Paul_Shepherd

Unprecedented times, I think its easy for people to critisize any government, but no one really know what they are doing at this point, any action is a shot in the dark.

Snowy560

There's simply not enough testing going on in most places.
That's the key in my opinion: agressive testing, contact tracing and isolation. But now it's too late.

scrubbedexpat091

BC update today includes 2 twenty four hour periods.

25 cases between Saturday and Sunday, and 20 new cases between Sunday and Monday.

11 more deaths.

137 in hospital with 58 of those in ICU.

905 people have recovered so far.

federal correctional facility in Mission outbreak has risen to 35 with 8 in hospital.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...l-13-1.5530942

5.4 million people have received emergency funds from the government so far.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6811658/c...medium=Twitter

dbd33

I don't think that's true. The best thing to do is to seal the borders, test everyone, contract trace everyone positive and isolate them. That, of course, is more practical for New Zealand and Hawaii than it is for Canada. Canada could however, "seal" the borders (as much as is possible, people will always be able to walk in), develop new tests so as to be able to test more people, test everyone in the circle of anyone found to be positive, aggressively promote social distancing and sheltering in place, provide financial assistance to minimize the number of people who break isolation for need of funds. Pretty much what the various levels of, usually warring, government are doing.

Canada is eventually going to have to deal with the probability of recurring waves of infection in the US but it's too soon for that.

It's no wonder to me that the governments of the US, the UK and Brazil should be making a bollocks of this but Sweden? There's no cartoonish but brutal dictator in Sweden.

Siouxie

Ontario as at 12th April
There are 7,470 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario reported to date in iPHIS. This represents an increase of 421 confirmed cases from the previous report.
44.4% of cases are male, 55.0% are female. 39.5% of cases are 60 years of age and older.
Greater Toronto Area public health units account for 53.9% of cases.
291 deaths have been reported - This is an increase of 17 deaths from the previous report
Eighty-nine outbreaks have been reported in long-term care homes
(opens in new tab, no download -- https://files.ontario.ca/moh-covid-1...2020-04-12.pdf

Nand

It shows how falable everybody can be in a crisis.

We all do stupid things.

Jingsamichty

I can't help thinking that Boris Johnson has played a blinder here. For all I loathe him, I don't for one second believe that he is a far-right politician, unlike many of those he surrounds himself with. He is an opportunist, and simply saw the far-right of the Tory Party/ERG as a means to achieve his dream of being in No.10.

By dint of catching Coronavirus, whether actual or pretended, he now has the ammunition to take a Damascene lurch away from the far right. His majority means he has the political position to risk that. It's interesting that no-one has seen Dominic Cummings for a few weeks... I wonder if he and Johnson have fallen out, perhaps Johnson has decided that he no longer needs Cummings?

I think Johnson is a natural One Nation Tory, pretty liberal in his views, and will be only too glad to ditch the far right elements of his trajectory. I wonder even if he will try to row back on Brexit now that he has been "saved" by immigrant nurses?

Jingsamichty

I see that Cummings has shown up for work today, so that answers that part of my post.

jimf

I notice that Dulux paint stores are open for trade customers but not to DIY customers now. Trade customers have to order by phone with kerbside pickup. The claim they have to do this to comply with government instruction seems odd when Benjamin Moore next door are open as usual?

jimf

Looks like borders do matter...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...iftigniter-rhr

Paul_Shepherd

Hind sight is a wonderful thing.....and there is not one plan that will work for all countries, there are so many variables. Sweden is still an unknown with regards to how their plan will work out..

dbd33

Where's the hindsight in that? New Zealand and Canada are making a good job of it. Boris has made a Brexit of it, instead of saving the country, he's caught it himself.

jimf

As you suggest there do seem to be many variables and an approach that might seem successful in one location isn't necessarily evidence that it would be appropriate elsewhere. There are some critiques which are balanced and informative, others are somewhat predictable.

This is a good one...

I thought this was an interesting overview of pandemics...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/his...ics-deadliest/

Halfway through Survivors (1975) on YT now, a 1 in 5,000 survival rate...

Danny B

Essential sporting event apparently. How weird must it feel to fight with no audience?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52285742

dave_j

So, where's the rule book entitled 'The best way to deal with a pandemic'.

I could write one, you could write one in fact my daughter's pet rabbit could write one (it wouldn't be very long though) and.. they'd all be just as valid as each other. At the moment it's simply too soon to be able to judge who's approach has led to a better outcome.
And there's another problem, define 'better outcome'.
In a few year's time, after all the conferences, symposia, papers and arguments have died down, we still won't know.
Sure some countries will have kept their deaths lower than others, others who've retained a higher GDP and still others who've retained the same government/rulers but generally speaking they'll all have attempted to do the best they could for that proportion of the population they thought best to represent.
What we will know is that we could almost certainly have done better, all of us.

So what'll be in the rule book?
It'll be blank. Why?

For the same reason we have so many different approaches to the same problem, there is no right way to fight this pandemic, whoever finds themselves having to deal with it will just do the best they can given the problems facing them at the time and soak up the criticism from those who thought they knew better with hindsight later.

A prime example is Andrew Cuomo. At the outset the death rate for the virus was stated to be 2-4% of those infected. The math's quite easy. for every million infected the anticipated death rate would be 20k and there are 20M in New York State. No wonder the panic, and the anticipated need for ventilators and beds in large quantities. Nobody knew what the effect of a lockdown would be but it has proven to have been somewhat effective. There are now those criticising him for attemting to prepare for the appocolypse. Did he get it wrong? He did well to prepare and the consequences are still unquantifiable.

There was no correct solution to the problem.

We're in the comfortable position of being able to throw brickbats with abandon, and like many I'll criticise the political class with the best of them, but I for one am relieved I'm not in their place today.