Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

West Midlands police and crime commissioner David Jamieson said officers are reporting people breaking lockdown rules and using Dominic Cummings as an excuse, amid fears Boris Johnson's key aide's actions are undermining the government's public health messaging.

Jamieson told BBC Radio 4's The World At One programme that people are telling officers that "if it is okay for Cummings, it is okay for us" and "it looks like there is one rule for us and another rule for the people in No 10 Downing Street".

He said:

Now you can't... if the rules are flexible, and people seem to have interpreted them who are at the heart of government, then it is almost impossible then for police officers to be able to carry out their job effectively.

What the police are now saying to me is they are getting quite a push back, not just from some of the younger people who previously where saying why can't I play football, why can't I go out in the streets? They're getting push backs from other generations of people as well.

Now that is a bad sign, showing that confidence in the rules, confidence in government and thereby the police's ability to enforce it has been undermined very much in the last few days.

I think a lot of people were already just looking for an excuse, so to speak, to consider this whole lockdown thing done, and Dominic "PR genius" Cummings really provided  them one. Even worse, if people continue to be riled up by this, it will make refusing to cooperate a political statement just like in America.

[alfred russel]

Wait so what was it? The institutions or the media? The media didn't order anything or recommend anything.

The media fed a panic that private and public institutions bended toward.

Take a step back--do you really think there was not a media panic? If you want, I can go back and find some very dire statements from two months ago that were complete nonsense--the question is, why were such people so wrong? The two most likely culprits seem to be that they were either bad actors effectively shouting fire in a crowded theater, or they were caught up in a panic.

Besides what should we have done? Had everybody go outside? I mean if the fatality rate is 0.6% or 0.5% we are still talking about a million or more people.

Freaking out about outdoor recreation and issuing stay at home orders doesn't seem to have been all that logical.

But anyway I mean why have you been going on and on and on about this for months? None of us had jack fuck to do with this or are deciding anything, it was the governor of Georgia, or whomever, who shut down your rock climbing not us. Why do you care so much what we think?

If in 100 years people discover the ghost of languish on some corner of the internet, they will chuckle at how much time everyone wasted earnestly discussing things that they had no control over. Why does anyone on this forum argue for their point of view?

[Sheilbh]

I think a lot of people were already just looking for an excuse, so to speak, to consider this whole lockdown thing done, and Dominic "PR genius" Cummings really provided  them one. Even worse, if people continue to be riled up by this, it will make refusing to cooperate a political statement just like in America.

Maybe. I think the people who were already going to break the rules will still break the rules and just use this as an excuse. If a police officer can't deal with someone giving bullshit excuses they probably should seek another career.

I actually think in the same way as people have been more compliant than was expected with lockdown. There's lots of the sort of demonstrative "well we don't need to follow the rules now" statements which are just political, but I think most people will still follow the rules and cautiously go back. I basically don't think the British people have proven to be a hooligan mass who need to be coerced into following these rules, even if that does apply to our political class. And I don't think that'll change.

[Josquius]

It's funny to see radicalised brainwashed morons outing themselves over this Cummings stuff.

Their newest trick seems to be posting tweets from MPs in the first days the lockdown came into force as they headed back to their constituencies... Because that's totally the same apparently.

[merithyn]

Also heartbreaking open letter on Facebook by a mother to her local MP (a Tory who has now called for Cummings to go). Its communications, and by all accounts MPs are receiving hundreds of personal stories like this, that are making it clear that it isn't a bubble story.

It's also something I think about a lot - also with the reported increase in domestic violence and child abuse - that while it's incredibly important to remember these measures because of the impact they can have on the most vulnerable, for many, many people this lockdown isn't just an inconvenience. I'm fine. So, I think, are most people but there are thousands and thousands of people who are really suffering through this and I don't have an idea how to help them - on the domestic violence side which I know a bit about, a lot of shelters (which are also socially distancing) are now running out of space.

It's those of us who are fine that need to work harder to maintain the spirit and the letter of the law so that those who can't - for your reasons stated - have safety out in public without fear of COVID, too.

If those who can stay home as much as possible, those who need the escape of the grocery store or a walk in the park can make use of those spaces without having to worry about overcrowding (which leads to closing that option to everyone) or getting COVID. It's why the selfish attitudes of those who deliberately choose to flaunt the law because they can makes me so mad. FFS, even the CEO of my company gets it. We'll be working remotely until at least the first Monday in September regardless of what everyone else is doing. Because we can. And by doing so, we make it safer for those who can't.

This is a poignant reminder of why we do.

[Iormlund]

Not to relocate out of cities was absolutely the right call.  That was a significant part of the spread in Italy - where they announced a lockdown in advance, so tons of people left Milan and spread the disease over a much wider area.

Is that true though? I know that was the fear at the time and it's intuitively right, but did it have that effect? From what I've seen the excess mortality in the North of Italy was up 96% (up to 31 March) but only up 2% in the rest of Italy so I don't think the spread happened.

You can't directly compare like that. The bug was loose in Lombardy for weeks, whereas quarantine came much earlier in the spreading process for most of Italy.

[The Brain]

Loose in Lombardy sounds like a good movie btw.

[Zanza]

There is a clear statistical correlation between severity of the Covid-19 outbreak in the German administrative districts and their distance from Ischgl. 10% closer to Ischgl means 9% more infections. Of course that's just correlation, but it adds to other aspects that point to Ischgl as the main hotspot from which Germany was infected. Similar figures exist for the Nordic countries.

[Duque de Bragança]

Ischgl delenda est?

[Zanza]

There is one bar n Ischgl that's the epicentre and it was known to authorities and the bar's owner long before it was shut down. That's at least grossly negligent.

[Syt]

Tirol and its tourism industry are a hotbed of nepotism and corruption, even by Austrian standards. There's investigations running into the events before the quarantine of Tyrolean areas, but this being Austria I'd be surprised if it led to more than a slap on the wrist.

I mean, one year after the Ibiza affair the main protagonist returned to politics, and the other affected party might follow.

[Tamas]

See, this is why this is disgusting; Johnson is in front of this committee of MPs, and he was saying how the whole Cummings thing is fine and there should be no time wasted with an inquiry and people should move on.

Then this:

If you're phoned up by a contact tracer and told to stay at home as you've had contact with an infected person, is staying at home compulsory or can people use their judgement, Clark asks.

Johnson says no, they will be asking people to stay at home. If people don't follow that advice, financial sanctions will be considered.

You should self-isolate, he adds. If people don't, we'll consider fines.

So, driving your family around the country with your infected wife, that's a-ok. But if you end up discovered as having made contact with an infected person (once we have this capacity), then you better self-isolate as we tell you to or you'll be fined.

[Josquius]

By the punishment for breaking the rule just being a simple fine they're also making it tacitly cool for rich people do what they want.

[Duque de Bragança]

Tirol and its tourism industry are a hotbed of nepotism and corruption, even by Austrian standards. There's investigations running into the events before the quarantine of Tyrolean areas, but this being Austria I'd be surprised if it led to more than a slap on the wrist.

I mean, one year after the Ibiza affair the main protagonist returned to politics, and the other affected party might follow.

Well, the case is made for South Tyrol staying in Italy I guess. 

[alfred russel]

Tamas, I'm sorry, but driving around the country by itself does not spread the virus. I don't know what you guys have in the UK, but here you can pay at the pump for gas. I could easily drive to Seattle approximately 3k miles away without talking to another person, going into another structure, or going more than a couple feet from my car. For non overnight trips like everything within England, it would be my expectation.