Does the UK really think it's ready to exit lockdown?

Thanks both

 

Lots of speculation there - coulds, maybes and possiblys should not be entertained when lifting this lockdown WILL cause increased deaths.

The people on here who are so blase about death is frightening.

 

I agree, it's frightening. Frightening that they don't take deaths from any other causes into account when forming and expressing their opinions, despite many warnings from experts that they could be much higher than those from Covid-19 due to our response.

 

Yes, you wonder how lethal this thing is. Strange how it can vary from no symptoms to death. I was always told the difference between cold and a flu was that you will definitely know when you have had the flu, because you will feel that you have been floored with a steamroller. Perhaps it's not true and you can get only slightly poorly from the flu. I heard an interesting radio chat with an epidemiologist from Sheffield who was talking about viral load. He said that he thought that you were unlikely to pick up enough from surfaces to get ill but that you might pick up enough of the virus for your immune system to register it. And that's why hospital staff are vulnerable, they are facing it everyday.

 

I'm far from blase about it thank you. I also never said we should return to normal. Its going to take a balanced approach. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

 

I didn't initially read his post, just one by someone else quoting his original claim and saying it was wrong. So I went away to check. It took me 5 mins to Google the two charts.

Then you posted, on his behalf, telling me I was wrong. I went away and thinking you'd looked at the numbers yourself, I double checked thinking I'd made a mistake. On this occasion I hadn't but as I was now on a PC I posted the graphs.

You then move the goalposts and claim the numbers didn't really matter anyway. In which case why bother quoting them in the first place?

*shrug*

 

Whatever you want, you've won, we're all wrong and you're right. You absolutely nailed the crux of the discussion and I've been moving the goalposts. Three cheers for Watcher.

I did look at the figures, I looked at an article in the telegraph, which had tests up and down between 5 and 10 thousands during the period, but as it wasn't the point I didn't bother to labour it.

 

I think the question is can we save more lives by relaxing some elements of the lockdown for some whilst enabling *anyone* in at risk groups to self isolate without fear of having no job or needing to get food, medicine etc. The biggest issue I can see on the horizon is when the government ceases to be able to underwrite people's wages.

Would it be better to reopen elements of the economy, with a whole raft of marginal gain measures through facemasks, testing, tracing, and absolutely still insisting on home working wherever possible? And then redirect all of the money currently being paid out in furlough so that anyone who is in a high risk group is enabled to self isolate and only has to interact with people who we are certain doesn't have COVID_19 and has appropriate PPE.

Just to add, I see no realistic prospect of how restaurants, pubs and the hospitality industry can viably reopen for a considerable period of time.

I think it is very easy for people like me who's job isn't likely to be at risk and can work from home to blindly say we just need to lockdown until a vaccine is in place. (Although my wife is a headteacher regularly in school looking after key worker kids so I am exposed anyway).

 

Yeah the number of daily infections shouldn't be as much of a worry as it was back in early to mid April. We are having to test tens of thousands more people to get the same daily infections number, less people are dying and hospitals aren't as full. All positive signs that social distancing is working and hopefully a sign that it's weakening so if you do catch it you will survive it.

 

one of the problems with manufacturing PPE could be the availability of raw materials..Much of what we buy and manufacture has its origins in China , which as we all know was subject to a massive lockdown, this situation has caused a massive shortage of products and raw materials,maybe PPE has been affected because of this.?.

I get around a lot of sites that are either storage and distribution or manufacturing and many of them,in fact a lot of them ,are telling me that they are struggling for materials.

I doubt it will happen but i really hope the powers that be will realise that our dependance on foreign manufacturing,particularly from China, is extremely short sighted..Christ knows what would happen if there was ever a war or world wide unrest,we have struggled to cope with lockdown both here and abroad,the after effect of the initial panick buying and people 'self isolating' is still having huge influence over the supply chains and its now more than six weeks since warehouses and cash and carry's had any groceries and bare essential products in.

 

The world is going to have to have a rethink about moving manufacturing to the places of cheapest labour.

Thanks for the post, what are our chances of sourcing the raw materials? Most if not all ppe is man made fabric. Have we the processing plants to make this? And access to compounds used to make those? Or are we really screwed?

 

Anyhow, no worries, enjoy your afternoon!

 

To be fair that depends on your definition of groceries and bare essential items

 

The Chinese must be inwardly laughing at our bungling incompetence at a balanced economy. We have ended up with a gazillion coffee shops. I remember years ago watching The Apprentice and the winning candidate had a career in off-shoring which I had never heard of and involves moving production from the original country to another.

 

Apparently the majority of the world's rubber comes from Malaysian rubber trees and they only produce a finite amount, the article I read said they are at that limit.

 

Is natural rubber still used in all things that are, erm, rubbery, for want of a much better term? It's still in there somewhere forming the base of the material, we haven't developed an alternative?

 

When people talk about "rubber", they don't usually specify what kind. There are many different kinds of rubber, but they all fall into two broad types: natural rubber (latex—grown from plants) and synthetic rubber (made artificially in a chemical plant or laboratory). Commercially, the most important synthetic rubbers are styrene butadiene (SBR), polyacrylics, and polyvinyl acetate (PVA); other kinds include polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polychloroprene (better known as neoprene), and various types of polyurethane. Although natural rubber and synthetic rubbers are similar in some ways, they're made by entirely different processes and chemically quite different.

 

And which is used for things like, for instance, the gloves medical professionals use? I know them as latex gloves, so I'm guessing the natural stuff. Although I call my vacuum cleaner a hoover but it's made by VAX.

 

Latex gloves are, vinyl gloves aren't. Apparently
Latex is the preferred choice but vinyl is an acceptable substitute and both can be medical grade.

 

That's probably the most sensible way of doing it.

Apologies if I was a nbhead to anyone just then. It just frustrates the life out of me when people are dying and wnkers are doing the conga up the village high street.