessarily dim, but will rarely question the source/bad intentions of anything. A bit like last year when my mum was one of those inexplicably saying "Gene Wilder has died" when he'd already died several years ago. I might be wrong, but I think it was posted on the "Wakefield Official News" Facebook page, which she sees as the official news because it says it is the official news and the fact that it's a random page on Facebook with a Yahoo Email address that posts up any old random nonsense doesn't matter.

[MartyG]

I'd be wary of getting it but that's by the same measure as any vaccination - I hate injections
I'd get it, I don't have an issue with vaccinating in of itself but between the needle and the rushed nature of this vaccine I'd be happy to ride it out a bit first to see how others fare first .

Unless you're a front line worker, you won't be first in line anyway - so just wait to see if they start dying off. Given how these vaccines work, I'm pretty sure that the anti-vac are wrong. The only one I'd have a very very small reservation on is the synthetic plasmid DNA vaccine using made-made RNA to invoke the immune response, as this has never been used before. The advantages being it's cheaper and easier to mass produce, given it's synthetic.

[Asura]

Just quit this **** for ****'s sake.

Only thing I guess I can take from that is that it's nice to see that humanity is pretty even, globally. There are idiots in every country, even in places like Japan where there's the somewhat xenophobic stereotype that they don't protest and uniformally wear masks.

[fallenangle]

Using NZ as an example of how to do it is at the very least questionable.

It has a population the size of Scotland split between two large islands which together are bigger than the size of the whole UK with a population at least 12 times more. Greater London alone has a daily population (residents plus commuting workers from the home counties) almost double the total NZ population.

In short chalk and cheese, there is no sensible comparison that can be made between the two country's responses to C-19.

That doesn't mean I think the UK authorities have made anything less than a complete Horlicks of the situation but they have a far more complex set of problems to deal with simply because of the size and concentration of the population.

[Dogg Thang]

Thanks for the geography recap. I live in a country with a population comparable to that of NZ. In short, chalk and more chalk. As it happens, total population has got very little to do with it. What has much more to do with it is how they controlled it and their borders. Once you get to a point where you can't contain it due to high population, you messed up badly.

There are only a complex set of problems because of a reluctance to act and the spread of misinformation.

[Hirst]

I don't think we can be directly compared to New Zealand, but we did have a major advantage over most of Europe in that it took longer to reach us (and we could learn from the mistakes of other countries) and the nature of our landmass not being connected to mainland Europe, making it easier to prevent access should we have chosen to do so. We just sat there doing nothing until it was already well underway.

[Brad]

We (and Ireland) are islands. We already had a head start there. Close the borders and we’d have been looking at something much closer to what NZ achieved. Ireland ought to have been almost identical in fact.

[Dogg Thang]

Ireland ought to have been almost identical in fact.

Exactly. It is applicable to the UK too, for exactly the reasons you give and we both had that head start and could see what it was doing to other countries. We had all the information. And yes, Ireland should be in a similar position to NZ right now (although NI might have always made that tricky if the UK didn't also act in a strong way). It's a failure our countries have brought on us.

[MartyG]

Education Secretary puts his head on the line stating school are safe, infection barely happens and routine testing without symptoms won't be used (I love that the Government is still using the line of argument that symptoms aren't a point where testing is too late given how long the virus incubates first for).

We're missing a trick here - why don't we turn all shops, pubs and cinemas into schools? That way the virus won't be able to get inside them - it's genius. Give me a Nobel Prize.

Or could it just be that schools haven't been spreading the virus because they haven't been properly open and so there isn't enough data to say "schools are safe" without that being a massive massive assumption based on convenience rather than fact.

[Neon Ignition]

It's Cummings still hanging on to that herd immunity theory.