Covid-19 and Politics

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Germany bails out Lufthansa to save jobs, govt gets 20% equity, seats on Supervisory Board to shape company policy.
UK bails out British Airways, no focus on jobs, no equity stake, no board seats, no employee say, no stipulations.
 
New Zealand, “Our PM has kept the number of Covid deaths down to 22”

UK, “We may have over 60,000 deaths from Covid but our PM can do a press-up!”
 
The Don said:
Meanwhile, Sweden is repeating the same messaging as the United States :(



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...f59bd71aef1f0655fc9982&pinned_post_type=share

Edited to add......

It worries me when countries reject comparisons on the ground that they're not applicable or that their country is special in some way - the UK government's refusal to acknowledge that the UK seems to have one of the highest per-capita death tolls because apparently numbers cannot be compared internationally is an example of this.
Click to expand...

From a US friend on Facebook, who posted this with the question, which country in this map does Fox news say is a model for handling COVID-19?


FB_IMG_1593243611566.jpg
 
There's something wrong with that map. England is showing up as if it's had few new infections in any region over that period, which is simply not true. I'm not going to quibble with the Scottish colours (although Lanarkshire looks a bit improbable), but the impression that England is doing just fine while Scotland and Wales aren't is the exact opposite from the truth.

I think what's going on is an anomaly I noted in a different thread, that while new cases from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland include all positive tests, the disaggregated country data for England only include tests done in NHS hospitals, not the ones done in the drive-through centres. This gives rise to the ridiculous situation seen in this figure, which is of last week's cases.

EbMvttVXkAAC1-e


You see that while England is shown as having only 1,900 cases for the week, "UK" is shown as 8,400. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together only add up to 553. In fact the true England figure is the one recorded for the UK, and the figure attributed to England omits the drive-through tests, which are the majority. I suspect the map in the previous post was taken from these deceptive figures.

There is a concerted effort as far as I can see for the English media not to report England-only figures at all. The UK figure is reported, but the implication that the pain is probably equally spread out is sort of left hanging. In fact, ...

Scotland could be covid-free by the end of summer

That doesn't mean eradication, which is impossible with an open border, it means no community transmission and any case or small cluster that emerges being immediately snuffed out by contact tracing and isolation.

So the impression given by the map is wholly misleading. England is in a bad place, but chooses to report its data in such a way as to conceal this.
 
It would be unwise of Westminster to issue England only figures given how badly they would compare to the rest of the UK who are taking lockdown lifting a little more cautiously.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Germany bails out Lufthansa to save jobs, govt gets 20% equity, seats on Supervisory Board to shape company policy.
UK bails out British Airways, no focus on jobs, no equity stake, no board seats, no employee say, no stipulations.
Click to expand...

To be fair, would you feel safe on a plane if this government had a say in how to run the airline?
 
Looks like international holidays are back on the cards again for UK folk as it’s now all over, well unless you live in Leicester but lets be honest who of significance does?
 
Mr Fied said:
To be fair, would you feel safe on a plane if this government had a say in how to run the airline?
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What? You don't agree with their plan to streamline the service and eliminate duplication of resources by cutting the number of wings on each plane by 50% (unless you pay for the executive package) in line with good market driven principals?
 
Rolfe said:
There's something wrong with that map. England is showing up as if it's had few new infections in any region over that period, which is simply not true. I'm not going to quibble with the Scottish colours (although Lanarkshire looks a bit improbable), but the impression that England is doing just fine while Scotland and Wales aren't is the exact opposite from the truth.

I think what's going on is an anomaly I noted in a different thread, that while new cases from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland include all positive tests, the disaggregated country data for England only include tests done in NHS hospitals, not the ones done in the drive-through centres. This gives rise to the ridiculous situation seen in this figure, which is of last week's cases.

[qimg]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbMvttVXkAAC1-e?format=png&name=900x900[/qimg]

You see that while England is shown as having only 1,900 cases for the week, "UK" is shown as 8,400. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together only add up to 553. In fact the true England figure is the one recorded for the UK, and the figure attributed to England omits the drive-through tests, which are the majority. I suspect the map in the previous post was taken from these deceptive figures.

There is a concerted effort as far as I can see for the English media not to report England-only figures at all. The UK figure is reported, but the implication that the pain is probably equally spread out is sort of left hanging. In fact, ...

Scotland could be covid-free by the end of summer

That doesn't mean eradication, which is impossible with an open border, it means no community transmission and any case or small cluster that emerges being immediately snuffed out by contact tracing and isolation.

So the impression given by the map is wholly misleading. England is in a bad place, but chooses to report its data in such a way as to conceal this.
Click to expand...

I have found the website where that data came from, but not where their regional breakdown was.

The worldwide daily report by country is below
https://t.co/RxWu4wMLIq?amp=1

And their latest map for the European area is here:
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases
 
Darat said:
Looks like international holidays are back on the cards again for UK folk as it’s now all over, well unless you live in Leicester but lets be honest who of significance does?
Click to expand...
That's assuming anyone wants to let you disease riddled Brits in...
 
Politically, this is getting serious. This is a slightly out of date graph of the 7-day average of deaths per day for England and Scotland. I just checked Scotland's current figure and it's 0.26. England's is over 2 on that (logarithmic) graph and doesn't seem to be coming down. So the death rate in England is currently eight times that in Scotland. Notwithstanding the fact that as recently as a month ago there was no difference. (Sorry about the image size but it's a twitter link and I can't change it.)

[IMGw=640]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EblZy0NXQAMMHdd?format=jpg[/IMGw]

It is no coincidence that the date Sturgeon decided to dump her catastrophic "lockstep" strategy whereby she committed to do exactly what England did regardless of the situation on the ground in Scotland was in early May. It takes at least three weeks for the effect of changes of strategy to work through and show up in the stats, so it all fits rather well.

Nevertheless she and Scots in general are getting flak for daring to be different, even for wanting to be different. People on twitter are saying, I wish you'd fall into line, I want us to go through this as a single country. Why, for God's sake? Commentators are criticising Sturgeon for "lagging behind England" in opening up, and she's accused of "playing catch-up" with England. (Not in mortality statistics I hope!)

In virtually every other country on the planet bigger than a tennis court, regions and states and counties and territories and Lander and departments and cantons and whatever are allowed and encouraged to deal with their local situation in the way that addresses that situation best. Not only that, central governments are in general anxious to put in measures to protect regions which have escaped the worst effects of the virus or have reduced it to very low levels. We weren't even allowed to stop tourists getting on the ferries to our vulnerable islands at the beginning of this. Britain is the only country I can see which is uniformly the same bad colour all over in the death statistics maps. Everywhere else managed to spare some part of its territory. But here "we're all in it together" to the point where some in England are outraged at the very suggestion of travel restrictions to prevent virus being seeded all over rural Scotland again.

If Westminster actually saw Scotland as a valued partner in the union it would have readily agreed to a divergent strategy and to travel restrictions. Indeed if it had had any sense (hah!) it would have implemented travel restrictions within England too and indeed may about to be forced into that anyway. But such is the terror of Scotland ever doing anything differently and particularly of the border meaning anything but a couple of back-to-back welcome signs, they're doing precisely the wrong things.

In times of instability things sometimes reach a tipping point and events happen much faster than most people would have believed possible. Remember 1989-90. If we're in a situation where preserving Scotland's virus-elimination status requires a border closure and we're being dragged into a destructive Brexit in the middle of a winter of stress and fear and England is in the middle of a second wave, we could be in for interesting times.
 
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I'm in Wales and would welcome a relaxation of the lockdown rules but I recognise that the recent outbreak in Anglesey and our need to restrict movement from England to reduce the risk of new cases coming across the border means that it isn't safe to do so.

I'm glad that the political differences between the leaders in Wales and Westminster means that it's actually politically expedient for the Welsh Assembly to pursue a divergent course. If the Tories were in charge here, we'd be in lockstep with England and damn the consequences. :mad:
 
looking for advice here:

I was on track to visit the UK for a week in late August.

Would I be able to do some sightseeing, or would I have to self-isolate in my hotel room?

any guesses?
 
The Great Zaganza said:
looking for advice here:

I was on track to visit the UK for a week in late August.

Would I be able to do some sightseeing, or would I have to self-isolate in my hotel room?

any guesses?
Click to expand...

Who knows :confused:

The UK English government seems to change tack on a weekly basis. First we waited for months to implement any quarantine regulations, then were going to have one implemented far too late, then the travel industry complained and the yet-to-be quarantine regulations were relaxed.

By late August, in England you could be able to waltz in from anywhere (white) in the world with no questions asked. Then again, case numbers could spike again and international travel could be off the cards.
 
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