jacksj1

Even by your figures Germany has nearly three times as many ICU trained nurses as we have. That's presently a significant limiting factor in who gets care and who doesn't in the UK - trained staff not just number of beds and we have a severe shortage of them. Let's not also forget that even by our much lower staffing levels we have a shortage of 50,000 nurses (my wife is one). Mental health in particular is absolutely decimated. Down from 25,503 beds to 18,182 Germany shared all its testing development with the WHO. We turned down using it. You're putting words in my mouth, I didn't say the UK test was redeveloped. But it was Hancock himself who said weeks ago - and repeated this morning on live TV - that the UK had decided to create its own test. And it's Hancock who has said time and time again that 'no test is better than a bad test'. As an aside it was Hancock who said on live TV this morning that we had 'successfully reached the peak'. Successfully ! Despicable.

Germany had a test, which has proven to be very accurate and reliable, developed by 15 January. They made it available to the World Health Organisation (WHO) who then made it available around the world. The UK (in common with the US) decided to develop our own test instead of using this. We didn't do very well hence the Government keep trotting out the line 'No test is better than a bad test'. When they do this it never gets picked up that we had a reliable test available from Germany/WHO organisation months ago. At the start of the year Germany had 500,000 hospital beds which they raised to 1 million for Covid.The UK had 100,000 hospital beds down from 121,000 ten years ago. Germany had 28,000 ICU beds while the UK had 4,100. Germany has raised it's ICU beds to 50,000. Critically their health system was and is staffed and equipped enough to look after those numbers of people. Germany started large scale testing and trace contacting very early while we chose to allow Cheltenham, mass festivals and things like allowing people to come from the most infected city in the world to travel to our country to attend football matches (Liverpool vrs Athletico Madrid 11/03/20). Sources : https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-hospital-b/germany-aims-to-double-number-of-hospital-intensive-care-beds-idUSKBN21627M https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Healthcare_resource_statistics_-_beds Testing in the UK is being led by an ex lobbyist (represented businesses with major NHS contracts) friend of Hancocks, who donated to his leadership campaign. He was not a Minister until he was appointed one for this purpose and has little to no ministerial experience. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/testing-efforts-led-by-ex-lobbyist-who-backed-hancock-leadership-bid Here's the experience of a normal person in Germany - thinks kids have Coronoavirus, tested within 24 hours, allowed to self isolate her and her kids in a hospital when it proves positive. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mums-warning-after-two-kids-21850123 The bottom line is over the last ten years the Government have decimated our health service.

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I'll take 10 of these please mate. PM me price with postage and payment details please.

No it's not. What are you suggesting is the % death rate from people who catch flu ? Flu numbers are notoriously imprecise but estimates I've read suggest anything from 5-20% of people catch flu each year with a death rate of anywhere from 0.01% to 0.1%. Covid death rate seems to be anything from 1-3% - thats where quaratine and isolation happens. If medical services are overrun that increases significantly but we aren't considering that. I'd suggest lots of factors mean the Covid numbers are imprecise (I know people are dieing at home not being recorded or checked for Covid, for example) but the numbers are clearly not even close.

You're jumping to an assumption, I didn't say it happened on purpose. I don't believe that for a second. On whether it was an accident one of the heads at the Chinese lab when interviewed said it was unlikely to have been as a result of an accident in his facility but that it could not be ruled out. Accident at the lab or naturally occuring isn't important. We are where we are. i) It's extremely dangerous with a fatality rate at least 100 times that of the flu among those who catch it (the reason flu deaths are comparable is because a thousand times more people catch it); ii) the health service are absolute heroes (my wife is a student nurse who has volunteered to work wherever needed); iii) the global elite are without question using the opportunity to (unnecessarily) tie Governments and individuals to massively more debt and in my opinion will plunder pensions across the world.

You can think Putin is a hypocrite and still believe what he is saying is spot on. He's probably sh** stirring because he knows this is exactly the opposite of what the US and UK will do but it makes it no less galling to live under it.

Even the most sceptical of people must raise an eyebrow at the fact that Wuhan houses Chinas most top secret biologicial research facility where they have for years been isolating strains of Coronavirus from bats. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487

These are statements of fact and absolutely true but that does not mean the virus is not as dangerous as we are led to believe. I believe both. As ever the elite treat every disaster as an opportunity to milk the masses like cattle. And the Government we voted for are party to that. Universal income rather than loans would have been in the interest of most people during this crisis but instead we are tied to ever more debt, personally and collectively. I suspect this will be used in the way you suggest to gut pensions en masse, which I've been expecting for years with or without such a crisis.

Agree that that's a good article. We should definitely be doing mass testing so that we have more solid data. In regards to death rate one of the most important things to remember is many who don't die need ICU to stay alive. The places with low death rates have managed to control the spread to lower the numbers needing ICU. Italy is a lesson in what happens when cases grow so that Intensive care is not available to everybody. Death rate when 20,000 need ICU care can not be scaled beyond the ability of medical services to keep a much larger number of people alive on respirators.

Some salient reads : 1. Article at the BMJ from 2018 claiming the Government were claiming all excess Winter deaths as flu, exaggerating the true figure by 150 times. https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6 2. Report with pictures from inside one of the hospitals in Italy : https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-they-call-it-the-apocalypse-inside-italys-hardest-hit-hospital-11960597 I would urge people to think carefully comparing the present situation to 2018, especially just citing statistics. Do we for example have similar pictures from inside hospitals dealing with what happened in 2018 ?

I didn't think it was worth replying to. I'm not looking for disagreements just to debate and learn. I'm not even sure what there is to debunk. Are you debunking the quote from Iain Duncans Smiths group I listed or my opinion that they will for the third time this decade raise the retirement age ? I'm not sure an opinion can be debunked and certainly not just because the DWP say they aren't presently planning to do it.

Good post, agreed on all points. The bottom line is it has been within the power of the Government to drastically reduce immigration at any time over the last decade. It has been a choice not to. But they are deceiving many people into thinking they don't have control over immigration numbers because of the EU. The fact is Brexit will change nothing in this regard.

What do people think of the proposal from Iain Duncan Smiths Centre for Social Justice proposal that the retirement age be raised to 75 ? https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/ageing-confidently-supporting-an-ageing-workforce?fbclid=IwAR1TSCOG81o0Rr_oFxkGtwUEhjigab7TtqZ2-kh3910IVfH16tfSlVa2Ftc i suspect this will be implemented in the next Parliament if the Conservatives win.

I'd agree with most of that. Surely while rates are low it's a good time to be investing ? It's beyond me why we haven't gone head first into green technology and manufacturing. Massive opportunities creating a huge number of jobs all over the country. As for Johnson putting himself beyond reach of the Courts - yes it's not typical of the historical Conservative party. But this isn't the Conservative party we've known. And it absolutely is typical of Johnson and Cummings.