Jerseygirl

i hope your relative will come through this.

that is one nightmare scenario...having to go to hospital for emergency treatment.

FriendlyExpat

My family is currently stuck in London so do need to get back if I can.

Also Millhouse is correct - shutdowns are huge overreaction and can't last very long once damage to economy / food supply chains etc becomes clear.

HVO_1111

That's your opinion and I respect that. But the unknown unknowns have forced the govt/business hands (and we don't know just how much they know that they may not be sharing with us) so I guess for some people it still comes down to a trade-off between economics and human lives.

Millhouse

EK suspending all passenger flights from 25th.

NorthernLad

Yet the amount of people I see on Facebook in UAE enjoying 'staycations' indicates not everyone gets the situation we are all in globally.

I was in the Facebook page that advertises these, left it a few days ago as the ignorance is mind-blowing.

FriendlyExpat

If the lock down cripples the economy, banks will eventually fail or pound will become worthless, bringing down food supply chains and infrastructure. Imagine how many more lives would be at immediate risk if supermarkets weren't being restocked, and water and power was out. That is the true trade off.

Jerseygirl

now you are scaring me...please stop.

HVO_1111

All the usual economic logic has gone out of the window. This is a global emergency and in my opinion, usual rules don't and won't apply for quote some time. And we are all in the same boat.

Miss Ann Thrope

You clearly just don't get why flattening the curve is so critical, which means that you either haven't read enough about this or you lack an ability to think things through to any logical extent (which would explain a lot of the brexit nonsense you have spouted on here).

With all the models indicating a range of between 40% and 80% of the population likely to get infected, the rate at which that happens must be slowed at almost any cost. While the disease may not be fatal to most, it is severely debilitating to many. So of course, for a starter that would mean health services being overwhelmed and many thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of people dying of causes other than covid 19; these are people who would otherwise not have died. It would mean many, if not most, NHS staff being very sick or dying (as has been observed in China and Italy where health workers have suffered higher rates of more acute cases). And the health service not just being overwhelmed but actually collapsing.

Meanwhile high rates of simultaneous illness mean that there would be acute shortages of workers for essential industries such as power generation, food and medicine packing and shipping, delivery drivers, grocery shops and pharmacies...not to mention police and defence forces!

So the trade off is temporarily shutting down most of the economy and social life for the longer term preservation of civilised society. It really is that stark and fortunately it seems most of our leaders have belatedly come to that realisation in the last few days.

Your arrogant dismissals of "mere experts", much like your hero JRM who naturally knows better than the proletarian fire brigade, is representative of a glib we-know-better shallow political movement that has already led to much damage to the UK and the US. Fortunately this crisis is exposing that "thinking" for the dangerous pseudo-intellectual sham that it is.

Boomhauer

So you want to sacrific the elderly because of the economy? Are you going to suggest the elderly who are sick should also be banned from hospitals, because when they get sick they are going to call paramedics or go to the hospital themselves. It's not going to be a few, it will be thousands. It is also not going to effect the elderly in general, it is going to affect elderly people who are not affluent and who do not have influential friends.

If Johnson's experts are right, then pray tell why the US, Canada, Israel, South Korea, China and many other countries are not following this Herd immunity strategy? Is the Johnson government smarter than all of them? Why are the Drs. in Northern Italy warning the UK to act fast now before they get into a situation like they are in? I wouldn't dismiss these folks as armchair experts.

More than half of the severe Coronavirus patients in ICU, in France, are under 50.
https://thehill.com/changing-america...-patients-with

FriendlyExpat

I'm going to be blunt. Yes.

My kids need a functioning economy so they can have food to eat, a school to educate them and a life to look forward to. If the choice is half a million deaths now from Covid-19 or untold tens of millions starving later in the year, what do you do? Because that potentially is the awful choice upon us.

HiHo

There really is no need for panic, stay calm and follow orders. Most of us will make it though this. Normal people like us are not going to allow the world to disintegrate as you suggest. Today I shall implement contingency planning for infrastructure investment, the roads will be maintained and goods will get to market. Mrs HiHo will write E-Learning material and tomorrow teach key workers kids, they will be educated. Ahmed will continue to grow citrus in Turkey, James will continue to fish the Atlantic, Food will be produced. Yusif will continue shipping natural gas, you will have power. The morons on the stock exchange will fold a bank or two. The government will bail them out yet again with our grand children's pensions. Play your part, do not put anybody at undue risk and get the job done. Each of us only make a small contribution but its an important one. Good luck to everybody in making yours, stay safe doing it.

scrubbedexpat141

...and now going to continue to some locations.

csdf

Yes, some amazing flip-flopping going on here.

scrubbedexpat141

Malls are shut though, so there is that upside. It means there's literally nowhere for people to go now, which should make a difference.