UK: Second National Lock-down Expected within the Week

I agree. In other news, 1,125,865 people have died in car accidents worldwide so far this year (Worldometer - real time world statistics). I think it's time to make driving illegal. Remember, saving lives is more important than the fact that you might be personally inconvenienced by no longer being allowed to drive.

 

Cars also kill millions of animals each day, plus we destroy so much of the environment to pave it over for roads and highways. And nevermind our addiction to oil. I kind of hate cars for those reasons.

 

It is sadly better than our current administration here. Sadly even if Biden wins Trump will still be at the helm for over two months.

 

That's why we have speed limits, and laws governing traffic flow and driving skills and driving behaviors. We have installed many legal, social, and economic mechanisms to make transportation safer. And we have minimized the deaths caused by transportation significantly. We didn't just say, "oh well, people got to get to work, so if they die on the way, too bad for them!"

 

The new national lockdown ("tier 4") announcement is of course a very important announcement. So it will be coming from our Prime Minister, yes?

No. Comes from a friendly journalist on Twitter, after a leak.

Tell me again what use Boris Johnson is. Oh yes, he's the front man for Dominic Cummings.

 

Yeah, it must, or you will die. That's just how it is. And, if you think dying from COVID is terrible wait until you're out in the cold or starving. At least with COVID if you're vulnerable it's over rather quickly... Starvation takes a long time and is even more painful. Your body doesn't get crushed by being hungry... You lose your mind, spirit, and soul.

QTFT. There is an economic engine that makes sure the people on SNAP get fed through the generosity of the public. If the taxes don't come in because people do their normal things those programs get cut. Many more people will be in the position of deciding to pay some bill or eat, and we do not want that. Starvation makes people crazy and willing to do anything to put something in their belly. I'm sure the Democratic leaders know this... You want a rebellion? Make people hungry. Works every time -- the thing is, people come for the rich first. So, maybe they should think about that.

 

The BS going on here is that you present only the most extreme alternative possibilities. As if there were no possible way of minimizing the loss of life by minimizing our interaction, and yet still maintain the basic mechanisms needed for everyone's survival. And then to re-open slowly, and carefully, and with a different economic model and goal in mind for our collective future.

It doesn't have to be, 'serve the god of commerce', or die. The alternative is to start making the mechanisms of commerce serve us.

 

That's all fine until you can't get treatment for your child's burst appendix, or your wife's suspected cancer, because all the hospitals are full.

Car accidents don't do that to the health system, because they don't increase exponentially. Nasty respiratory epidemics, on the other hand, do.

 

Commerce is the basis of life. There is no life without it and there isn't much to discuss. And, regardless of the ideologues here on the forum that seem to have very extreme positions in this regard themselves... Nothing changes that and the system that's in place is a product of demand. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it hasn't been serving your needs and for the most part isn't there to spite you or anyone else -- it's there because there isn't a viable alternative and it's addressing most of the base needs. (And, we've tried many.)

There are basically only three options:

1) Go out to the wilderness and hunt/forage for food or mine something or whatever. True freedom, and no serving the 'god of commerce'. It's more of a yolo way to live with not security blanket and backup plan. If you don't get enough of something you're probably screwed. This person still has to trade/barter or otherwise construct resources they cannot obtain any other way.

2) Be a slave to that system and do nothing to serve it. Just collect welfare and leech. Other people decide what you're worth, but since you're leeching it's not much. Contrary to many opinions this is playing completely within the next system, it's just that you've resolved to abstain from providing any value.

3) Participate in the system and reap the rewards of it. You get an opportunity to help people and in trade you get provided for roughly measuring your value to them. There is a trade here in freedom for security and comfort in comparison to the first condition. It's debatable as to whether #1 or #3 are more profitable. #1 done right can be the most profitable economically, but it's much more difficult and dangerous.

For whatever reason, I'm always under the impression that most of the user base is in condition #2 and has no room to talk. It's not that I don't feel those people wouldn't have a seat at the table, but rather they haven't enough life experience that condition #1 or #2 would give you that yield a more balanced perspective. #1 was how we did things in the past, but most people gave that up for condition #3 willingly. That's how hard #1 is to obtain really -- you can live money free, but it's a chore. If you decide to go that road that's basically a 24/7 job.

Closing/reopening... Why is the government even involved? Certainly, I think think they should give health guidance but then get the hell out of the way. There is no evidence any of this matters or works.. It might briefly slow a spread, but as long as humans have families (and most of us do) they are the vector for the spread and nothing will stop it short of forcing people to completely physically isolate for at least a month. And, I mean isolate from everyone... Not even in contact with your wife, children, whatever... That's obviously impossible.

 

That's untrue. All you need to do is get R below 1, i.e. the average chance of one infected person infecting someone else needs to be less than 1. R=0.99 will do fine.

You can do that without closing everything down. But only if people cooperate and follow rules. So long as you have 30% of the country talking in terms of a socialist plot, every time someone says to wear a mask, the countermeasures will fail - as they are now doing.

Unfortunately, when the country's leadership encourages division, and turns simple countermeasures into a political wedge issue, you have little chance of them working. Obviously.

 

These limits you suggest might be impossible to have without literally killing ourselves. This is what I call 'scientific suicide'. It's probably desirable or correct to do a certain thing on paper, but also completely stupid to do it into the context of the threat to your lifestyle. There are many ways to die and being extremely poor is one of them. (one of the worst really) The world economics can take some of the brunt, but eventually there is a piper to pay and when that time comes it's gonna be really nasty.

 

You can hold R at under 1 without closing everything down, but you need people to wear masks, keep their distance and you need to close bars and restaurants and get people to work from home wherever possible. It will mean people thrown out of work in the hospitality sector and in city centres that rely on office workers, and I don't minimise the pain that will cause, but it does not have to mean wholesale destruction of the entire economy.

Whereas if you let it rip, you will for sure overwhelm the health system. Then you will get a lot of illness and death from all the conditions that can't be treated, everybody will get terrified, and you won't be able to tempt them into going to work, at any price. That will damage the economy even more than the countermeasures.

I agree there will be a huge debt to pay off whatever is done, just as there is after a war. But the idea that the low cost option is to let the disease rip is flawed, for the reasons I have given. Once your health system collapses, you will lose control of what people will do to protect themselves.

 

Good luck keeping your job. Good luck that business owners don't lose their business.

Good luck putting food on the table and keeping a roof over your head.

I feel the pain and I'm sure one's leaders are saying, "This is going to hurt you more than it will hurt me but its for your own good".

Thats my assessment as well. The million dollar question is whos going to pay all these people so they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads?

 

The British welfare state, backed by enormous government borrowing. But, make no mistake, the economic cost of letting the virus rip would be still higher.

 

Absolutely. And we could save over 1,000,000 lives per year worldwide by banning cars. Isn't it a tragedy how people's selfish desires to keep their childish little conveniences prevents us from saving lives?

 

And yet, we've still failed to prevent over 1 million lives lost annually, knowing that we could do more to save lives.

 

You are missing my point. My point has nothing to do with the Covid 19 death rate.

Car accidents occur at a roughly constant level that hospitals can deal with. So car accidents do not stop you getting treatment for your child's burst appendix or your wife's suspected cancer.

A runaway Covid 19 epidemic, by contrast, involves an exponentially increasing number of acute hospital admissions. Eventually, this overruns the health system so that nobody can get treatment for any other conditions they may have. In other words, a runaway Covid 19 epidemic takes down your whole health system.

Now, you could avoid that, by issuing a "death panel" type rule, that no Covid 19 case is to be treated, thereby preserving your health system. In that scenario, all the Covid 19 acute cases would be left in their beds at home, to die of asphyxiation or recover, as best they could.Is this what you would advocate? If not, how would you avoid the health system being taken down?

Or do you think you could run a major economy with no functioning health system?

 

UK passes 1 million mark for covid cases, out of a population of 63 million.

1 in every 63 of us.

 

I agree that hospital capacity is an issue.
If the issue is not enough hospital beds, then resources and time need to be put into building more hospitals and expanding capacity at existing ones, so that this can be avoided. Obviously covid is here to stay for awhile, and a lockdown is like a bandaid on a bullet wound. It can only work for a very short time. Why are world leaders not even talking about building more hospitals? It's asinine.

 

It is. Car deaths don't overwhelm health services, exponentially increasing covid deaths would. As in - no spare hospital beds. As in - shortage of staff because they are off sick.
No wonder some people are called covidiots.