Asian Coronavirus Outbreak

[cantagril]

..........
Having said that I still don't think much of this Covid19 nonsense other than that it is simply a more aggressive form of just another virus with a unique set of hosts it favours.
Nonsense? ...or common sense?
Weather people should take drugs or note, make decisions over their lives is really up to them, no matter how bad we think the consequences may be. As long as they do not subject their affects on other people. So in my book, people who can't control their drink and become aggressive and violant are the sh!ts of the world.
I wonder if you consider that refusing to wear a mask/distance/quarantine also constitutes being a shit
Wrt your brother-in-law the fact that he subjected his love ones to suffering may be perceived as bad but at least he lived the life the way he wanted. I feel you are being too hard on him.
He's dead, so his story is over, no matter how he chose to write it. The suffering he caused to people he supposedly cared for is a different subject. I would hazard that his wife and children might surprise you in not sharing your leniency.
It is better to live a good short life than a miserable long one with weakness and regret. Just my tuppence.

As I suggested in my earlier post, had he dropped dead of a heart attack it would have been a "cleaner" end and altogether less harmful to his family; they certainly did love him even if he didn't love them enough to live on for them when he could have.

 

[Atilla]

As I suggested in my earlier post, had he dropped dead of a heart attack it would have been a "cleaner" end and altogether less harmful to his family; they certainly did love him even if he didn't love them enough to live on for them when he could have.

Indeed it is difficult to please most people let alone everyone. Each to their own.

Wrt your Nonsense? ...or common sense? comment, I feel Covid19 is what it is. Our politician's response along with people is the nonsense. Locking people into houses with only one hour exercise doesn't seem so wise now when we know one is more likely to catch the bug indoors than outdoors.

Or releasing people with Covid19 out of hospitals and back to care homes without due care given to those most vulnerable.

Or allowing people into the country from infectious areas without checks until way too late. Not learning from other countries experience like Italy or Spain.

Not making masks mandatory at the start of the pandemic but doing so after stats start improving back to baseline is more nonsense imo.

Catalogue of nonsenses coming from our elected leaders, forecasters and scientists. i.e. Without any evidence stating asymptomatic transmission is still possible. What a load of tosh is that about?

One of my friends recently had a tooth ache and dentist wouldn't allow visit because of a rise in temperature. It subsequently turned out to be an abscess and so they had to endure pain and suffering simply out of Covid19 fear. GP prescribed antibiotics and they are now feeling better. I'm sure there are many more nonsense stories like that plaguing the nation.

I just find our responses have been driven by false assumptions and FEAR induced by our elected leaders avoiding risk.

Accepting the risk and building contingency would have been better than trying to avoid risk at great cost but simply kicking can down the road. Covid19 hasn't been defeated, deaths not avoided (our stats are higher than most other nations), even if we do have a vaccine much like other bugs, Covid19 will be with us for quite some time to come.

So in my book, poor leadership and much nonsense has prevailed.

 

[cantagril]

Indeed it is difficult to please most people let alone everyone. Each to their own.

Wrt your Nonsense? ...or common sense? comment, I feel Covid19 is what it is. Our politician's response along with people is the nonsense. Locking people into houses with only one hour exercise doesn't seem so wise now when we know one is more likely to catch the bug indoors than outdoors.

Or releasing people with Covid19 out of hospitals and back to care homes without due care given to those most vulnerable.

Or allowing people into the country from infectious areas without checks until way too late. Not learning from other countries experience like Italy or Spain.

Not making masks mandatory at the start of the pandemic but doing so after stats start improving back to baseline is more nonsense imo.

Catalogue of nonsenses coming from our elected leaders, forecasters and scientists. i.e. Without any evidence stating asymptomatic transmission is still possible. What a load of tosh is that about?

One of my friends recently had a tooth ache and dentist wouldn't allow visit because of a rise in temperature. It subsequently turned out to be an abscess and so they had to endure pain and suffering simply out of Covid19 fear. GP prescribed antibiotics and they are now feeling better. I'm sure there are many more nonsense stories like that plaguing the nation.

I just find our responses have been driven by false assumptions and FEAR induced by our elected leaders avoiding risk.

Accepting the risk and building contingency would have been better than trying to avoid risk at great cost but simply kicking can down the road. Covid19 hasn't been defeated, deaths not avoided (our stats are higher than most other nations), even if we do have a vaccine much like other bugs, Covid19 will be with us for quite some time to come.

So in my book, poor leadership and much nonsense has prevailed.

I think that we are of one mind in that our government is no better than most others and sometimes /often worse. That said, as we have no cultural memory of the last Great Plague (Spanish Flu) everybody is in more or less the same boat...i.e making up the rules as we go along.

I concur that Boris is an idiot but he's in exceptionally good company around the world. It's worth remembering that in our grand Mother of Parliaments democratic system, we neither dragoon people into representing us, nor do we force others to choose them, so ultimately the road we selected led us here.

To my mind, the whole farce has and still is being managed in the absurdist tradition and in the final analysis it is up to the citizenry to make their own choices. Personally, I'm considerably diverted by the apparent mass suspension of critical faculties and disbelief. What has happened to "Don't Believe everything you read in the newspapers" / "All politicians are liars"/ "Business people are self-serving mercenaries" etc etc. ? It seems to me that the proletariat* (of the western world at least) appears to think that the fiction factory that is Social Media is a fine and reliable resource. I would have hoped that generally speaking, us trader folk, whether we be whales or minnows, have sufficient common sense not to base our trades on the dross of dubious analysts and charlatans. This is of course, completely in vain as a cursory reading of some of the threads here in this bright and beautiful forum show that a fair number of members' grasp of reality is pretty tenuous. Alack and alas, this state of affairs is reflected out there in the the real world.

I make my own decisions and choices, both here and out there. I have kept away from people for a few months, not because of a government directive but because I know how viruses in generally work and that with my long since expired Best Before date immune system, I would have to be unusually stupid to frolic with the patrons of Wetherspoon's - my chances of recovering from the virus being approximately fuck all. My remaining neurones have led me to think that keeping to myself won't do me any harm and might save my life. Rightly or wrongly, all I can say is that I'm still here.

So, this New Normal that is beginning to take shape is imho a long way from a Nazi or Stalinist model. Whether we are encouraged or forced to modify our behaviour, is neither here nor there as the ultimate arbiter has to be whether one lives or dies. As hoaxes go, we are encouraged to decide if we're in the "the government is lying and far less than 41k people have died of it" camp or "the government is lying and far more than 41k people have died" and that, Watson, is the biggest hoax of all. There simply is no absolute truth, or right, or wrong but a shadowy landscape of opinions and perspectives that we all have to navigate and paths we think we should tread.

The best advice I can offer is straight from trader world in the shape of the acronym DYOFR - Do Your Own Fucking Research.

* not just the proletariat but many who can read and write and have actually been to school. Gaudeamus igitur.

 

[timsk]

Hi cant',
I could comment on all of your well written and thought provoking post (oh dear, there I go again!), but, after a few [cough] lunchtime drinks, perhaps it's best that I limit myself to these two . . .

. . .This is of course, completely in vain as a cursory reading of some of the threads here in this bright and beautiful forum show that a fair number of members' grasp of reality is pretty tenuous. . .

Being paranoid - like what I is, guv', I immediately assumed you're talking about me! Be that as it may, given what you go on to write, (quoted below), the mix of opinions expressed here on T2W (and elsewhere), is completely understandable - is it not?

. . . As hoaxes go, we are encouraged to decide if we're in the "the government is lying and far less than 41k people have died of it" camp or "the government is lying and far more than 41k people have died" and that, Watson, is the biggest hoax of all. There simply is no absolute truth, or right, or wrong but a shadowy landscape of opinions and perspectives that we all have to navigate and paths we think we should tread. . .

I disagree, forgive the repetition, but there absolutely is an absolute truth, it's just that the government have a clear and obvious interest in hiding it from us and causing the very confusion that you allude to. So, what is the absolute truth? That's a matter of opinion of course, but I subscribe to new_trader's post #2,411 and back this up with Lord Sumption's latest article: Britons know a rudderless ship when they see one
Tim.

 

[cantagril]

Hi cant',
I could comment on all of your well written and thought provoking post (oh dear, there I go again!), but, after a few [cough] lunchtime drinks, perhaps it's best that I limit myself to these two . . .

Being paranoid - like what I is, guv', I immediately assumed you're talking about me!
Sorry to disappoint you but your paranoia has misled you. OTOH, you will shortly be receiving copies of the compromising photos of you and that goat and we can discuss terms then.
Be that as it may, given what you go on to write, (quoted below), the mix of opinions expressed here on T2W (and elsewhere), is completely understandable - is it not? Yerst, but I did think we might have been better than that.

I disagree, forgive the repetition, but there absolutely is an absolute truth, it's just that the government have a clear and obvious interest in hiding it from us and causing the very confusion that you allude to. So, what is the absolute truth? That's a matter of opinion of course, but I subscribe to new_trader's post #2,411 and back this up with Lord Sumption's latest article: Britons know a rudderless ship when they see one

I regret to say that I disagree with both Lord New Trader and Mr Sumption. NT's wholesale lift of the Australian article made some good points but was obviously written by somebody who was too lazy to check his own facts and DHOFR rather than trot out other hacks' well-worn shock-horror-conspiracy fables. A clue as to the calibre of this journo might be in his statement:
"Until we are entrusted with the knowledge of how many are the results of tests on people who show no symptoms, they serve only to strike terror into the innumerate." Ummm...so if you 'd be terrified because you can't count?? Interesting, I would have thought that being illiterate would be the thing preventing you from reading the horror stories and working out all by yourself just like a grown-up that the stats were in fact,missing...
my view here is as an ex-antipodean journalist with some personal experience in scribbling matters.

As for Sumption: ignoring his gumption in waiting out the quarantine by cunningly staying in France until it's lifted, I have to say that I find some of the things he says to be irredeemably disingenuous. The whole point about "flattening the curve" as was hammered day after bloody day a few months back was precisely so that people would be able to pick up the threads of their lives in an environment where the NHS was better prepared and people behaved more responsibly - both of these are debatable but he himself goes on to say "The infection rate among the old has actually declined. This is exactly what ought to be happening. People in both groups are making rational risk assessments of their own. The young and healthy, for whom the symptoms are mild and the risk of death negligible, are getting on with their lives and making up for the weeks in which they were cruelly cooped up like battery hens." Well, yeah. ...and he thinks that somehow that wasn't supposed to happen and this is all a huge surprise?? Ummm, I think you've found a kindred spirit in Jonno and perhaps he too should go easy on the claret at dindins.

I consider one of his many problems to be that having been one of yer top judges, his thinking is completely bolloxed by the fair and reasonable garbage of the man on the Clapham omnibus. In the real real world, fairness and reasonableness hold as much sway as truth and righteousness and the idea that "Britons know a rudderless ship when they see one" somehow make them canny and perspicacious is IMO rather akin to saying that my child is a genius because (aged 12) he can understand how to open the fridge....I think not.

...and returning to the opinion theme: I suggest that the Big Bang Theory is possibly a better source of material for some things than one might expect and certainly better than antisocial media.

...and to end with mangled Mulder quote: A truth is out there.

 

[timsk]

Hi cant',
I've read and re-read your comments about Lord Sumption and I'm afraid I don't understand your point or what you find disingenuous about his comments. Doubtless I'm being thick - rather than a poor explanation on your part!

. . .Ummm...so if you 'd be terrified because you can't count?? Interesting, I would have thought that being illiterate would be the thing preventing you from reading the horror stories and working out all by yourself just like a grown-up that the stats were in fact,missing...

Afraid not, striking terror into the innumerate is exactly right. Day after day after day we've been given rising figures on infection rates and the death toll. It's not surprising that in the minds of most people who don't have the time or inclination to study the actual figures supplied by ONS and others - they think the disease is far worse than it actually is. Hence the current fuss about kids returning to school - even though only six youngsters under the age of 15 have died from the disease. In fact, most people the world over think the disease has killed many times the actual number that it has - check out this vid' - skip to three minutes in if you don't want to watch the whole thing. . .

...and to end with mangled Mulder quote: A truth is out there.

The truth is out there and, for my money, this is pretty much it:

 

[cantagril]

Hi cant',
I've read and re-read your comments about Lord Sumption and I'm afraid I don't understand your point or what you find disingenuous about his comments. Doubtless I'm being thick - rather than a poor explanation on your part!
Not so Timsk! I'm a serial poor explainer - you should confer with my wife; she has a full dossier on this subject.
Afraid not, striking terror into the innumerate is exactly right. Day after day after day we've been given rising figures on infection rates and the death toll. It's not surprising that in the minds of most people who don't have the time or inclination to study the actual figures supplied by ONS and others - they think the disease is far worse than it actually is.
Well yeah...but if they ain't reading them it hardly matters that they can't count either.
Hence the current fuss about kids returning to school - even though only six youngsters under the age of 15 have died from the disease. In fact, most people the world over think the disease has killed many times the actual number that it has - check out this vid' - skip to three minutes in if you don't want to watch the whole thing. . .
Well...I certainly didn't want to watch the whole thing and that the masses of the US are as ignorant as they are doesn't surprise me at all for reasons that I've dealt with earlier. They are unfortunately, not unique and ignorance is pretty much a world-wide phenomenon responsible for the deaths of many millions. Covid-19 is completely insignificant in real terms when compared with any decent historical plague.

The truth is out there and, for my money, this is pretty much it:

We live in different bits of the multiverse and I envy your certainty that the greater scheme makes sense or that there is an absolute truth. In my world it is completely normal that the vast majority of the population chooses to believe complete cobblers, opting for ignorance and self-destruction and I am unsurprised by any of the pronouncements on social or main stream media. Cats miaow, dogs bark and the media does what it does...i.e lies, distorts facts and makes stuff up on slow news days. I can't bring myself to repeat my research mantra yet again but truly, ignorance is a choice and if that particularly lack of knowledge is potentially fatal then the ignorant may die. In my profile you will see the following quotation "Ignorance looks like stupidity, stupidity looks like ignorance - wilful ignorance IS stupidity".

" And that's all I have to say about that"

 

[Pat494]

I think I may be right in saying that the number of virus deaths will make little difference to the steady population growth on the planet. Maybe the next plague will be a bit stronger and cull the numbers more significantly ?
So overall not much to worry about. The politicians are making their usual fuss to get attention. As they and billionaires seem to shrug off the virus, Boris and the Brazilian leader, perhaps they have a special source of medicine all to themselves.

 

[cantagril]

I think I may be right in saying that the number of virus deaths will make little difference to the steady population growth on the planet. Maybe the next plague will be a bit stronger and cull the numbers more significantly ?

Here you are Pat - just what the doctor ordered:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-virus-strain-that-s-10-times-more-infectious

 

[Pat494]

Good to see you back Canta. I was beginning to fear the worst. No sign of life from CV though ???

 

[cantagril]

Good to see you back Canta. I was beginning to fear the worst. No sign of life from CV though ???

The worst being that I might rejoin the undead Brexit thread? Nah, we'll begin to see the fall-out in a few years when we've replaced all those horrid European migrants with charming people from warmer places with utterly incompatible cultures.

CV is alive and coughing but mostly contributing pith and wisdom to the footsie scalper's thread....when he's not sticking it to JJ3... or FiboTrader - I've given up looking at that one as it seems to combine HolyGrail/ ForumLLuzers/ TheBramble/ Soco et al in one glorious mess of pottage. Too difficult to swallow for my tastes and I've had it on ignore for quite a while.

 

[Pat494]

I shopped at Tesco yesterday and was shocked to see how many young children there were WITHOUT masks. All the adults had masks but not the children ! Criminally careless of their parents imho.. It's obligatory.

 

[cantagril]

I shopped at Tesco yesterday and was shocked to see how many young children there were WITHOUT masks. All the adults had masks but not the children ! Criminally careless of their parents imho.. It's obligatory.

I sort of agree but possibly not for the same reasons as you. Unless you live in Manchester or amid one of the other resurgent clusters, then the stats lean very much toward risk being almost insignificant.....there is still some degree for risk but not enough perceived risk to keep people behaving in a way they don't want to.

As I understand it, wearing a face covering does almost nothing to protect the wearer and a meaningful but still modest amount to protect other people. As a sense of civic responsibility and courtesy tend to fall by the wayside in the cities, it's hardly surprising that an awful lot of people think that they are no longer valid reasons to keep putting the masks and distancing, especially when the daily death rate can be counted on the fingers of one only slightly mutated hand....So,
not criminal but rather discourteous.

...watch that same space when there's a spike and sphincter-mode kicks in again - you'll see that mask wearing suddenly gets more popular.

BTW: For the first time since March I met up with a chum in the Dog and Leper for a preprandial and realised that out of the 30 odd patrons present, I was one of only 5 wearing a mask. We were so uncomfortable about this that we sat outside in a bit of the car-park (optimistically described as the "garden") and my friend, a voluble Italian recently arrived from Milan, spent a quite a bit of time wondering at the bravery of the locals and how things were just a tad different back home.

Meanwhile, in Spain.....

 

[new_trader]

I shopped at Tesco yesterday and was shocked to see how many young children there were WITHOUT masks. All the adults had masks but not the children ! Criminally careless of their parents imho.. It's obligatory.

☝ A perfect example of Government brainwashing....and a Corona Karen.

The future is bleak...

 

[cantagril]

☝ A perfect example of Government brainwashing....and a Corona Karen.

The future is bleak...

The Karen wakes ....sounds like there's a sci-fi/end-of-the-world story in there

 

[timsk]

If you were to compile a list of the top ten causes of death in England & Wales - where would you put Covid? In the top five, surely? I think most people would put it in the top three, possibly behind cancer and heart disease. Actually, the latest ONS stats for July show it's in 8th place: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales: July 2020

Can any of you who support mask wearing and other restrictions please explain to me why such draconian measures are being imposed on us, supposedly to protect us, from a disease that is so far down the list (and falling) - when there aren't similar measures for any of the first seven causes of death? Also, note that #9 on the list is Influenza and Pneumonia. I'd be inclined to put it above Covid on the grounds that amongst its many failings the government admits it can't count and, additionally, that people who die - for example in road traffic accidents - are recorded as having died from Covid if they've tested positive for it within the last three weeks.
Tim.

 

[David Knight]

☝ A perfect example of Government brainwashing....and a Corona Karen.

The future is bleak...

If people were genuinely wearing masks for health reasons, would they have waited for the designated day where they believed that it is mandatory? The threat of a (non enforcable) fine wouldn't be a factor, would it?

There's never been a better time to be an anti human sociopath than now. Tyranny on a global scale and no more invading armies to fend off, just the small matter of 7.5 billion people to potentially deal with.

Now we know what globalism really means. Not too suprising when you look at the usual suspects who created and run it.

Wearing a mask is not a law, it's a government guideline.
Fines are unenforcable

Possibly, at some point, some laws, for some people, will be too tyrannical to comply with

 

[barjon]

If you were to compile a list of the top ten causes of death in England & Wales - where would you put Covid? In the top five, surely? I think most people would put it in the top three, possibly behind cancer and heart disease. Actually, the latest ONS stats for July show it's in 8th place: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales: July 2020

Can any of you who support mask wearing and other restrictions please explain to me why such draconian measures are being imposed on us, supposedly to protect us, from a disease that is so far down the list (and falling) - when there aren't similar measures for any of the first seven causes of death? Also, note that #9 on the list is Influenza and Pneumonia. I'd be inclined to put it above Covid on the grounds that amongst its many failings the government admits it can't count and, additionally, that people who die - for example in road traffic accidents - are recorded as having died from Covid if they've tested positive for it within the last three weeks.
Tim.

Perhaps it’s more than an outside possibility that it’s only in eighth place because of th3 measures we have been taking to keep it at bay. Also experience has shown that the quicker you nip it in the bud - a la New Zealand - the better. Hence the latest moves.

At some point, however, there has to be a balancing between the risk - which is only fatally significant for old codgers like me - and economic disaster. In my view he Government should try to get the country back to “normality” whilst explaining the risk to the vulnerable, giving them advice, support where necessary and leaving it to them to take care of themselves until a vaccine can be provided. So far as we are concerned we're happy to take the risk of mixing with our friends who are of similar vintage to us and have, like us, kept themselves unexposed. Been ok with family, too, but when the kids go back to school that’ll change. We won’t be mixing with others, or crowds, or shopping ( long live click and collect) etc, etc. We will be standing to one side when we meet people on our walks, we will keep our distance when we eat out and we will elbow bump our greeting however much we’d prefer a hug. We expect it to stay like this until - if - a vaccine comes along. Thing is we don‘t need government edict to do all this and we see keeping ourself “safe” as our responsibility. If we chooose to do otherwise then we might die, but it’d be our own fault.

 

[Atilla]

In the spirit of free enterprise and capitalism, I would like there to be only advice and guidelines and each body with the information provided make their own risk assessments.

Shops say wearing masks are mandatory but they can't stop you. So as mentioned, we are wearing masks (me too) out of civic duty to comply and not receive snake-eyed death stares from my seniors.

I'd think we should be talking about locking up the likes of Sir Canta and Lord Baron on the Isle of Wight for their own safety.

Why imprison the 99.99% when we can simply take care of the 00.01%.

 

[cantagril]

In the spirit of free enterprise and capitalism, I would like there to be only advice and guidelines and each body with the information provided make their own risk assessments.
I read those first few words as "In the spirit of free entreprise and cannibalism..." I am almost reassured by your assessment of risk assessments.
Shops say wearing masks are mandatory but they can't stop you. So as mentioned, we are wearing masks (me too) out of civic duty to comply and not receive snake-eyed death stares from my seniors. Speak for yerself, the snake-eyed death stare is definitely an incentive - my mrs is skilled in the art.
I'd think we should be talking about locking up the likes of Sir Canta and Lord Baron on the Isle of Wight for their own safety.
IoW sounds appalling. I invoke the Geneva Convention and the Rights of Man and the European Directive on animal testing and insist on somewhere warmer. I rather fancy St Lucia.....am quite happy for the Baron to still go to the Isle of Wight.
Why imprison the 99.99% when we can simply take care of the 00.01%.

That's the real spirit! Sod free entreprise and capitalism - I always knew you were a closet fascist - just look after number one....oh, right, that mostly is capitalism.