Hancock's Half Hour

[Chris152]

Watching it now. R rate rising, and that doesn't include the effect of floods of people onto public transport and back in work since Sunday evening's message to the nation(s).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52677194
Relatively happy to be in Wales.

 

[worn thumbs]

I'm very glad not to be a London commuter,but then thats always been the case.I gave up watching the windbaggery weeks ago as the whole thing could have been condensed into five minutes.It actually reminds me more of "Are You Being Served" with the fairly patronising tone adopted when the staff get told "you've all done very well."

 

[Trevanion]

What'll be will be, you just need to take precautions for your own wellbeing.

 

[SammyQ]

I agree with wornthumbs; the talking -down-to is galling and sends out the wrong signals: humility, not hubris please.

Tony Handcock would, I am certain, have a low opinion of us reheating his working title as a satire on Matt Handj0b's unimaginative, criminally-inexactitude-ridden daily propaganda.

Sam

 

[Steve Maskery]

Get back to work.
Hope for the best.
Stay lucky.

 

[beech1948]

I simply ask myself What could we all do.

Could we restrict Tube carriages to say only a max of 20 people at a time instead of the insane crowding. I have stopped going into London for these reasons.

Would TfL have enough people to manage this. Maybe they travel in full PPE for a days work perhaps behind a perspex screen in a carriage.

Same with buses. Restrict to say 20 people total

Make people walk to work. 3 miles is not so difficult and should take only 45 or so minutes.

Make parts of London and indeed all other built up or city areas car free. Say a 3 mile circle from Piccadilly Sq.

Shops to have an allowance of one customer person per 250 sq ft. Restaurants/pubs etc to stay shut.

Trains again restrict the number of users per carriage.

Planes only allow internal UK flights, keep all non-UK people out.

Use the Army/Navy/Air Force as needed to get stuff organised...its one thing they are quite good at...getting stuff done rather than fussing and farting like the politico's.

Has the benefits of helping Boris with his supposed fight against overweight people.

My brain is screaming at me to find someone who can get stuff done instead of the lackadaisical civil servants and MPs who seem unable to act at all.

No doubt you will all tell me I'm mad. I just lost an acquaintance to the virus though and another is in severe difficulties with pneumonia. Todays trip to the local village Co-oP was a joke. The Co-oP have done a lot to mark out lanes, give direction arrows, shield check-outs etc etc. What do the customers do though...they walk anywhere in any direction they like...morons.

There we go. Got it out of my system for today.....see you guys come in useful sometimes.

 

[D_W]

I don't know who Hancock is or any of the references here but in the states, other than NYC and maybe some areas like urban centers close to there, there's been no overwhelming demand. At a 525 bed hospital here (where my wife works) we generally have about 10-15 beds with covid patients on any given day (serious or ICU types).

It seems inevitable that more people will die. It's a virus. It also seems like Sweden will be far ahead of us by staying open and building herd immunity and we may not be better off for death toll when all is said and done as I've lost contact with talk of any vaccines.

We have a local vaccine center here who is always working on vaccines, and who already had a vaccine effort for SARS, so they quickly came up with a patch type (protein needles) vaccine that produces antibodies in mice. And we've done nothing but sit here and wait since. There are other vaccines and trials.

As we sit here and watch the loss of life occur and now the life loss is generally migrating to nursing homes, we deal with the mind boggling logic that volunteers cannot trial vaccines and be intentionally exposed (not even 20 or 25) because it creates an ethical dilemma. And putting it off somehow doesn't. At the pace we're talking about for actual distribution of a viable vaccine (that may never come), everyone will have herd immunity, and I would be surprised if the death rates by country in the end are much different.

As long as the exposure rate at any given time isn't greater than available beds (and at present here, it isn't - not close).

 

[Rorschach]

I don't know who Hancock is or any of the references here but in the states, other than NYC and maybe some areas like urban centers close to there, there's been no overwhelming demand. At a 525 bed hospital here (where my wife works) we generally have about 10-15 beds with covid patients on any given day (serious or ICU types).

It seems inevitable that more people will die. It's a virus. It also seems like Sweden will be far ahead of us by staying open and building herd immunity and we may not be better off for death toll when all is said and done as I've lost contact with talk of any vaccines.

We have a local vaccine center here who is always working on vaccines, and who already had a vaccine effort for SARS, so they quickly came up with a patch type (protein needles) vaccine that produces antibodies in mice. And we've done nothing but sit here and wait since. There are other vaccines and trials.

As we sit here and watch the loss of life occur and now the life loss is generally migrating to nursing homes, we deal with the mind boggling logic that volunteers cannot trial vaccines and be intentionally exposed (not even 20 or 25) because it creates an ethical dilemma. And putting it off somehow doesn't. At the pace we're talking about for actual distribution of a viable vaccine (that may never come), everyone will have herd immunity, and I would be surprised if the death rates by country in the end are much different.

As long as the exposure rate at any given time isn't greater than available beds (and at present here, it isn't - not close).

I've been saying almost exactly the same for almost 2 months now.

 

[D_W]

Well, it's an easier thing to say now. Initially, if you remember the context, we had people in italy being denied life saving measures in some areas - that creates a large number of preventable deaths.

The same issue started at the outset here in NYC - panic and filled hospitals and exhausted staffs, but now that we aren't in that situation it seems senseless to sit here for 18 months and add 10 times the annual tax revenue (not deficit, but revenue) to the debt in that time with the absolute nonsense statement that you can't willingly expose two dozen volunteers to COVID after they've tried a vaccine. That, to me is just bonkers. It's more virtuous to allow individuals to volunteer (and none may die - in fact, if they are younger volunteers, likely none will) but sit back and watch tens of thousands of people *who may have been saved by a vaccine* die losing an average future average lifetime of 13 years.

If the hospitals become overwhelmed, then you can shut things back down temporarily. We know how to do it now.

 

[Andy Kev.]

I simply ask myself What could we all do.

Could we restrict Tube carriages to say only a max of 20 people at a time instead of the insane crowding. I have stopped going into London for these reasons.

Would TfL have enough people to manage this. Maybe they travel in full PPE for a days work perhaps behind a perspex screen in a carriage.

Same with buses. Restrict to say 20 people total

Make people walk to work. 3 miles is not so difficult and should take only 45 or so minutes.

Make parts of London and indeed all other built up or city areas car free. Say a 3 mile circle from Piccadilly Sq.

I suspect that anybody who has ever been to London would accept the idea that the biggest guarantee of spreading any disease is the underground. Restricting the number of people per carriage would be sensible. The disabled should probably get some sort of pass enabling them to use it as getting around otherwise might be too difficult for them. I also think that the use of the underground should demand a higher level of respiratory shielding/protection than the simple masks widely in use.

I'd be inclined to go for 5 miles from Piccadilly or Charing Cross (or whatever London thinks is best). For the able bodied a few miles on foot is no trouble at all but obviously the main thing would be to get bicycle use right up. The humble bike will, if allowed, be the rescuer of the big cities. 10 miles on a bike in a flat town like London? You'd have to be a complete and utter tart to moan about doing that.

 

[RogerS]

....10 miles on a bike in a flat town like London?...

Flat ? :shock: Ever noticed the hill up from Victoria towards Hyde Park Corner ? Primrose Hill ? There's a clue there in the name. OK compared to SFO it is flat but not flat like Amsterdam. Still no reason why the fatties couldn't cycle

 

[RogerS]

Anyone picked up on the unexpected implication of bloody Brexit? ow we're going to lose that magic E111 card, it really puts the mockers on leaving the UK for a European holiday. All travel insurance that I've seen excludes Covid-19 now. So it's a lottery going away now. If it's a seven day break then perhaps not too bad unless you pick it up the first day you get there and have a fast severe reaction. How are you going to pay for your hospital care or repatriation ? Or you might already be infected before you go out but not know it.

The longer you extend your holiday, the worse the odds become.

 

[RogerS]

..... What do the customers do though...they walk anywhere in any direction they like...morons.

....

We really do need a Covid cull.

 

[worn thumbs]

Anyone picked up on the unexpected implication of bloody Brexit? ow we're going to lose that magic E111 card, it really puts the mockers on leaving the UK for a European holiday. All travel insurance that I've seen excludes Covid-19 now. So it's a lottery going away now. If it's a seven day break then perhaps not too bad unless you pick it up the first day you get there and have a fast severe reaction. How are you going to pay for your hospital care or repatriation ? Or you might already be infected before you go out but not know it.

The longer you extend your holiday, the worse the odds become.

Surely that wasn't a surprise.I well remember an elderly joiner telling me how disgusted he was about foreigners coming here and being treated by the NHS-the subtext was that he was contributing to the cost.He also believed that we wouldn't get treated in other countries,not that he had ever been to any.It gave me a good deal of pleasure to show him an E111 and explain how it worked and now I share your sadness that it won't work for very much longer.The greater worry is that the Covid virus looks like being rather hard to eradicate and will be an intrusion into our lives for a very long time,maybe forever.We need a recovery plan and a part of it will have to map out a way to keep us off crowded public transport.Maybe its time to encourage businesses to disperse themselves from London and to reinvigorate some of the more remote towns.We ought to have learned that with a decent internet connection a good deal of work can be done outside a central office.We also have plenty of communities that would benefit from some high earning jobs being created in their midst.I suppose it will need a mindset that isn't limited to doing things the way we have always done them because thats the way we have always done them.

 

[lurker]

Is there really anything super critical happening in London that requires people to travel there?

Most London workers appear to be paper shufflers. All the construction work is to either transport to or provide a place of work for said paper shufflers.

 

[SammyQ]

We have a local vaccine center here ...who already had a vaccine effort for SARS, so they quickly came up with a patch type (protein needles) vaccine that produces antibodies in mice... we deal with the mind boggling logic that volunteers cannot trial vaccines and be intentionally exposed (not even 20 or 25) because it creates an ethical dilemma...At the pace we're talking about for actual distribution of a viable vaccine (that may never come), everyone will have herd immunity, and I would be surprised if the death rates by country in the end are much different.

David, at the risk of being super-cynical ("moi??") can you extrapolate from your comments and consider a less-than-ethical superpower, not far from your western borders, who WOULD 'accidentally' trial any given promising vaccine (on dissidents, say?)... If successful, where would that put them in terms of dominance?

Maybe I'm just too stir-crazy, depressed and Orwellian....

 

[Woody2Shoes]

We have a local vaccine center here ...who already had a vaccine effort for SARS, so they quickly came up with a patch type (protein needles) vaccine that produces antibodies in mice... we deal with the mind boggling logic that volunteers cannot trial vaccines and be intentionally exposed (not even 20 or 25) because it creates an ethical dilemma...At the pace we're talking about for actual distribution of a viable vaccine (that may never come), everyone will have herd immunity, and I would be surprised if the death rates by country in the end are much different.

David, at the risk of being super-cynical ("moi??") can you extrapolate from your comments and consider a less-than-ethical superpower, not far from your western borders, who WOULD 'accidentally' trial any given promising vaccine (on dissidents, say?)... If successful, where would that put them in terms of dominance?

Maybe I'm just too stir-crazy, depressed and Orwellian....

Ah yes, I can see it now, hiding candidate vaccines in perfume bottles near mediaeval tourist attractions....

 

[Andy Kev.]

Anyone picked up on the unexpected implication of bloody Brexit? ow we're going to lose that magic E111 card, it really puts the mockers on leaving the UK for a European holiday. All travel insurance that I've seen excludes Covid-19 now. So it's a lottery going away now. If it's a seven day break then perhaps not too bad unless you pick it up the first day you get there and have a fast severe reaction. How are you going to pay for your hospital care or repatriation ? Or you might already be infected before you go out but not know it.

The longer you extend your holiday, the worse the odds become.

To feel hard done by in terms of not taking a European holiday is the kind of moaning that only those who enjoy a luxurious lifestyle can complain about. And yes, I do mean luxurious: consider the conditions in which most of the world lives. There are loads of people who would kill to have problems like that.

In any event, it is likely that alternative arrangements will be made in place of the current card.

 

[RogerS]

Anyone picked up on the unexpected implication of bloody Brexit? ow we're going to lose that magic E111 card, it really puts the mockers on leaving the UK for a European holiday. All travel insurance that I've seen excludes Covid-19 now. So it's a lottery going away now. If it's a seven day break then perhaps not too bad unless you pick it up the first day you get there and have a fast severe reaction. How are you going to pay for your hospital care or repatriation ? Or you might already be infected before you go out but not know it.

The longer you extend your holiday, the worse the odds become.

To feel hard done by in terms of not taking a European holiday is the kind of moaning that only those who enjoy a luxurious lifestyle can complain about. And yes, I do mean luxurious: consider the conditions in which most of the world lives. There are loads of people who would kill to have problems like that.

In any event, it is likely that alternative arrangements will be made in place of the current card.

What tosh. Spoken like a true Brexitear.

 

[Chris152]

The greater worry is that the Covid virus looks like being rather hard to eradicate and will be an intrusion into our lives for a very long time,maybe forever.

Something positive here, cross everything:
'A vaccine against coronavirus appears to have provided protection against the disease Covid-19 in six rhesus macaque monkeys.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52674739