Rayvin

I'm not immediately going to reject J69's point here as I can see an underlying logic, but how would he explain South Korea's success if not being due to mass testing and origin tracking?

The Independent, international review carried out last year in global readiness had the UK as the second most prepared country to handle anything like this, and directly cited the NHS in the way you've referenced here. So you're totally right. The issue therefore cant be the NHS, it has to be political leadership. The US incidentally came first in that list.

An enquiry which will take years, become hugely politicised, and the outcome of which no one will take any notice of anyway, having decided to tar it with their own political bias without needing to engage with the material.

Sounds like a good gesture to me tbh. Nice one ewerk.

4th April I think I read? No idea how long it takes to handover.

I appreciate no one cares anymore, but apparently Starmer is going to purge the Corbynite Ultras at the top - good move IMO, Labour needs unity, not more factionalist nonsense. I can't quite believe how many people in the Labour groups I'm involved with want to use COVID to extend Corbyn's reign. He's been invisible since the election and is absolutely not going to be able to muster any kind of serious challenge to the government. He's done.

It's not so much optimism as not really seeing what it is that's indicating so clearly that we're going to be locked down for something approaching a year...?

As soon as we go past the peak of the curve, we can start easing people back in, you would have thought.

'Turkeys voting for Christmas' has to be one of the most frequently used Brexit metaphors. This feels the same. Non billionaires voting despite all evidence to the contrary, against their own interests and possibly their own existence. Given that 180k died for austerity, I think we can assume Brexit will have a toll.

Just feels like Brexit all over again to me.

The Independent has just reported that polling indicates more people in the US trust Trump on the pandemic than they would Biden. And moreover he has overall positive approval ratings for his handling of it.

Yeah that sounds like a fair assessment to me.

Fine.

Although if it delays or softens Brexit, it gets a gold star from me.

Wait, what? I'm not worrying about any of this I was simply making the point that they won't let the economy fall apart. This whole thing isn't panicking me at all, my life has been a continuous train wreck for the past 2 years anyway, there's not much COVID-19 can do to me, to be perfectly frank. I think it'll blow over after a year or so without any particularly earth shattering long term consequences. Because the system has to perpetuate - we have no other models to move to.

2008 was a recession in my book, but it's been a while since I really looked at it. I just think in this era of boundless apocalyptic possibilities, collapse means collapse, and not shrinking But look, we don't know how bad this is yet anyway - but if the power stays on and the food keeps coming, then for me it's just a depression at worst, and one we'll probably bounce back from fairly quickly (within 5 years), without even the need for a world war this time. The only reason 2008 dragged on was because of austerity.

Well, tbf, you and I have wildly different definitions of the word "collapse"

Ok so you're talking about a depression. Ok yes, it'll be annoying for a while indeed, and life will be shit. No arguments from me there. I suppose the US will act as a control group in all of this. I think their economy will bounce back quicker if they take the hit as Trump wants them too, but I don't think it'll be worth the cost in lives.

I want to stress as well for the avoidance of doubt, that I think the Tories have handled this as well as they could have, with the exception of their initial dithering. I'm not criticising them - I'm just saying that there's a line in the sand somewhere on all of this. Western civilisation is not going to be allowed to be brought down by a virus with a mortality rate of 3%.

You think they'll let the entire economy fall apart? Are we getting wires crossed here or something - when you say 'fall apart', do you mean a depression? Cos if so then ok, I can see your point but it isn't a collapse. If you mean capitalism is going to be on its knees to save a few old people, you're barking up the wrong tree entirely. What they've done so far is all well and good, but it hasn't yet started really and seriously ruining the economy. I just read that we're going to have to prepare for powercuts. That's a step up in the economic stakes IMO, especially with everyone working from home. Then food next, presumably. They will hang on as long as they can, but the scales will tip in the end. The devastation caused by a total economic collapse will be far worse than the loss of even a million or so people. I'm not a Tory by any stretch of the imagination, and even I can see that. So you can bet your bottom dollar that they can too. Trump, bizarrely, kind of has the right of this - for the wrong reasons, granted, but there is a point somewhere in all of this where the lives lost are not as significant as the damage done/future generations lost to economic collapse. They won't let it come to the latter. Honestly, I'm not even sure they'll have to make that choice anyway - curve flattens, they lift lockdowns in essential areas and ease the economy back in. That's clearly the idea at least.

I'm not saying he isn't, but we aren't in total economic collapse yet - the stakes will change if we get anywhere remotely close to it.

They can send people back to work and lift the lockdowns. That's how they stop it. COVID-19 isn't causing the economic problems on its own, our response to it is. It could and almost certainly would cause a healthcare crisis on its own, but even that wouldn't be as bad as total economic collapse. If we get the latter, society is done. It's 2 days without food, I believe, for the wheels to come off society and Mad Max to start looking like a documentary. They will not let that happen, they just won't. They'll take as many hits, as many companies going under as they can realistically afford to do, but there is a red line somewhere - once we hit that, the lockdown gets lifted to save the majority of the economy, no matter how many lives it costs.

I agree with you. I just don't see this economic Armageddon happening, mostly because at some point the scales will tip and they will absolutely be ok with letting people die to preserve the 'actual structures'. They're not going to throw the global economic system under a bus for COVID-19 and a few hundred thousand dead. They've thrown more lives away in wars for a lot less. The world will bounce back, there will be lipservice paid to learning lessons, but honestly they're not going to risk a total economic collapse. It just won't happen. I don't know why anyone thinks these right wing governments, motivated by money and power, are going to risk both of those things for the sake of human compassion.

If it gets anywhere near what that article is outlining, they'll let the elderly die. Even here.

I'm still not sure how much damage this is really going to do in the end. Has anyone tried forecasting it?