| Icelandic expert opinion on 21:52 - Apr 28 with 2105 views | Guthrum |
His argument that we ought to have tested a similar proportion of our population to what Iceland have done, because we have more resources, is problematic. To get hold of 45k tests is one thing. But to acquire 7m involves cornering a sizeable proportion of the world's supply (if not more than actually existed on the planet back in Jan/Feb). It's no longer a question of money, but sheer availability. Plus, of course, at that point the price skyrockets as we're bidding against China and the USA.
Plus Iceland is not by any means a poor nation. Their GDP per capita is more than 50% higher than ours ($67k as against $41k, IMF 2019 figures).
Controlling or closing down Iceland's single international airport is a bit of a different prospect to our many (plus ferries and tunnel). The daily passenger numbers at Heathrow alone are more than half of Iceland's entire population.
Not to knock the stuff his team are doing with deCODE, that could provide extremely useful data. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 21:57 - Apr 28 with 2097 views | BlueBadger |
As Guffers says, whilst we certainly should have been testing a lot, lot more and a lot sooner, this country presents a fair few more logistical challenges to doing that than Iceland have. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 22:23 - Apr 28 with 2047 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 21:52 - Apr 28 by Guthrum |
His argument that we ought to have tested a similar proportion of our population to what Iceland have done, because we have more resources, is problematic. To get hold of 45k tests is one thing. But to acquire 7m involves cornering a sizeable proportion of the world's supply (if not more than actually existed on the planet back in Jan/Feb). It's no longer a question of money, but sheer availability. Plus, of course, at that point the price skyrockets as we're bidding against China and the USA.
Plus Iceland is not by any means a poor nation. Their GDP per capita is more than 50% higher than ours ($67k as against $41k, IMF 2019 figures).
Controlling or closing down Iceland's single international airport is a bit of a different prospect to our many (plus ferries and tunnel). The daily passenger numbers at Heathrow alone are more than half of Iceland's entire population.
Not to knock the stuff his team are doing with deCODE, that could provide extremely useful data. |
Fair enough, but with a higher population there comes a potential for a higher manufacturing potential.
I am by no means an expert on the testing side of things, but with PPE there is a suggestion we could have been producing more if we had been onto it in a more co-ordinated way earlier.
Personally I get the feeling we didn't take it seriously enough early enough. I think we are now. Also, don't get me wrong, this is said very much with hindsight but I get the impression the Government was acting on the wrong advice. How much that is the fault of the advisors or the fault of the Government for listening to the wrong ones is another question but they clearly were at odds with WHO at various times. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 23:08 - Apr 28 with 2009 views | Swansea_Blue |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 21:57 - Apr 28 by BlueBadger |
As Guffers says, whilst we certainly should have been testing a lot, lot more and a lot sooner, this country presents a fair few more logistical challenges to doing that than Iceland have. |
They do have to worry about their chicken dippers defrosting if the freezers go off though! |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:04 - Apr 29 with 1950 views | Guthrum |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 22:23 - Apr 28 by Nthsuffolkblue |
Fair enough, but with a higher population there comes a potential for a higher manufacturing potential.
I am by no means an expert on the testing side of things, but with PPE there is a suggestion we could have been producing more if we had been onto it in a more co-ordinated way earlier.
Personally I get the feeling we didn't take it seriously enough early enough. I think we are now. Also, don't get me wrong, this is said very much with hindsight but I get the impression the Government was acting on the wrong advice. How much that is the fault of the advisors or the fault of the Government for listening to the wrong ones is another question but they clearly were at odds with WHO at various times. |
I think we could have been onto the PPE thing more promptly, making use of the warning from Italy. Tho as things ramped up - and perhaps if we were a bit behind the curve - we were in competition with everyone else for the raw materials needed to manufacture the stuff.
It's unreasonable to expect contingency stockpiling of pandemic levels of kit in normal times. Buying and storing that amount of stuff would bankrupt the NHS, for what is likely to be (on average) a once a century situation.
Find it difficult to blame the Government for listening to bad advice from scientists, when they do not have the expertise or knowlege to discern what advice is good and what bad. They only have their medical advisers' word to go on. We probably ought to cut the scientists some slack, too. We are, after all, less than five months into an outbreak of an entirely new (to humans) disease. Especially at the start there was very little reliable data to go on.
Fortunately, the scientists and government did recognise, in the face of mounting evidence, that their first approach was going to go horribly wrong and changed tack, rather than sticking to their guns through stubbornness or pride. | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:07 - Apr 29 with 1941 views | Guthrum |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 23:08 - Apr 28 by Swansea_Blue |
They do have to worry about their chicken dippers defrosting if the freezers go off though! |
Tho that will probably be because the bitcoin miners have drained all the power supplies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43030677 | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 07:06 - Apr 29 with 1845 views | WeWereZombies |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 23:08 - Apr 28 by Swansea_Blue |
They do have to worry about their chicken dippers defrosting if the freezers go off though! |
Expect a call from Hermann, you spelled puffin dippers wrong. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 08:22 - Apr 29 with 1782 views | ElephantintheRoom |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 22:23 - Apr 28 by Nthsuffolkblue |
Fair enough, but with a higher population there comes a potential for a higher manufacturing potential.
I am by no means an expert on the testing side of things, but with PPE there is a suggestion we could have been producing more if we had been onto it in a more co-ordinated way earlier.
Personally I get the feeling we didn't take it seriously enough early enough. I think we are now. Also, don't get me wrong, this is said very much with hindsight but I get the impression the Government was acting on the wrong advice. How much that is the fault of the advisors or the fault of the Government for listening to the wrong ones is another question but they clearly were at odds with WHO at various times. |
It was not too much to expect a competent or even remotely sane government to attempt to protect its citizens from a pandemic it knew about months in advance.
Yet even today there is no requirement to self isolate if you fly into this country - let alone be quarantined.
No attempt to shut down public transport or force citizens to stay inside
No requirement to isolate from the community if you work in a virus-ridden environment eg a hospital or care home or if you rattle around 20 + old people per day as a care in the community.
No attempt to force people to act sensibly and join the new virus lottery of visiting a supermarket as little as possible
No attempt to recognise the geographic advantage of being an island - despite the country being run by insular, inward-looking fantatics. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 09:12 - Apr 29 with 1749 views | Lord_Lucan |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:04 - Apr 29 by Guthrum |
I think we could have been onto the PPE thing more promptly, making use of the warning from Italy. Tho as things ramped up - and perhaps if we were a bit behind the curve - we were in competition with everyone else for the raw materials needed to manufacture the stuff.
It's unreasonable to expect contingency stockpiling of pandemic levels of kit in normal times. Buying and storing that amount of stuff would bankrupt the NHS, for what is likely to be (on average) a once a century situation.
Find it difficult to blame the Government for listening to bad advice from scientists, when they do not have the expertise or knowlege to discern what advice is good and what bad. They only have their medical advisers' word to go on. We probably ought to cut the scientists some slack, too. We are, after all, less than five months into an outbreak of an entirely new (to humans) disease. Especially at the start there was very little reliable data to go on.
Fortunately, the scientists and government did recognise, in the face of mounting evidence, that their first approach was going to go horribly wrong and changed tack, rather than sticking to their guns through stubbornness or pride. |
Phil
Can you pin this please.
Then we can all get back to some sort of normal life and talk sh1te about something else. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 09:50 - Apr 29 with 1706 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:04 - Apr 29 by Guthrum |
I think we could have been onto the PPE thing more promptly, making use of the warning from Italy. Tho as things ramped up - and perhaps if we were a bit behind the curve - we were in competition with everyone else for the raw materials needed to manufacture the stuff.
It's unreasonable to expect contingency stockpiling of pandemic levels of kit in normal times. Buying and storing that amount of stuff would bankrupt the NHS, for what is likely to be (on average) a once a century situation.
Find it difficult to blame the Government for listening to bad advice from scientists, when they do not have the expertise or knowlege to discern what advice is good and what bad. They only have their medical advisers' word to go on. We probably ought to cut the scientists some slack, too. We are, after all, less than five months into an outbreak of an entirely new (to humans) disease. Especially at the start there was very little reliable data to go on.
Fortunately, the scientists and government did recognise, in the face of mounting evidence, that their first approach was going to go horribly wrong and changed tack, rather than sticking to their guns through stubbornness or pride. |
Absolutely true but I do feel there has been some misrepresentation of figures (claims that PPE was stockpiled and has been delivered when accounts suggest it wasn't etc).
I agree entirely the change of track has been good handling and I accept it is easy to look back and criticise. I, for one, was not critical at the time. When the media first publicised the issue in China I felt very much "what is all the fuss about?" but I think the reaction to the Italian reports was a little slow. We seemed to follow their path far too closely and probably should have learned lessons a bit more quickly.
I am certainly thankful we have Johnson ahead of Trump in charge! | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:03 - Apr 29 with 1696 views | r2d2 |
How many experts are there? Everybody seems to be one. Every scientist under the sun seems to have crawled out of the woodwork. Every chart, diagram, graph possible have been used to interpret the problem one way or the other. Truth is, the experts are still in the dark as to how any of this will pan out over time. Most of what we hear are theories. There is no hard and fast answer. Especially from the new found wing of scientists and experts on TWTDs. |  | | |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:11 - Apr 29 with 1686 views | Guthrum |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 09:50 - Apr 29 by Nthsuffolkblue |
Absolutely true but I do feel there has been some misrepresentation of figures (claims that PPE was stockpiled and has been delivered when accounts suggest it wasn't etc).
I agree entirely the change of track has been good handling and I accept it is easy to look back and criticise. I, for one, was not critical at the time. When the media first publicised the issue in China I felt very much "what is all the fuss about?" but I think the reaction to the Italian reports was a little slow. We seemed to follow their path far too closely and probably should have learned lessons a bit more quickly.
I am certainly thankful we have Johnson ahead of Trump in charge! |
Indeed, but you have to ask whether that misrepresentation was any more pernicious than the usual massaging and selective reading of statistics which goes on every day in politics. At best not bothering to check the veracity of numbers as long as they show one's own lot in a good light.
Amen to that last line - or even worse, Bolsonaro. Or, for that matter, India's Modi, who locked down alright, but without economic safety nets for millions of casual workers, who were left to either starve, or to walk hundreds of miles home (many dying en route, plus spreading the disease), also now using the crisis to persecute the victims of his party's Hindu nationalist agenda. | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:15 - Apr 29 with 1685 views | Bluespeed225 |
Havent trusted em' since the banking crisis. And as for that volcano... | | | |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:23 - Apr 29 with 1664 views | GlasgowBlue |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:04 - Apr 29 by Guthrum |
I think we could have been onto the PPE thing more promptly, making use of the warning from Italy. Tho as things ramped up - and perhaps if we were a bit behind the curve - we were in competition with everyone else for the raw materials needed to manufacture the stuff.
It's unreasonable to expect contingency stockpiling of pandemic levels of kit in normal times. Buying and storing that amount of stuff would bankrupt the NHS, for what is likely to be (on average) a once a century situation.
Find it difficult to blame the Government for listening to bad advice from scientists, when they do not have the expertise or knowlege to discern what advice is good and what bad. They only have their medical advisers' word to go on. We probably ought to cut the scientists some slack, too. We are, after all, less than five months into an outbreak of an entirely new (to humans) disease. Especially at the start there was very little reliable data to go on.
Fortunately, the scientists and government did recognise, in the face of mounting evidence, that their first approach was going to go horribly wrong and changed tack, rather than sticking to their guns through stubbornness or pride. |
This x 10000.
This place had the potential to bring people together for support during this crisis but I find myself logging in less, as it’s overwhelmed by repetitive and negative threads looking to put the boot into the government at every opportunity.
Arguing over a box of gloves is a perfect example of this.
You’ve summed up in one post all that really needs on the subject. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:26 - Apr 29 with 1659 views | Swansea_Blue |
That's bonkers! | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 11:14 - Apr 29 with 1633 views | WeWereZombies |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 09:12 - Apr 29 by Lord_Lucan |
Phil
Can you pin this please.
Then we can all get back to some sort of normal life and talk sh1te about something else. |
Trouble is, Lucan, that does not tell the whole story. Or even as much of the story that we know and can digest. Have a watch of the video that UrbenBlue posted for a bit of balance. | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 11:33 - Apr 29 with 1609 views | Lord_Lucan |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 11:14 - Apr 29 by WeWereZombies |
Trouble is, Lucan, that does not tell the whole story. Or even as much of the story that we know and can digest. Have a watch of the video that UrbenBlue posted for a bit of balance. |
I always look out for Urby as he is a king amongst posters and has given me some great hair tips.
I'll have a look later, busy as hell at the moment. | |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 12:52 - Apr 29 with 1555 views | Darth_Koont |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 10:23 - Apr 29 by GlasgowBlue |
This x 10000.
This place had the potential to bring people together for support during this crisis but I find myself logging in less, as it’s overwhelmed by repetitive and negative threads looking to put the boot into the government at every opportunity.
Arguing over a box of gloves is a perfect example of this.
You’ve summed up in one post all that really needs on the subject. |
While your repetitive and negative threads looking to put the boot into the opposition at every opportunity were a real joy.
This is the same. You only care about propping up the status quo despite the overwhelming evidence that the government is retreating further and further into "media management" as this pandemic has gone on. |  |
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| Icelandic expert opinion on 13:19 - Apr 29 with 1526 views | Darth_Koont |
| Icelandic expert opinion on 01:04 - Apr 29 by Guthrum |
I think we could have been onto the PPE thing more promptly, making use of the warning from Italy. Tho as things ramped up - and perhaps if we were a bit behind the curve - we were in competition with everyone else for the raw materials needed to manufacture the stuff.
It's unreasonable to expect contingency stockpiling of pandemic levels of kit in normal times. Buying and storing that amount of stuff would bankrupt the NHS, for what is likely to be (on average) a once a century situation.
Find it difficult to blame the Government for listening to bad advice from scientists, when they do not have the expertise or knowlege to discern what advice is good and what bad. They only have their medical advisers' word to go on. We probably ought to cut the scientists some slack, too. We are, after all, less than five months into an outbreak of an entirely new (to humans) disease. Especially at the start there was very little reliable data to go on.
Fortunately, the scientists and government did recognise, in the face of mounting evidence, that their first approach was going to go horribly wrong and changed tack, rather than sticking to their guns through stubbornness or pride. |
Think you're being way too charitable there, even accepting the challenges.
- Slow on PPE
Should have been a priority from Day One - it was for the NHS staff. And we even had time based on being able to watch Italy, Spain and France struggle. But it seems we were late even to that party.
- Contingency stockpiling
We can just admit that the cost-benefit wasn't considered worth it even after Cygnus. We do that all the time anyway with our funding of the NHS and social care. But it's the sort of thing that's the first to go when you start bleeding public services dry and shifting responsibility to the individual. Let's have that discussion.
- "Following the science"
I took that as read at the beginning but the lack of transparency around the "science" is a massive concern. That's not how science works. And again there should be a more robust discussion about how and why "evidence-based" decisions are being taken and what evidence is being used. Polling data is also a science ...
- "The wrong approach"
See above. Again that needs to be opened up. There's a long-term view that seems to be ignored, and they haven't even been that effective at coping with the relevant short-term issues e.g. healthcare and social care responses to minimize the effects. Again, we seem to have a government that's trying too much to manage the crisis politically. Because that's all it really knows. | |
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