UK Coronavirus: Boris Johnson Announces Strict Lockdown Across Country 134
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced strict measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. He says a "huge national effort" has been needed to halt the spread, adding: "there will come a moment when no health service in the world could possibly cope because there won't be enough ventilators, enough intensive care beds, enough doctors and nurses." Non-essential businesses will be closed and citizens are being ordered to stay in their homes. They can only leave for the following "very limited purposes": shopping for basic necessities; one form of exercise a day alone or with members of your household; any medical need, to provide care or to help a vulnerable person; and/or traveling to and from work, but only where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home.
"That's all -- these are the only reasons you should leave your home," says Johnson. "You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say No. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine -- and you should do this as little as you can. And use food delivery services where you can." The police will be able to take action through fines and dispersing gatherings. The lockdown restrictions will be looked at again in three weeks to determine if they'll be relaxed or not.
You can read the full text of Boris Johnson's address to the nation here.
"That's all -- these are the only reasons you should leave your home," says Johnson. "You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say No. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine -- and you should do this as little as you can. And use food delivery services where you can." The police will be able to take action through fines and dispersing gatherings. The lockdown restrictions will be looked at again in three weeks to determine if they'll be relaxed or not.
You can read the full text of Boris Johnson's address to the nation here.
Too bad, but probably good. (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought it was an interesting experiment to have a whole country remain open as others lock down entirely.
That said, it's not such an interesting experiment it's worth a potentially lot of lives to find out, so it's probably just as well they are shutting down...
It sure seems like the chloroquine drug may pan out though, if it makes Covid far less lethal and even prevents infection, everyone could go back to normal fairly quickly as there is tons of chloroquine already around, and it's easy to make.
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"It sure seems like the chloroquine drug may pan out though,"
Half of England is on Gin-Tonic anyway.
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Half of England is on Gin-Tonic anyway.
"Gin & Tonic", at least in UK English :-)
It's a bit early for that here, but maybe later!
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""Gin & Tonic", at least in UK English :-)
It's a bit early for that here, but maybe later!"
The 'and' is OK at home when you mix it yourself, but at the bar, the ordering gets faster when you omit it.
But what am I talking of, bar? Tempi passati.
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"Gin & Tonic", at least in UK English :-)
It's a bit early for that here, but maybe later!"
It's always 5 o'clock, somewhere. :-)
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW: At least one other country is also not trying to "lock down": Belarus. But then they are hardly comparable to first world countries.
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:5, Insightful)
The strategy of quarantining individuals who test positive works, but only if you test lots and lots of people, including many who turn out to be negative. And you need to quarantine those the negatives till the test comes through.
Otherwise, you need to do assume everyone is infectious, because there is no way of knowing. I could be breathing virus at this screen now.
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Most importantly, South Korea quarantined everyone who tested positive even if (especially if) they were asymptomatic, which they could do only because they got their testing act together in a hurry. They also aggressively tracked down all known contacts and tested them. That works in the early stages of an outbreak, but as you note, if an outbreak enters the population at large the only feasible approach is to presume everyone is a potential carrier.
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The Government has had a month to act, but has only started doing so seriously in the past few days.
The Government has been acting seriously for over two months.
Just because you don't understand what they're doing doesn't mean that it's not happening.
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is the UK got started late and still doesn't have the capacity to test the needed numbers.
The initial strategy was to just let to run rampant and wait for herd immunity to kick in. That was Dominic Cummings' plan, the unelected ruler of the UK.
By the time that changed it was too late. Then Boris Johnson asked people to self isolate but of course was ignored. He's spent years telling people to ignore experts and that they know best, so of course that's what they did.
This may finally be enough but it depends if the police can enforce it and if the promised financial assistance comes.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fortunately, he doesn't actually have that power. The governors of various states will open things up when they think it's reasonable to do so. Of course he'll still do damage to those who listen to him even in those states. He'll end up killing his own supporters.
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:5, Funny)
The initial strategy was to just let to run rampant and wait for herd immunity to kick in.
No need to wait for Slashdotters! We've got something much better than herd immunity! We have:
Nerd Immunity!
Politicians telling us not to socialize is basically a NOP for us. We were all doing our civic duty following all the lockdown guidelines years before they were even created!
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The Cummings plan specifically accepts the weak will die. Lots of them. It's an insult to call it planned herd immunity, it's mass murder, ensuring almost everyone that could die does die, leaving a herd of the possibly immune. If Cummings exact words hadn't been leaked "never knowingly truthful" Johnson would have ignored experts advice even longer.
It's sickening watching them continue to play politics even now, desperately trying to bullshit their way past a decade wrecking the services we desperately nee
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Oh for fucks sake will you stop spreading bullshit propaganda.
The UK did not start late. The initial strategy remains the current strategy and is continuing to be implemented. Dominic Cummings is not the fucking antichrist and Government policy is being guided by scientists and medical professionals.
Now fucking pipe down and let the adults speak.
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You would not know this from reading news reports, or watching Youtube videos of famous people offering suggestions for how to cope now that we are "all" locked down, but it is true.
Most cities have enormous loopholes in their "stay home" orders. Virtually anyone anywhere in the logistics chain of dozens of industries can just keep going about their lives. Huge factories are still packed full of workers, running production as if nothing is going on. I have a friend who is an a
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:4, Informative)
Randomly controlled trials are not encouraging.
Re: Too bad, but probably good. (Score:2)
Saw an article where several people poisoned themselves in Nigeria taking too much of it.
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Saw an article where several people poisoned themselves in Nigeria taking too much of it.
No surprise. Many people have no common sense at all and in a country like that safeguards will be far weaker.
Re:Too bad, but probably good. (Score:5, Interesting)
"It sure seems like the chloroquine drug may pan out though, "
It might do. It a result from a dish, on cells. Whether this actually works on people is a different thing. It could even make them worse. The only useful thing to do with the results that we have at the moment are to do more experiments to test this. That will be done. It probably will not work since many results like this do not work. Fortunately, they will be testing lots of other things as well.
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Six hydroxychloroquine-treated patients were lost in follow-up during the survey because of early cessation of treatment. Reasons are as follows: three patients were transferred to intensive care unit, including one transferred on day2 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on day1, one transferred on day3 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on days1-2 and one transferred on day4 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on day1 and day3; one patient died on day3 post inclusion and was PCR-negative on day2; one patient decided to leave the hospital on day3 post-inclusion and was PCR-negative on days1-2;
So at least one patient in the treatment group (10 people) still died.
Re: Too bad, but probably good. (Score:2)
China stopped testing since everyone got better and went home
Try harder next time.
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Eh? Quinone was tested on people in China and France and it worked ...
In China it did not work.
And in France no one ever claimed it was tested, where did you get your info from?
The link is only a diagram with no text at all
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Eh? Quinone was tested on people in China and France and it worked. There are many more trials ongoing. China stopped testing since everyone got better and went home, so were nobody to test on anymore.
~flyingfsck
I live in China and "everyone" returned home to advisory quarantines with the initial exceptions of those who work in the distribution of food and with reduced evening hours of operation and government offices where social-distancing is practiced and no congregation of the public (facilitated by appointment) is allowed inside to wait online. Lines beyond a gate that do form are distanced.
The first large subset of workers to return across my city, but not in full force, were construction workers. Erection c
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> Eh? Quinone was tested on people in China and France and it worked.
The paper was interesting, and I hadn't seen it yet. No doubt there will be others coming out and there maybe more now. So the paper is good information and a promising result. But, it is not evidence that "it worked"; it is using a proxy measure (i.e. viral load) rather than patient outcomes, albeit a good proxy measure. It's also a small sample size and non-randomized. So, all good news; I hope that it works and it might well do. But
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It sure seems like the chloroquine drug may pan out though, if it makes Covid far less lethal and even prevents infection
That is a myth.
There is no confirmed study about effects like that.
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I disagree with their reasoning but I can understand it. You're not going to be going to work, the kids are off school, you have a house in a low population part of the country, surely that's better than trying to survive in a crowded metropolis.
It's just that the low population part of the country lacks the infrastructure to support a large permanent influx of people..
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Chloroquine is promising and may save some people but there is only some circumstantial evidence that it does https://www.inverse.com/mind-b... [inverse.com] There are other equally promising drugs in the WHO "Solidarity" trial https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] and beyond that there are many treatments including vaccines that are being studied https://emedicine.medscape.com... [medscape.com] The problem is that in two to three weeks time when 500 people a day are dying in America it will still be complete guess work as to whether any o
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The US have the worst voting system of the planet, and the UK's is only slightly better.
That leads often to the fact that the lowest denominator wins. Why the parliament in the UK does not function I don't know. No one forced the MPs to vote for Johnson.
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Re: Too bad, but probably good. (Score:2)
In spite of nobody trusting him, BoJo was elected because he's a chancer, because he was popular and because Tories are morons who are desperate to have their Brexit will carried out regardless of the cost.
The thousands of extra COVID-19 deaths due to driving away EU medical staff is just one of those costs.
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Oh, that old canard. The percentage of NHS staff from the EU was LOWER than the percentage of UK residents from the EU. In other words, people from the EU going home would reduce demand for NHS services by a greater extent than its capacity to deliver them.
Still, those EU medical staff are really making the fucking difference in Spain and Italy.
Fucking educate yourself before posting in public, you look like a cunt.
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While this late measure will probably have increased the problem somewhere around 10x or worse, there is still quite a bit of exponential grows in things. Hence this moron may just effectively have killed only a few 1000 by his insane decision making.
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his insane decision making
Interesting. Would ignoring the medical professionals have been sane? Would ignoring the scientists have been sane? Would listening to Jeremy fucking Corbyn have been sane?
Just what exactly was insane about the decision making?
I'm not asking if the decisions were all right, or all made at the right time, you used the term insane so please, back it up.
Or fuck off. That would work.
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to be blunt if you look at the log plots of infections they are rising by a magnitude every 10 days roughly 100,000 cases by the 2nd of april, 1million by the 12th 10 million by the 22nd and 2nd of may would be 100 million but the population of the uk is smaller than that so with very few hosts to infect and an outcome about a week to 6 weeks. middle of june the virus should be burnt out in the UK. lot of places really
Yes. And by that time society will be in chaos and you will have a lot of dead bodies, most of which would have been avoidable. Good luck with that.
Re: Too bad, but probably good. (Score:2)
Brits can't wear masks (Score:2, Troll)
You couldn't see the stiff upper lip that way.
Re: Brits can't wear masks (Score:2, Troll)
Sadly the stiff upper lip is 4 generations gone. Now it's just hysterical panicking arseholes stripping the shops bear.
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This is no time to shop for a bear! People's lives are at stake!
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arseholes stripping the shops bear.
This is no time for playing dress up with bears, strip that bear and get back to hoarding!
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The stiff upper lip was always a myth. For example during WW2 and the blitz there was widespread looting, organized crime considered it a golden age, kids vandalized the bomb shelters, and ration books had to be introduced because people were panic buying and couldn't be trusted to do share what was available.
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Now it's just hysterical panicking arseholes stripping the shops bear.
Poor Paddington, having to work retail while naked...
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My wife and I have been wearing masks when we go out. You get a few looks because it's unusual in the UK, especially for white people, but it's fine. I wish more people would do it. Several times I've had to ask people to keep their distance too.
There was a woman on the TV standing in a queue who was asked why she wasn't isolating or keeping her distance. She said "you can't let the virus win." I don't understand how people can be so thick.
He can announce whatever he wants (Score:2)
But he doesnt have nearly enough police to enforce it thanks to severe cuts of their numbers by Theresa May as home sec. He might as well announce the sun will rise in the west for all the effect this will have on people determined to go out.
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So when is the main planting season in England? Or is agriculture exempt?
Re: He can announce whatever he wants (Score:2)
Fuck knows. All the governments seem to be making it up as they go along.
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The plan is to eat dandelions. There will be an internet lottery to decide who gets to go out foraging on which day.
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Most of planting is already done: hint it is end of march, facepalm.
Agriculture and other things don't force you to meet with groups of people. Meeting other people is what is restricted, not riding with your tractor to the fields and toiling around there.
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Why facepalm? Planting season hasn't started here (eastern Washington State). Mid-May is standard here for plants that can't take a frost. In Wisconsin late May is typical. Potatoes and oats can go in earlier, like mid April. Here the forsythia is just stating to bloom, and the first rhubarb leaves are just emerging.
That is why I asked the question. I have no idea when things get planted in England.
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Most things are planted in autumn, and as we are in Europe, have coastal climate + golf stream we plant early. There is surely something we plant later, but the fields are all green already.
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The people are scared shitless. They will obey because they don't want to end up in need of a ventilator with 100 people in front of them in a line in a hospital. In Germany rules are pretty much the same and 97% of the people agree with them, regardless of age or political preferences. This is a global catastrophe, it's WW3 against a fucking alien, a virus.
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There is nothing alien about it, this is a direct consequence of China's refusal to regulate its industries and they must face the consequences.
Re: He can announce whatever he wants (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup. They've bad enough scares like SARS and bird flu but did they take any notice? Did they fuck - their medieval animal markets stayed open for business and now the whole world reaps the consequences.
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Yes, but those items aren't still wiggling.
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Name any disease anyone has ever caught from a fish.
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If you think those are weird wait until you see kangaroo meat. Highly recommended by the way, it's delicious.
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Hey AC, what happened on the 4th of June 1989 in Beijing?
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How many police do you think are needed? Would adding another 16% really make a material difference?
What are all these policemen doing instead right now? They're sure as fuck not policing football matches.
May I go for a ride with my motorbike? (Score:2)
Like, get out of my home already wearing helmet and gloves, ride away, return and go back in.
How is that more risky than running around the block ?
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In Europe, the law is more likely to be interpreted by its intent rather than its precise wording.
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"May I go for a ride with my motorbike? "
Legally I don't know the answer but I doubt you'd get stopped since you can travel to work and travel to shops to get food or medicine.
Googled a bit, found this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Sigh, the info is still stupid, they tell at risk people to stay clear of people with symptoms, but the virus can infect other people long before the infected person has symptoms. This has been bugging me for weeks, other countries get this right like South Korea but this govt
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I used to think that Boris was a smarter version of Trump. Now, I'm not so sure.
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you do agree that the risk of infection is less than any of the other activities that are allowed, right?
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Yes. Stop somewhere for a sandwich, then your trip is 'food shopping'.
Ironically more risky too, but that's how the law goes.
at least no big MED bill form 5-6 differnt people (Score:2)
at least no big MED bill form 5-6 differnt people. But in the USA each Doctor and place can bill on there own and if they are out of network then THERE IS NO CAP. and the OUT OF POCKET MAX does not apply
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The each doctor part is just so stupid no use even explaining why that is wrong.
Plenty of out of network does not apply to everyone only those under government healthcare and HMO or similar insurance.
Mine has a cap and pocket max for when I am out of network.
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Did you buy non-ACA compliant insurance? I have pretty shitty insurance (it's the best deal for me, because my employer kicks in some money to my HSA if I choose the shitty plan) and the out-of-pocket maximum applies to both in-network and out-of-network bills, combined.
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You can be balance-billed for out-of-network stuff.
and ACA plans can have NO caps out-of-network costs
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Unlike the absolute you spouted, it's possible to buy insurance that does have out-of-network coverage with out-of-pocket maximums on out-of-network bills. So, your original claim ("THERE IS NO CAP. and the OUT OF POCKET MAX does not apply") is only true for a subset of people, and not universally true as you imply.
Plus some states limit balance billing for treatment in in-network facilities.
This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
UK announces measures after sticking head in the sand for long enough to ensure pandemic starts spreading there too. Honestly at this point I think the twats in charge should be held criminally liable.
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Honestly I think the UK just saw the EU close its borders and said "we're not doing that because the EU did it first".
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Idiotic cunts online panic and blame the Government for adopting a reasoned and measured response, use their own ignorance and lack of understanding to make spurious claims.
If you'd actually been listening for the last few weeks you'd know that the current measures were always part of a strategy that tries to balance important things like public health, food supplies, the economy and basic democratic freedoms that frankly many of us would kill to retain.
If you have to die so that this remains a free country
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> If you'd actually been listening for the last few weeks you'd know that the current measures were always part of a strategy that tries to balance
> important things like public health, food supplies, the economy and basic democratic freedoms that frankly many of us would kill to retain.
It is certainly one way to interpret events. I think to many though, it seems that we started off with one strategy and then changed fairly rapidly to another. Whether it is true or not that the original strat
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I don't know where the priority was, but it's clear that there was a desire to balance the conflicting needs. Precisely where the right balance lies is subjective, and whether it's been achieved will no doubt be the cause of months of media and political outrage followed by decades of academic study.
Not in the slightest bit strict (Score:2)
Just look at this list of ameneties that can continue as normal
Supermarkets and other food shops,
health shops,
pharmacies including non-dispensing pharmacies,
petrol stations,
bicycle shops,
home and hardware shops,
laundrettes and dry cleaners,
garages,
car rentals,
pet shops,
corner shops, newsagents,
post offices,
and banks.
Market stalls which offer essential retail,
such as grocery and food
So not locked down at all then .
Total Bullshit response from Johnson IMHO
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No and not with this speed.
Come here near Milan and see the constant stream of ambulances going in and out of hospitals.
Re:What's the morbidity % for flu for people over (Score:5, Informative)
Obligatory reminder of who has been lying.
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5: “The United States has, as of now, only 129 cases and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9: “This blindsided the world.”
March 13: [Declared state of emergency]
March 17: “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
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There's a reason it's been nicknamed "the Boomer Doomer"
Re:What's the morbidity % for flu for people over (Score:5, Informative)
America has fewer hospital beds than Italy (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a good explanation [youtube.com] of the problem. Basically if things are let go without quarantine there'll be about 1/50 the number of ventilators we need. 7.5 million will die.
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It isn't just the hospitals with no hysteresis built in, it is just about the entire economy. The discretionary part of the budget has also been subjected to this same mentality. The Republicans go about squeaking about waste in the Federal Gov., then campaign on the Fed. Gov. not working so much of its functions should be privatized. The result is no preparedness for disasters because they cannot be put on a spreadsheet.
Re: What's the morbidity % for flu for people over (Score:2)
I get first hand reports that get confirmed by media only days later, it's good to know what's what.
Update from Switzerland: though everyone who feels slightly unwell is told to stay at home, hospital personnel must come to work as long as they have no fever. Same in Holland at least in one place I know of (elderly home, not hospital), by the way. There are still enough beds, more being set up. Percentage wise,
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The government by closing stores that are non essential. Basically grocery stores remain open.
I suspect in a few days time, the supermarkets will be asked to close down sales of stuff that is non-essential. It seems unreasonable that a supermarket can sell a TV, because they also have cabbages.
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We've had the retail shut down here in the Czech republic for over a week. Supermarkets are sill selling everything, you can totally go buy a TV or a vacuum cleaner in a Tesco. Also florists are open too, for the upcoming funerals I suppose.
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You have Tesco in the Czech Republic? That makes me sad.
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It's pretty obvious if you just think about these things.
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Cue the attendant to direct this fellow to the dictionary queue.
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Any form of sustenance is a basic necessity. Get a grip man. No one's taking away your BBQ chips.
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A shop online is open for a delivery service.
1. A citizen in the UK provides their CC and other details to set up an account to shop online with a shop they like and trust.
The gov and shop take a day+ to create a new account. Look if the provided old age, allowance ID is correct, citizenship is in use once and of a real person.
Is the citizen real, not sharing an account, ID is correct, is the ID fake? An attempt at fraud? Did not get detected as 10 other
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Indeed. That's the point. If we overreact now then the virus may turn out to a big fat nothing. Despite what you think you know, experts understand the potential this has. Just like Y2K was a big nothingburger because experts made it that way through a wide spread coordinated campaign.
could/should be (strongly) recommended (but still NOT as mandatory)!
You sound like an anti-vaxxer.