In reply to RedFive:
> Now they are coming to an end at just the time the second wave is upon us. I don’t understand why we helped save millions of businesses and jobs but won’t now. Why didn’t we just pull the plug on them six months ago? That’s taxpayers money wasted if they end up going anyway.
At least three obvious possibilities exist:
*They will yet act to preserve most of those companies and jobs as the second wave bites.
*They didn't in April know what was going to be possible so a punt on furlough and economic preservation was worthwhile. The government has since then, in light of new information and consideration, decided it's better to let market forces act.
*Covid was a largely Southern problem in Marc-April striking hard at the economic heart of the nation and the Conservatives' voter base who therefore had to be shielded from their wantonly cruel and inadequate welfare 'reforms', not least because it would have made lockdown impossible without triggering a near instant stockmarket and banking crash. Less so now it's in the North and Scotland.
All those are simplistic and in reality they're probably all at play to some degree.
> So closing hospitality and possibly other sectors is extremely worrying for me. I am directly engaged with many of them. I have been close to a nervous breakdown from the hundreds of calls I’ve taken from desperate business owners at the end of their their tethers this last six months. And it’s starting up again.
Look at the covid numbers, they are going to be closed again. The issue is when and for how long. The assumption is the smaller the problem, the quicker and easier it is to deal with. The risk: you have to repeat smaller shut downs more frequently as the virus will recur between them.
> These businesses will not survive a second closure. The domino effect means I will also have to cut costs of which my employees are the largest. I’ve never had to let an employee go in 10 years of being in business. I can’t even contemplate it.
That is to a degree a choice for government. Let's hope the Conservatives really are interested in preserving the economy of the North, not mired in brexit and distracted by London.
> The point Sapuer made therefore IMHO is a good one. The Gov is pushing a stat last night that 30% of ‘exposures’ to cv happened in hospitality. I thinks that’s rubbish. It’s like saying 100% cv patients had been to the toilet in the last 24 hours so let’s ban toilets. Causation and correlation again which has been vastly misunderstood by the majority of pundits pushing their own agendas.
Possibly, it's hard to unpick without experiment. The problem is we do need to unpick it and the experiments are very very expensive.
That proves nothing. I know I'm not using the QR check-in function on the app and I haven't seen anyone else do so either, it's pointless, the message it generates if an outbreak occurs is of no use to anyone.
Full disclosure, I love pubs, I really really hope they don't get squeezed too hard because I know many will fail without significant support. On the other hand they will also fail if they lose customers to fear as the epidemic accelerates or are closed for longer to deal with a more serious problem in a months time. That also makes Christmas impossible with enormous social and economic implications. There are no good options here.
> Despite a sense of gallows humour loss by some on here I believe and have believed all along my earlier point is right. It’s a point though. A theory. Call it a hunch. I don’t have stats to prove it.
What point?
> Im not saying let it rip. But a managed exposure to the vast majority of people who will be fine (don’t mention long Covid that’s a tiny fraction of the actual people exposed) and target our resources to the vulnerable ones.
Oh that point. Well you're entitled to believe what you like but since you're pushing for a policy epidemiologists tell us could kill hundreds of thousands and in so doing wreak untold economic , social and political damage, it would be better based on some hard science than a gut feeling.
> The South has already done it to a certain extent. Let’s find a way of working through it.
c60k dead in wave one. In summer. With a hard lockdown.
> Closing the pubs just because it’s a lever the Gov can pull to make it look like they are doing something is not the way forward.
What if in three weeks time it's abundantly clear it was actually the way forward*, will you be eating humble pie or claiming it's evidence of herd immunity and that the pandemic is over because that's what the Telegraph will be telling you loud and clear?
*I have my doubts but doing nothing simply isn't an option here. My wife gave birth at the height of the first wave, our hospital was perhaps a week from being swamped, if that had happened she and my little girl would have died . We're approaching that tipping point again, it didn't feel like it in the weeks before it happened last time, it doesn't feel like it again now but look at the numbers, listen to the people managing resources, it's where we are.
All courses of action from here including pretending there isn't a problem until it's too big to ignore have associated costs, big ones. The option being kited this weekend, further hospitality restrictions and closures can be mitigated with borrowed cash much more effectively than the alternatives. Stop pressing for more carnage, start lobbying a government I presume you voted for for more support. Tell your MP what happens if they let you and the businesses you support down.
jk
Post edited at 11:41