Jump to content

UK Politics: Johnsons Hoaxy Yurt North of Hadrian's Wall


Tywin Manderly

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, lessthanluke said:

I think people(I definitely fit into this) find it hard to relate to something that they haven't seen any direct effects from aka the virus itself. So these are the people who are still going to the pubs. 

I think there's a strong element of truth here. I've been pretty hardcore on avoiding the virus but then I have a pre-existing health condition and one of my best friends (who's younger than me) contracted COVID in early March, before the lockdown, and gave me delightful blow-by-blow accounts of the symptoms that ensured no one in their right mind would want to contract it. Since then I've had several friends test positive for it (only one of whom developed relatively mild symptoms) and an ex's mother had it and was very ill with it.

That said, there is also something to be said for respecting the scientific method and the reporting. I've never seen, with my own eyes, the planet Neptune but I readily accept it exists based on the balance of evidence in support of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think there's a strong element of truth here. I've been pretty hardcore on avoiding the virus but then I have a pre-existing health condition and one of my best friends (who's younger than me) contracted COVID in early March, before the lockdown, and gave me delightful blow-by-blow accounts of the symptoms that ensured no one in their right mind would want to contract it. Since then I've had several friends test positive for it (only one of whom developed relatively mild symptoms) and an ex's mother had it and was very ill with it.

That said, there is also something to be said for respecting the scientific method and the reporting. I've never seen, with my own eyes, the planet Neptune but I readily accept it exists based on the balance of evidence in support of it.

Agreed on the latter also. This is why I still personally follow all the advice re masks, socialising, keeping my gym clean, safe etc. 

But that's the reason lots of people are just carrying on as normal imo. When 6 months into the pandemic you don't know anyone who's had it it's hard to relate to. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Agreed on the latter also. This is why I still personally follow all the advice re masks, socialising, keeping my gym clean, safe etc. 

But that's the reason lots of people are just carrying on as normal imo. When 6 months into the pandemic you don't know anyone who's had it it's hard to relate to. 

 

I think also as predicted when this started that there is a limited period of time when you can apply lockdown before the populace stop paying attention and the grip starts to slip. I think we have seen that point now, in fact much earlier.

Once cases and hospitalisations dropped dramatically and stayed low then it wouldn’t be long before people stopped being so strict. 

Plus there is the fact that if you aren’t in that vulnerable group then it almost certainly won’t be a problem for you.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Who in their right mind is going to pubs?

Oh, some people. Not me of course. But after being crammed up in the house for months with a small child, some people might find one night a week drinking with friends a very good idea indeed. They're wrong of course, it totally sucks. Especially now the pubs are actually quite clean and you're guaranteed a table and you order from your phone and the drinks come to you like magic. Doesn't appeal to me though. Other people. Morons. Must... Protect... Grandma...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think also as predicted when this started that there is a limited period of time when you can apply lockdown before the populace stop paying attention and the grip starts to slip. I think we have seen that point now, in fact much earlier.

Once cases and hospitalisations dropped dramatically and stayed low then it wouldn’t be long before people stopped being so strict. 

Plus there is the fact that if you aren’t in that vulnerable group then it almost certainly won’t be a problem for you.

 

I think the government itself enforced that moment on us, via their defence of Cummings.

There was very little flouting or even questioning of things beforehand, but then we were told that actually, the rules aren't rules after all, more like guidelines to be followed or rejected as you feel like.

That is the moment the populace stopped paying attention, and government has only themselves to blame. Which they've doubled down on with ever less consistent messaging

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

I think the government itself enforced that moment on us, via their defence of Cummings.

There was very little flouting or even questioning of things beforehand, butnthen we were told that actually, the rules aren't rules after all, more like guidelines to be followed or rejected as you feel like.

That is the moment the populace stopped paying attention, and government has into themselves to blame. Which they've doubled down on with ever less consistent messaging

Yeah I think a lot of people want that to be true. That nasty Cummings, it’s all his fault.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

I think the government itself enforced that moment on us, via their defence of Cummings.

There was very little flouting or even questioning of things beforehand, butnthen we were told that actually, the rules aren't rules after all, more like guidelines to be followed or rejected as you feel like.

That is the moment the populace stopped paying attention, and government has into themselves to blame. Which they've doubled down on with ever less consistent messaging

Yeah, I think thr moment was when the government told us breaking the rules made him a good parent, implying those who obeyed them were bad parents

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Pubs closing at 10 is just one more rule that makes little to no sense. Feels like it’s just random ideas being pull out of an arse shaped hat these days.

I'm guessing the idea is that as the night goes on and people get drunker their ability to social distance will deteriorate, but it does seem like a half-hearted attempt at reducing risks from pubs.

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It is messaging, but part of that is that they don't appear to have a strategy. 

At the start of this, I think we pretty much all understood the strategy. Protect the vunerable, keep the rate of infection low enough so that the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed. That strategy then went out the window pretty early, to be replaced by 'contain the virus at all costs', which didn't really make any sense, and was then also in direct conflict with the need to stop the economy tanking. 

Now it just seems to be wack-a-mole, jumping around trying random things to keep any spikes from happening, but without any sort of track and trace system in place. I honestly don't know what the long term goal is here, maybe it's just to keep things low going into Winter.

A clear strategy would make messaging a lot easier. We wouldn't need daily updates as to what we need to do or not do today, because we'd understand the grand plan. But there is no grand plan any more. Like everything else, we've jumped back and forth between strategies and never had the courage of our convictions in anything. 

It does feel like Boris switches from day to day between taking the virus seriously and encouraging everybody to get back to normal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah I think a lot of people want that to be true. That nasty Cummings, it’s all his fault.

That's not actually what Which Tyler said. The argument isn't actually about Cummings at all, it's about the government's tying itself into knots to try and make out that Cummings hadn't broken the rules. Or, if he had broken the rules, that breaking the rules wasn't actually that bad. As in many cases, the cover-up (or in this case, the after-the-fact justification) is worse than the initial transgression.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Liffguard said:

That's not actually what Which Tyler said. The argument isn't actually about Cummings at all, it's about the government's tying itself into knots to try and make out that Cummings hadn't broken the rules. Or, if he had broken the rules, that breaking the rules wasn't actually that bad. As in many cases, the cover-up (or in this case, the after-the-fact justification) is worse than the initial transgression.

Although, characterising Cummings as nasty is not entirely without justification.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I witnessed a general change in attitude to lockdown and social distancing after Bernard Castle Eye test.   It could I suppose have been coinsidence and nothing to do with the government saying to ok for one of them to break the rules and he did nothing wrong at all.  but what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As someone who was actively involved in monitoring public behavior the change after Barnard castle was minimal. And this is from someone who fucking hates him and would love to heap blame and scorn on the tories. There was a gradual decline from not great - pretty poor - appalling. People are arseholes. The problem was always the lack of consequences. The wishy washy messaging didn't help, but ignorance was the driver. Whether we came out of tighter restrictions too soon is unknowable, because a significant minority were not doing what they should have been to allow the return to normality to succeed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The urge to blame it all on the Cummings incident I’m sure makes some people feel good about themselves and helps to confirm all their little theories about the world... but it doesn’t really have any real basis in reality. Why are we getting spikes now, months after the whole thing? Why not afterwards? Answer is because it didn’t really have very much effect, other factors are much more important.

Also, we were in a lockdown, and we are .. or were.. coming out of a lockdown. You would expect the number of cases to spike. Pubs and restaurants opened, I know people are going back to the office, I’ve seen that the tubes are starting to get fuller, buses are fuller, ive seen shopping centres being crowded. Of course there is going to be a spike after that. 
 

And yeah, on top of that, I think the perception in a lot of people’s minds is that the virus is pretty much gone and they can go back to normal. A lot of that is poor messaging, but it’s also the consequence of easing of restrictions and a general awareness that cases and deaths were pretty minimal for a long time. 
 

I do not know what will happen now, I’ve seen quite a few people rail against the new restrictions in a way that wasn’t happening before. They think it’s bollocks. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best guess:

Covid has a long lead time and exponential growth starts slowly.

The rate of infection began to climb under the radar as more and more people started taking lockdown less and less seriously. Reopening of schools and universities will have boosted it substantially. With the general appetite to accept restrictions now far lower (fatigue, mixed messaging, and fraying trust in the government all being factors) and the test and trace system still risible, the rate of infection will continue to grow until things get sufficiently bad that enough people are scared or shocked into voluntarily isolating themselves. After that, who knows? But mass distribution of a vaccine sufficiently effective to make much difference is not going to happen this year.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Meanwhile in Brexit news.

I know, not really news. But it's always kinda amusing, when the Goverment eventually can't deny realities anymore, and admits to things, where the writing was on the wall for months.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

As someone who was actively involved in monitoring public behavior the change after Barnard castle was minimal. And this is from someone who fucking hates him and would love to heap blame and scorn on the tories. There was a gradual decline from not great - pretty poor - appalling. People are arseholes. The problem was always the lack of consequences. The wishy washy messaging didn't help, but ignorance was the driver. Whether we came out of tighter restrictions too soon is unknowable, because a significant minority were not doing what they should have been to allow the return to normality to succeed. 

I wonder if some people were using Dominic Cummings as an excuse for doing what they would have done anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

As someone who was actively involved in monitoring public behavior the change after Barnard castle was minimal. And this is from someone who fucking hates him and would love to heap blame and scorn on the tories. There was a gradual decline from not great - pretty poor - appalling. People are arseholes. The problem was always the lack of consequences. The wishy washy messaging didn't help, but ignorance was the driver. Whether we came out of tighter restrictions too soon is unknowable, because a significant minority were not doing what they should have been to allow the return to normality to succeed. 

I think the biggest driver is, was, and always will be fear. I was scared of this virus in March, and now I’m just mildly wary. People need to be scared again, and it’ll come around quick looking at today’s jump in positive cases. 

It’s odd to hear the government directly saying that people aren’t following the rules and that’s why cases are up. It seemed like a fairly obvious sequence to me, pubs opened back up and schools opened back up, and here we are. I’m amazed we managed to tread water for so long and have the numbers plateau as they did. People talk as if there’s some correct path that the government need to take, but maybe you just fundamentally can’t have this many things open. Something has to be sacrificed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cummings actions validated the lockdown breaches people were already planning to do, and weakened the influence health and other authorities might have had on discouraging such breaches. It didn't suddenly turn sensible people into idiots and have them go out en masse and expose themselves to risk.

Fear is the biggest driver. And at the moment the fear of authoritarian government restrictions on freedom for what is perceived no good reason, or very little benefit seems to be driving more behaviour than fear of the virus.

In some ways the recent new cluster here put a little bit of fear of the virus back into the country. Initially people thought going to level 3 in Auckland was overkill because of just 4 cases in a single family. But when it blew out to 100+ cases and a mini-superspreader event at a church, and 2 deaths in a single family with one of them being only 50 years old. That actually gave everyone except for the actual conspiracy nutters pause. But that's because we were coming from a base of zero cases for 100 days. Quite what might bring back the fear of the virus in a country that hasn't seen daily case numbers below 350 since mid-March and hasn't had daily deaths above 50 since early July is hard to guess. But today having the second highest daily confirmed case numbers since the pandemic began might start to do it. But how the death rate moves will be the real determinant of whether the second wave is taken seriously or not by the population as a whole.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...