Lighthouse

A few thousand. Without social restrictions Covid 19 might kill more people in Britain (pop. 67m) than malaria kills in the whole of Africa (pop. 1.2bn). Availability of medication in third world countries is a separate issue. If we did nothing we would trash the economy anyway. The numbers off work sick and the fatalities would all do enormous damage, not to mention other people who would engage in their own social distancing. Even without the government lockdown, I'd be avoiding pubs and Saints games for the foreseeable future.

Other countries are meaningless in this context, there are far too many social variables. Reduced social contact will reduce the chance of infection. Fewer infections mean fewer deaths. Those are both universal truths, I can't see any way they can be debated.

That's only in Wuhan, I've seen a number of 21 million posted a lot. There's no way to verify it but the official figure of 4,000 is laughable. There is absolutely no way the worlds largest population, with some of the densest conurbations in the world, a heavy skew towards the elderly, appalling air quality run by a totalitarian government which attempted to silence doctors and journalists for months, could possibly have anything remotely close to 4,000 deaths.

China has most likely seen many times that number already.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52552888 This headline got my attention. He was even the same age, from the same place and a football coach.

That’s less than 1% of the UK population and has been widely suggested as a possible death toll if the UK took no precautions.

For me it’s the highlight of any election campaign; some massive, fat... sorry, ‘body confident’... w*nker yelling about the disgraceful Tories ruining the NHS. Not a hint of irony in their voice either.

Monkey tennis?

I think 1GB of data would have taken a month to download in 2005. The village I lived in then didn’t even have broadband.

I’ll pass thanks. I’m trying to sell my house and 500,000 dead people will flood the market and lower property prices.

Surely it's time to start reopening 24 hours supermarkets. I get that they stopped before so that staff could restack shelves without being swamped by mass crowds panic buying bog roll but now that's over I'd have thought that anything which spreads out numbers is a good thing.

It's the adverts more than anything. If I see one more advert where people on webcams in their living room are telling me 'things are kind of tough right now' I'm going to scream. Still, it makes a change from funeral plans and people with debt and floppy willies.

Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought the Boxing Day 4-0 over Arsenal secured his job for a month before we went on that amazing run.

Car travel maybe. Air travel is down 90%.

The average Brit doesn't watch PL football at all. The highest ever viewership for a PL game was just over four million for the Manchester derby in 2012.

I'm sure they do but 50 seems ridiculously high. I don't think I've ever seen more than about 10 being used in any supermarket, ever. I'd bet a couple of them were just lazy buggers using the cash machine too.

Tesco in Bursledon now has at least 50 disabled spaces, taking up an entire section of the car park. 10 would be plenty, 20 excessive. The whole place has been empty but for about 6 cars whenever I've been there recently. Just be glad you're not a Skate. Half of their grandparents weren't alive during the first gulf war.

Sh*t. Get well soon fella.

Any emotion is inferred purely by yourself, all I have done is put forward a rational argument based on my beliefs. If you like to believe you've wound me up with your superior intellect that I'm now sat at home crying hysterically then carry on. I don't care about hairdressers as such. I'm going bald, I give it the #1 all over in my bathroom mirror anyway. You mentioned them as an example, I empathise with how tough their situation is. If I was being selfish then yes, f**k the hairdressers - I wanna watch football. Seriously, if it's all about me put some games on tomorrow and close all the hairdressers forever, I don't need them. It's not about me though, it's about what I think is right. A local journalist can be reassigned onto other projects if needs be. F**k knows there's enough news going around, we're not short of stories to report on. We're not even short of sports news either, the transfer window is about to kick in and it'll be chaos. Nobody knows what's going to happen, when the season will start, what transfer fees and wages are going to look like. Anyway, this time I am actually done. Ciao.

You know it's such a shame Fry. You clearly have the brain to engage in a well reasoned debate but as soon as you're presented with an argument you disagree with, it's straight in with the patronising insults and sarcasm. The fairly obvious point was that a large number of people don't care at all about football. In other words, how would you feel about these risks being taken for a sport you don't give a sh*t about. Never mind. I'm done, have a lovely day.

If one happened to someone I love, then yes I would. Clearly we have a different definition of mental. I sort of value lives a bit higher than a game of football. Yes and if the PL clubs make a few cut backs, like say, for example; not spending ONE BILLION POUNDS on transfer fees this summer, they will all be able to keep their jobs ready for next season.

We aren't ready to lift any restrictions yet but when we do it's about risk versus reward. What's going to help the country most and what can we do to minimise risks. Opening shops and other businesses, when we have infections down to a sustainable level, will put hundreds of thousands of people back to work so they can pay their bills. The massive amount of good it will do will balance out against the increase in cases and deaths. It's grim but it's the new reality. People need jobs. They don't need football, most people in the country wont even watch it. It's a needless risk. If someone I loved died because a single mum reopened her beauty salon to put food on her kids plates, I could cope with that from a moral POV. If they died because the Marquis of somewhere invited a hundred of his Eton chums around for a polo tournament, I'd be livid. That's how I see it. If it's different for you, then we'll have to agree to disagree.

We're going round in circles now, so I'll give it one last go... Hairdressers are about jobs for people on low income with mouths to feed and rent to pay. They NEED their jobs and the longer we try and prop them up with the JRS, the more damage we do to the economy. Finishing this season is not necessary, it's purely driven by greed from some of the richest people and organisations in the World. This is about Sheikhs and investment conglomerates not wanting to miss out on their share of the prize money and TV revenue. If it's just the Premier League, they probably would spread fewer cases but that's only because there are 1,000 people involved instead of 160,000 hairdressers. Then what? If the PL starts up again, what about the rest of the FL? Rugby? Cricket? Athletics? Why can't go back to my gym and sit in the steam room with half a dozen strangers, so long as I get tested the day after? Your argument is based around allowing something dangerous and unethical but it being okay so long as it's only a small number of people get that privilege. If you want to stick to the motorway analogy, which would you prefer, given choice; a) Everyone drives at 70 like they do now and a couple of thousand people get killed. b) Everyone drives at 20 but I am allowed to drink drive at 130mph. The answers got to be b, right? I'd probably only kill about 5 people, that's way better than two thousand. If it's a straight choice between opening up the PL or hairdressers then the PL is less than 0.5% of the number of people going back to work.

1. It's not okay, it is necessary. The country would literally cease to function if the motorway speed limit was 20mph. It's a stupid straw man and I'm not willing to discuss it further. 2. You can't compare that either, there's a risk to other people. If you fall off a cliff or stick a glider into a mountain and do yourself in, that's up to you. If people were crashing gliders into care homes every week and killing a couple of old dears watching countdown, then they would probably be closed down. 3. At no point have I said never restart it. We should and we will, next season at some point. Not now though, whilst there are still over 600 deaths being recorded each day.

Again, a completely false equivalence. Having motorways at 70mph is a necessary part of life, if it was 20 the entirely logistics industry would grind to a halt. We wouldn't be able to stack supermarkets, commute to London etc. Aside from the fact that British motorways are already some of the safest roads in the world, driving that speed is a necessary 'evil'. A month of football just isn't.