Coronavirus

[TheHowieLama]

1 hour ago, Sugar Ape said:

 

I think every country - apart from Italy and Spain as they were caught out at the beginning - has a number that they have prepared their masses to accept (and when that number comes in or around, or God forbid, below that, they will claim VICTORY) And they will back into that number by any means necessary.

[Lee909]

The gun nut crowd protesting in the states don't half make some great signs. 

 

 

[TheHowieLama]

Tough choice there tbh.

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

18 hours ago, SasaS said:

I've noticed that there was much more praise for New Zealand than Australia on my social media feed, despite numbers being pretty much tha same. But, alas, no Jacinda.

Aye, she has a decent rep internationally, Scotty from marketing has performed ok with the virus, but after a succession of fuckups he had to get something right.

18 hours ago, Section_31 said:

I saw a headline in the guardian I think it was which said all the countries handling it the best had women leaders. What a bizarre narrative. 

It is possible for a more compassionate approach, not that this has to come from women leaders.

18 hours ago, TK421 said:

Lovely Jacinda. 

Aye, some of the scandi pols kick her in the bin mind.

18 hours ago, Moo said:

Is it not possible there's an element of truth? 

Certainly 

17 hours ago, Section_31 said:

Surely the assumption itself is sexist? Is the new Zealand leader a good leader because she's just a good leader? Or is it because she is a woman with a mother's heart, can multitask and doesn't have to mansplain.

 

Hilary Clinton kept coming out with shite like that when she lost the election, "I hope all the little girls will keep trying and believe that one day too they can become one of the most hawkish warmongering secretaries of state the United states has ever seen."

 

Let's also conveniently forget Thatcher and May were a pair of total cunts, as is the former heroine of all bbc media luvvies whose name I can never spell, ang sang soo chi.

To say all women are compassionate and all

men are not would be sexist. To suggest there maybe a more compassionate approach coming from women is not. 
if politics is a “mans world” then undoubtedly you will have women who seek to outcompete their  male counterparts in order to seek advantage, but as female politicians become more common place there is less requirement to out macho the competition.

thatcher, may, clinton are all twats.

what do people go into politics for? Gross generalisation, but I’d say it’s either to better the community, or to enrich themselves. Some will take one and end up at the other. One is a psychopathic / sociopathic trait, the other is altruistic(to a certain extent). There are more men convicted of murder than women, so it’s not necessarily sexist to say women maybe more compassionate.

16 hours ago, General Dryness said:

She's alright.

 

Wouldn't give her a bite of my apple though.

Never minded the odd flesh wound myself.

[Jose Jones]

Been practising your quoting skills during lockdown there Arthur, I mean Audrey.

[Mudface]

"Scotty from marketing" is a fantastic insult, especially how I imagine it being pronounced in an Aussie accent.

[Anubis]

About as nimble as a dead elephant with all four legs caught in elephant-sized bear traps.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/21/government-misses-out-on-14m-facemasks-for-nhs-in-four-weeks

 

Quote

The government has missed opportunities to secure at least 16m face masks for NHS staff in the past four weeks, amid growing frustration from companies who say Britain is losing much-needed equipment to other countries.

 

As ministers faced relentless questionsover a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals, suppliers said their offers to deliver UK-standard face masks were being met with silence from the government.

 

And on another day of chaos over the government’s PPE procurement, a senior civil servant said that its decision to opt out of a joint EU scheme was politically motivated. However he was forced to retract his claim within hours after he was contradicted by the health secretary, Matt Hancock.

 

Adding to the confusion, Hancock claimed that the UK had now joined the scheme – only for EU sources to note that the U-turn had happened recently so Britain would not benefit from the supplies of emergency equipment.

As new figures revealed that care home fatalities had quadrupled over the last week and as another 823 deaths were announced, the government faced further acute pressure over difficulties securing protective gear for hospitals and care homes.

 

These problems included:

The saga of the PPE shipment sourced from Turkey, which dragged on, with an RAF plane sitting on the tarmac in Istanbul for hours before the first batch was delivered, and two more aircraft yet to leave from the UK

Ministers were forced to defend the disclosure that millions of pieces of equipment including respirators and masks had been shipped from British warehouses to Spain, Italy and Germany

Social care groups struggling to source enough PPE on the open market said that plans to allow them to access the NHS supply chain had left them in a dire situation, with all forms of PPE due to run out within days.

 

Of 8,000 companies so far offering PPE within the UK, the government has engaged with about 1,000 and is working with 159 manufacturers to bring the offered supplies into use. But many of those firms said that they had seen offers of rapidly available and certified equipment ignored.

 

Volker Schuster, the owner of the Merseyside-based chemicals firm EcoLogix, said he wrote to the cabinet office’s “Covid commercial response unit” offering to supply 10m FFP2 masks for frontline medics that would be ready to ship from China within a week. He said he submitted details of the masks, including their European CE certification, but only received a substantive response eight days later – asking for details he had already provided. By that time the masks had been sold to other countries.

Schuster’s MP, Bill Esterson, confirmed that he also contacted the office of the health secretary, Matt Hancock, to highlight the offer on 27 March but that he had never received a reply.

 

Rachel Reeves, the shadow cabinet office minister, said on Tuesday she had been inundated by manufacturers who had contacted the government offering to make or supply PPE but that she had heard nothing back.

 

Reeves also accused the government of prioritising “major fashion and clothing brands … over companies that may have been better placed to manufacture what is needed as quickly as possible”.

 

Retailers including Burberry and Barbour announced collaborations with the government to help increase availability of PPE supplies.

 

Hancock said in the televised Downing Street briefing that the government was accelerating its response to companies but that officials were having to filter out approaches from firms which were not credible.

 

He said: “We’re always trying to improve the processes that we have in place to make purchases. We want to engage with all those companies who can help us in this national effort and we are accelerating the progress of getting back to all those companies with a substantive response. This is a fast-moving market. There is a global shortage … and that means we need to be as nimble as we possibly can.”

 

The infectious disease specialists, Landcent, said it could have distributed 6m FFP2 face masks to the UK if the government had placed an order when it first submitted an offer three weeks ago.

 

Arun Prabhu, Landcent’s co-founder, said its UK partner, EFDUK, had contacted the government at the end of March offering to supply face masks, testing kits and protective overalls. He said they received a reply expressing interest in face masks “three or four days later” but had heard nothing since.

“By now we would have supplied close to 6m face masks,” he said, adding that the firm had already shipped millions of Ply surgical masks to Austria, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

 

Prabhu said Britain risked losing out to other countries unless it responded more quickly to credible offers. “There is a global demand but there is no lack of supplies – it’s just tapping into the right distributing partners. I would urge [the British government] to assign a special taskforce who are primarily focused towards procurement.”

 

Both EcoLogix and Landcent said they submitted detailed information on the specification of their face masks and that these met the UK requirements and were CE approved, meaning they meet EU standards for health and safety.

 

Esterson, the shadow minister for international trade, said the government’s “shambolic” response to credible offers to secure PPE was putting lives at risk from the coronavirus pandemic. He said: “It cannot be right that companies which can help with PPE and which have offered to help are facing long delays in hearing back from the government. People are dying and this needs to be simplified and speeded up.”

 

Social care companies meanwhile were critical of the government’s plan allowing to them to use the NHS supply chain where commercial options failed. 

 

One group, Methodist Homes, called the system “not clear at all” and said that just two of the firm’s 131 sites had managed to order basic supplies.

 

The Sue Ryder palliative care charity said it was in a diresituation, with all forms of PPE due to run out within days, and that it had not heard from the government that it could access the NHS supply chain.

 

A government spokesperson said there had been more than 8,000 offers of support, adding: “We are working rapidly to get through these offers, ensuring they meet the safety and quality standards that our NHS and social care workers need, and prioritising offers of larger volumes.”

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Guardian article saying all big UK airline and travel firms refusing refunds as they fear bankruptcy. Er.... that's just theft then. People paid, service wasn't provided return the fee.

[DalyanPete]

4 day curfew starts midnight tonight here in Turkey. Coincides with public holiday and start of Ramadan.

Nowhere to go so doesn't make much difference to us.

It will be interesting to see if tourists make it here this year, don't think I would want to be at an airport or on a plane. 

Resigned ourselves to no family visits this year.

[DalyanPete]

So, when the pubs and restaurants reopen, how comfy will you feel being in a crowded area?

Bit like terrorism for me, don't let them/it win, life must go on. Missus thinks otherwise on the virus issue.

[alles ist gut]

4 minutes ago, DalyanPete said:

So, when the pubs and restaurants reopen, how comfy will you feel being in a crowded area?

Bit like terrorism for me, don't let them/it win, life must go on. Missus thinks otherwise on the virus issue.

I’ll be giving it ‘a few weeks or so’. ‘A few’ being 20-ish.

[Davelfc]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jocd.13443

 

A preliminary observation of high frequency of male pattern hair loss among admitted COVID-19 patients, and suggest that androgen expression might be a clue to COVID-19 severity

 

The more testosterone you have, the more likely COVID-19 is to be serious. They note that men who go through treatment for male pattern baldness or other treatments that lower testosterone may be lower risk for severe cases. 

Clinically, this is treated as an anecdote... reliable findings that someone somewhere might want to research (and they will probably follow up with research when they get time/people/funding.) 

 

 

 

This raises the question of how younger men with almost double the testosterone level are not affected. Of course the usual risk factors they know about along with this might be the reason. 

[johnsusername]

31 minutes ago, DalyanPete said:

So, when the pubs and restaurants reopen, how comfy will you feel being in a crowded area?

Bit like terrorism for me, don't let them/it win, life must go on. Missus thinks otherwise on the virus issue.

I'm just not sure how it's all going to work - what about clubs, cafes, cinemas, gym, swimming pools? What about public transport? What about schools with 30 kids in a class and kids and parents at the school gate? The obvious one is football and sports with large crowds. 

 

I work in an office which is pretty cramped, and the lifts are always cramped. 

 

Will the government keep certain places closed for longer? Are we all going to have to wear face masks until Christmas? Are there enough masks?

 

I'm just wittering on now. 

 

[Rick Sanchez C-137]

45 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Guardian article saying all big UK airline and travel firms refusing refunds as they fear bankruptcy. Er.... that's just theft then. People paid, service wasn't provided return the fee.

 

Surely credit cards will process a chargeback?

[sir roger]

36 minutes ago, DalyanPete said:

4 day curfew starts midnight tonight here in Turkey. Coincides with public holiday and start of Ramadan.

Nowhere to go so doesn't make much difference to us.

It will be interesting to see if tourists make it here this year, don't think I would want to be at an airport or on a plane. 

Resigned ourselves to no family visits this year.

Oddly enough I was booked to go to Dalyan the week before Easter for some specialist dental treatment , but obviously had to cancel. Unless everything clears up far faster tha  expected I cant see me re-booking this year now.

[Mudface]

4 minutes ago, Aw Geez said:

 

Surely credit cards will process a chargeback?

Hopefully. I had a holiday to Spain booked through Jet2 starting on the 6th of July. That's obviously not going to happen, but at the moment Jet2 are insisting that flights after the 17th of June will be OK.

 

I've only paid the deposit so far, but I need to pay the balance by the 11th of May, otherwise they'll take the money owed automatically from my credit card. The problem is, if I cancel now then I lose my deposit, if I cancel after the 27th of April (i.e. less than 70 days before the outbound flight), they'll charge me my deposit, plus 30% of the total holiday cost (there's a sliding scale after that, 50% with less than 50 days etc).

 

I decided to cancel now and take the hit on the deposit, as there's no real point in paying for it, then trying to claim it back. Thing is, you can't ring Jet2 directly any more, and you can't cancel online either, so I've had to send an email requesting the cancellation. Whether or not that'll be processed this week I don't know, so I've also had to contact my credit card firm and see if they can block any outgoing payments. 

 

Compare to the parking I'd booked at Glasgow airport- I logged in, pressed a big button marked 'Cancel booking', was asked to confirm and then told I'd be refunded within three working days. And Jet2 in my experience are one of the more reliable and less cunty travel firms, so Christ knows the hassle other people must be going through with the likes of RyanAir, EasyJet and TUI.

[Barrington Womble]

10 hours ago, Moo said:

This has been puzzling me for a couple of days and it's entirely possible I am missing something really obvious but.. 

 

I've read a number of times now, in the last few days, that contrary to expectations hospitals / ICU's in the UK are not and have not been overrun and have adequate capacity - unlike in Italy at the same stage where it was chaos.  But we were told in numerous articles from numerous sources that Italy's ICU facilities and capacity are better than ours, yet we have the same if not worse death rates.  How does that work then?  Why are our hospitals not in disarray and struggling to cope (PPE aside)? 

It makes you wonder if the only lesson the UK took from Italy was to choose to admit fewer people to hospital, to choose to not even try to help some people, to choose to let them die at home and in care homes.

 

edit - and to choose not to report on numbers of  deaths outside of hospital 

I reckon you've answered your own question here! The government's response has never been about saving lives and it's always been about avoiding the optics Italy had in their hospitals. 

10 hours ago, Moo said:

That was the obvious thought of course, but even London hospitals are coping remarkably well apparently. 

Something seems amiss. 

The nightingale hospital is turning people away because they don't have the staff. London throughout has been walking just passed the line. 

1 hour ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Guardian article saying all big UK airline and travel firms refusing refunds as they fear bankruptcy. Er.... that's just theft then. People paid, service wasn't provided return the fee.

Are they claiming an act of God or something?

21 minutes ago, Aw Geez said:

 

Surely credit cards will process a chargeback?

And it doesn't need to be credit cards any more, you get similar protection on any card transaction. I was away a little before this app started and my mate had booked and paid the hotels and the company he booked through (Expedia, hotels.com or whoever) cancelled it, but payment had gone to the hotel. He claimed it back despite it being a debit card. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

I got my money back from a holiday I was supposed to go on next week but I've got one booked in July that's a package holiday there's no way that's happening either. Bastard virus. Not important but still it's a pisser.

[Gnasher]

Travel subject on bbc 1 now

[Bobby Hundreds]

So was that government NHS fake twitter accounts a load of bollocks. How the hell is anybody supposed to find the truth these days. 

[Brownie]

Same situation with me regarding a holiday, have paid the deposit and need to clear the balance in the next week but I’m not comfortable with travelling this summer at all.

 

Only option at this point is to lose my deposit.

[redinblack62]

49 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Hopefully. I had a holiday to Spain booked through Jet2 starting on the 6th of July. That's obviously not going to happen, but at the moment Jet2 are insisting that flights after the 17th of June will be OK.

 

I've only paid the deposit so far, but I need to pay the balance by the 11th of May, otherwise they'll take the money owed automatically from my credit card. The problem is, if I cancel now then I lose my deposit, if I cancel after the 27th of April (i.e. less than 70 days before the outbound flight), they'll charge me my deposit, plus 30% of the total holiday cost (there's a sliding scale after that, 50% with less than 50 days etc).

 

I decided to cancel now and take the hit on the deposit, as there's no real point in paying for it, then trying to claim it back. Thing is, you can't ring Jet2 directly any more, and you can't cancel online either, so I've had to send an email requesting the cancellation. Whether or not that'll be processed this week I don't know, so I've also had to contact my credit card firm and see if they can block any outgoing payments. 

 

Compare to the parking I'd booked at Glasgow airport- I logged in, pressed a big button marked 'Cancel booking', was asked to confirm and then told I'd be refunded within three working days. And Jet2 in my experience are one of the more reliable and less cunty travel firms, so Christ knows the hassle other people must be going through with the likes of RyanAir, EasyJet and TUI.

I have been working in Ireland the last 10 months back and forth on Ryanair. When my current flights were cancelled I was told I would get a refund in 20 days. Now they have sent me vouchers for the value of the flights, and if I try to apply for a refund instead the site just crashes. I have a couple more flights booked before end of May which I imagine will go the same way. I'll be pretty much out of pocket.

[skend04]

I had tickets for The Book of Mormon this weekend and have only been offered vouchers instead of a refund. Is everyone just trying it on or is this likely to be the best we get for cancellations?

[Grinch]

Had a few concerts.   Rammstein have put there's on hold, planning to get a new date ASAP. 

 

Wednesday 13 refunded right away. 

[redinblack62]

9 minutes ago, Grinch said:

Had a few concerts.   Rammstein have put there's on hold, planning to get a new date ASAP. 

 

Wednesday 13 refunded right away. 

I had a ticket for Cardiff, not had any communication around that. Prepaid a hotel as well.