Vocal Voices

Or medium, high, very high. Take your pick.

What happened today made all the speculation / leaks over the weekend official.

From Jonathan Van-Tam this morning through to the PM's statement in parliament and on to this evening's press briefing things have become clearer - we should all now know what is expected of us and what restrictions we are under.

Whether these new measures are right or will work remains to be seen, but they are clear.

Like it or not something was going to have to be done - the numbers say so. However, those numbers also say that we are nowhere near where we were in the Spring. If, and it is a big 'if', we all do our bit then things might not be as bad as the doomsters would have us believe. Unfortunately there will be deaths, businesses will close, and people will still lose their jobs, but not at the levels once predicted.

We have to hang on in there.

I'm at the point now where I think the cure is worse than the disease.
Especially as the cure doesn't seem to work.

I am in the same place, Cromwell, but what else can we do? I don't have the answer, and I suspect no one does.

We know that washing hands, masks, space and distance / time work, but how the hell do we enforce them in the whole of the community? It is more of a societal problem than a government one, no matter how much I wish it to be otherwise.

Workingman wrote:We know that washing hands, masks, space and distance / time work, but how the hell do we enforce them in the whole of the community? It is more of a societal problem than a government one, no matter how much I wish it to be otherwise.

Very true, and in the last resort, those (of us) who are the most at-risk really need now to self-isolate as far as possible again. One problem though is that community support networks which operated back in March and April have now largely been dismantled - that is certainly the case in this area. Can they be resurrected?

London next?

Sadiq Khan says so.... and it will go as one, not borough by borough.

I do wonder if that will change the thinking of those in the Westminster "bubble" when they too come under the new rules.

cromwell wrote:I'm at the point now where I think the cure is worse than the disease.
Especially as the cure doesn't seem to work.

I'm starting to think so too.

TheOstrich wrote:

Workingman wrote:We know that washing hands, masks, space and distance / time work, but how the hell do we enforce them in the whole of the community? It is more of a societal problem than a government one, no matter how much I wish it to be otherwise.

Very true, and in the last resort, those (of us) who are the most at-risk really need now to self-isolate as far as possible again. One problem though is that community support networks which operated back in March and April have now largely been dismantled - that is certainly the case in this area. Can they be resurrected?

Good point Ossie, community support networks will be needed even more now.

If the cure worked, we wouldn't have a second wave.

Cure doesn't work. It is about politicians not taking the blame for deaths and putting it on the population, who have little choice but to interact in order to survive.

I generally look at the numbers. Friday in France, just short of 27,000 cases. I said this in March and it is worth repeating. The only reason cases were so low in March is they weren't looking. Up until August France had only done 1.4 million tests. Now it has done 12 million. The UK was ramping up but only to test people who were ill. The UK has now tested 28 million people and has the largest, per 1m population, number of tests of any country over 9 million inhabitants. The US, Russia, they are behind us on pre 1m head of population tests.

We do have to interact, but we have to do it responsibly. Liverpool last night showed us how not to do it and why we have such a problem. We cannot blame the government for so many stupids being stupid.