From sam
Is the UK government’s handling of covid-19 yet more UK exceptionalism,like Brexit?
http://www.progressivepulse.org/ireland/covid-19-in-great-britain-and-northern-ireland
“The “exceptionalist” approach of HMG was a combination of a variety of factors. I suspect primarily the need to show the world that British exceptionalism was indeed real – that the UK was truly World-Leading. This seems to have backfired, first in needing to get into line with the rest of the world, second in the higher cost it will surely entail, both in lives and economic impact.
It may even prove disastrous. Again from the Byline Times article by Nafeez Ahmed:
My back-of-the-envelope projections suggested that the Government’s refusal to attempt to slow and curtail the spread of the virus could lead to as many as 458,752 deaths – possibly as high as 1.6 million in an absolute worst-case ‘do nothing’ scenario.”
This looks just awful.No wonder Professor Pollock was so powerful in the advice she gave to the Scottish government.
“Several models produced by SAGE scientists indicate that using contact tracing to contain the outbreak would be extremely difficult without sufficient speed, but they still emphasised that identifying people infected and isolating them systematically on a mass scale would at least help to reduce or control the epidemic.
Independent scientists who have reviewed the SAGE corpus say that it reveals a fatally incompetent scientific process. According to Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, the SAGE corpus inadvertently reveals why the UK Government “got it wrong… SAGE analysis was overcomplicated, too academic, relied on incomplete data, overlooked testing and health service capacity. Why didn’t we go fast down the path of test, isolate, trace while delaying spread for health services to prepare?”
According to the New York University complex systems scientists – Dr Chen Shen, Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Dr Yaneer Bar Yam – early assumptions that the outbreak might inevitably grow beyond control in a way that would mute the point of mass testing and tracing, was completely unfounded. Dr Chen and his co-authors point out that the Imperial College scientists, along with their other colleagues and SAGE, have consistently overlooked data from China and elsewhere.”
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
The Bylines Times article is a long read, but worth it! Having seen the main headline this morning – that Mercedes (German company,,,) F1 are building a ‘breathing aid’ to help corona virus, although helpful, I haven’t seen increased PPE, increased ICU beds, increased staff, increased pay for NHS staff, increased testing and the mystery test kits that were going to days away, I’ve heard ‘BUILT IN THE UK! YAY, WE CAN BUILD ONE THING IN THE UK! THE UK IS GREAT! BROAD shoulders,,, Boris has been highlighted saying how fab the NHS is, and how fab it is that 24000 volunteers have come forward – well these things are fab. But, BUT, why not fcking PAY THE VOLUNTEERS you stingy bustard?! The U.K. Gov’t has run down the NHS for decades, privatising, cutting – they need massive injections of money, supplies, people – in a time of national crisis, they’ve what? Called for volunteers? They’ve got a lot of damn cheek…
Sorry, rant could go on forever, I guess radio Scotland GMS is back to normal. No criticism, just blandly reporting Boris mumbled statement. Ugh, Gary has now said the uk government business minister – he says, apparently, that bosses are being unfairly criticised for making workers work, and it’s being said by people ‘that hate private business’. So, construction workers are trying to follow clear instructions from Nicola Sturgeon to stay at home, the U.K. Gov’t is telling people to work ‘to help the economy’.
The U.K. Government has the money to pay everyone a basic wage, to allow rent, mortgage and rates freezes, to hold payments on energy bills – all these things CAN be done, and can relieve stress and help the NHS cope, and can save small businesses from collapse, can help stop redundancies. They CAN do all these things, without economic collapse. It will be a long time picking up the economy afterwards – the difference will be companies starting back up and re-employing people straight after so maybe a few years, or our current trajectory of few businesses running, no work, no employment, and decades of recovery.
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Contrary,
I’m sure you have seen this bit of the Byline Times article.
“The east Asian experience, the New York University paper points out, demonstrates that rapidly containing and stopping the spread of infection is entirely possible – within a period of six to eight weeks – through national scale public, private and community coordination. After this, selective and careful lifting of restrictions along with extensive monitoring and tracing may enable societies to slowly begin functioning again.
Since lockdowns result in exponentially decreasing numbers of cases, a comparatively short amount of time can be sufficient to achieve pathogen extinction, after which relaxing restrictions can be done without resurgence,” the New York University analysts write. “If actions had been taken earlier, successful local lockdowns, as performed in China in Hubei province, would have been possible instead of national lockdowns.””
If the Scottish government follows the approach advocated by Professor Pollock and others, we can come out of this sooner than the rest of the UK – closing our borders.
The UK government reserves power to deal with an emergency which covid 19 is. Does devolution mean that Scotland is responsible,since health is devolved,for being able quickly, in the event of an emergency, to provide ventilators and protective clothing?
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The next bus along, had a new legend:-
Run for cover–head for the hills —Join Charlie in Scotland !
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