Andrew Reid

No scientists can truly say but the common sense aspect is undeniable. If 90%+ of the population are wearing masks and 100% of those with a cough, then you prevent the spread. If you have hand sanitiser at every public space, again you prevent the spread. Ask yourself why this isn't the situation in the US and Europe. No preparedness, no plan, no clue. Instead, a risk that millions could die and a brutal economic collapse. There is no sugaring it. This MAY happen, and all because of our governments.

The talking point of criminal negligence is inaccurate or something else, not sure I follow... Anyway, you just gave your own great example of what criminal negligence in government looks like.

These are good points but it doesn't change the fact that governments are behaving in a criminally negligent way towards their public and health workers.

Yes exactly. 3 weeks and army is not urgently distributing supplies of basic cheap essentials in the fight agains the virus. It's criminal negligence again. And we as the citizens will make sure we hold these governments to account if our loved ones die. We will not stay quiet on this. And not just train carriages full of people spreading it but offices... Vulnerable age groups or people with underlying lung conditions exposed to large groups of younger workers who don't give a shit. Money first, all the fucking time. The drugs companies racing to be the first to make mega profits from at-home testing kits, which if we all had NOW, would stop the virus in its tracks and isolate the right people, preventing a full on lock down and economic warfare. Money first. American first. Boris, Cummings, Gove... criminal negligence. It's all going to end in a shitshow. You heard it here first.

I don't need a background in epidemiology to understand what is happening. You just need eyes and to be able to logically deduce more than 1 step ahead (which rules out at least 50% of the British public) I'll explain why it's government manslaughter and negligence, very clearly. Science community has been warning about the threat of a pandemic for decades. SARS hit Asia and governments there did the responsible thing to wake the fuck up...Whilst ours pondered and basically sat on their hands with other issues taking priority... like who appeals to the public the most in our daily gameshow political shitshow. They were thinking it can't happen here... The scientific data was telling them otherwise. Bill Gates told them otherwise, very clearly. Logic tells them otherwise. The millions of flights and international travel increase the spread of a virus so that it's a pandemic. Are you saying I need to have a background in virology to understand this? Even school kids know this. The UK government has been proved by the events of this month to have had zero preparedness for a pandemic. - A lack of political recognition of the seriousness of what was unfolding in January - Insufficient testing capacity - Insufficient protection of front-line health workers, doctors and staff - Insufficient supplies of hand sanitiser and masks... Basic, cheap stuff. - A lack of political urgency to put any preparedness plans into action in January (oh and they didn't have any plan anyway) - Poor case isolation and low testing numbers especially early on at critical stage of the spread - Underfunded health system and not supporting the staff - Negligently informing the public I'll give you two examples of that last point which is key. On his Japan trip, @BTM_Pix noticed the Brit tourists suddenly abandon their masks after Boris said they were ineffectual. Nothing sums this crisis up better. People cannot take seriously what they don't understand or are poorly advised about. People don't understand the role of the masks to stop the spread of the virus. They are not there to protect you from infection. They exist to stop YOU passing the virus onto somebody else, if you cough, sneeze, it catches burst of aerosols, and it stops your hands from coming into contact with your mouth, nose or catching the cough. In the UK we catch our coughs and sneezes with our bare hands and then put our hands on shopping and goods in the supermarket. It stays there for up to 72 hours before somebody else picks up the same item and then touches their own mouths at some point, then the trouble happens especially if they are elderly or have underlying health conditions. It is the government's responsibility to make us understand this but in actual fact their "scientific" advise is still to catch your coughs and sneezes with your bare hands. Great way to spread it onto surfaces in public, like in a packed metro carriage and spread it to a 100 others. That's what the Japanese and Taiwanese understand in their densely populated cities. The British don't. We do not have a culture of understanding anything much as a collective. We don't have a culture of wearing masks when we have a cold, let alone during a pandemic. This has to change ASAP... Like tomorrow... It may already be too late, and certainly for the economy and for people who have died so far it's too late. Everyone has to wear one in public to stop the spread. It's simply no good just 20% of the public wearing them, or scarfs or buckets or whatever in a misguided belief they are a barrier to the virus entering your body. Army should be on the streets handing them out. Basic stuff like soap is equally important and disinfecting common public spaces. In Asia they have been disinfecting public transport on daily basis, cleaning businesses and offices like the plague. We are not doing that here. We are just not used to it. We don't have a warm climate in England with a lot of bacteria. The virus is not the same as bacteria but is removed by similar deep cleans, so why aren't we doing them? So yes, the government had all this info, like the lay man did, like the bloke who runs EOSHD did, it's not even hard to understand... And yes, they failed to act or be prepared which makes them criminally negligent and responsible for the manslaughter of potentially 2 million people in the UK alone.

There is a slow burning realisation and awakening in the UK and Europe (it will come to the US soon) that we have fucked up. Big time. In Japan and Taiwan, simple early hygiene measures avoided a lockdown or economic crash. Thousands of jobs saved, but more importantly thousands of lives saved from the outset. In January, the Japanese started to test in-depth for coronavirus and did case by case contact tracing and isolation. The public did their bit by wearing masks en-masse in public and using hand sanitiser. @BTM_Pix points out that most if not all shops had hand sanitiser on the entrance so people didn't unwittingly spread by handling goods. At the same time, here in the UK our government did nothing. Business as normal. In February our crackpot chief advisor started to float the theory of herd immunity, and amazingly the chief scientists and government itself went for this strategy straight off the bat, as the first cases reached the UK. When the scientists ran the numbers, it wasn't until over a month later... It would result in 2 million dead people, minimum. The chief advisor Dominic Cummings is rumoured to have been advocating for the death of 2 million people as late as February 28th. "At one private event at the end of February, Cummings outlined then government’s strategy at the time in a way that was summarised by some present as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.” Meanwhile in Japan and Taiwan, the simple hygiene measures were leaving some of the most densely populated cities on Earth virtually untouched by the epidemic. But for Italy things were rapidly going downhill. Another government who sat on their hands in January and February. Italy's terrifying unfolding tragedy is a glimpse into the future for all of us... Just 2-4 weeks into the future. In Italy, 20-30% of intensive care patients are aged 20-40. People with underlying health or lung problems are at great risk even if they're young. Hospitals and health systems will collapse. The sudden lockdowns required, will crash the economy, creating joblessness, government debt and hardship on a scale never seen before in modern times. Meanwhile Japan remains open for business. Sure, with some major events cancelled and the Olympics in doubt... But over in China, they are already going back to work. Taiwan has some of the fewest cases and deaths per 100,000 people in the world, despite being on the doorstep of China. Hong Kong too. In the West this is the biggest government manslaughter unfolding, that has ever been seen in our lives. Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, US, we are all going to face utter darkness. Please takes step to protect yourselves from the government's handling of this in the critical early stages. It is going to get out of control.

She can't seem to decide who's the bigger dickhead. Car dickhead or rollerskating hipster dickhead. Just waiting for similar to happen on an e-scooter. 20kg battery slicing somebody's head off.

Ah bugger. Here's me thinking LA's traffic problems were solved.

Lovely scenes.

Wrong. Trump tried to lure the research to the US and gain exclusive ownership of both the company and the vaccine See: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-germany-usa-idUSL8N2B8075.

In the UK we have an inexperienced ex-hedge-fund manager chancellor in control of economy, so that is about to go tits up. He has promised unlimited bailouts, dedicated $330 billion to prop up the economy (20% of GDP!), but done it in a the most backward dumb way imaginable, where most of the money will be pocketed by shareholders, bosses and big companies, leaving the staff and small businesses who really need it scrambling for what's left. It's a bit like how they shut down theatres and cinemas here last week in an 'advisory' way. Oops. Meant none of them could claim on insurance for any closure and losses. The chancellor and prime minster have sacked most of their advisors and there is a rift with the civil service. Both of them are wreckers, gamblers, risk takers. Until today bars and restaurants were still open, in midst of a pandemic. Virus is spreading very fast in London but it was almost like business as normal till now, with very little social distancing going on. People are waking up now, but government is still way behind the ball. Doctors and nurses having to share masks, not even able to get tested for coronavirus. When they get it, they spread it. Likewise, most of the population, because none of us get tested either, none of us have any masks, won't wear them anyway, and are getting on packed trains to go to packed offices and bars like the problem doesn't exist. The situation in the UK in 2 weeks might make Italy and Barcelona seem positively calm. In Spain and Italy at least they are taking the lockdown seriously and stuff is closed. Also people have just genuinely gone mad. The panic buying, empty shelves, country gone to shit. I might have to move. Where to? Mars?

It's an interview with Frank M. Snowden, professor emeritus of history and the history of medicine at Yale. So let's hear him out. "One way of approaching this is to examine how I got interested in the topic, which was a realization—I think a double one. Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are. That is to say, they obviously have everything to do with our relationship to our mortality, to death, to our lives.... "They show the moral relationships that we have toward each other as people, and we’re seeing that today. "The main part of preparedness to face these events is that we need as human beings to realize that we’re all in this together, that what affects one person anywhere affects everyone everywhere" "and we need to think in that way rather than about divisions of race and ethnicity, economic status, and all the rest of it." "I had done some preliminary reading and thought this was an issue that raises really deep philosophical, religious, and moral issues. And I think epidemics have shaped history in part because they’ve led human beings inevitably to think about those big questions." "The outbreak of the plague, for example, raised the whole question of man’s relationship to God. How could it be that an event of this kind could occur with a wise, all-knowing and omniscient divinity? Who would allow children to be tortured, in anguish, in vast numbers?" "It had an enormous effect on the economy. Bubonic plague killed half the population of full continents and, therefore, had a tremendous effect on the coming of the industrial revolution, on slavery and serfdom. Epidemics also, as we’re seeing now, have tremendous effects on social and political stability. They’ve determined the outcomes of wars, and they also are likely to be part of the start of wars sometimes. So, I think we can say that there’s not a major area of human life that epidemic diseases haven’t touched profoundly." *** Well I saw it myself in Barcelona. The different approaches from different people. I'll give you some characters I met, and their response. Had I stayed longer, I would have filmed them and made a documentary. When I travel I prefer backpackers hostels (at least good ones) to hotels as you save money and get to meet interesting people. The facilities are hotel standard anyway and some of them are like fancy apartments. A great way to travel. In one I met the French hostel owner, whose first priority was safety of his staff... he sent them all home, but kept a few guests on who had no flight and nowhere else to go. A good man, he didn't panic... didn't put himself first...he risked his own wellbeing to help me. Barcelona Garden Hostel in city centre, if you're curious. I will be going back once this is over and saying thanks. And my response to the crisis there told me something about me. I wanted to stay, I took unnecessary risks, didn't book a flight home even though I knew trouble was coming. I think in hindsight it was foolish. I booked 3 hostels at once when things were really locking down, so if one closed, I'd have somewhere else to stay. Contingency plan! I wasn't going to leave it up to God to decide whether I would be homeless, using GFX 100 as a hammer to crack open coconuts for dinner. Another character were staff in a different hostel, who tried to charge me double for a room if I wanted to stay there as a backup plan... any excuse basically to make a profit from a pandemic and public health crisis. Other people I met, were panic stricken. One girl in tears, afraid of losing her job. Some hostels and hotels were rejecting new customers... didn't give a crap. Some just sacked their staff on the spot, sent home with nothing. Britannia hotel chain in the UK today did not just sack a ton of people, they flung them out of their accommodation too. Tells us a lot about some businesses and why they should be allowed to go broke in a crisis... No bailout from taxpayer for them, give it to the staff they treat as disposable, instead. There were people joking about the pandemic. I didn't mind it. But sometimes seems insensitive. In a supermarket, shelves empty, elderly old wise cracking Spanish man came up to me with the wheezing laugh like in the meme, something I didn't understand but definitely about toilet paper. Very amusing. Other times, some American tourists, acting like they were immune and to hell with everyone else, being jokey and insensitive around so many people worried for their jobs and health, just made me sick to the stomach to be honest. So yes, the Yale guy is right. It is going to tell us some deep truths about our character, our values, our societies by the time this is all over.

Here we fucking go again. If we can read the article and identifiy the facts in it, and comment on those rather than any politics, we might start the thread off in a more interesting way. Otherwise it'll have to be canned like the last one. Can we do it??

There is already a general sticky thread for lenses So closing this one now Cheers

Ironically Japan and China are soon to be safest places to go to avoid coronavirus and stupid people.

Yes looks every bit as bad as expected... Honestly looks like total muck. Contrast is your friend. Look at lighting in Citizen Kane.

I'd like to hear your stories from Japan as well...Lemon Camera, any rare stuff you came across, and the story of the Brits all taking their masks off because they listened to Boris! I can keep a secret, I just won't tell anyone I am keeping a secret. On way back the GFX 100 got melon juice spilt on it due to Ryanair forcing me to put my lunch in my camera bag. Smells nice and fruity Shutter is a bit sticky though

I don't know how much longer I can survive here... All the camera stores are closed. Only the night before I saw some rare Canon FD lenses behind a shutter, and this was the tipping point. Got a Ryanair back last night. Barcelona is a truly wonderful place. In Barcelona people were acting sensibly, responsibly, in an adult manner. I am now in the UK. The place has gone completely to shit! So now my escape from doom to hell is complete, at least I'll have plenty of time to write that F1 / GFX 100 blog post, S1H review, @BTM_Pix secret projects and panic shopping. Thankfully the plane even had a pilot. At one point I thought I might have to fly it myself. At least I had plenty of leg room on board.

Last month I made a trip to Barcelona to film the Formula One circus in town for the pre-season test. This, it turned out would be the last time the 2020 F1 cars would run. When a McLaren team member tested positive for the virus at the first race in Australia, the race was called off. In a twist of fate I met McLaren CEO and team boss Zak Brown in track grandstand and watched the new car in action before crisis hit - now we might never know how fast the car was versus the likes of dominant Mercedes and Ferrari. Read the full article

Right that's enough. I am ashamed of some of you, quite frankly.

I am putting my foot down in this fucking thread. eleison is no longer welcome. Can't allow racism here, even when it's in disguise as patriotism. If he rejoins I will track him and take legal action against him for damaging the reputation of my forum and site. We can't allow the forum to descend into toxic bullshit. It's as simple as that.

Looks like we have another Trump troll heading for the bot farm from which they came. What a shit stirrer. A ban is coming on at least 10 members because you are basically toxic people. I am not going to sit here and let you turn the forum toxic with your racism and America First fuck the rest of us delusion. You will need the Germans when the vaccine is ready. You need the British when you want a camera forum, apparently. But being grateful or thankful apparently isn't a part of your brain that lights up very much. Therefore you don't deserve to be a member of this forum. It's that simple. Enjoy your time here while it lasts because I am going to blanket ban toxic thickos tomorrow. For the other idiots and patriot racists who are coming out of the woodwork, you're time's up. Camera forums deserve a basic morality going on. If you are trying to gain exclusivity over a coronavirus remedy, it's nothing more than a profit grab and a death sentence for others. The science community is a global one. All important science needs to be a world effort especially with a pandemic like this. People are slowly realising what America First really means and what does this for America's image in the world. It fucking tarnishes it, to say the least. You have a President who is destroying any remaining appeal of American identity and idealism in the eyes of 80% of the world's population. Be a good neighbour and you may get a German or Japanese coronavirus medicine at the same time as the rest of us. And if you think your own people and flag is so much better than the others, develop your own fucking vaccine. Like I say, I have tolerated gobshites all my life but time's up. Yes I do remember the behaviour on the Titanic. Having an exclusive deal on a pandemic vaccine isn't IN YOUR FUCKING BEST INTERESTS YOU FUCKWIT You really are as fuckwitted as it gets... aren't you? You consider shafting the world some kind of "victory" You don't live in a fucking bubble. You are a human being on planet Earth before you're an American.

Good people don't defend a US president who wants exclusivity on coronavirus medicines. Any Trump supporter needs from now on to explain why they support a guy who just tried to murder millions of over 60's outside America. Still waiting for Mercer to offer his explanation but he's dodging it. But yes, Berlin supermarkets are fucking terrible. Always have been. Thanks for the reminder!

If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of some grapes mumbling bitterly about Nikon, Fuji and Olympus cancelling on Photokina 2020. There may even be a bit of revenge in there, a very subtle German one. I've no sympathy for the management of Photokina.

what part of this makes any sense though. It's not long ago they wanted to go to one every year... Come 2022 it will be 4 years since the last Photokina! Bit of a u-turn isn't it??