If we're talking predictions, I predict the UK death toll to top 60,000 by the end of May, or certainly by the end of June.
The graph shown on yesterday's gov' Covid press conference showed that the curve is not falling, but levelling off due to the continued increases in deaths in care homes.

It's still being tested.

I know. But the fact that it was promising was known weeks earlier. One wonders why the US researchers are repeating peer-reviewed research already done in Japan and Europe. Waste of time and effort.

Meanwhile, this looks promising as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html

It's being tested all over the world.

You have an America complex.

The problem is, how do we introduce a lockdown in the carehomes, to flatten the peak? We can't, because they were already adopting the maximum measures they could adopt and the death rate keeps accelerating. — Punshhh

Maximum measures? I think not.

1. Test care workers.

2. Do not send recovering patients back into care homes.

3. Do not leave residents with symptoms in place to spread the illness.

4. Provide the proper equipment not the PPE for a down-graded non serious infection.

5. Take steps to eliminate carers moving between care homes because they are so badly paid they need 3 or 4 jobs.

6. Have as many as possible live on site during the emergency.

7. Maybe ask someone with more expertise than me to suggest other measures, because these are just the blindingly obvious things that haven't been done.

Chicken holocaust.

I don't quite understand why they have to kill the chickens. It has something to do with large-scale meat production?

I love the Orwellian "depopulated".

I don't quite understand why they have to kill the chickens. — frank

I don't think they could adopt them out quickly enough.

For the record, my family has been consuming a record number of eggs during this pandemic. I think eggs are something everyone knows how to cook. As long as the egg makes it into the pan, you end up with something edible. Well, not the egg shell, but the inside of the egg. The shell should end up in the garbage so that the dog can knock over the garbage and get the eggshell and also happen upon the old yogurt containers so that he can drag them over the rug.

The virus depopulated us so we had to depopulate the chickens.


Nobody wants a live chicken. Sad.

Nobody wants a live chicken. Sad. — frank

They taste better un-lived.

I think they should have let them go free.

"the're ain't nobody here but us chickens, there ain't nobody here at all"

The mass slaughter of chickens is normal, I recently tried to rescue a few chickens, as the egg producing industry replaces them when they are a year old, because they are less efficient as egg layers. There are organisations who try to save them and hand them out to people who keep a few chickens. I have three which provide 3 large eggs every day all year round and they are good company too. Unfortunately Tesco had decided to withdraw the order from an egg producer, meaning they had to kill 1,800 and there was a failure to organise their rescue in time.

Not a great idea unless you don’t minds them being practically everywhere you go.

Forget the whales, save the chickens!


That would be amazing! Chickens everywhere!

Pretty much.

Yep.

The doctor problem has been cured!

Oh, very droll.

Praise from Caesar

...is praise indeed!

And in case I seem to rag on the US too much, the Australian government is of course trying to do the only thing neoliberal shitkickers know how to do: push back on workers rights in IR and give companies additional tax cuts, all under the guise of propping up the economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/22/labor-accuses-coalition-of-using-covid-19-to-dust-off-ideological-ir-obsessions

"Josh Frydenberg has put lower company tax rates and industrial relations reforms back on the table as a way to boost growth, prompting Labor warnings the Coalition will use the Covid-19 crisis to “dust off its ideological obsessions”. As Australia’s health results improve and national cabinet signals Covid-19 restrictions could be eased as early as May, the Morrison government has called for pro-growth policies, prompting business demands for industrial relations deregulation."

I don't know how anyone can look at the utter trash that is American model of governance and think: "ah that's a good idea, let's copy that", especially when the results have been literally murderous and clear for all to see. But such is our fucking government.

Just to give some context to the dangers of this virus...in 1968-69 between 1 to 4 million people died of Hong Kong flu. So far about a quarter of a million have died with/because of covid 19.

'm not a fan of the Daily Mail but this piece from a couple of years ago helps give some perspectives on the numbers too...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5440785/Killer-flu-outbreak-blame-42-spike-deaths.html

By now, it should be clear to anyone with a shred of common sense and a healthy distrust for authority (of which I had expected there to be plenty on a philosophy forum) that something about this 'crisis' doesn't add up.

Governments are pushing legislation that impedes on citizens' constitutional rights for a virus that barely ranks above the common flu. Coincidentally, it shares basically all the symptoms of the common flu and flu deaths have conspicuously dropped since covid was discovered. How strange...

I'm with you on this one mate, it's almost as if something deeper is happening. Saying that I'm not against elements of social distancing whilst this is ongoing and keeping the vulnerable isolated (within reason), but I fail to see why we are not following Sweden...for once they seem to be showing a bit of commonsense.

One theory that interests me is that global banking was on the verge of collapse just before this pandemic...but I'm not in a position to know whether that is true.
.

Governments are pushing legislation that impedes on citizens' constitutional rights for a virus that barely ranks above the common flu. — Tzeentch

You don't have a constitutional right to things which are designated as dangerous, whether or not you believe in that designation.

One theory that interests me is that global banking was on the verge of collapse just before this pandemic...but I'm not in a position to know whether that is true. — Chester

The stock market was in a bubble. Russia and Saudi Arabia were intent on bursting that bubble by pulling the bottom out of the oil market. But global banking is something different. .