Brexit, for once some facts.

Woosh

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I don't agree.

Life expectancy at birth for a male has increased from 65.7 years in 1920 to 89.4 years in 2020, 36% in 100 years. That is so far out of synch with evolution it's ridiculous, so there is a cost and this is it:

Healthy life expectancy has also increased, but not as much as life expectancy, so more years are spent in poor health. Although an English male could expect to live 79.6 years in 2016–18, his average healthy life expectancy was only 63.4 years – ie, he would have spent 16.2 of those years (20 per cent) in ‘not good’ health. And although females live an average of 3.6 years longer than males, much of that time is spent in poor health – they experience only 0.5 more years of good health than men. Rates of disability-free life expectancy are similar to those for healthy life expectancy.

A fifth or more of one's life spent in poor health and increasing risk of disability is a questionable advance, in my opinion making one a victim of the survival instinct which compels one's drive to continue life, regardless of its advisability.

We are on the wrong path of disease treatment advancement, thinking we are only extending lifespan when in fact we are also greatly extending ill-health life span. That needs to change to disease avoidance advancement by the extension of good health life span at the cost of disease treatment advancement. Achieving this is of course as much societal advancement as medical science.
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the morale issue for me is it's a preventable disease with a potential death toll of about 1.5 million.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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the morale issue for me is it's a preventable disease with a potential death toll of about 1.5 million.
But you cannot prevent all those 1.5 million deaths and attempting to could totally wreck the future for the young, and assure those you've saved a very poor extension to their lives. Those are moral issues too.

As I keep repeating, it's an unavoidable balance of life versus economic cost.
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Woosh

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the economic cost affects all strata of society, not just for young people.
When you consider mitigations of the spread of the disease, the economic cost can be reduced if those gathering in large numbers in closed spaces had more consideration for those at greater risk than themselves.
Look at China which had experienced SARS, they clamp down hard on any clusters, making sure all phones have the app, people who flout the curfew are locked inside their homes, close motorways, no train, no plane in or out of Wuhan. Contrast that with what happened here in January and February and since. 9 months in, we still have not learned the lesson, prefer splashing borrowed money to solve Covid.
 
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RossG

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Sadly though flecc you can't do a deal with the devil, he wants it all. I don't believe for one second the UK is going broke, not in the slightest ... nor will it.
 

oyster

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Be prepared for some very cold winters - even in the face of global warming.

Boris Johnson to unveil plan to power all UK homes with wind by 2030
PM vows to make Britain world leader in low-cost clean power with ‘Build Back Greener’ drive
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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the economic cost affects all strata of society, not just for young people.
When you consider mitigations of the spread of the disease, the economic cost can be reduced if those gathering in large numbers in closed spaces had more consideration for those at greater risk than themselves.
Look at China which had experienced SARS, they clamp down hard on any clusters, making sure all phones have the app, people who flout the curfew are locked inside their homes, close motorways, no train, no plane in or out of Wuhan. Contrast that with what happened here in January and February.
But that's a ques tion of what can be done in differing societies. Try the Chinese approach here in the UK and see what happens! Londoners refused to tolerate even what little we did at the outset and openly defied the rules and the authorities, and still do.

We had the spectacle of greatly outnumbered police plaintively saying "What can we do, they are just ignoring us?"
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flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,152
30,567
Be prepared for some very cold winters - even in the face of global warming.

Boris Johnson to unveil plan to power all UK homes with wind by 2030
PM vows to make Britain world leader in low-cost clean power with ‘Build Back Greener’ drive
:D
 

Wicky

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Be prepared for some very cold winters - even in the face of global warming.

Boris Johnson to unveil plan to power all UK homes with wind by 2030
PM vows to make Britain world leader in low-cost clean power with ‘Build Back Greener’ drive
What isn't he planning to build as last year Boris was planning to build “miniature” nuclear reactors in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Lancashire and Cheshire in a £500m scheme. Seems a lot of these schemes are a way to throw public money into private hands with minimum returns .... like affordable housing with non built!
 

jonathan.agnew

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But who says which one of you is right? The world has some wives who like to be swapped.
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Indeed. but I'm not sure I'm ready to take the ethics of a man who lives at -50c on whale blubber and has to shag his neighbour's wife to survive the journey to see him without frost bite as a moral compass
 

Woosh

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We had the spectacle of greatly outnumbered police plaintively saying "What can we do, they are just ignoring us?"
parliament could have voted for a law compelling that mobile phones must have a Covid app, the police will arrest curfew breakers, tourism air travels suspended, wear of mask compulsory in public places, sort out test trace and isolate much sooner etc
The Chinese got their app in days and we can't do that even 9 months later.
 
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Fingers

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the morale issue for me is it's a preventable disease with a potential death toll of about 1.5 million.
I still think it’s a numbers game.

there are 30k of under 50s not presenting themselves for preventable cancer treatment gone missing this year.

we should be doing both. I have no idea why they didn’t use the nightingale hospitals...oh yeah. They had the beds but not the nurses.

its not good either way but long term someone should make the decision on an 80 year old with underlying conditions or a 32 year old with young children.

as it stands the stats say we can’t do both.
 
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RossG

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parliament could have voted for a law compelling that mobile phones must have a Covid app, the police will arrest curfew breakers, tourism air travels suspended, wear of mask compulsory in public places, sort out test trace and isolate much sooner etc
The Chinese got their app in days and we can't do that even 9 months later.
They couldn't compel people to use it though, bit like reflectors on a bike.
 

Danidl

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A 4 year experiment - fun fact > only guinea pigs can cough and sneeze


I think there's some speedier research happening electrically levitating the virus in different experimental conditions.

That electric levitation experiment is a re run of the Milliken oil drop , I did in Year 3 at Uni!
 
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