Coronavirus General Discussion

Bear in mind the following:

1) Sensible behaviour isn't news. 50 people holding an illegal party gets reported; 8 million Londoners staying at home doesn't.

2) Whenever things are opened up there will be a brief period when people need to "get it out of their system".

3) Survey after survey shows that the overwhelming majority of people are fully aware of the need to take precautions and are being careful.

4) Several people here are quite deliberately making a point of digging out and repeating only the most negative news they can find in order to make the situation seem far more bleak than it actually is.

Where I am we've had 25 new cases in the local authority in the past two weeks. That's 0.01% of the population, which means that if you assume only half the cases get detected, if I go to a pub and get within a metre of 25 people there's still only a 0.5% chance that I'd even be exposed to the possibility of infection. Not that the pubs I go to ever get that crowded at the best of times anyway.

Of the four pubs I go to regularly one isn't opening until late next week, two haven't announced plans to reopen at all, and the one that did open yesterday has a strict limit on capacity, a one-way system, mandatory prebooking for any group of four or more, and a strict "if you sit outside and it rains you can't come inside unless you can keep to the distancing rules" policy. Nobody around here had opened first thing yesterday morning. People are not taking risks. This is not the pubocalypse.

I'd been wondering how that would work. I'd been giving serious consideration to double sided sticky tape.

The Government are culpable, they knew this would happen with a Saturday opening and subliminally influenced it by making it a ‘duty’ to go out and drink with nearly every Minister in the last week referencing the pubs opening.

The Government knew exactly what they were doing, this is psychological warfare against its citizens and most are falling for it, the pictures of Ministers in pubs along with it being continually referenced by Ministers were unnecessary and set the expectation.

Looks like we are following in the foot steps of America not our European betters who seemed to handle the relaxation of lockdown and the opening of bars in their stride without the need to be covidiots.


All we can extrapolate is that Herd Immunity is still their primary strategy, quite a gamble on the Nation’s health and long term prosperity.

Europe has shown it is possible to ease lockdown without enticing hysteria and get the economy working again. 

Initially thought it would be number of deaths (this has somehow been erased from our collective consciousness) that would be the Government’s downfall but now think it will be the economy as our GDP is likely to trail most European Nations over the coming years and ergo the unemployment figures which will affect many more of us.


To quote England’s greatest Patriot

...organised a piss up in a brewery to distract from their failure to organise a lockdown in a pandemic...

On the whole nearly every comparable metric the EU Nations have dealt with COVID better, the only truly comparable Countries Italy, Spain and France have transitioned from lockdown much better and have consistently lower death and infection rates at comparable timeframes post lockdown easing.

How have you managed 2 haircuts in one day?!!

No, the government is to blame. We are run by a bunch of libertarian inclined politicians who were so against the idea of state intervention that they were willing to kill half a million people. All because ‘liberty’. 

Other nations that have been successful, across Europe and places like Korea, Japan etc have governments who actually govern. As such they have people who actually listen. This whole disaster about guidelines instead of rules is really the last straw. Same with the similarly inclined rulers of America and Brazil. The pattern is clear.

Mystery solved! Should have got my brain in gear!!

Those people making comments on the Soho clip, it’s Old Compton Street, so it was never going to be like a Darby & Joan club night out after nearly four months of lockdown, yes there are a fair few people out and about in that clip but it’s not like it’s a deleted scene from Salo: the average person is not as ignorant, or as quick to get stupidly drunk as some of the media would have you believe, and at the end of the day, it’s not the Black Death or Ebola we are going through so some of you should maybe try to ease off with the doom mongering.

Trump is so stupid.

Northern universities attract a lot of Chinese students, and Liverpool and Manchester have long-standing British-Chinese populations (the oldest in Europe). I don't think picking on young Chinese people would play well up here either.

Briefings stopped a few weeks back. But they did a couple last week. With the recess coming up soon then we'd still like info as Parliament isn't sitting.

Plus there are bills and stuff to pass - the last 4 years have been Brexit and now this mainly with both sides being pretty ineffectual.

xanady never one to praise this Government but today will give praise where it is due

- The Arts funding, only hope the implementation is better co-ordinated than most of their COVID initiatives.
- The implementation of the Magnitsky Act, a pleasant surprise in light of the Russian Report delays.


One of the Governments better days but a long way to go to make up for the excess deaths and Brexit shambles.