ALB
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It’s a no-brainer. With the date of conference coinciding with the period during which the government is planning the epidemic should reach its peak, with people falling sick in droves, it cannot take place then. It has to be postponed.
Even the Rebellion has been called off:
https://www.cityam.com/extinction-rebellion-cancels-london-protest-over-coronavirus/amp/
Meanwhile others are beginning to worry about the strategy the government here has adopted:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/boris-johnson-turned-britain-petri-130300274.html
Don’t know how reliable this publication is but the government seems to be backtracking anyway. Giving the impression that they are carrying out some experiment on “the herd” as they call us is bad for publicity.
Missed this from yesterday’s Times:
“At the core of policy decisions, argues Roy Anderson, from Imperial College London, there is a dilemma. ‘The simple epidemiological rule is the earlier you intervene the better. Weighed against this is the economic impact. Governments cannot minimise mortality and economic impact.’”
If this is the dilemma, in deciding to delay the peak the British government appears to have decided to minimise the economic impact rather the number who will die.
Which might explain why the Prime Minister went out of his way to warn that “many more families are going to lose loved ones” — many more than strictly necessary?
The media are reporting that one of the strategic aims of the government’s policy is to achieve “herd immunity” so that the next time the virus comes around, like next year, it won’t be so bad as enough people will be inoculated against it. Since there is as yet no vaccination against it, this means that the only way to inoculate people will be for them to have contacted the virus and recovered.
According to an item in today’s I paper:
” for the UK population to gain herd immunity, a large enough number of people — 60 per cent of the country, 40 million people, in the words of the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance — will need to contract the virus and then recover.”
But not everyone will recover. If the death rate is 3% then 1.2 million won’t. Even if it is only 1 percent some 400,000 won’t. These will be the number of us herd who will have be sacrificed to achieve “herd immunity”.
I don’t know if achieving herd immunity is the government’s aim or if the figure of 6 out of every 10 people having to get the virus and recover is valid, but if so it appears that the government is being advised by a mad professor.
The weight of evidence is that radiation from 5G does not have the dangerous effects that people like Firstenberg claim. See for instance:
http://skepdic.com/electrosensitives.html
Firstenberg seems to be regarded as a crank. The list of scientists signing that petition doesn’t seem very impressive.
The rational approach of the layperson to this sort of scientific issue is (as with climate change) to go along with the middle of the road view of the scientists in the field concerned.
“ALB does that stat include the recommended self-enforced quarantine or actual employees falling sick?”
Yes I think so. So the estimated 6.5 million to be off work during the peak period would include those advised to self-isolate as well as those too sick to work.
The stated policy of the UK government is, as the doctor you quote put it, “flattening the timeline of the epidemic so it’s not, for example, 100 people getting admitted to the hospital one week, but maybe 10 cases a week for 10 weeks.” Which of course prolongs the epidemic and the disruption to everyday life even if it would make it easier for the NHS to cope.
Just been reading the chancellor’s budget speech (as you do) and at one point he says “if we expect 20 per cent of the workforce to be unable to work at any one time.” There are 34.5 million in the UK workforce, so the government is apparently anticipating that some 6.5 million workers could be off work during the peak of the epidemic.This would only be temporary but would translate as a significant drop in production — and so the flow of profits. It seems that have calculated that this can’t be avoided and have resigned themselves just to trying to limit the damage; which would be more if they did nothing.It is true they could be exaggerating or panicking but we’ll know in two or three months.Sent from my iPhoneWhat Bernie is advocating— help for the self employed and those with no sick pay — is already going to be implemented by the Tory government in the UK. As for Woolf, I thought I heard him complain that everybody in the US was not being tested to see if they’re carrying the virus. That doesn’t seem realistic or even necessary for that matter. He does raise one issue, though, of what about “illegal” immigrants: will the government here do what he says the one is South Korea is doing, ie forgetting their illegal status if they come forward for treatment?
It does appear, though, that there is concern about the pandemic even in the USA.
How can you deny that the pandemic is having a negative effect on production?
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-51689178
It will be the same in other countries though with a smaller impact in those with a larger service sector where some people can work from home. This should be confirmed (or not) when the statistics for the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the year are published.
The reason the government here is giving for their particular policy is that they want to try to control its spread so that the inevitable peak comes at a time (May) when the health service will be able to cope better. Other governments are pursuing the different strategy of trying to contain the spread now rather than control and postpone it. (None are pursuing your suggested policy of letting the pandemic run its course as it eventually will). We will see who’s right. Meanwhile we in the UK are guinea pigs in the government here’s experiment.
Alan, you say: “My position is one of priorities. I still do not see why covid19 is as deserving all the publicity and concentration of resources.”
But if we say that priority should be given to dealing with dengue fever in the swamps of Asia and Latin America over dealing with the current new strain of Coronavirus in the densely populated parts of the world, we are likely to attract the support only of Christians and other do-gooders rather than ordinary people. In fact we’ll be seen and dismissed as just another bunch of do-gooders. Which we are not and must avoid.
We have got to think of something better to say on this issue.
I don’t understand your position. You get worked up about a potential threat that may or may not materialise in 50 years but pooh-pooh an immediate threat to fellow workers.
I am not saying that this pandemic is going to be as bad as the one a hundred years ago but this is what happened then:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
No government can just let the pandemic take its course, as you seem to be suggesting. Even under capitalism those in charge of the central administration can’t be, and aren’t, that irresponsible. If they were that would of course strengthen our case that society’s central administration should not be in the hands of the capitalist class and its political representatives.
That document says that there are a few hundred cases in the UK all acquired by travellers from areas where it is endemic. So not a problem for workers here. Unlike the Coronavirus which is an immediate current threat to the health and life of workers here.
Incidentally dengue fever is a threat to some workers in the US as parts of the US are “tropical”:
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0005744
In fact dengue fever is not the only Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) threatening workers in those parts of the USA. I can see therefore why in the US the amount of money devoted to dealing with these diseases compared with that being made available for combatting Coronavirus might be an issue. It not in the UK or indeed the rest of Europe.
Raising it here could even be counterproductive as, given nationalist sentiments, some politicians will be tempted to call for money to be diverted from the budget to deal with NTDs in other parts of the world to helping workers here.
I don’t think that the government is prioritising the problem here because it affects the rich. I think it is to do with its effect on production as, with so many workers off sick, this will fall and the flow of profits be interrupted. A confirmation as to who the real “wealth producers” are. They will also be concerned with whether the health care system can cope with a huge unexpected increase in sick workers and the cost of dealing with this.
What will also be revealing is, as Alan has raised, how capitalism deals with this global problem compared with how it is dealing with the threat of global overwarming. Will it be each state for itself here too? Or will the existence of a World Health Organisation be of some use?
So there’s no chance of me or any member of the working class in Britain catching it? On the other hand, there is a high chance of thousands here getting the Coronavirus and, as the prime minister has just announced, hundreds dying from it. As a pro-working class party we can’t complain that too much is being done to deal with it compared to what is being done about dengue fever. That won’t wash and can’t be our position. That’s irrelevant to the immediate threat to workers here.
We are not reformist but we must want as much to be done as it takes to protect the health and life of workers. Also the loss of earnings by those who can’t afford to take time off sick. I think that something along those lines would be a much more credible approach.
What is this dengue thing that we are all going to get rather the Coronavirus? What precautions do I have to take to stop getting it ?
