Post covid will be a long time coming, according to Whitty !!
Little chance of eradicating covid according to whitty !!
Rich nations have used 90% of vaccine produced so far, WHO !!
only one in ten Africans
have received vaccine so far,( mostly politicians and wealthy)
At this rate we will Never beat covid !!
Donkeyman!
That’s why you should refer to “excess mortality”, rather than official COVID-related death figures. Obviously, the number of deaths may vary from month to month, year to year but, by comparing “actual” to “average” or “expected”, significant variations may be identified. The excess mortality figure includes ALL deaths and in 2020, there were over 90,000.
Number of deaths
2020 695,812
2019 604,707
2018 616,014
2017 607,172
It makes you wonder how many people would have died whilst travelling, getting illness transmitted from others, accidents at work or even stress from work causing heart problems
In a “normal” year there would have been at least 90,000 less … :!:
Yes, Good job we’re not still in the EU!
The UK’s population is ageing and it’s only natural that the older a population becomes, the more deaths we will see per year.
Age is the biggest killer and although average lifespan is increasing it’s only very, very slowly so saying people live longer isn’t accurate unless you mean by a few weeks.
As the new millenium dawned only one in six people in the UK were aged over 65 and by 2019 that had increased to one in five - by 2039 it is expected to be around one in four.
Taking the UK population as being 59 million in 1999/2000; 67 million in 2019; and a projected 74 million by 2039 according to the ONS gives us approximately the following numbers of over-65’s in the UK according to ONS percentages:
2000 = 9.3 million over-65’s
2019 = 12.4 million over-65’s
2039 = 17.6 million over-65’s.
Now I’m not suggesting this increasingly aged population alone as the reason for 2020’s high excess deaths but it’s certainly responsible for some of the number, as are other things besides Covid-19.
By the time it comes to giving jabs to poor countries we will be needing our August booster shots to combat the variants , so back
to back of the queue for poor nations, and goodbye to any hopes of
world travel we may have in the near future?
On the positive side, air pollution should continue to improve !!
Donkeyman!Back in 2019 If I had told you what was about to happen in 2020 you would have called that a conspiracy theory too Omah…:surprised:
I knew it was coming - unlike Boris, I’d seen the movies (especially in 1971, 1995 & 2011) and taken note … 
Perhaps you should have been advising Boris Omah…
Perhaps he should have listened to his advisers and not his cronies …
Maybe he did.
That’s how the VMIC is almost ready to begin production and so ramp up home production of vaccines; it’s how Oxford developed the vaccine with AZ and is developing new variants to tackle different strains of Covid-19; and best of all it is how our vaccination strategy is proving to be one of the most effective in the world.
A government can do something like the above with vaccines and thus prevent severe illness and death from a disease.
Without martial law it probably could not force a population into observing rules which prevent transmission of the disease.
“Official figures are produced and updated daily for the worldometer site. They are the best we have, though they are of course influenced by how much testing is carried out in each country to identify the disease, and how doctors fill in death certificates for people suffering from a variety of conditions as well as CV 19. These figures show that the five worst countries for numbers of cases and the five worst countries for acknowledged CV 19 deaths are all continental European.”
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/03/24/the-virus-and-the-third-wave/
Then on the red list they should go !!
Or if you go there then not allowed to return ??
Donkeyman!
Good post Zaphod…
Boris is doing the best he can with tools at his disposal. We can all say what he should have done in retrospect…But it is what is.
Boris can not be held responsible for people who disregard the lockdown rules and carry on as normal. We all know what to do to avoid infection, and it’s not Boris’s fault if people ignore the advice. Short of placing the country under marshal law, which nobody wants, those who respect the rules should keep away from those who don’t, and let them get on with it, but it will just prolong the pandemic. Even with a vaccine though, if covid still exists in other countries, especially countries in Europe, the UK will never be free of covid…
I agree Donkeyman, If there was one single thing we could have done for the best effect, it would have been to ground all flights into the UK, and keep them grounded. I would like to bet that Air passengers have been by far the biggest importers of covid into this country.
Of course they were OGF!
What other way could covid have travelled to Europe in less than
two weeks from China ??
We should have marooned all European flights in China untill
the incubation period was over or they had recovered from the
disease???
I did post on this back when it all started l believe ??
Donkeyman!
I’m playing devil’s advocate maybe but looking at facts too in the following.
With the numerous lorry drivers who bring goods through Europe perhaps?
How about on the packaging of goods that are imported since we know that the virus can survive at least 7 days on plastic & somebody has to handle imports and exports, many of which (like fruit & veg) are time-sensitive and so do not take that long on their journey here?
Another thought: if masks are indeed as effective as claimed in reducing infection amongst the general population how is the virus continuing to infect so many people not just here but in countries where the wearing of face masks is compulsory?
Look at France where mandatory face coverings must be worn in all public places and must be to at the very least the FFP1 standard, yet is seeing new infection rates far above those seen here.
:?:
Well, for a start, most of what you propose is after the fact Zaph?
Any transport from China other than flying, takes longer than the
incubation period of covid?
So by the time it gets here the virus has allready died !
Whereas with flying, the product,( humans) arrive within two days?
so, well within the the incubation period ??
Plus the humans act as hosts during the journey thus further
encouraging the virus to survive !!
I am sure the powers that be knew this, but chose to release all
those humans into the then uncontaminated enviroment ??
So the blame falls on everybody for closing their eyes to the truth !
There is no excuse!!
Donkeyman!
I’m sorry but that’s either an extremely naive opinion or one lacking in understanding.
Have a look at this for a start:
"Coronavirus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, a major analysis of the genetics of the virus shows.
The study, by the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium (Cog-UK), completely quashes the idea that a single “patient zero” started the whole UK outbreak.
The analysis also finds China, where the pandemic started, had a negligible impact on cases in the UK.
[SIZE=“4”]Instead those initial cases came mostly from European countries.[/SIZE]
The researchers analysed the genetic code of viral samples taken from more than 20,000 people infected with coronavirus in the UK."
So the infections studied here in the UK show that those infections came here mostly via Europe, not China.
Okay so far?
Do you think then that stopping all flights etc. after Covid became widely-known as being a threat would have worked?
Because we could have kept the virus in a few places and stopped the spread?
Before it reached the UK, even?
In a word: no.
By then it was already too late.
The virus had already taken hold both here and in mainland Europe, and probably globally too.
Have a read of this to see that research now shows that the virus was here in the UK before Christmas 2019 as well as in Paris.
So the damage had been done and spread was inevitable without draconian measures that would simply not have been tolerated at that time.
You talk of hindsight (after the fact) and yet would in hindsight have done that which at the time was debatably necessary but certainly would not have been deemed acceptable.
I’d love to know how you think any leader in the Western World could get such measures accepted in the face of what then just looked like a few isolated cases of an infection that hadn’t then affected any of our own people?
Remember please that we’re now looking at December of 2019 before it could realistically have stood any chance of making any difference.
As you said : “So the blame falls on everybody for closing their eyes to the truth ! There is no excuse!!”
Well the truth is above in black & white after considerable global research, so if you refute that then you are the one guilty of closing your eyes and if indeed you are doing that then you are correct; there is no excuse.
Your post is full of contradictions Zaph !
You say that the virus came to UK from Europe, this is possibly
correct, but even so, did all those Chinese workers WALK to Europe??
No they flew, at that time there were allready rumours about a virus in
China, but hundreds of Chinese residents in Europe were still
allowed to return, and to cap it all we allowed our own residents
on holiday and business there to return and thus multiplied the
the problem, this caused the spread to Ozzie and the Pacific
region as well ??
The authorities everywhere were reluctant to apply the necessary
restrictions, except in NZ and Ozzie where conditions , luckily,
favoured a good result, whereas in more congested countries the
opposite happened and restrictions etc were late arriving?
So although l believe we are all to blame , the government’s and business leaders must take the main blame imo ??
We were lucky that it was only a fairly benevolent virus we were
dealing with and not something much worse ??
Do you think we have learnt anything from this. ???
Donkeyman!
PS.l'm knackered now, not used to overlong posts LOL!
Nope.
Not one contradiction in my whole response to you so wrong again DM.
If you know what a contradiction is then I’m sure that you could point one out from my earlier reply?
Blimey, I know the ad says “Redbull gives you wings” but I didn’t know Covid gave Chinamen wings too!
I didn’t say where UK infections came from.
Research did.
Research into thousands infected people as you would know if you read what I posted.
You don’t know how the infection spread and while planes won’t exactly have prevented the infection spreading, people do travel by other means too you know.
Even over longer distances.
In fact doing so is more common than air travel.
(It’s cheaper you see, especially to a poorly-paid Chinese.)
You assume too that the infection always travelled directly.
How do you know that?
From China across borders to Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India, Russia and then onwards over other borders is just as likely a path of transmission.
Statistically in fact far more likely since most cross-border travel is by foot, vehicle, rail or even sea and not by air.
Now TBH you’re making so many false assumptions and errors that I do not have the time or patience to correct them all, so I’m going to leave you to your theorizing if that is what will make you happy.
