From the Times
Hugging new friends will not be possible until a vaccine or treatment for coronavirus has been found, Matt Hancock has said.
The health secretary also told people to abandon hopes of going abroad for a holiday in the months ahead, agreeing that “summer is cancelled”.
My summer of 1985 was a glorious one. Out of college for a long break, meeting up with my friends, playing in our (terrible) band, all night gaming sessions, camping, drinking cider (illegally), successfully picking up girls. You get a few of those summers in the years between being a child and being an adult, and we’ve ruined this one. We’ve sacrificed the summer of youth, and indebted the nation, mostly so that a lot of old people who spend most of their days gardening, watching Countdown and doing crochet can have a few extra years of it.
What’s going to be the point at which kids on social media decide they’ve had enough and would like someone to jump on their bones and everyone else can stuff off? Because hugging new people is pretty much shagging new people. Are they going to wait a year of spending time with Madame Palm and her Five Daughters for a vaccine to appear, which might not?
Temporary measures to contain an outbreak of a pandemic are one thing, but we can’t live forever like this.
If the incompetent politicians would get out of the way, the virus will spread, may already have done so enough to provide herd immunity so a vaccine will not be required. Since the virus is pandemic (everywhere), it cannot be stopped, slowed, or anything else by Human intervention. I swear the politicians ‘in charge’ do not understand what the word pandemic means, nor the difference between infection and disease. Vaccine does not prevent infection, it prevents the infection becoming disease. Since for 99% of the population the Wu Flu virus produces no disease in about 50% and only mild disease… Read more »
It’s a strange thing that a country would accept half a million dead to prevent its economy being wrecked & its population being curfewed by foreign invaders, yet will do the same thing to itself over a few thousand having briefly curtailed lives*. There’s been a lot of reference to there being a revival of the WW2 spirit, of late. The WW2 spirit had my grandparent’s generation doing their best to conduct normal lives under nightly bombing raids, so I don’t think so.
*Since I’m firmly in that demographic, my attitude? WTF? Being dead isn’t a problem if you’re dead.
It’s bizarre how nannied we’ve become. I was only in favour of severe curtailment so that we could get it knocked on the head and I could go on holiday in July. That’s gone now, so it’s going to be autumn and shitty weather, or everyone rushing for Winter Sun breaks.
At the end of this, I think the port-mortem is going to be really ugly for the politicians and scientists.
The government’s initial response, isolating the vulnerable and then letting everyone else get on with living was almost certainly the correct approach (e.g. Sweden); however, the political risks of such a strategy no doubt influenced policy. Certainly the leftist media, BBC and Guardian would have had even more ammunition to take pot shots at Johnson and his administration if a less panicked and more balanced approach had been taken. However, since they are seemingly always going to do their very best to undermine a Conservative government they’ll never be mollified anyway. What lesson’s can be learnt? Perhaps only that it… Read more »
“What lesson’s can be learnt? Perhaps only that it takes an enormous amount of courage to resist the Piers Morgans of this world and to put country before party, a statesman might but a politician won’t.” There’s no conflict between those two things. Look after the country, people will vote for the party. But the Conservatives really have no game. Few of them have any philosophy or mission. It’s continuity New Labour with a few calls out to the right that they never deliver on. The only significant change in the past decade is because UKIP and Brexit Party threatened… Read more »
Nobody has ever come up with a cure for any virus. Vaccines for colds don’t exist, vaccines for flu are of limited use, vaccines can take a very long time to develop and produce and often aren’t possible. Since the disease is worldwide it would be pointless eliminating it in the UK short of getting herd immunity, unless we are to stop all travel to the UK forever- which would need to include stopping anyone from crossing the channel on a dinghy- and would put an end to external trade. This will end when herd immunity is attained, nothing else… Read more »
We will eventually cure it, though I agree we should not be compelled to wait at home until it happens (and if so, then why not quarantine until gov’t can “guarantee” against all other sicknesses too?). Nobody has done it before, as nobody had crossed the ocean, until they did. We’ve listed its 22,000 genes, we have a fair idea of what they do, we know the exact protein that attaches to a human cell and how, teams are going after this and a few other places to damage or block it, and there may be several cures, from antibodies… Read more »
“…Nobody has ever come up with a cure for any virus…”
Not sure what you are counting as a ‘cure’. Briefly, there are two approaches: vaccines and treatments. There are quite a few very successful vaccines – those for polio and smallpox spring to mind. And there are quite good treatments for viral diseases – HIV and Herpes Simplex infections both benefit from the recent development of anti-virals….
“We’ve sacrificed the summer of youth, and indebted the nation, mostly so that a lot of old people who spend most of their days gardening, watching Countdown and doing crochet can have a few extra years of it.” Those old people you refer to are the same ones who risked their lives to prevent you being called Helmut or Adolf; who risked their lives in Korea to stop the rise of communism; who fought in Borneo to stop Malaysia becoming part of the Indonesian empire, who risked their lives in Yemen and the middle east; and in Northern Ireland to… Read more »
“Those old people you refer to are the same ones who risked their lives to prevent you being called Helmut or Adolf; who risked their lives in Korea to stop the rise of communism; who fought in Borneo to stop Malaysia becoming part of the Indonesian empire, who risked their lives in Yemen and the middle east” Bollocks are they. Almost no-one is left from WW2, and most of those following wars were pretty small skirmishes. There’s a lot of 80 year olds in homes who had peaceful lives. “Last week, on the 8th May, you probably sang a song… Read more »