Brexit, for once some facts.

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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The scientists have been set up as the fall guys since day one. I suppose if they now melt into the background, there is no one to question and hold to account. All accountability can be pinned on “the science” which will be like vapour, you can kind of see it and feel it’s presence, but if you study it for more than a few seconds, it vanishes. A bit like the Prime Minister.
The government should have done like the Swedish, nothing.

Yes they've had bad figures, but the Swedish people have been very happy with that approach and largely still are. Their lives carried on as normal and their personal and national economies haven't been wrecked.

Even now with a worsening outcome it's been left to the people to do their own thing with just a suggestion that distancing might be a good idea if they'd like to do it.

That's how people like things, controlling their own lives, not being bossed around and threatened with punishments. The great majority who didn't get very ill and die are content, those few who died don't complain.
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Woosh

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The government should have done like the Swedish, nothing.
their cities are less crowded than ours, our infection rate will never be comparable to theirs. At the time of the lockdown (23rd March), more than 100,000 Brits get infected every day.
Translate it to 3 months later, even if R does not go higher than 1, we would get 15,000 Covid deaths a day. The NHS would not be able to cope with a tenth of that sort of hit.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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Translate it to 3 months later, even if R does not go higher than 1, we would get 15,000 Covid deaths a day. The NHS would not be able to cope with a tenth of that sort of hit.
If we'd used the seven Nightingale hospital there would have been far more capacity. However what you've projected is just the theory, I'm betting that the outcome would be very different, so I prefer to go by what is rather than the conjectured what might be.

As what you projected had developed, behaviours would have changed, bringing a different outcome, but still voluntary rather than being enforced and still a far better individual and national economic outcome.

Result as now in Sweden, a happier people.
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Woosh

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the Swedes don't live exactly like us.

cases: SWE: 52/10,000. UK: 45.6
deaths: SWE: 4.8/10,000. UK:6.4

They have more cases and fewer deaths.
Why? because they have better facilities. We can't stop public transport because a large percentage of our workers don't have personal transport.

QUOTE:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52395866

On the face of it little has shut down. But data suggests the vast majority of the population have taken to voluntary social distancing, which is the crux of Sweden's strategy to slow the spread of the virus.
Usage of public transport has dropped significantly, large numbers are working from home, and most refrained from travelling over the Easter weekend. The government has also banned gatherings of more than 50 people and visits to elderly care homes.
Around 9 in 10 Swedes say they keep at least a metre away from people at least some of the time, up from seven in 10 a month ago, according to a major survey by polling firm Novus.
 
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Barry Shittpeas

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If we'd used the seven Nightingale hospital there would have been far more capacity. However what you've projected is just the theory, I'm betting that the outcome would be very different, so I prefer to go by what is rather than the conjectured what might be.

As what you projected had developed, behaviours would have changed, bringing a different outcome, but still voluntary rather than being enforced and still a far better individual and national economic outcome.

Result as now in Sweden, a happier people.
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There is no staff to take care of the people in the Nightingale Hospitals. Those hospitals are just warehouses to store the dying with very minimal care.

I don’t think we can make a comparison with Sweden, the population density is very different. I think a free for all in “sardine” London would have been absolute carnage.
 
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flecc

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I think a free for all in “sardine” London would have been absolute carnage.
Your memory again failing you?

London was largely a free for all and very heavily criticised for it at the time, including in this thread. As a result we had double the Covid rates of the rest of the country, but it wasn't carnage.

That's the facts that I go by, not the unproven scaremongering theory.
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Wicky

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Post Brexit trade deal with NZ... exporting Covid in return for Lamb?


I've an expat friend who lives in Bulgaria flying into the UK in a week or so and warned him that even after 14 quarantine here at his mum's he might struggle to return back to Bulgaria.

Many European countries - like Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary - have already reopened their borders, but are excluding nations deemed unsafe due to infection levels. In several cases, the UK and Sweden are among the banned countries.
 

Danidl

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Your memory again failing you?

London was largely a free for all and very heavily criticised for it at the time, including in this thread. As a result we had double the Covid rates of the rest of the country, but it wasn't carnage.

That's the facts that I go by, not the unproven scaremongering theory.
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Flecc, I suggest that London was not a free for all. The football was suspended, the pubs and theatres closed, the numbers travelling on the underground severely curtailed. The shops just about opening en mass now.
Had these measures not been taken , London would have been Lombardy on steroids. And can again if the people do not self police.
 

Barry Shittpeas

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Flecc, I suggest that London was not a free for all. The football was suspended, the pubs and theatres closed, the numbers travelling on the underground severely curtailed. The shops just about opening en mass now.
Had these measures not been taken , London would have been Lombardy on steroids. And can again if the people do not self police.
Absolutely. A spot on observation.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,201
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On the face of it little has shut down. But data suggests the vast majority of the population have taken to voluntary social distancing, which is the crux of Sweden's strategy to slow the spread of the virus.
Usage of public transport has dropped significantly, large numbers are working from home, and most refrained from travelling over the Easter weekend. The government has also banned gatherings of more than 50 people and visits to elderly care homes.
Around 9 in 10 Swedes say they keep at least a metre away from people at least some of the time, up from seven in 10 a month ago, according to a major survey by polling firm Novus.
Exactly, and what we could have had instead, voluntarily, instead of threats, fines and heavy handed policing.

It's what I've been arguing for all along, no legal compulsion, and why I backed Jeremy Sumption and David Blunkett when they joined in with that view.
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oyster

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The ineptitude which allowed him not to do this before being forced into it is, yet again, staggering.

Boris Johnson makes U-turn on free school meals vouchers

‘Covid summer food fund’ announced after pressure from campaigners including footballer Marcus Rashford
 
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Woosh

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Unfortunately, this being Britain, he's probably scuppered his chance of appearing in a New Years Honours list for services to sport.

They're for the Yes people.
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he is in with a chance, anything to divert the public attention from this government's record.

we have Captain Sir Tom Moore, why not Sir Marcus Rashford?
 
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