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Why is covid going on for so long in your opinion?

It has all been going on for a very long time now. What do you think is the problem and the solution? In your opinion?

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(edited 3 years ago)

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Original post by exols
people protesting, not wearing masks or social distancing properly isn't making it any better

I am not sure why protesting isn't prohibited at the moment. It may be a bit undemocratic but drastic measures need to be taken in my opinion.
Can you elaborate what you mean by look to the East?
What did they do differently from the uk?
Because it’s overhyped
It's because we have an incompetent govt who keep flip flopping and doing u turns on every decision they make :colonhash:

They need to stop listening to that moron Ferguson (who has a poor track record of being wrong) and listen to someone more credible and has a good track record.
Original post by Anonymous1502
It has all been going on for a very long time now. What do you think is the problem and the solution? In your opinion?


Idiots socialising when they know for a fact they're not supposed to.
Personally, i think its going on for so long because the gvmt isn't really considering shutting schools/colleges or at the very least make masks in classrooms compulsory. It is partly because people aren't sticking to the rules- they're still gathering and having guests over. The main issue is schools tbh.. social distancing at college seriously doesn't exist, neither does regularly cleaning the toilets.

Solution: focus on strict rules- either shutting down schools completely (which will be a disaster for gcses and a levels) or put schools on a rota basis (few days online, few days in school). Make masks compulsory inside classrooms. Another issue is that when one student tests positive for covid, only the students around the infected individual isolate - this should be considered and if one person tests positive the whole class should isolate.
-Issue with students isolating: they miss out on a lot. Even though there are live lessons, some teachers can't really focus on people working at home and people at school simultaneously.. its harder to get help when you need it.
As soon as people were given a tiny bit of freedom at the end of the first lockdown, the majority of people stopped following the rules about social distancing completely (if they ever followed them to start with).

The subsequent confusing and ever changing "guidance" (now made worse by being different across the 4 nations) plus the Cummings fiasco then led people to ignore the government, make up their own 'rules' or to believe the people who shouted the loudest on facebook or youtube about us all being oppressed and other conspiracies.

The solution? Clear, specific guidance, with the instruction "do this, or someone you love will die sooner than they should in the not too distant future".
At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if this became the long-term norm for contemporary society. Everyone expects this to be temporary and to magically disappear over night, hence why everyone's been so lax about it over here. News flash people - if you don't get your act together, we'll be stuck in this quandary forever.

This mentality vaguely reminds me of studying World War I and how the Brits thought going to war would be cool and just a small getaway before coming back as heroes for Christmas...
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by Anonymous1502
What did they do differently from the uk?


It's not rocket science. If you go near someone with covid you will get it. If you have covid and you go near someone they will get. It is that simple.

Wearing a mask reduces the chance of infection.

Sadly, huge swathes of our population seem unable to understand this basic principal.

The East are doing better than us mainly because they have a compliant population and authoritarian security forces.

New Zealand and Germany are bucking the trend because they have empathetic leadership and a population with a reading age in excess of 11 unlike in the UK.
Reply 11
In fairness, its a bit hit and miss out there, Malaysia **** the bed hard with it and Vietnam (if memory serves) is marching down the wrong path as well
A mix of causes- lack of a proper test and trace system, universities starting back in person, eat out to help out, government response being late both in March and since, and government not leading by example (Dominic Cummings and Robert Jenrick not being sacked).
The government didn't enforce the first lockdown, and then politically had to give the message that they knew what they were doing, meaning they had to relax things.

The aim all along was to keep infected numbers to be low enough that they could all have a bed in an NHS hospital. What they stupidly forgot to include in their plans was the obvious spike when kids went back to school, as well as the fact that loosening restrictions in line with keeping r just below 1 was walking a tightrope needlessly.

We don't even need a 4 week lockdown, 3 will do if it's done properly. But this 4 week lockdown isn't being done properly (there is the benefit of colder weather meaning people won't go sunbathing at the seaside) so I expect it to prolonged for a bit and then another one in at the start of 2021.
Original post by ThomH97
The government didn't enforce the first lockdown, and then politically had to give the message that they knew what they were doing, meaning they had to relax things.

The aim all along was to keep infected numbers to be low enough that they could all have a bed in an NHS hospital. What they stupidly forgot to include in their plans was the obvious spike when kids went back to school, as well as the fact that loosening restrictions in line with keeping r just below 1 was walking a tightrope needlessly.

We don't even need a 4 week lockdown, 3 will do if it's done properly. But this 4 week lockdown isn't being done properly (there is the benefit of colder weather meaning people won't go sunbathing at the seaside) so I expect it to prolonged for a bit and then another one in at the start of 2021.

The 1st lockdown was a disaster, because people couldn't meet inside it meant they met outside. The parks were super overcrowded along with beaches and people met in large numbers outside. It sometimes makes me feel what's the point of following the rules if no one else seems to be. I was super disciplined and followed all the rules of the 1st lockdown. I think another big issue is the difficulty of accessing healthcare for people who don't have covid as everything is just too covid focused yet despite that we don't seem to be very successful at stopping the spread.
The problem is the class of viruses it belongs to. There are seven coronaviruses and they are very successful viruses. The two deadlier coronaviruses did not visit the UK and much of the population has no knowledge and even looking at the last flu pandemic here, swine flu is forgotten about as anyone born before 1968 was immune and many others got partial cross-immunity from flu jabs. Sars-cov2 seems to have hit the coronavirus sweet spot of not being quite as deadly as the other two but about as spreadable as the other four which are endemic and have been for hundreds or even thousands of years. 70% of people being asymptomatic. 82% being symptomless before the day of a covid swab PCR test. In a western society in winter with a weary public it's pretty much impossible to stop it circulating to levels which without interventions would spiral to where we are now or even much worse. There's very little the UK government can do to stop people meeting indoors without closing everything down and scaring them. People survived the first wave, so fewer are going to get that scared again. An additional problem is all these months on we all know perfectly well that our friends and acquaintances were meeting indoors, having parties and so on. Once people hear people earnestly going on about the rules and then when a person who'll judge them is out of earshot and you hear them say I met xyz, I went around a large shopping centre, I went on holiday etc. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's not like March/April where everyone pretended they were following the rules. We know better now.

The solution is not one single thing. It's a partially effective vaccine that stops 30% of people getting it (WHO minimum) or some other partial aspect such as it stops people getting pneumonia or being in hospital but doesn't stop them getting it. This will take the edge off the 3rd, 4th waves for the medical system. 300,00 tests a day is not sufficient for a population of 66 million which has so much job and social mixing. Testing needs to get up to the millions of tests a day so much broader bits of the population get tested regularly and other bits from time to time. Lastly the isolation, a survey reported to sage suggested only around 10% of people with covid-19 were isolating fully. The government will probably have to swallow it's pride and do what other countries have had an reverse the earlier decision and put self isolation for close contracts back to 7 days to get compliance up. The track and trace system needs sorting. It's highly dysfunctional.
Because we have an utterly toxic mix of an incompetent government and a public who for years have just done what they want without having to follow rules. I’ve said this on other threads and I’ll say it again, we are paying the price for years of liberal policies which have completely eradicated the need for respect for oneself and others. It is well seen that in countries like Japan and Germany who have a strong moral ethic as a society; they are doing much better.

On top of this further we have absolutely nobody to police this, and even if we did, our society is so liberal and free that no one would be able to question why someone wasn’t wearing a mask, or not social distancing without fear of a lawsuit for discrimination, which is becoming the new normal. Get offended, despite being in the wrong, wap the camera out and make a fool of the police. Thanks Labour.

I mean, you can murder a policeman in this country and only get 7 years. Why on earth should I worry about the punishment for not wearing a mask, right?

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