Time for a second lockdown?

Businesses will go bust. That's the way it is. The majority of the businesses going out of business are those relying on passing trade on the High Street as people change shopping habits.

Other casualties will be bars and restaurants as people stay away from them in order to protect their health, and who can blame them?

Some businesses could be doing more when it comes to both creating conditions people feel safe in and policing from my experiences so far.
Not my view but your view isn’t that dissimilar to saying

‘people will die, that just the way it is’
 
Miniscule? Really

More than 5,500 people have died with Covid-19 in this country of just 10 million. It is one of the highest death rates relative to population size in Europe, and by far the worst among the Nordic nations. Unlike Sweden, the rest all chose to lock down early in the pandemic

Deaths per capita is the important one. You can ignore San Marino and Andorra as tiny populations where 1 death can move from 1st to 20th. Belgium is worst, but UK is catching fast, give it 80-90 days we will be 'winning'.

Sweden despite its low population density is 6th worst in the world. Their approach didn't work, but we're not particularly in a place to criticise.

I'd be looking at countries like Japan and S Korea, with their deaths at 6 and 8 per million (ours is ten times worse), for a strategy for combatting this, not bloody Sweden. Track n trace, social distance, masks, masks, masks.

Screenshot 2020-08-12 at 09.44.15.png
 
I have been surprised that workers in my local supermarket are not wearing masks as they wander around. all on the till are wearing them but managers etc dont.
I wouldve thought that, given the amount of different people theyre exposed to, day in, day out, it should be mandatory for all shop workers to wear a mask.
No? OK then.
 
Deaths per capita is the important one. You can ignore San Marino and Andorra as tiny populations where 1 death can move from 1st to 20th. Belgium is worst, but UK is catching fast, give it 80-90 days we will be 'winning'.

Sweden despite its low population density is 6th worst in the world. Their approach didn't work, but we're not particularly in a place to criticise.

I'd be looking at countries like Japan and S Korea, with their deaths at 6 and 8 per million (ours is ten times worse), for a strategy for combatting this, not bloody Sweden. Track n trace, social distance, masks, masks, masks.

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In bloody Sweden up to last week 231 people under the age of 60 had died with Covid 19 in 2020. Most of these poor people had underlying health issues. That is by any standards minuscule in relation to population.
The over seventies account for 89 percent of all Covid deaths in Sweden again many with underlying health issues. This is a country that has a death rate of around one hundred thousand per annum. According to an article by a Swedish doctor in Stockholm yesterday they now have a death rate of around five per day and new infections are falling all the time. They’ve virtually got rid of it. The economy will suffer as a knock on effect from the rest of the world but to nowhere near the same extent as ours. Silly bloody Sweden.
 
I have been surprised that workers in my local supermarket are not wearing masks as they wander around. all on the till are wearing them but managers etc dont.
I wouldve thought that, given the amount of different people theyre exposed to, day in, day out, it should be mandatory for all shop workers to wear a mask.
No? OK then.
Yes, I noticed this too in our small local CoOp - seems strange that it is not a requirement given the footfall passing through
 
Businesses are institutions, not people.
Businesses employ people. They use the income from that employment to feed and house their families. When that is taken away from families and communities it has devastating consequences for physical and mental health. That will overburdened then NHS. We know this from Thatchers evil experiments nearly 40 years ago. Locking up fit healthy people that are at next to zero risk of long term harm from Covid is madness and will have consequences far and above those of the disease it is supposed shielding them from.
 
I was the East Coast Main Line last week and it was perfectly fine. All people wearing masks and carriages planned with social distancing in mind.
Funny my friend was on the same train and she said it was a nightmare. They hadn't put the reservations on the seats and someone was in her seat. No one was wearing face masks either
 
Oxford centre for evidence based medicine say there isn't an increase in cases:-

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-cases-in-england-arent-rising-heres-why/

On the morning of the worst recession since records began, suicides spiking amongst the young, thousands of cancer patients needing access to screening and 700,000 jobs lost between March and July... This whilst excess deaths have been running below the 5 year average for 8 weeks during the time of year when there are the least amounts of deaths and the death rate trending upwards since 2011..

Some of you think a 2nd lockdown is a good idea. Absolutely bonkers.
 
Businesses employ people. They use the income from that employment to feed and house their families. When that is taken away from families and communities it has devastating consequences for physical and mental health. That will overburdened then NHS. We know this from Thatchers evil experiments nearly 40 years ago. Locking up fit healthy people that are at next to zero risk of long term harm from Covid is madness and will have consequences far and above those of the disease it is supposed shielding them from.

Nobody is locked up now, businesses are still going to go bust because people are choosing not to use them, the same as the High Streets aren't being used.

Society has moved on and not in a particularly healthy way since Thatcher and Co tried to move us back towards slavery.

We've got to adapt and move society in a way more beneficial to the majority, with jobs to benefit society, not leave towns to become wastelands.

The hard question is how, leaving it in the hands of spivs and barrow boys has failed. Time for some planning?

All we hear is 'back to normal'. How about changing the normal rather than making people accept the third rate nation we've become?
 
Nobody is locked up now, businesses are still going to go bust because people are choosing not to use them, the same as the High Streets aren't being used.

Society has moved on and not in a particularly healthy way since Thatcher and Co tried to move us back towards slavery.

We've got to adapt and move society in a way more beneficial to the majority, with jobs to benefit society, not leave towns to become wastelands.

The hard question is how, leaving it in the hands of spivs and barrow boys has failed. Time for some planning?

All we hear is 'back to normal'. How about changing the normal rather than making people accept the third rate nation we've become?
There are God knows how many businesses that will go to the wall because people have been unable to use them due to the response to Covid. A friend of mine has a catering business that has had its trade decimated due to the closure of the hospitality sector and a second lockdown will be the end of it. That has consequences for him, his family, his employees and their families. There are countless more like him up and down the land in various sectors.
 
Nobody is locked up now, businesses are still going to go bust because people are choosing not to use them, the same as the High Streets aren't being used.

Society has moved on and not in a particularly healthy way since Thatcher and Co tried to move us back towards slavery.

We've got to adapt and move society in a way more beneficial to the majority, with jobs to benefit society, not leave towns to become wastelands.

The hard question is how, leaving it in the hands of spivs and barrow boys has failed. Time for some planning?

All we hear is 'back to normal'. How about changing the normal rather than making people accept the third rate nation we've become?

Meanwhile in reality people are committing suicide and falling into poverty and will die as poverty directly links to increase in mortality.

I agree with your sentiment CtC but the only way any of that is happening is via civil war, we have 4 years of Tory corruption to come then 5 years of status quo under Starmer... Where in either of those parties makeup currently is there room for discussion about ending the current version of capitalism which is what you are prescribing.
 
Sweden screwed up in the old folks homes initially, but they have got that under control now. Daily deaths are between 0 and 5 nationally and, tellingly, there are very few people getting sick enough to require hospital care. Their children have still been able to go to school and their economy has suffered somewhat less that the EU average (much less than ours).

They currently have 33 people in ICUs nationally. Most of these are long term. There are very few new admissions.

It's probably a little early to judge whether they have succeeded or failed, as they have maintained a consistent policy whilst other countries have gone from lockdown to opening to lockdown again. In the end, I think it will be more nuanced than just success or failure. The picture there looks much better than much of europe now.

As for the OP question, we can't afford another national lock down. Simple. The response will have to be more targeted and nuanced from now.
 
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