Coronavirus Megathread Part II

Still lots of deaths and we've just opened up restrictions in England so every possibility it may rise.

Here's the conundrum. We can't stay locked down indefinitely, our economy is already on the brink of unprecedented ruin, and the virus will continue to be with us until a vaccine is found, which could very well be never (nobody has ever succeeded in making a vaccine for any of the other human coronaviruses).

how are hundreds of people still dying everyday when we've been on lockdown for weeks?

Testing, testing, testing. Have you noticed how many adverts you have not seen to recruit contact tracers. Also they would need a lot more than 18000 to track and trace our population and it should not be done by people on minimum wage either. We will be back in lockdown in no time with these idiots running the country. Track test and trace was meant to be one of Mattie's pillars for coming out of lockdown. Did they forget that one?

how are hundreds of people still dying everyday when we've been on lockdown for weeks?

Here's the conundrum. We can't stay locked down indefinitely, our economy is already on the brink of unprecedented ruin, and the virus will continue to be with us until a vaccine is found, which could very well be never (nobody has ever succeeded in making a vaccine for any of the other human coronaviruses).

Look at date of death data. We are definitely way past the peak.

Because none of the other coronaviruses have had anywhere near as much impact so less money is pumped into research for it. There's money to be made in a Covid Vaccine though so people will work to find vaccines much more aggressively.

Our economy will be in more ruin if more people die and if outbreaks overwhelm our healthcare systems. We have 34k deaths officially, probably double that unofficially when you look at excess deaths and covid deaths outside of care homes and hospitals. So possibly 60k+ people dead in this country and will rise. We could be looking at 100k people dead by July if there's a spike in cases due to the easing of restrictions.

IMHO schools shouldn’t open at all till September.

IMHO schools shouldn’t open at all till September.

IMHO schools shouldn’t open at all till September.

And parents that need to go back to work?

The deaths reported in the previous 24 hours didn't all occur in that period. Sometimes the deaths reported can go back several weeks, sometimes even into March.

The below graph from the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine gives a clearer picture of the situation in NHS hospitals in England.

I'm on the fence about this. On one hand I don't see what's going to be different in September, the virus will still be here. On the other hand though, damage has already been done to a lot of children's education and I don't see the point in all this hassle about opening schools in June, when they will be closed for the summer in July anyway, and the last few weeks of term are hardly full on. It's not like every year group is starting together either so some will literally just end up going back for a few weeks.

What do these parents do with their children in the summer holiday?

they think the public are so dumb (tbh some people in this country the way they act I wouldn’t blame them for thinking this) that they have to try dumb down the messaging as much as possible.

I agree..

My other thought is that schools should be being shamed for how awfully they are adapting to online teaching. I was talking to a family member who is a teacher, who was telling me how awful teaching online is going.. the schools have no plan, and no desire to sort things out quickly. They use all sorts of awful excuses 'so many of my students don't have a PC!!' *******s, almost every family with kids has a smart-phone, which is enough to communicate with. And then when they do set work, the lazy parents complain to the school about their kids being stressed because in reality the parents don't want to have to force their kids to study for 3-4 hours a day. Its much easier to just to let them play games/watch tv, and not bother with the hassle.

Maybe its just my perspective, but I came from working in a poor part of China, where schools managed to get full lessons taught online to their kids in around 3 weeks. All done through smart-phones or tablets, administered through the many apps that exist for online teaching. They got it set up, made sure every parent/grandparent knew what was going on, and then after that all the kids sat down for their classes like normal each day, and did their work - and if the parents let the kids misbehave, they were shamed by the other parents/teachers. Within a month you had all kids receiving a pretty good education from their home. Job done, no stressing about needing to urgently go back to school, or kids missing their education.


I don't have any sympathy for the UK, when my part of China which is 8x poorer on average, with schools that have so much less money and facilities, and families who have much less technology or time, can make it work.

If everyone was being honest.. the teachers don't want to do online lessons in the UK because its more work from home, and it means entirely new lesson plans/ideas.. the parents don't want the hassle of managing their kids behavior all day.. the kids want to have fun and don't want to learn.. the schools don't want the administrative burden and hassle of organizing and paying for a new online service..

So its very convenient for all of them to pretend that its not really possible or a good idea.

What do the parents do with their children now?

Also the Virus would still be here but would be in a better situation if we social distanced and don't open up too early.

Does it really matter losing 3 months of education in the grand scheme of things, what do people learn in July anyway and in June? Exams usually are around May/June time.