Coronavirus Megathread Part I

This nonsense has to stop. We may not be poorer. Nobody knows what the future holds and we have to do whatever we can today to be ready for the future.

the support announced is supposed to keep the country going so the economy does not implode. If we can protect jobs then there is a good chance that things will be better when everything settles.

Yeah but people still lost profits, people have still lost jobs, projects have been delayed. The government are there to help you survive, not to help you profit. We won't implode obviously, but the economy isn't going to suddenly roar back straight away. Maybe markets will, but those delayed deliveries, the borrowed money, the people out of work etc. and restarting the projects in the country. It's going to be troublesome.

Let us not forget we have brexit to deal with too.

You need to protect the economy. You dont want companies to go bust and damage the economy.


What? They should know? So doctors should know how to treat all diseases. Ok.

The distance between each person wasn't the first thing I noticed. It was really highlighting America's obsession with guns and the fact such a large number of people decided it was necessary to purchase a gun during a pandemic.

The point Hotchocolate is making (I hope) is that not all jobs can be protected, even if you try to, there will be some slippage and people will miss out.

It's weird, I'm probably moderate left in all honesty when it comes to policies, other than wanting to own my own home and rent it out without someone taking equity, I think rich people need to be taxed more (or not taxed more, but their actual taxes should be paid, unpaid taxes loss of revenue a couple years back was in total £70bn e.g. https://www.patrickcannon.net/insights/uk-tax-evasion-statistics/

That's a significant amount, imagine if we halved that and gave a quarter of that extra income to the NHS. That's just under £9B

Do you think raising the rich's taxes is the wisest option(where I think they will just find new instruments to prevent tax being paid) or being more aggressive on tax evaders is better?

That is not how things work. Companies need cash now. They need to pay wages, pay contractors, invest in key projects etc.

Yes, we have Brexit hence why we need to ensure that the economy does not implode.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I agree with the measures Sunak put in, in fact I'm directly benefitting from it. I'd be straight up out of a job right now if it wasn't for them covering businesses.

Companies need cash now to survive and stay afloat, a lot of companies are just as month to month as the workers so an emergency cash fund to stay afloat is important. If banks implode people won't have cash, if companies are out of business people lose their homes, if people lose their homes 2008 happens all over again. I get how it works.

Yeah Brexit to deal with too. Realistically we need to delay the transition date. Last thing we need right now is more issues with supply chains e.g.

If they want to go to church because god will protect them from the virus, then fine, as long as they agree to see out the remainder of the lockdown locked in the church, with no access to any medical care for COVID-19 related symptoms. If they die, they die.

If they agree to that, then I’m 100% fine with churches being reopened.

Now that I think has been downplayed by the government, definitely. But I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as weatern media has predicted.

You still in china?

If people are already living together, fair enough. But plenty of people are still meeting socially.

One thing that infuriates me now is regularly seeing squads of clearly unrelated and non-living-together cyclists racing around together, a foot apart, not giving a ****.

Yeah, I never left

You're probs safer over there than in Europe now lol

This is one of the most debated topic on tsr and IRL. How do we provide for public services?

The fundamental decision that needs to be made about the NHS is whether the UK truly wants a public health system. Not this lackadaisical approach that we have towards it.

We will have the money if the Government stops wasting money on dead projects, taxing the rich properly and stop allowing corporations to avoid taxes. We can also do more by ensuring the NHS is run properly by stopping private contractors from defrauding the health system.

Trust me, the money is there but the political will is not there. Just look at the Coronavirus response. Few weeks prior, the Government had dragged their feet and tried to defend their abysmal economic response. Then they suddenly came out with an economic response that even Jeremy Corbyn was proud of.

There are lots of waste in the service because the system is run badly. For example, I heard of a story of a hospital that had employed a locum (part-time contractor) doctor on £100 per hour. The doctors had asked the hospital manager to employ a full-time staff. However, the claim was that he would be only part-time but ended up staying there for 4 years. Even his full-time equivalents did not receive half of his salary and it means that they could have funded 2 doctors on his wages and reduced the workload.

I personally think that the policy towards the NHS is ‘managed decline’. They will leave it to rot until the people decide to get rid of it. That way, we don't blame the politicians. The frustrating bit for the politicians is that they end up needing the NHS whenever there is a major national crisis.

That problem isn’t unheard of, but is a serious problem because there’s been no job planning on behalf of government at all, the number of new doctors needs to be increasing substantially each year but they’re not, so there’s always a staffing shortage.

Yes, I agree. My view is that the Government sees the NHS as a burden hence they are slow to react.

We know that there is an ageing population. Instead of working to support this demographic change, we are trying to stick to business as usual whilst hoping that things don't change.

I really figured and hoped that the UK would try and take this as an opportunity to perform on Germanys level. But apparently the UK just wanted to prove it was foolish to leave the EU and pretty cocky to feel superior, and is fully headed down the Spain, Italy route. Not even on par with any Northern European nations... Smh...

Really sad, and people are suffering.