I told you.

[Biggus]

22 hours ago, zugzwang said:

Who's the one with the fake persecution complex? All you're being asked to do is wear a mask occasionally to protect the vulnerable. Asians are frankly astonished at the politicisation of the issue. Another example of the West's moral and intellectual decline.

I think you mean told, not asked.

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

11 minutes ago, Biggus said:

I think you mean told, not asked.

Seriously how old are you?

[Staffsknot]

1 hour ago, Biggus said:

You tell me. How many deaths would you allow before implimenting the type of measure we''ve seen?

 

You're the one trolling a pandemic as flu and making sweeping statements such as this should be done for Ebola not Covid.

You're ducking out of putting you're own figures up so you can go off about somebody else. It is why we got clickbait videos as well.

Given the measures were to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed the death rate was irrelevant it was the infection rate.

So fag packet calculation we had around 5000 critical care beds in UK ( rounded up to nearest 1k and not including private ones). That means fill them and every extra ventilator patient was already stuffed. Ignoring geographic constraints and assuming all available.

So if 4 week recover or pass away ( crude ease of maths ) you have 5000 ventilator cases per month before you are pushing up the death toll through choice.

So answer is 0 deaths but 75% ventilator usage per month estimated would be a good start. 

Again crude estimate but we had daily death rates of over 1000 per day in April but let's say you put 125 people a day on ventilators that is 70% used a month. I don't have recovery figures but let's go with 75 ppl survive making 50 deaths per day.

Each month you are losing 1400 people by that measure, so almost UK annual road deaths each month. I'd say staring that in the face would make many people think a lockdown was worthwhile once you get beyond 3000 total, that's before you get to long-term problems those recovering are reporting. 

Personally equalling the road death total would be more than enough to introduce measures such as mask wearing - simple measure much like we campaign for road safety. Lockdown is higher threshold due to the economic hardships and impact on other treatments. But estimating 3000+ dead and 100k cases would more than do it for me. 0 death necessary if 5-10k long-term health issues from contracting. The panic and public safety anxiety caused by doing nothing as new virus spreads & infections rise shouldn't be overlooked either - do a Bolsonaro ( grade a1 moron) and you cause panic.

All arbitrary and unscientific, but a set of figures. Do I like the idea of 3000 people dying, no, but I balance the fact a lot of people struggled with lockdown

We're at 41k after locking down & taking extraordinary measures - so we reduced it down to this level.

Look forward to all the 'are you mad' posts and keyboard warriors saying 40k deaths now isn't worth it / snowflake trolling / I wouldn't wear mask if x number die you authoritarian stooge...

Now post your numbers Biggus for this 'little sniffle' as you keep claiming. You happier with more people dying than current figures?

[Biggus]

19 hours ago, Staffsknot said:

You're the one trolling a pandemic as flu and making sweeping statements such as this should be done for Ebola not Covid.

You're ducking out of putting you're own figures up so you can go off about somebody else. It is why we got clickbait videos as well.

Given the measures were to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed the death rate was irrelevant it was the infection rate.

So fag packet calculation we had around 5000 critical care beds in UK ( rounded up to nearest 1k and not including private ones). That means fill them and every extra ventilator patient was already stuffed. Ignoring geographic constraints and assuming all available.

So if 4 week recover or pass away ( crude ease of maths ) you have 5000 ventilator cases per month before you are pushing up the death toll through choice.

So answer is 0 deaths but 75% ventilator usage per month estimated would be a good start. 

Again crude estimate but we had daily death rates of over 1000 per day in April but let's say you put 125 people a day on ventilators that is 70% used a month. I don't have recovery figures but let's go with 75 ppl survive making 50 deaths per day.

Each month you are losing 1400 people by that measure, so almost UK annual road deaths each month. I'd say staring that in the face would make many people think a lockdown was worthwhile once you get beyond 3000 total, that's before you get to long-term problems those recovering are reporting. 

Personally equalling the road death total would be more than enough to introduce measures such as mask wearing - simple measure much like we campaign for road safety. Lockdown is higher threshold due to the economic hardships and impact on other treatments. But estimating 3000+ dead and 100k cases would more than do it for me. 0 death necessary if 5-10k long-term health issues from contracting. The panic and public safety anxiety caused by doing nothing as new virus spreads & infections rise shouldn't be overlooked either - do a Bolsonaro ( grade a1 moron) and you cause panic.

All arbitrary and unscientific, but a set of figures. Do I like the idea of 3000 people dying, no, but I balance the fact a lot of people struggled with lockdown

We're at 41k after locking down & taking extraordinary measures - so we reduced it down to this level.

Look forward to all the 'are you mad' posts and keyboard warriors saying 40k deaths now isn't worth it / snowflake trolling / I wouldn't wear mask if x number die you authoritarian stooge...

Now post your numbers Biggus for this 'little sniffle' as you keep claiming. You happier with more people dying than current figures?

That's a good, well thought out post, though I don't agree with it.

In 2018 there were 50,000 excess deaths caused by flu. Should the economy have been shut down,  everyone forced to wear masks and so forth? Every flu season there are around ten thousand deaths caused by flu. Too few or too many for a lockdown? Should the UK be locked down every year? How many deaths are you willing to accept before you would have the country locked down.

 

[Biggus]

23 hours ago, MonsieurCopperCrutch said:

Seriously how old are you?

Too old.

[Staffsknot]

1 hour ago, Biggus said:

That's a good, well thought out post, though I don't agree with it

Ta

As for why not lockdown for flu? It is a known annual event with variable effective vaccination (from good one year to poor next) due to mutation.

Long-term health impact of seasonal flu has also been ascertained by multi-year occurances.

Covid was and largely is an unknown, that may become an annual mutation event. Many ordinary flu sufferers don't end up on ventilators and we also spend a small fortune on mitigation strategies already ( annual flu fund top-up to NHS).

We already enforce school and local ward closures for highly infectious non-deadly outbreaks such as norovirus too.

In short we locked down to protect the NHS while we devised a strategy to an unknown threat. We only know the death toll at present because we lived through it and continue to take special measures.

[Tapori]

On 22/08/2020 at 14:18, A.steve said:

It would take a coherent, reasonable, sensible and constrained justification that was proportionate to the genuine risks.

For example, I could easily be convinced to wear a surgical mask if I was about to perform a surgical operation... and I had done all the other preparations.  Of course, this is unlikely to be a scenario with which I must deal in the forseeable future... as I do not envision myself performing surgical operations.

What form of evidence, other than the wide effective use of this measure in previously pandemic-stricken countries which have adopted these measures  in south east Asia, would convince you of the efficacy of wearing a mask during this current pandemic?

The surgical scenario is a complete misnomer (I agree that you should if performing surgery) as my question again, is straightforward:

Which, or what evidence would you require, for you to wear a mask in confined public spaces such as public transport during this pandemic?

[Tapori]

On 22/08/2020 at 18:04, Staffsknot said:

Tapori - as I've said I may be wrong but I believe Steve exhibits mild autism based on responses. That is not an insult it just could explain why the social impact of his choices don't feature / harder to comprehend.

Steve a realworld justification - in Staffs we had a pub open which could neither maintain social distancing effectively, failed to take addresses properly and which individuals did as they pleased. Pub landlord charged £5 a pint to recoup his lockdown losses.

End result 22 cases of Covid, some of whom did not attend the pub and a couple unrelated to said individuals. They got it from being around where they'd been or were in some way in contact. Needed 5 days of NHS testing unit in area.

So life choices of a few impacted wider community. Likely one or two people asymptomatic or coughing spreading to those others. 

Now wearing a mask while drinking is impractical but social distancing was, but wearing one in crowds or around others not in your group likely to have lessened or stopped the spread - none of that took place and everything went Pete Tong.

Alarm was raised by folks who went to go in, saw the situation and rang police. In your world view the mask wearing new Stasi. However these people stopped wider infection and got people tested.

Pub shut, landlord in trouble and lots of people bricking it. Now imagine someone they know dies - imagine how a person who didn't go to the pub is go to the pub is feeling about those that did and infected them. A much more likely scenario than the leap you made before. That in a nutshell is why a good chunk of rational people are so intolerant of being stood in a shop, with no choice but be within 2m of someone buying some beans, who chooses not to wear a simple mask even as a token gesture.

Fair point.

 

[A.steve]

On 29/08/2020 at 22:48, Tapori said:

Which, or what evidence would you require, for you to wear a mask in confined public spaces such as public transport during this pandemic?

Pandemic, or no pandemic, I choose not to use public transport.

[23rdian]

Wow this post is scary. Talk about brainwashed sheep 

[scottbeard]

1 hour ago, 23rdian said:

Wow this post is scary. Talk about brainwashed sheep 

Which post?

[Staffsknot]

15 hours ago, A.steve said:

Pandemic, or no pandemic, I choose not to use public transport.

I don't think your use of public transport or lack of it was his point. I'm guessing you are also smart enough to know that and were deflecting 😉

[A.steve]

2 hours ago, Staffsknot said:

... deflecting 😉

If, by "deflecting" you mean refusing to become embroiled in a stupid argument involving unfounded accusations about my character... that are orthogonal to my position... and any facts or evidence whatsoever... then, yes, I am deflecting.

I have no intention of attempting to provide direct answers to loaded questions.

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

5 minutes ago, A.steve said:

If, by "deflecting" you mean refusing to become embroiled in a stupid argument involving unfounded accusations about my character... that are orthogonal to my position... and any facts or evidence whatsoever... then, yes, I am deflecting.

I have no intention of attempting to provide direct answers to loaded questions.

It was not a loaded question. Your refusal to answer it with a deflecting uppity whimsical attitude says more than anything else quite frankly. 

[Staffsknot]

That was lighthearted Steve hence the 😉 but...

I think he just asked what it would take for you to wear a mask in a confined public space. I don't think a link to loaded questions is necesaary at all tbh.

He's trying to work out what needs to change to make it more pallatible and in what situations you might need to wear a mask to comply with the rules.

For instance if you had modified your behaviour / activities to avoid any mask wearing environments that is a noble commitment to your convictions and I for one salute anyone that determined in their convictions even if I disagree with their conclusions.

As for the orthogonal question - if it is a matter of personal liberties, freedoms and causing future anxieties - if you are engaged in activities in a confined public space then we come back to what about responsibility to others and the anxieties someone may create by not wearing one. Lady from the Cardiff TUI flight was pretty anxious and annoyed that she's been on a plane with folks not wearing masks.

I also have a coworker who is wfh because his missus had lung damage, he has massive anxiety about going shopping or if go for a walk as folks around no masks or distancing. He takes all precautions as advised by doctors and essentially is stuck in most time

Steve these aren't personal attacks but you and your position seem permanently entwined and elements of it fairly unique to you - the future vision of authoritarianism that you are trying to prevent and how you assess that risk. Do you see why people might be interested what the impacts of those choices are on wider community as well. So please don't take it folks are just lining up to take a pop for sport - it's genuine debate

[TheCountOfNowhere]

I told you.... House prices would go up.

 

Low rates, more magicked up cash, more desperation.... Voila, price rises. 

 

Its a mania, a sickness. 

 

What next is the big question. 

 

In my opinion, tptb just won't stop till we have all out monetary collapse. 

Forget houses for now, protect your cash, job, income best you can and hope you are in a position to buy when the system implodes. 

 

People are saying that unemployment will hinder prices, not when a few thousand btlers are being funded with magic money it wont. 

The UK is well and truly screwed. We are well and truly screwed 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chunketh]

On 27/08/2020 at 14:56, Biggus said:

That's a good, well thought out post, though I don't agree with it.

In 2018 there were 50,000 excess deaths caused by flu. Should the economy have been shut down,  everyone forced to wear masks and so forth? Every flu season there are around ten thousand deaths caused by flu. Too few or too many for a lockdown? Should the UK be locked down every year? How many deaths are you willing to accept before you would have the country locked down.

 

We have a vaccine for Flu. We don’t have a vaccine for COVID. Asians wear masks every flu season when showing symptoms, you don’t hear them whinging about it because its a good idea. Nobody tells them to wear one usually, they just do it.

Even if wearing a mask reduces the CFR by 5% its worth doing it until we can get a vaccine. It’s a mask, its really not a big deal wearing one.

We are being legislated to wear masks because the government thinks we are children and wont do the right thing by choice. Given the totally out of proportion reaction to masks, I think they are right.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Chunketh

[Riedquat]

Sigh. Another one who utterly fails to grasp why it's a problem. Scary.

[Chunketh]

9 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Sigh. Another one who utterly fails to grasp why it's a problem. Scary.

What is scary is how opposed people are to wearing masks. I find it genuinely baffling. The government has had to step in and mandate wearing them because the people of this country are too bloody selfish to consider protecting others voluntarily.

Its really that simple.

[Riedquat]

See, that's your problem - "I find it genuinely baffling." In other words you're admitting to criticising something you don't even understand.

[katchytitle]

9 minutes ago, Chunketh said:

We have a vaccine for Flu. We don’t have a vaccine for COVID. Asians wear masks every flu season when showing symptoms, you don’t hear them whinging about it because its a good idea. Nobody tells them to wear one usually, they just do it.

Even if wearing a mask reduces the CFR by 5% its worth doing it until we can get a vaccine. It’s a mask, its really not a big deal wearing one.

We are being legislated to wear masks because the government thinks we are children and wont do the right thing by choice. Given the totally out of proportion reaction to masks, I think they are right.

There's always 2 sides to this and its best to pretend to be on both sides to see that things are not so black and white.

Covid is new - frankly it could do anything as it spreads. Random mutations could allow it to become more infectious more easily or it could peter out. But when faced with an unknown unknown you need to stop and evaluate the tail risks which "might" wipe out your population. So on the face of it, a total lockdown is an appropriate response over and above a virus like the flu each year. 

If you think linearly, then you would say well, it hasn't killed more people than the flu so we should end lockdown. IF you think cyclically, viruses come and go in the population again and again, they mutate each time and are difficult to stop until everyone has some sort of immunity. So then, logically, you can't ease restrictions until there is a vaccine as it would just take one mutated strain to ravage your population and put your economy to zero. I would also point out that humans have a very hard time picturing the exponential function, this is the growth rate of natural populations. doubling in every time period is just not something we can comprehend because we don't see it very often. IF the virus grew exponentially by the time you notice it in 10% of your population, it will have infected the world in 14 days. The world, not just your country. From there, everyone would have it within a few more days call it 7 roughly. Just use a calculatorand use 2^1 and go up to to 2^8  - in 8 time periods you go to twice as many infections to 256 times the infections. That's slow compared to e^x which is 2.7^x

Another consideration is human herd behaviour, most people are not schooled in the nuance of a scientific argument, they want a binary answer from scientists - YES/NO. They don't understand its a judgement call based on partial data - its an educated guess. The same as the answers to "what causes gravity?" or "what is the earth made from?" But, this question  unlike the others, plays a part in the safety of people's family and so emotions are heightened and misinformation is ripe for emotional response. The media feed of emotional response so they love to push all the buttons on this and cause even more uncertainty.

So far, the bottom line seems to be the current strain of the virus barely affects anyone under 40, but they can all be carriers which can affect 30%+ of people over 60 especially those who already have other health conditions (4m people have diabetes in the UK, even more are obese). So, to keep these people from overwhelming the health service and stop killing a large chuck of elderly people we are continuing social distancing and mask wearing (the former more important than the latter but every reminder helps).

What could we have done differently? We could have shutdown visitors and installed PPE in care homes and hospitals much sooner. We should have got PPE to the army and got them delivering food trucks to the end of streets with large numbers of vulnerable people. We could have staggered work times in London immediately, with half of people working from home Mon, Wed, Fri. etc. We could have shut down the country sooner but in order for it to make a difference we would have to have done it end feb / early March when little was understood. I couldn't have been the only one watching the news on new years eve when 1/3 of China was locked down and thought - "this is going to spread fast". But distrust of chinese and general apathy for the exponential function led to delayed response. There's even a youtube video with dominic cummings explaining how civil servants are not hired with scientific degrees and uses the example that they don't understand the exponential function.

The people furloughed are on the whole retail workers who were young and unlikely to be able to buy a house now. Those on mortgages will have government support. Commercial property will take a big hit because covid has allowed CVAs to be used as a weapon to reduce rents or go into pre pack administration.

 

 

[Sour Mash]

12 minutes ago, Chunketh said:

What is scary is how opposed people are to wearing masks. I find it genuinely baffling. The government has had to step in and mandate wearing them because the people of this country are too bloody selfish to consider protecting others voluntarily.

Its really that simple.

 

What's the actual verified improvement in Coronavirus deaths from mask wearing? 

The lack of hard facts and figures for imposed wearing of masks might possibly be what is irking many people - not the actual wearing of the mask.  All we need is for the government to show some verifiable, quantifiable improvement in fatalities.  Shouldn't be so hard yet the whole issue seems pretty hazy.

Some quantifiable, verifiable numbers on just how much safer it makes things would go a long way, no?

 

Personally, I think there has to be some wider-scale (ie societal level) benefit from wearing a mask in enclosed public spaces due to less droplet spread (particularly from coughing and sneezing, which will become an issue during the winter cold/flu season) contaminating surfaces and nearby people (minimised  with simple social distancing of course) but the typical bits of cloth that people are told they must strap across their faces are going to do sweet FA about aerosolised spreading which seems to be a very large component of indoors spread - especially in buildings with aircon.

 

What is disappointing is seeing the brainwashed masses who seem to think that a mask makes them 'safe' and that anyone who questions the absolute power of the holy mask of Antioch is some sort of heretic.

 

The masks are there primarily  to make people feel safer (and thus more willing to get out and do stuff)  and are just a small but useful part of the overall mitigation of the spread of infection.  They don't make you 'safe' and they won't eradicate the virus.

 

 

[MonsieurCopperCrutch]

40 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Sigh. Another one who utterly fails to grasp why it's a problem. Scary.

What's scary is your blighted selfish attitude towards a simple request to control a once in a Century pandemic. Seriously just grow up. Sick of your pathetic boo hoo I don't wwwant to wwwear a wwwask!!

Edited September 2, 2020 by MonsieurCopperCrutch

[Chunketh]

13 minutes ago, Sour Mash said:

What is disappointing is seeing the brainwashed masses who seem to think that a mask makes them 'safe' and that anyone who questions the absolute power of the holy mask of Antioch is some sort of heretic.

Sigh, again.

I don’t think the mask makes me safe. It does however lower the chance of my spreading it to someone else. We can argue about how *much* lower that chance is, but even a low percentage of reduction in transmission makes it worthwhile. The more people doing it the better the herd effect.

Masks are cheap and easy to use. The bottom line is that this is about people spreading it to others and it speaks volumes about the people up in arms whinging about being forced to wear them. I can only conclude that they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.

[Riedquat]

One very worrying part of it all is the number of people who were begging for legally forced compulsion based on "well it might help". Setting the bar for legal compulsion that low is shocking, but we've seen on this thread plenty of examples of how poor peoples' risk perception is when it comes to health, how easily they can be scared into over-reacting "just in case" - and how they fail to grasp that not being in 100% agreement with them is not the same as being at the most opposite extreme end of the spectrum.