UK Politics: Life in the Johnsonian Dystopia

[ljkeane]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

If you said to the average British person that they can leave lockdown and go where they like on the island of Britain (or even the islands of both Britain and Ireland, as this would have to be joint effort because of the RoI-NI border) but they wouldn't be able to travel abroad for 2 years (or even 3-4), they'd probably take that in a heartbeat right now. We're lucky in that respect.

Would they bollocks. I think you're vastly overestimating the appetite for very restrictive measures.

No international travel would have a very significant impact on the jobs of a lot of people and you're telling a lot more people with family abroad they won't see their family in person for years. On top of that I don't think a large proportion of people would be ok with no leisure travel abroad for 3 or 4 years. I'm pretty sure closing borders for years isn't going to happen.

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In countries with land borders, yes, but in countries which are islands and where everyone has to fly in or take one single rail connection (which can be shut down), no, you can seal off those countries rather easily.

If you said to the average British person that they can leave lockdown and go where they like on the island of Britain (or even the islands of both Britain and Ireland, as this would have to be joint effort because of the RoI-NI border) but they wouldn't be able to travel abroad for 2 years (or even 3-4), they'd probably take that in a heartbeat right now. We're lucky in that respect.

But it wouldn't be just that. You'd also have to tell the average British person that there would be dramatically fewer imports and exports. Because you'd need to have extremely strict controls in place to ensure that the airplane and dock workers aren't infected by the crews of the planes and boats. Maybe the UK can produce all the true necessities on its own (I don't know), but how much is quality of life impacted by those restrictions? And how much does the economy stagnate with so little international trade for so long?

You're also cutting off the average British person from in-person contact with any friends or relatives who live abroad for years at a time. Or telling them that once they leave they can't come back. Or setting up the infrastructure for a massive, mandatory quarantine zone for people coming into the country.

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In countries with land borders, yes, but in countries which are islands and where everyone has to fly in or take one single rail connection (which can be shut down), no, you can seal off those countries rather easily.

If you said to the average British person that they can leave lockdown and go where they like on the island of Britain (or even the islands of both Britain and Ireland, as this would have to be joint effort because of the RoI-NI border) but they wouldn't be able to travel abroad for 2 years (or even 3-4), they'd probably take that in a heartbeat right now. We're lucky in that respect.

What about the people coming into the country? Is everyone checked? What about people coming in trucks illegally? 
 

it’s impossible to keep the disease out long term 

[dog-days]

Increasingly I'm wondering what's going to happen with the fruit and veg harvest. Germany has decided to import farm workers. Whether Britain tries to bring in farm workers from abroad or recruit from amongst the unemployed British, that doesn't really matter - at least, not compared to the whole system of fruit picking that often involves living in caravans or other crowded accommodation. The ideal environment for Coronavirus to spread. Even with a British workforce, many would be living in cities a long distance from the farms that need help. They'd need accommodation, or minibus transport, or else government subsidies to drive themselves out to the farms everyday, assuming most had a car. 

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Maybe the UK can produce all the true necessities on its own (I don't know)

By way of bearing this statement out, around 52% of UK food is imported. It would be pretty agonizing to get us back to 100%, even over a number of years assuming multiple innovations in food production. 

[A wilding]

As for the fruit and veg harvest: we have had this discussion before, when Brexit was the reason that the harvest might not get picked.

I think that the consensus even then was that enough UK people would never be found to travel across the country to do seasonal on site work like that for the minimum wage. Even without the issue of the high risk of catching covid-19.

[dog-days]

10 minutes ago, A wilding said:

As for the fruit and veg harvest: we have had this discussion before, when Brexit was the reason that the harvest might not get picked.

I think that the consensus even then was that enough UK people would never be found to travel across the country to do seasonal on site work like that for the minimum wage. Even without the issue of the high risk of catching covid-19.

The trouble now is that a lot of the countries we'd import fresh fruit and veg from are also in the midst of the Covid crisis. So I'm not sure to what extent the option of leaving stuff to rot in the ground and giving government compensation to the farmers/leaving them to go out of business is viable.  

ETA: I suppose one option would be to import foreign workers - should any be found - distribute them around the farms, but with pretty Draconian restrictions. Sounds miserable though.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

32 minutes ago, dog-days said:

Increasingly I'm wondering what's going to happen with the fruit and veg harvest. Germany has decided to import farm workers. Whether Britain tries to bring in farm workers from abroad or recruit from amongst the unemployed British, that doesn't really matter - at least, not compared to the whole system of fruit picking that often involves living in caravans or other crowded accommodation. The ideal environment for Coronavirus to spread. Even with a British workforce, many would be living in cities a long distance from the farms that need help. They'd need accommodation, or minibus transport, or else government subsidies to drive themselves out to the farms everyday, assuming most had a car. 

That's however just a fraction of the usual numbers of farm workers, and so not really sufficient. And the additional precautions and hurdles make it particularly tough for smaller farms.

Saw a TV bit the other day, one of the big veggie/fruit farmers, he said, he basically has to charter a plane to fly them in, then he has to arrange different lodgings than usual (less crowded) and keep them away from the town folk basically. Set up small shops for them to buy stuff, instead of htem just going to the next super market.

He also has fields in Spain, where the restrictions (physical distance between workers) means they have less there, and also with them not being able to work/pick fruits at full capacity, with a lot of it ending up unpicked.

I kinda wanted to call me auntie and ask how they are doing, they might be in a somewhat better position as they are milk farmers, and I guess just plowing through the fields with a farm machine is less of a hassle than having to have farm hands actually picking fruits.

 

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Zoë Sumra said:

Don't tempt me...

I think you can legitimately say now that a police officer told you that you should do it.

[BigFatCoward]

5 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think you can legitimately say now that a police officer told you that you should do it.

It was a lawful order. 

[Werthead]

For the second day in a row the British daily death toll is higher than either Italy or Spain's worst days and we're apparently still two weeks from the peak. It looks like it's going to get pretty bad. Maybe that earlier study predicting 60,000+ deaths wasn't so unfeasible after all. I suspect the post-virus analysis is going to be pretty damning about the early handling of the crisis when we had a clear window to act but failed to do so.

1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

Would they bollocks. I think you're vastly overestimating the appetite for very restrictive measures.

No international travel would have a very significant impact on the jobs of a lot of people and you're telling a lot more people with family abroad they won't see their family in person for years. On top of that I don't think a large proportion of people would be ok with no leisure travel abroad for 3 or 4 years. I'm pretty sure closing borders for years isn't going to happen.

Yes, the attitude of a small number of British people would be problematic. However, I think the overwhelming majority would be fine with it (not to mention the huge number of people in this country far too poor to take regular trips abroad anyway).

I mean, the alternative is that we have the current level of lockdown for months anyway, come out of it, then go back into it again when another outbreak takes place and rinse repeat for two years and maybe more until a vaccine is widely distributed, during which time people won't be getting to go abroad anyway.

1 hour ago, Fez said:

But it wouldn't be just that. You'd also have to tell the average British person that there would be dramatically fewer imports and exports. Because you'd need to have extremely strict controls in place to ensure that the airplane and dock workers aren't infected by the crews of the planes and boats. Maybe the UK can produce all the true necessities on its own (I don't know), but how much is quality of life impacted by those restrictions? And how much does the economy stagnate with so little international trade for so long?

That's a key problem, you wouldn't be sealing off all of Britain forever more, you'd only be stopping all non-essential travel in and out of the country (so 100% of holiday-goers and probably 99% of business travel). Cargo and supplies would still need to come in and go out to other countries (especially if Britain quashed the virus and other countries didn't, so we could then export aid to other countries at scale) as normal and there would be a risk of contamination that way. This would have to be managed. It's hardly impractical to do so.

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You're also cutting off the average British person from in-person contact with any friends or relatives who live abroad for years at a time. Or telling them that once they leave they can't come back. Or setting up the infrastructure for a massive, mandatory quarantine zone for people coming into the country.

 

Pretty much, yes. I have family overseas whom I wouldn't be able to see for 18-24 months. Not five or ten years, which is what you're making it sound like. It's not ideal but it's hardly unbearable.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

What about the people coming into the country? Is everyone checked? What about people coming in trucks illegally?  

With the number of people coming into and out of the country reduced, people coming in trucks or on boats illegally would find it harder to do so. But yes, that would be a risk.

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it’s impossible to keep the disease out long term 

 

It's difficult to keep out the disease long term, but not impossible. What will be interesting is seeing how those countries trying to do exactly that fare.

What is clear is that pursuing short-term herd immunity is also impossible and that going in and out of lockdown for the next several years is also impossible.

[ljkeane]

7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, the attitude of a small number of British people would be problematic. However, I think the overwhelming majority would be fine with it (not to mention the huge number of people in this country far too poor to take regular trips abroad anyway).

I think you're taking your own attitude and assuming a similar opinion is held by the majority of people. To put it lightly I think you're very wrong.

ETA: And just to be clear I definitely wouldn't support closing the UK's borders for years. It would cripple huge sectors of the economy and I'm extremely dubious it would work.

[DaveSumm]

Day four of the official U.K. numbers not tallying. Day four of nobody seeming to give a shit. The total cases today minus the total yesterday does not equal the number they’ve reported. I suppose a question from the media at the press conference is too much to ask.

[ljkeane]

9 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Day four of the official U.K. numbers not tallying. Day four of nobody seeming to give a shit. The total cases today minus the total yesterday does not equal the number they’ve reported. I suppose a question from the media at the press conference is too much to ask.

I can't actually see where you're getting yesterdays figures from on the government site and I can't remember what it was off the top of my head but if you look at the testing statistics they're clearly testing a lot of people multiple times so perhaps that changes the results? There's also something there today about swab testing for key workers so perhaps they've gone back and added these to the previous results.

 

[williamjm]

52 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Day four of the official U.K. numbers not tallying. Day four of nobody seeming to give a shit. The total cases today minus the total yesterday does not equal the number they’ve reported. I suppose a question from the media at the press conference is too much to ask.

I thought this analysis was interesting about the figures for deaths:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/reconciling-covid-19-death-data-in-the-uk/

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What makes tracking up to date daily death data particularly tricky is that counts get revised daily. When the latest number of deaths are announced, numbers for all previous days are revised upwards with the most recent days often given the large adjustment. 

For example, the NHS announced that a further 828 people, who tested positive for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in hospitals in England to 6,483 (April 8th). You might think that this means that 828 people died the day before, but this isn’t what is reported. 

The data shows how the 828 deaths on the 8th of April are distributed amongst the previous days.

 

They don't discuss the figures for cases but I wonder if something similar is happening there.

[The Sunland Lord]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’m sorry to hear that but it doesn’t change fact that it’s not just going to ‘go away’

Easier to say rather than suffer.

[Which Tyler]

25 minutes ago, williamjm said:

They don't discuss the figures for cases but I wonder if something similar is happening there.

The pretty much said today that they do.

The get the number for "tested positive" on the day that the lab results are reported, those results cover several days in which patients were swabbed. As with most medical tests, there's a delay between the test being performed, and the results known. We're getting announcements on the results known today, but they go into the figures for the day the patient underwent testing.

Thanks why most places do a "rolling X days" forntheir graphs, which takes out the numbers jumping approved the place, and this changing of previous day's numbers.

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, The Sunland Lord said:

Easier to say rather than suffer.

I have a young family, I have numerous elderly relatives with health issues who are highly at risk. 

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

I thought this analysis was interesting about the figures for deaths:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/reconciling-covid-19-death-data-in-the-uk/

They don't discuss the figures for cases but I wonder if something similar is happening there.

This is another issue I’ve been trying to wrap my head around, but not the same issue I was talking about. With regard to the article, the part I don’t understand is surely the updated figures from NHS England are fed back into the total that PHE provides? Let’s pretend there’s 5 days that we’re dealing with. Day 1, one person dies. But the death isn’t processed until Day 3, and so on Day 1 they announce no deaths. On Day 3, they announce (say) five deaths, but also they adjust their figure for Day 1 up to one death. Then the DHSC must announce a total of 6 deaths? The only conclusion I can come to based on those graphs is that the government figure for deaths is actually “we added up all the deaths we knew about on each individual day, and the total is X” (but don’t ask about a bunch more that came to light). That can’t be right? That makes the statement as it’s written in the DHSC tweet a lie.

My issue with the other figures is this: yesterday they announced 65,077 people had tested positive so far. Today, they announced 73,758. The difference being 8,681. But they’ve started declaring that difference as a separate figure, which according to them is 5,706. There is a footnote that says they’ve started including commercial swab testing, and that had they not included these figures, the difference would be 5,195. Neither of those numbers is 8,681.

That’s just one example, the total people tested also doesn’t align. I’m sure there is some reasoning behind it, but it’s frustrating for them to say “look, here’s the numbers, they don’t add up but trust us” with no explanation. 

[DaveSumm]

48 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

My issue with the other figures is this: yesterday they announced 65,077 people had tested positive so far. Today, they announced 73,758. The difference being 8,681. But they’ve started declaring that difference as a separate figure, which according to them is 5,706. There is a footnote that says they’ve started including commercial swab testing, and that had they not included these figures, the difference would be 5,195. Neither of those numbers is 8,681.

That’s just one example, the total people tested also doesn’t align. I’m sure there is some reasoning behind it, but it’s frustrating for them to say “look, here’s the numbers, they don’t add up but trust us” with no explanation. 

OK, it turns out the one particular example I used is explained by the key worker testing: they just bundled the back log of those unreported tests onto today, so all 3000 odd were attributed to one day. BUT the daily people tested figure still doesn’t make sense.

[dog-days]

Had we gone down the other Trouser of Time, this would definitely be an April Fool.