Coronavirus

[Muddy Retriever]

Id heard that one plan would be to give out immunity certificates to those who’d already had the virus. This would be possible once there were reliable antibody tests. People with such a certificate would be able to carry on with their lives. People without one would have to stay in lockdown. I see two flaws with that idea.

Firstly, it would penalise those people who have been most diligent in social distancing.

Secondly, it would probably encourage people who hadn’t contracted Covid 19 yet to actively seek to get it, particularly if they deemed themselves to be in a low risk category.

[Stagger]

Probably take years to administer the tests for everyone.

[Mike T]

Id heard that one plan would be to give out immunity certificates to those who’d already had the virus. This would be possible once there were reliable antibody tests. People with such a certificate would be able to carry on with their lives. People without one would have to stay in lockdown. I see two flaws with that idea.

Firstly, it would penalise those people who have been most diligent in social distancing.

Secondly, it would probably encourage people who hadn’t contracted Covid 19 yet to actively seek to get it, particularly if they deemed themselves to be in a low risk category.

And thirdly, unless the test is extremely accurate, a lot of the positives would be false positives.

[Witton Park]

Ryanair - I was due to fly to Fuerteventura 21/3 for 8 dayts from Liverpool.

19/3 they cancelled the flight out.

They offered me a refund or transfer. Of course I chose a refund, but the system wouldn't allow me to complete probably because my return flight was still active.

20/3 I got the same email, this time it allowed me to claim the refund advising "Refunds will be processed within 7 working days back to the form of payment used for the original booking."

27/3 I received an email confirming receipt of my claim for refund, but due to load it might take another 10 days to process.

This morning.

Dear Mr Taylor,

We refer to your correspondence dated 27/03/2020.

We apologise, for the cancellation of your flight FR4081 from Liverpool to Fuerteventura on 21/03/2020 which was due to the current worldwide COVID 19 crisis.

As per interpretive guidelines on EU passenger rights, announced by the EU commission on cancellations caused due to COVID 19, this is now classified as an extraordinary circumstance and compensation does not apply under EU261/2004.

If you remain dissatisfied with the final decision made from our customer services team, you may contact the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and their Passenger Advice and Complaints Team (PACT).

We hope the above clarifies the matter and we have now closed your claim

Yours sincerely,

They were cheap flights, so it's not the money although still £230, but the principal. I can see things kicking of big time.

I've just claimed now from the credit card so see how that goes.

[Muddy Retriever]

The government's mistake was to think the epidemic needed a bit of help, and now, despite video evidence to the contrary, are denying that they were thinking that way. Lockdown should have been weeks earlier. As for horse racing, and pop concerts ....

Is the failure to lockdown sooner really the main fault? South Korea hasn't had a lockdown and their number of fatalities is tiny compared to us, despite being much closer to the initial epicentre. What they did, which has proved hugely effective is mass testing and contract tracing. We have spectacularly failed to do that.

You could argue that South Korea had the experience of SARS to fall back on. But closer to home Germany is testing half a million a week, while in Britain, we have only recently achieved 10,000 a day. This is a national disgrace, wherever the fault lies. Germany has a much lower fatality rate than the UK.

[Witton Park]

But closer to home Germany is testing half a million a week,

I'm often hearing this, yet on the tracker https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries they are currently down as 981,460 total tests, so something is amiss.

[Muddy Retriever]

I'm often hearing this, yet on the tracker https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries they are currently down as 981,460 total tests, so something is amiss.

It looks like the half a million figure means capability now. Here is a bit more detail on the 981,460 figure, which is the total figure up to one week ago.

– The cumulative total of samples tested was 918460;
– For calendar week 13 (which ends on 29 March), 143 labs reported 354521 samples tested;
– For calendar week 12 (which ends on 22 March), 176 labs reported 348619 samples tested;
– For calendar week 11 (which ends on 15 March), 114 labs reported 127457 samples tested.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing#germany

[Stagger]

A lot of propaganda

[Travs]

Ryanair - I was due to fly to Fuerteventura 21/3 for 8 dayts from Liverpool.

19/3 they cancelled the flight out.

They offered me a refund or transfer. Of course I chose a refund, but the system wouldn't allow me to complete probably because my return flight was still active.

20/3 I got the same email, this time it allowed me to claim the refund advising "Refunds will be processed within 7 working days back to the form of payment used for the original booking."

27/3 I received an email confirming receipt of my claim for refund, but due to load it might take another 10 days to process.

This morning.

Dear Mr Taylor,

We refer to your correspondence dated 27/03/2020.

We apologise, for the cancellation of your flight FR4081 from Liverpool to Fuerteventura on 21/03/2020 which was due to the current worldwide COVID 19 crisis.

As per interpretive guidelines on EU passenger rights, announced by the EU commission on cancellations caused due to COVID 19, this is now classified as an extraordinary circumstance and compensation does not apply under EU261/2004.

If you remain dissatisfied with the final decision made from our customer services team, you may contact the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and their Passenger Advice and Complaints Team (PACT).

We hope the above clarifies the matter and we have now closed your claim

Yours sincerely,

They were cheap flights, so it's not the money although still £230, but the principal. I can see things kicking of big time.

I've just claimed now from the credit card so see how that goes.

As much as i'd hate to do it myself, the only thing these companies hate is negative publicity on Social Media.... an angry rant on their facebook page... "Ryanair offered me a transfer/refund... I took the refund then they wouldn't pay" etc, might get them into action.

I just simply refuse to use budget airlines wherever possible (whilst appreciating that is not always possible)

[Mike T]

Is the failure to lockdown sooner really the main fault? South Korea hasn't had a lockdown and their number of fatalities is tiny compared to us, despite being much closer to the initial epicentre. What they did, which has proved hugely effective is mass testing and contract tracing. We have spectacularly failed to do that.

You could argue that South Korea had the experience of SARS to fall back on. But closer to home Germany is testing half a million a week, while in Britain, we have only recently achieved 10,000 a day. This is a national disgrace, wherever the fault lies. Germany has a much lower fatality rate than the UK.

Something should have been done sooner - testing/tracing/lockdown - something. Germany is doing well, as are Australia and New Zealand.