[SaltergateBorn]

As I understand it, Dancing, that`s the whole point; the government is trying to spread it out, so that the NHS can cope with the demand for treatment at any given time rather than an almighty rush of cases that would completely swamp the system. As you say, the thing is going to have to run its course and will do when enough people have recovered from it and will hopefully have immunity.

[spireitematt]

As I understand it, Dancing, that`s the whole point; the government is trying to spread it out, so that the NHS can cope with the demand for treatment at any given time rather than an almighty rush of cases that would completely swamp the system. As you say, the thing is going to have to run its course and will do when enough people have recovered from it and will hopefully have immunity.

That's if people catch it. There will be people who are immune from it but they will be carriers and spreaders of it hence the social distancing and everyone staying in their homes. There also might be a 2nd or even 3rd wave of this, we just don't and neither do the experts, we all have to take each day as it comes and hope for the best.

Dancing it's affecting everyone not just those who are vulnerable or with underlying health problems. If we just let it run it's course it won't just go away and disappear it may find another host.

I can't see the current football season resuming and I can't see there being a next season either.

[SaltergateBorn]

All plagues / epidemics have to run their course, Matt. Even the Black Death was around for less than a year in this country before it petered out; and that was before the days of vaccines.

I may have missed it but I don`t think I`ve heard any suggestion that somebody who develops the antibodies to deal with it once they`ve recovered is necessarily a carrier and can infect others; in fact, I thought that the whole principle of `herd immunity`was based on the idea that they aren`t and can`t.

You may be right about there being a second or third wave. Nobody knows. What`s sure as eggs is eggs, though, is that there will be another pandemic somewhere, sometime in the future. Pestilence has always been around and always will be.

By the way. On another tack completely, when I was reading your post just now before I logged in there was `1 guest` (me, presumably) and `1 invisible user`. Any idea what that`s about? Never seen it before.

[spireitematt]

All plagues / epidemics have to run their course, Matt. Even the Black Death was around for less than a year in this country before it petered out; and that was before the days of vaccines.

I may have missed it but I don`t think I`ve heard any suggestion that somebody who develops the antibodies to deal with it once they`ve recovered is necessarily a carrier and can infect others; in fact, I thought that the whole principle of `herd immunity`was based on the idea that they aren`t and can`t.

You may be right about there being a second or third wave. Nobody knows. What`s sure as eggs is eggs, though, is that there will be another pandemic somewhere, sometime in the future. Pestilence has always been around and always will be.

By the way. On another tack completely, when I was reading your post just now before I logged in there was `1 guest` (me, presumably) and `1 invisible user`. Any idea what that`s about? Never seen it before.

I was on about people being asymptomatic who could be a carrier.

An invisible user is someone who has an account but is hiding there identity on here. I know 2 users on here who use the invisible user so it's probably one of them.

[SaltergateBorn]

Fair enough, Matt. I got the wrong end of the stick. (Not the first time, won`t be the last). I agree about the asymptomatic; that`s what the lock-down is about and why we all need to show a bit of social responsibility at the moment. As always, some will and some won`t but thankfully it seems that the great majority are doing at the moment.

Thanks for the info on the `invisible user` thing. I didn`t know you could do that.

[Devongone]

Almost all the protective gear is plastic and designed to be thrown away. Why isn't Extinction Rebellion gluing itself to hospitals and that foetus-faced nit Matt Hancock?

Here is a fact to take note of from my Masters Degree (perhaps the only one!). There is very little difference between the success rate of EXPERTS making decisions and the rest of the population. AND more information doesn't always lead to more accurate predictions.

I've said this before, anything else we talk about gets FULL, but we insist the NHS is overwhelmed as though its capacity is unlimited, but due to circumstance it is currently unable to cope. TRUTH is if we let the virus run its course everyone, everything and everywhere in the NHS will be working to capacity and beyond to the point where they can no longer survive. At that point the NHS is certainly full. That is as big as it is. It is overflowing and should have declared itself FULL earlier.

If the NHS is full, the people have to survive or not by their own means and obey or disobey any rules regulating that. The NHS is not the TARDIS, ask The Doctor, or any doctor. It has a size. We dictated it by allowing investment to be at a particular level. We could have scrapped Trident, we could forget HS2, we could have left Iraq alone, we could have invested all the magic money-tree money that now has apparently been available all along because all government money is debt anyway. We didn't. We acquiesced. If we continue to acquiesce the lockdown could become the go-to response for everything. At some point we have to embrace death, those nearing it and those affected by loss. The alternative is to live in a media-generated world in which everything that happens is a tragedy and our every next breath is coloured by fear. Some of us die. They tend to look like me.

[SaltergateBorn]

I never realised you were an anarchist, Dev

[Devongone]

I vacillate between beneficent but strictly applied state socialism and anarchism. Anarchism relies on the implicit goodness of man and unfortunately we are all bombarded with bad influences from an early age so ……...

……… In the case of Covid I think I'm more of a Socialist. Good people like Doctors and Nurses can only do so much work for so long. Places are only as big as they are. The number of beds in an area is limited by the size of the bed and the space available. The facilities to store drugs and equipment also have a physical size. We have acquiesced or actively agreed, to those limits because we voted for them and did not protest or rebel, just as we are either agreeing, or acquiescing to the lockdown. There a millions of us, we could have the power to effect change, but we don't bother. We live the quiet life.

I would do a lot to protect you Salts, or Dancing, because you have families and people who love you. For myself? No! I'm not valuable. If I contract the virus my plan is not to seek medical help. I'll try to recover, but if I don't, please don't take me to hospital, don't use a bed or a ventilator for me when someone younger and more needed by the planet might miss out. I'm not afraid to be dead. When my partner was alive I used to tell him that if we were ever caught up in a terrorist-style incident I'd run towards the gunman, not because I'm incredibly brave (but I am stupid enough to do it!) but because my partner wasn't capable of running away. Me attacking the terrorist would have been his only hope of surviving. (You're thinking no wonder he played in goal!)

This is clearly a horrible virus but it has proved far more infectious in terms of world media and responses to perceived danger than through sneezes and lack of handwashing. After the First World War 200,000 died in this country alone of Spanish flu'. PMs never end up in hospital ……….. well no Boris isn't actually unprecedented. Lloyd George collapsed seriously ill in Manchester during the flu', and Churchill had a heart attack in 1941 mid-war. Until two days ago the rise in the number of deaths led the news for days. The last two days the figure has been announced more quietly, not just because of the Boris effect, because the number went down. Down isn't news.

It's patronising to stand outside applauding and banging tins for our NHS workers if that's all we do. We need to recognise there is only so much a human being can do. We need to make sure they have all the support in future we actually think they should have. Naturally some circumstance is always eventually going to make provision inadequate, but don't turn workers into sandbags failing to hold back the flood. THey can't be expected to risk drowning every day to save some useless old buffer like me!

There are 8 Billion people in the world aren't there? Forests and oceans will be heaving a sigh of a relief if a virus does for a few of us.

Apparently the virus can live for three days on plastic, so the protective equipment might not be so much protection as a temporary home.

I'll sign off. Scientists are wonderful. They are brilliant. They can save us, but they also made nuclear bombs. They have great wisdom, but they have to take their trousers down to crap.

[spireitematt]

I believe in a mixture of democratic socialism and capitalism. You need the free market for certain things but the free market doesn't work in times of crisis like now or if you are ill. We need public ownership on things like the NHS, public services and maybe we need to look at a publicly owned train franchise. Give the people the choice if they want to travel on a publicly owned rail service or on a privately owned service. It should be the people's choice not the Government's.

[Devongone]

If the virus hadn't first surfaced in China and if China, due to it's economic influence in Africa, did not dominate the World Health Organisation, would the response have been to lock down the world? A totalitarian command economy can survive a lockdown because it is an integral part of the state. Free market economies, even under democratic socialists, have given you the clue on the tin. Their freedom is not only the freedom to generate huge profits, it is also the freedom to crash and burn. Treated as if they were part of a command economy free markets are ill-equipped to survive. Yet the whole world is trying to be China, because the death of either ourselves or a loved one is deemed more important than our whole way of life.

We think the world is dying of the virus. But we are killing it out of love and a fear of dying.