Starmer calling for lockdown (Edited by GNHQ)

In the Asian flu pandemic of 57 only 3 of us in school didn't catch it. The schools were not closed down. I don't think anything else was either. I must be lucky as i have never had flu

growstuff ironically one of the highest (Thurrock) areas in Essex will be exempt from going into tier 2 along with Southend.

We need to keep as much of the country running as normally as possible whilst attempting to prevent hospitals becoming overwhelmed, and that is exactly what the PM is trying to do.

You mean like having parties and meeting friends when you're young? Not wearing a mask in public places? Just being "normal"?

Funnily enough, plenty of GNers are whinging about the behaviour of people other than themselves.

JenniferEccles

I still think the PM’s strategy is the way to go.

The numbers vary so much around the country that a national lockdown would not make sense at all.

Starmer of course just wants to come up with a different idea just for the sake of being different.

I did however like the suggestion from one poster on here that maybe his suggestion should be taken up, on the condition that he (Starmer ) copes with all the resultant flack when it doesn’t work !

We need to keep as much of the country running as normally as possible whilst attempting to prevent hospitals becoming overwhelmed, and that is exactly what the PM is trying to do.

How about us all getting behind him and supporting him rather than constantly whinging, when he is clearly doing his dammdest to help the country through this?

Are you Starmer's confidante? How do you know what he wants? Do the SAGE members just want to be different too? Or do you think there's a chance they might have a point?

Why do you thing the Conservative dominated Essex County Council wants to be placed in Tier 2? The level of infection in Essex is rising, but it's not particularly high.

What does the Daily Mail have to say about it?

sparklingsilver28

^EllanVannin - Trouble is, most politicians et al don't remember our last pandemic !^

Most unlikely to have been born in 1957/8. The generation experiencing it then made of sterner stuff having survived WW2.

Plenty of people alive in 1957/8 hadn't survived WW2. (I was one.) How did the war increase resilience to a pandemic anyway?

I still think the PM’s strategy is the way to go.

The numbers vary so much around the country that a national lockdown would not make sense at all.

Starmer of course just wants to come up with a different idea just for the sake of being different.

I did however like the suggestion from one poster on here that maybe his suggestion should be taken up, on the condition that he (Starmer ) copes with all the resultant flack when it doesn’t work !

We need to keep as much of the country running as normally as possible whilst attempting to prevent hospitals becoming overwhelmed, and that is exactly what the PM is trying to do.

How about us all getting behind him and supporting him rather than constantly whinging, when he is clearly doing his dammdest to help the country through this?

Dinahmo I believe there was discussion on a traffic light system similar to that in France, however and this is concerning, the number of colours is limiting and not as easily understood. 1, 2, 3 can continue onwards..4, 5 etc.

EllanVannin - Trouble is, most politicians et al don't remember our last pandemic !

Most unlikely to have been born in 1957/8. The generation experiencing it then made of sterner stuff having survived WW2.

railman

There's a fair bit of talk on here about coalition governments.

Perhaps we forget sometimes that during WW2 - that approach was our survival success, and the work of managing that success was shared equally between Attlee and Churchill.

I'm not sure that today's Tory Party has the bottle to make that a success, since it's more recent lurch to the far right of its own ideology.

I agree with you railman. I think Starmer would be signing his own political death warrant if he went into a coalition with this Johnson/Cummings led government, which isn't the slightest bit interested in co-operation or compromise.

Maybe Nick Clegg could have a word with Starmer about coalitions with the Tories!

I'm a bit confused about claims that the 1957-1958 influenza pandemic (Asian Flu) was deadlier than Covid-19. It 's not what the statistics suggest.

The case mortality rate in the UK was 0.3%. The case mortality rate for Covid-19 isn't known yet, but it's estimated to be between 0.5 and 1%. That figure will possibly go down as more younger people are infected and recover, but it's not going to be lower. An estimated 3% of cases of Asian Flu had complications, which is probably about the same as Covid-19.

33,000 people in the UK died from Asian Flu. That figure has already been exceeded for Covid-19 and will certainly increase.

A vaccine was found for Asian Flu, which helped prevent cases. It also causes bacterial infections, which were controlled with antibiotics.

There's a fair bit of talk on here about coalition governments.

Perhaps we forget sometimes that during WW2 - that approach was our survival success, and the work of managing that success was shared equally between Attlee and Churchill.

I'm not sure that today's Tory Party has the bottle to make that a success, since it's more recent lurch to the far right of its own ideology.

They don't need to remember the last pandemic EllenVannin.

They had the recommendations from Operation Cygnus in 2016, which they chose to ignore, and the 'Pandemic Planning' documents from 2013.

Most of us in business still have copies of those documents and guidance - none of which seems to have been followed.

Sparklefizz

^Sadly folk just do as they want because they are shown an appalling example - Dominic Cumming, Stanley Johnston, and Margaret What'shername to mention a few. This causes resentment.^

But people just use this as an excuse to justify what they want to do. Only idiots with no commonsense or responsibility would feel the urge to do the same. As another poster said yesterday, if you saw someone getting drunk and throwing themselves off a cliff, would you feel you had to do the same? Of course not.

Well said , I’ve always gone along with what you said, those you mentioned were totally out of order but because they broke the rules doesn’t mean to say we can follow suit, tit for tat, idiotic to think so no matter how fed up we all are

Dinahmo - did you mean this?

I do not understand why the local authorities have not been given more powers to take decisions as to what actions are taken.

Back when the world beating test, track and trace system was begun, it was in part handed over to Sercoi, and the "NHS" system was overseen by Dido Harding - famous for the data protection failures of "Talk Talk", where she was CEO, and who were later fined £400,000 for breach of data protection laws by the UK ICO.

I suspect asking a private sector business to run this system with no history or expertise in the area might be a major factor. Maybe they struggle with Excel spreadsheets too.

There are - or were - 134 Public Health Directors across the country, with the local knowledge, skills and assets who would have been able to do a much better job in April, and who should have been involved then. Many experts - such as Prof. John Ashton - were calling for their involvement.

But oh no, Boris & Tigger just had to opt for a private sector involvement - their success in implementing a half-baked system has to be congratulated.

That said - I agree with you - I don't understand why they did not involve the local public health bodies either. After all, that is a core part of their brief. It's worth checking out what Ceredigion council did in Wales too - a much more successful approach than the NHS/Serco scheme.

JillyBird - Like you, I also believed BJ capable and his buffooning a clever facade in order to dodge a question he had no wish to answer. I am sadly coming to the conclusion he is incapable of getting to grips with the fine detail of most issues - and probably ever so.

I read somewhere it likely he will resign in January 2021 after the final EU withdrawal achieved without a deal?

Trouble is, most politicians et al don't remember our last pandemic !
There was a totally different response to the 1957 pandemic, without the media hysteria, without government panic and the doctors weren't fearful.

Now we have all the " high emotional content ".
The huge global scale of coverage which is likened to the end of the world, capitalism, workplaces, high streets, tourism, traditional social interaction etc etc.

Evidence gathered from the 1957 pandemic ( Asian flu ) was that people remained stoical, calm, measured and accepting.
There was very little media coverage and nobody panicked if anyone nearby happened to sneeze, unlike now where it would be catastrophic if you heard a cough.

It's not even a " second surge ", it's the first one that never went away because with the population increase the virus can stick around for 2 years and not the one year that we saw with Asian flu, as not everyone isolated as you would/ should with just the common cold.

Sadly folk just do as they want because they are shown an appalling example - Dominic Cumming, Stanley Johnston, and Margaret What'shername to mention a few. This causes resentment.

But people just use this as an excuse to justify what they want to do. Only idiots with no commonsense or responsibility would feel the urge to do the same. As another poster said yesterday, if you saw someone getting drunk and throwing themselves off a cliff, would you feel you had to do the same? Of course not.

Thank you mamacaz

Very interesting comments here! I wonder how many of you are in Tier 1 compared to those of us in Tier 2? This crisis requires a consensus of all parties in parliament so I would support a coalition type approach so that fresh eyes and ideas could be pursued! I would fully support a circuit breaker in order to stop the idiots from putting the rest of us at risk and to give healthcare plus all key workers a break! We are in debt so a bit more won’t bake that much difference in the paying it back in the future !
Starmer talks sense, Mr Bumble has lost the plot!!

I think we need a 2 week circuit breaker.

My daughter is a secondary school teacher and she says it's incredibly stressful and she and other teachers don't feel at all safe. Teachers are not allowed to wear masks, students are lax and irresponsible at following rules and directions, and she gets home exhausted. She's a single parent with 2 children at different schools. There are frequent bubble quarantines in her own school and the children's schools, and she feels it is just a huge outbreak waiting to happen.

She is not going to risk bringing any of this to me as I am still shielding due to 9 different illnesses. I have not seen my grandchildren since last Xmas and am expecting to spend this coming Xmas on my own.

EllenVannin "Asian flu 1957/8 was a more deadlier strain than this pandemic we have now as globally, it killed 2-4million when we had a count of a world population of 3 billion compared to now, 2020 where it's 7.5 billion.
So bad was Asian flu that it only took 8 months to travel from Hong Kong to the UK."

Good to know the figures. I was 19, my YB eleven and mother 41, when all three had "Asian Flu". It was horrendous but fortunately all recovered. The young wife of my EB, married a few months, not so fortunate. The consequence of having had it is that I have never had flu since - neither have I ever had a flu jab. Varying medics believe it left some with an immunity - and interesting from the point of view of different strains over the years.

I also understand that the majority of deaths in the AF epidemic from a type of Pneumonia.

Lucca
"Genuinely don’t think it’s a question of political point scoring for Starmer or others to disagree with plans."

Actually, I agree with you, despite having used that expression in my own post.

Part of the article I mentioned :

Earlier this week I heard a woman from the Ribble Valley talking about lockdown. The Ribble Valley apparently has very low numbers of covid but falls within an area of severe lockdown.

I do not understand why the local authorities have not been given more powers to take decisions as to what actions are taken.

I live in France and so was checking the rules here. I'm sure that most of you are aware that there is a traffic light system here for the departments with green having the least numbers of people affected by the virus and consequently few rules. So far like England. But here there is a further category for those areas where the numbers are higher. This colour is purple/maroon. Originally just Nice and Marseilles fell within that category but Bordeaux and Paris were added and just recently Toulouse and Lyons. In these places the lockdown is very strict.

The other difference is that Prefectures have the ability to make further rules so if Perigueux, in the Dordogne suddenly has a spike the Prefecture there could impose more stringent rules than those that apply to the rest of the department.

I do think that if more power were given to local government then more people would accept the lockdown rules.

I also think that track and trace could have been much better organised, had local services been used. I think that one town started a T & T service back in March (Stafford) which is continuing successfully. I also heard earlier in the week that some places are using the STD clinics because they are very knowledgeable about tracing about tracing people.

Agree with you totally SilentGames.