Figures show real extent of second wave is far beyond what is being publicly discussed
Liverpool is on the verge of a Leicester-style lockdown, with coronavirus rates in the city region and neighbouring areas soaring.
Half of the city’s intensive care beds are already full and around 8,000 children – plus some 350 teachers – have been forced to self-isolate because of rampant school outbreaks.
But Liverpool’s situation merely foreshadows where the rest of England is headed, with schools now the driving force of the pandemic’s second wave and the government determined to keep them open while tinkering at the edges of peripheral causes.
Those who want to minimise the danger posed by the second wave are still pointing – against all the evidence – to supposedly low hospitalisation rates. But Liverpool’s intensive care units are already half full, according to council sources, just a few weeks after English schools re-opened and in spite of a more cautious approach by the city’s council than in many parts of the country.
It’s been clear for weeks now, to those prepared to see, that the UK is well and truly in the grip of a second wave – and that the Tories’ actions and inaction are plunging England deeper, with the inexcusable collaboration of Labour’s centrist leadership.
But Liverpool’s situation underscores it in deep red – and if a local lockdown on Merseyside is needed, then it will come nationally.
If the Tories really cared about saving lives, they would do it now and not repeat Boris Johnson’s lethal delays in March.
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71 deaths today, the highest number in six weeks and more than five times yesterday’s.
However remote the possibility I still hope RH gets to say “I told you so.”
That’s more deaths than on the day we locked down in March. 🙁 https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/ngoddard/covid19/index.html
Yep, its going to be ever more difficult for our infestation of Covid 19 troll deniers on Skawkbox comments to play down the seriousness of this now accelerating second wave of the UK, never mind global, pandemic. They’ll still try though – that’s what they are paid to do.
As many commentators have said – there s more than a strong feeling of ‘Groundhog Day’ to this lead-up to wave two in the UK, with few lessons learnt, and a government solely interested in seeing covid19 as an opportunity – to pass vast sums of state cash to their cronies and funders, rather than the disaster it actually is for most of us – particularly the older and less healthy of our citizens. And for Starmer’s now firmly ‘Blairite reenactment society’ farce of a neoliberal Labour Party , ‘Political Opposition’ simply involves endless statements about loyalty to the government, endless petty jingoism, but NO actual analysis of why the privatised approach of the Tories to fighting the epidemic, and 10 years of Austerity which has severely weakened our NHS and local government, is the underlying ideological neoliberal reason for the disastrous situation we are in. For Starmer and his cronies, they offer no alternative to the Tory neoLiberalism – just a vacuous promise to be ‘more competent’ at carrying out exactly the same agenda ! Scumbags all.
Trump’s tax returns and the parasitism of the financial oligarchy
The Times account does add another dimension to the explanation of the response of the Trump administration to the coronavirus crisis. Given his vast holdings in real estate, hotels and golf clubs, Trump had a direct and immediate financial interest in demanding the reopening of the economy and the resumption of travel, business meetings and sporting events, regardless of the cost in human lives. In this he was not alone, but rather spoke for the interests of his class.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/29/pers-s29.html
fao jpenny……..that’s insulting to scumbags.
Can either of you two shitehawks tell us how we get from here to wherever your fevered imagination takes us, are you calling for another lockdown
Does the lockdown last for as long as it takes us to develop a vaccination, who pays to keep you two fuckers safe
No one is denying the virus, at worst its how we manage it,
As for Killer Snowflakes, not once have any of you dealt with death toll from lockdown
Are you denying your fakery is responsible
Doug,
Like many others, you are one of the most pig ignorant of contributors with your utter crap opinion.
Lets reiterate, we seem to have many on here comparing apples with oranges, the Sweden example crap is a point in question as on many key areas, such as population density, public transport, hospital bed numbers, overhaul health of the population there is no match, and when compared with similar nations, guess what, Sweden ain’t doing well.
Of course, we could try places in Asia, which many seem incapable at looking at, but the fact is, all mature economies in Asia Pac have done a far better job in containing the Covid-19 Pathogen than European nations.
Is it not strange that a place 1/18th the size of Wales with a population of 7.5 million has been able to virtually eradicate the pathogen, actually twice now, whilst maintaining the full function of its public health service, meaning if you have a chronic illness you get treatment, treatment in a safe environment as only designated hospitals admitted Covid-19 patients, and, all persons with Covid-19 were hospitalised in isolation wards, more than 5000 to-date.
In a nutshell, the UK Government has engaged in malpractice of such a degree its criminal, and this has been supported by the Opposition Party.
To clarify, where I’m stuck we are down to zero transmissions, our Education sector is now open and folks are able to get on with some normal practice, but not all as its realised we are still in the midsts of a global pandemic and when you let you guard down or screw up the pathogen quickly takes hold again – as we also learned in Hong Kong.
Another one who talks a lot but says fuck all
Hands up how many of you fuckers on here think we have learnt nothing in the last 6 months
A million breast screening appointments cancelled, 8,000 positive cases missed
Spot on Doug. Call em out when ever they pop up. NCS is what we have now not NHS.
You deniers, who are acting as Capitalism’s chorus line in this discussion, are obsessed with ‘lockdowns’ which are merely one small part of a Public Health response to the threat of the virus.
The reality as jpenney points out is that the real problem is that decades of chipping away at the NHS and using healthcare budgets to enrich the likes of Richard Branson have put the government, and the system, in the same position that it was when cholera struck in 1830-they have a choice to change completely the society in which life is less valued than property or to mess about pretending to be concerned about the deaths of thousands of poor people for whom they care nothing and cannot bring themselves to understand that anyone else does.
The virus is just the icing on a cake- the rash of DNR orders began long ago, along with the news that old folk in Liverpool Hospitals were being denied water in order to hasten their demise. The obvious meaning of the Blair/Thatcher NHS reforms- as well as those in local government and in the breaking of Unions- is that profit matters and people do not. That is the core truth of neo-liberalism and it is at the heart of the government’s response to the virus.
You want an end to ‘lockdowns’ ? You are not alone, so do most of us, which is why we are calling for a massive reconstruction of the infrastructure of the health system and a commitment to trace, test and treatment programmes of the sort that have not only kept China’s death to down to less than 5000 but have facilitated the ending of lquarantines and general lockdowns.
The deniers, here and around the world, led by Bolsonaro, Trump and Cummings are simply chanting a mantra written by Austrian Economists to the effect that nothing is more important that capitalism and that it is the duty of workers to work- in conditions dictated by employers and the role of old, unproductive people to die unless they can find some means of paying for the luxury of nursing care, drugs, Physicians’ attention and other expenses.
Todays Vote on covid control. 330 votes to 24 Tell me where Kneebend and crew stand on getting the NHS back from the NCS that has been foisted on us. Wake up Bevin.
From the early nineties we fought to stop the privatization of the NHS and we campaigned on that and the removal of the hated NHS trusts back to the original “matron” system.This was popular and successful and along with the stop Post office closure helped me to be the first Labour borough councillor in my area of Surrey in the history of the Labour party..Even the Rock solid Tory voters wanted to stop the privatization of our assets .We then topped it off with a general election landslide victory with a popular young PM Tony Blair.We had made the Labour party even in Surrey relevant and popular.3days after the election we were told by Mp and former shadow health SecretaryDobson that the Trusts would stay but we would pack the trusts board with Labour councillors and would I like a job?….That was immediately refused by me and a light was shining on Labour party treachery.And in my constituency a ,Tory boy was growing up and watching the young Tony Bliar start the New Labour project.That Tory boy was keir “Rodney starmer who attended the posh boys private independent Reigate independent grammar school.He has carried on the Labour party tradition as leader of the new Labour party and the rest of the partys of tearing up the assets of the country.Like Tony , the knights treachery is nothing new in the Labour party and the election of a new Labour government will not make one jot of difference in the long term project of the neo liberal tripartite commission..All of the establishment system is committed to safeguarding the establishment and that is why myself and many other members have finally realised that the country and the establishment system is committed to destroying the rights and freedoms that we fought for..We need a true Opposition party and a working class Socialist leader and Opposition party of the people…not the new Labour party…and definitely not the tripartite commission Sir knight.
Assange Smear 3: “He was hiding from rape charges in the embassy.”
People who claim Assange was “hiding from rape charges” are necessarily implicitly making two transparently absurd claims: one, that Assange had no reason to fear US extradition, and two, that Ecuador was lying about its official reasons for granting him asylum — that in fact the Correa government was just in the business of protecting people from rape charges for some weird reason.
For its part, the Ecuadorian government was crystal clear in its official statement about the reasons it was providing Assange asylum, saying that “there are serious indications of retaliation by the country or countries that produced the information disclosed by Mr. Assange……
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/assange-smear-3-he-was-hiding-from-rape-charges-in-the-embassy-9765975d4067
And the above is just one section of the following:
Debunking All The Assange Smears by Caitlin Johnstone
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-all-the-assange-smears-a549fd677cac
Another falsehood that has been repeated endlessly by the MSM, both here and in the US and numerous other countries, is that Julian fled Sweden (to escape rape charges), a recent article, so-called, in the Daily Mail being a typical example. Here’s the headline:
Blowing the whistle on the Wiki-creep: Julian Assange fled rape charges, groped women and leered at teenage girls – yet will try to beat extradition. Before you judge the morality of WikiLeaks, read this devastating expose first
Well, in the first place Julian was never ‘charged’ with ANYTHING, let alone rape, and he did NOT flee Sweden. He stayed on in Sweden for a couple of weeks more than he would otherwise have done to assist with any inquiries, and then asked for permission to leave to come back to the UK and was given permission to do so.
In other words it’s just one falsehood on top of another, the latter giving validity to the first and affirming it in the general publics mind. Anyway, I came across the following article a bit earlier from March this year, which is well worth reading, even if just as a refresher:
How Swedish authorities invented the rape charge against Julian Assange
https://www.pressenza.com/2020/03/how-swedish-authorities-invented-the-rape-charge-against-julian-assange/
IN a civilized country Assange would not even be in court and he should have been awarded a medal,instead under any US administration he will not get a fair trial and like in Britain the cards are stacked against him.From my reading of the trial rumour,innuendo and smears are “Evidence” .IF Assange looses,we all loose.and the reporting of real facts will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
If you’ve never read it, please check out Julian’s defence statement to the Swedish prosecutor. It’s very lengthy, so it’s probably best to save it and read it at your leisure:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/julian-assanges-defence-statement/
It would appear that MSM, particularly the BBC, are championing the end of lockdown & ‘a return to normality by Christmas’. Captains of industry & esteemed Oxbridge professors are given a platform to promote the ideology that Covid 19 isn’t that bad & building ‘herd immunity’ is the only solution; lockdown & isolation doesn’t work & more damage is caused closing down businesses & the day to day business of the NHS. The Semi-Lockdown to be replaced by social apartheid.
It is proposed that the elderly (over 65’s) & the vulnerable, be sheltered aka locked away & isolated for their own good, but no proposal suggesting how multi-generational families could be segregated. The rest of Society can just live their lives as usual. This solution should take no more than 3 months to eliminate Covid 19..
You haven’t dealt with 1,000 women predicted to die needlessly from breast cancer
And counting
Can ANY of you ‘walk and chew gum’
Steve Richards….. “The solution should take no longer than 3months to eliminate the virus” …and no doubt the elderly and vulnerable….order the body bags and keep the crematoriums busy.This is what you get with the Conservative and unionist party….Dead
Sorry J’OK but this is what you get with NO OPPOSITION. Where is Kneebend and crew? Breast Cancer is just one portion of the MASSIVE backlog of treatments that has resulted from the transmogrification of the NHS into the NCS. Did you bang a saucepan outside at any time in the last few months? It can take less than 3 days to change, given the will, and an acceptace that face saving is not that important an issue on the scale of things.
I live just outside Liverpool, but my family are inside the city boundaries. Why (may I ask) is Liverpool a hotspot for Covid 19? Is it genetic? Are scousers more prone? Did something happen to change everything? Is there a pattern? Why the north west? Why………..?
When did the Universities invite their students back? When did schools re-open? Is there such a thing as cause & effect or just constant blind spots in the logic of our lords & masters?