Coronavirus

[TAR]

you might feel a bit of a dick 🙂

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

I know Rishi Sinak has a lot of friends on here, but is he really just the gift that keeps on giving?

It used to be the case that the Chancellor would be hailed for not putting an extra 5p tax on a pint of beer or a gallon of petrol in a pre-election Budget. Other than that you’d expect stuff all from him. Now Rishi’s offering to go Dutch on some of our meals out, help pay us to move house and even chip in with help paying for trips to the cinema or theme park. This is not exactly essential expenditure for most people. Still I guess if he’s already paying millions of people’s wages to sit at home, he may as well pay a bit more for them to go out and enjoy themselves too.

Of course, it’s still not enough for some people, but God knows how we’re going to pay for all this.

[Bibs]

Exactly that. This really is going to take generations to pay back - I know a lot of the money they are dishing out comes back pretty soon in the form of tax but these are huge sums and a lot of them are being taken advantage of.

I'm reading that the NHS are £10bn deep into the non-existant (and probably useless by now) track and trace system and got royally ripped off on PPE prices. If we ran our own finances like the govt, we'd all be bankrupt and deservedly so! 

[Chillidoggy]

Rishi Sunak probably thinks he might as well get hanged for a sheep as a lamb. There’s no such thing as free money though, so taxpayers will end up paying it all back somewhere along the line.

It will be interesting to see what (if any) conditions are placed on the home insulation grant scheme. I can’t imagine a £5K cheque will simply arrive in the post. If it’s anything like past government schemes, it’ll be a virtual impossibility to get anything out of it unless it takes the form of some kind of voucher to be redeemed solely against home insulation products and services.

Regarding the meals out and cinema thing; I guess the thinking is that if we do venture out once, we may enjoy it and continue to do so, thus stimulating those industries, most of which are teetering on the brink. Stamp duty is, in my view, an outdated, outrageously expensive tax for doing precisely bugger-all, and should have been scrapped anyway, but it’s income for the government which it relies upon. Could a break in paying it could possibly move some of the log jam? I don’t know, but with potential mass unemployment looming, moving house may well be well down on most peoples’ list.

[Bibs]

£190bn to date - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53342271

[PaulCP]

1 hour ago, Bibs said:

 

I'm reading that the NHS are £10bn deep into the non-existant (and probably useless by now) track and trace system and got royally ripped off on PPE prices.

I’m not at all surprised by any of those 2 possibilities.

The company I worked for between 2002-9 appointed an ex NHS guy as Group IT Manager who then brought in another NHS guy in as his next in line. To say that they were absolutely useless at anything systems wise is a major understatement. They just had no idea on how to close loops and how to thoroughly define requirements and test systems.

NHS procurement is non existent, just look at what they pay for some over the counter drugs which are much cheaper for individuals to buy over the counter.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Haven’t we already had the home insulation scheme? All those nuisance callers, like the PPI scammers.

Surely if you needed insulation then, you would have got it done. We haven’t been building houses without it since, have we?

[Chillidoggy]

The nuisance callers are probably the reason why a large majority haven't got the correct level of insulation - they got sent away with a flea in their ear!

The vast majority of UK housing stock is more than likely deficient in some way, cos they're always moving the insulation goalposts.

[Bibs]

3m confirmed cases in the USA. Trump's all over this

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/jul/08/three-million-coronavirus-cases-donald-trump-mary-mexico-joe-biden-live-updates

[C8RKH]

Yup - but the ironic thing is they seem to be just getting on with it and not dying as much as everyone else! Is that because without a proper NHS to fall back on they just soldier on? Or is the US diet that makes them more resilient? Seriously, there is something in it.

 

[Chillidoggy]

3 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

Haven’t we already had the home insulation scheme? All those nuisance callers, like the PPI scammers.

Surely if you needed insulation then, you would have got it done. We haven’t been building houses without it since, have we?

Sorry, I forgot - when I hear the words ‘government’ and ‘initiative’ in the same sentence, I smell a rat!

[Dan E]

8 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

I know Rishi Sinak has a lot of friends on here, but is he really just the gift that keeps on giving?

It used to be the case that the Chancellor would be hailed for not putting an extra 5p tax on a pint of beer or a gallon of petrol in a pre-election Budget. Other than that you’d expect stuff all from him. Now Rishi’s offering to go Dutch on some of our meals out, help pay us to move house and even chip in with help paying for trips to the cinema or theme park. This is not exactly essential expenditure for most people. Still I guess if he’s already paying millions of people’s wages to sit at home, he may as well pay a bit more for them to go out and enjoy themselves too.

Of course, it’s still not enough for some people, but God knows how we’re going to pay for all this.

Sorry for quoting @Bibs but I think it is justified as it appears that @Sparky has solved the paying back The national debt issue with one Esprit service, which happens to be mine, so please all sit back and relax, I have got it from here 

[C8RKH]

All round to @Sparky's for a garden party on the proceeds..... Austerity is now officially over.

[Sparky]

Excellent! That calls for another surcharge.

[pete]

[Dan E]

16 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

All round to @Sparky's for a garden party on the proceeds..... Austerity is now officially over.

No, no @C8RKH it’s round here I am covering the after debt free party, obvs 

[Sparky]

Oooh, double bubble.

[rjwooll]

For anybody with the patience to spend the time, here is a youtube interview with Dr John Lee, retired pathologist, on how it has been handled:

Apologies if this has been posted before but I don't have the time to hunt through the whole thread! Well worth watching though - lots of useful insights (warning: it may make you angry!)

Cheers, Richard

[mg4lotus]

Only had the patience for the first 18 mins. Is he an adviser for Trump? He seems to be guilty of his own assertions?

Edited July 12, 2020 by mg4lotus

[ramjet]

Must admit that I could not watch it either. Tried, but gave up.

Hindsight of an issue makes many more knowledgable of that issue.

It only helps a small amount with the next issue.

[rjwooll]

Yes, it is too long! And I find the interviewer a bit irritating! Apparently, though, this isn't just hindsight - he has been saying that the lockdown was an overreaction since April. Maybe the government should have listened to a broader range of scientific advice - they focussed in on the Imperial College modelling very early and, although there were and are other well-respected schools of thought (including an Oxford University group) with different outlooks, they made decisions that are having massively negative repercussions for the economy based on those Imperial College models. Recently, the excess deaths statistic (i.e. deaths compared to the same time last year) has turned negative, possibly indicating that those who have - sadly - died of or with coronavirus may well have died anyway within a short space of time, so fewer are dying now.

[mg4lotus]

So they died of covid-19 then?

[C8RKH]

Is anyone actually dying of COVID-19?  I thought the cause of death was something else - in other words they died of something (usually linked to respiratory failure and COVID-19 was a contributory factor but not the cause. In the same way as pre-conditions such as heart disease, diabetes etc is a co9ntributory factor.

[andydclements]

As far as I know you are right @C8RKH that people die from other conditions where COVID-19 has either added strain to an existing problem or seemingly in very rare cases led to a condition. For example, my father had heart failure which meant poor circulation and the lings struggled to exchange CO2 for O2 due to the poor blood flow through them, had he contracted COVID-19 it would have meant more fluid build-up in the lungs so restricting their effectiveness even further, putting more strain on the failing heart which would then have failed sooner.  

I think I used the analogy before of a car crash, you don't really die from a car crash you die from injuries such as massive blood loss leading to heart failure or lack of O2 to brain, or other things.

 

@rjwooll I think the "excess deaths" may for a while go negative (meaning we have less deaths than an average year" but people who've failed to seek medical diagnosis or not been seen in the normal ways (telephone consultations etc) let alone delays to actual treatments may mean we later on see "excess deaths" from non-COVID-19 patients, anything that could be fatal such as cancers.

[Kimbers]

And people are still dying of it after having had it months ago. Internal scarring in the lungs and organ failure brought on by the Virus is a very real possibility.