Banking crisis next?

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I have never had any trouble in strange or foreign bars , that I caused ....although once on way back to my boarding house in a new to me maritime city some guys thought they should have my money , told them I was returning from a bar and was cleaned out , well I got home with no more than a scrape or two couple of them were limping in other direction others had vanished , realized next day I would be walking past these thugs twice daily to get to college I was attending , was a long fall and winter by spring it was no issue will finish this in another post later ....
 
Craig said:
In that case check out “The Plague” by Albert Camus ... was 40-45 yrs ago when I read it , certainly still resonates in today’s world ... saw it on shelf the other day and thought it was next on my re-read list ....[/QUOTE

Wish I could remember where my copy is- good choice.
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Fast Eddie said:
He’s right. They did. The Chinese played this down, tried to subdue it as best they could. And that had a direct impact on Western leaders who then thought “no need to panic”.

Had the Chinese been more honest, sooner, it may have panned out differently.
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The Chinese played this down,presumbly, because of an encroaching New Year ,atime when millions of Chinese are normally in transit ie the playdown was for Chinese domestic consumption I assume that 'intelligence'is notjust dependent on public domain knowledge but even that was supposedly available in early jJanuary.Whatever , that these early signs were overidden by subsequent Chinese pronouncements is due to a faulty evaluation of data rather than Boris having been bowled a googlie .
No one ever puts their hands up for anything in political circles ,so whether this is the responsibility of Boris or Trump ,their advisors ,or intelligence is unlikely to be knowable any time soon if ever.
It was fairly clear that a pandemic was in the making not on data seepage from China but from what was happening in Italy , and still HMG did nothing. It might be that to underreact isbetter than to overreact but there is still not, for instance adequate PPE in place for health workers in the front line and they are dying as a consequence. This seems a no brainer and surely couldhave been done without causing panic or goosing the markets ?
 
The WHO also downplayed this virus in the beginning and aligned themselves with the Chinese info, they only belatedly called it a pandemic when it spread.

When you consider what happened in Oct 2017 then any action or pronouncement by the WHO must first be met with 'Who paid for this'

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/world/africa/robert-mugabe-goodwill-ambassador-who.html

The World Health Organization’s decision to name President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe a “good-will ambassador” has provoked outrage from medical professionals, rights groups, opposition leaders and others who took to social media to call it an “insult” and “a sick joke.”
 
We have had a string of ‘end of the world’ pandemics of the last 20 years and all have been damp squibs.

I feel it’s real witch hunt thinking to single ANYONE out for lack of early action with covid19. The issue is that the WHO and other ‘expert’ bodies have cried wolf too often. Society as a whole just didn’t believe it this time either. How many folk were happily planning and booking holidays in Jan and Feb this year? I know I was. And I know I wasn’t alone !

EVERYONE has been caught out because we all thought it was another over reaction / false alarm. The Chinese subduing the truth absolutely fuelled this.

We also have to be very aware of lockdown fatigue. People will tire of it, do it too soon and you can easily ‘miss fire’.

And, the biggest thing we need to remember here is that covid19 IS here, it IS going to infect millions and it IS going to kill thousands and WE AIN’T GONNA STOP THAT. The strategy is therefore to ‘flatten the peak’ which means to accept the deaths, but spread them over time, that means staging the actions over time, not all at once.

All that said, IMHO the thing governments around the world are genuinely guilty of is not having much greater stockpiles of PPE and basic medical equipment. The WHO also are hugely guilty here, where was their sage like advice BEFORE the outbreak telling govts to stockpile etc? I sincerely hope this is something that is learnt for the future.

Personally, I’m really struggling to see the ‘value add’ of the WHO in this whole scenario.
 
That’s all true Nigel but as you have said earlier, we don’t know how many of those dying from symptoms of Covid19 - pneumonia, respiratory failure, heart failure etc would have died in the normal course of events. I am not downplaying the seriousness of this novel coronavirus but many older people die from pneumonia as a result of other illnesses affecting either their immune system or their respiratory system. The number of deaths are not being compared to those in a normal year - the excess winter mortality rate in 2014 was 44000, most attributed to the H3N2 flu strain (thats 44000 more than normal or expected)
It is serious and we need to stop the spread but we also need to know if these Covid19 deaths are in addition to normal mortality rates or whether they include those figures.
 
Eljahara said:
It is serious and we need to stop the spread but we also need to know if these Covid19 deaths are in addition to normal mortality rates or whether they include those figures.
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That will be impossible except in small study areas run by a single controlling body, between different hospitals, even before you look at regional and national policies, the recording of deaths is not fully standardised and even with standard rules still open to clinical interpretation. Just the simple difference between 2 words is enough to cause huge variations.

Died of Covid 19

Died with Covid 19

This is the latest info on the disease

https://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopki.../540747/all/Coronavirus_COVID_19__SARS_CoV_2_

Risk groups
  • Older age, especially > 65 yrs and people with comorbidities appear more likely to develop an infection and severe symptoms and be at risk for death.
  • Younger adults are also being hospitalized.
    • Adults 20–44 account for 20% of hospitalizations, 12% of ICU admissions.
  • Children appear less symptomatic with infection and less prone to severe illness.

Even if there is a higher overall death rate that does not tell you everything, if you add in the next 6 or even up to 18 months of deaths post virus then you can hopefully answer how many extra deaths vs how many premature deaths. But you also need to define premature, 2 weeks or 2 years makes a big difference.
 
True, I guess we won’t know until the numbers are crunched - that is usually 12-18 months to deliver the report. If a death from pneumonia occurs in someone with “underlying health conditions” who also tests positive for Covid19 - they die from pneumonia but it is recorded as a death from/with Covid19.. but is that the real cause?
My question/curiosity arises from the published numbers in the UK - 48000 recorded cases and 5000 deaths is around 10% whereas the expected rate is 1%
 
Eljahara said:
My question/curiosity arises from the published numbers in the UK - 48000 recorded cases and 5000 deaths is around 10% whereas the expected rate is 1%
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Current explanation is the lower rate of testing in the UK (compared to the highest, compared to most its high) means the real infection rate is 10 times higher which then brings down the death rate to 1%, but its a guess. But even the highest testing regimes in South Korea and Germany are coming under pressure, the test failure rate is high giving a lot of false negatives (it needs a high presence of the virus to work) plus the test is currently only the presence of the virus not the antigens. So giving some one the all clear takes up to 3 tests and then they can still get infected within minutes of the all clear.

The promised antigen test keeps failing the final approval tests as its not sensitive enough, you get a false negative if someone has just recovered, you need to wait a week for the antigens to be present in enough quantity for the test to work.

Until the antigen test is sensitive enough and available in last numbers with certificates issued then we are left with lock-downs, relaxation and then more lock-downs as cases pop up again, rinse and repeat.
 
oldmikew said:
No one ever puts their hands up for anything in political circles ...
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With the exception of every democrat politician running for the nomination. ALL put their hands up when asked "who will provide FREE healthcare to ILLEGAL ALIENS?"
 
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NPeteN said:
Does that make them undeserving of potentially life saving medical care?
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It does say on your currency - in God we trust - which coined the phrase “all others pay cash”
The Republican Party seem to take that to the extreme, hence the post of that doctor lamenting the dying words of one of his patients “who will pay?”
 
You’ll have to excuse Paul, for in his part of the country they have a lot of Mexicans without documentation. Of course, those good ‘Mericans, like Paul, love to hire these undocumented Mexicans, paying them much less than a legal worker, then denigrate them for being here. See, Republicans, again like Paul, are missing the brain receptor that recognizes hypocrisy.
 
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