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villakram

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Oh fantastic, we're on THIS topic again.

 

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As well as scientific concerns, there are also legal and ethical considerations, according to the report's lead author Prof Melinda Mills.

"What would it be used for - getting a job or attending a football match or buying milk?" she questioned.

"What if we start barring people from essential goods and services?"

"There is a risk of unjustly discriminating in hiring, attending events, insurance, housing applications, you can think of many examples," Prof Mills explained.

If a passport scheme was rolled out before everyone in the country has been offered a jab, this could unfairly disadvantage young people or people living in certain parts of the country.

Even then, some people are unable to or are not recommended to take the vaccine, for medical reasons or during pregnancy unless they are at particular risk, for example.

And, "people of different ethnicities have different levels of vaccine hesitancy," Prof Mills said, which opens up the potential for discrimination against people's "religious or political beliefs" - or where this hesitancy is linked to a long history of racism and marginalisation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56125142

 

Edited by StefanAVFC
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God damn vaccine passport. Get in the sea. It’s unpoliceable, it’s impractical and by the time it’s ready to roll out it will be 2022. Not to mention how unethical it is to punish people who haven’t had the vaccine yet through no fault of their own. This **** country man. Full of selfish clearings. Just wait. We will get there as a society. Not subsets of society.

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Yeah, I find this discussion about so-called vaccine passports highly irritating. There needs to be an acknowledgement that creating separate classes of services for people based on their medical history is frankly dystopian. It will destroy social cohesion, lead to a collapse in adherence to rules - including sensible ones - and make it extremely difficult to gain whole-society buy-in to future public health measures. And that's before we get to the privacy implications.

The bigger picture here is that we need to get to *normality*, not a facsimile of it where things are open but you actually need to stick a swab up your nose and wait outside wherever it is for 30 minutes when attempting to access a service. Nobody has ever suggested widespread testing for influenza before, and had they done so in 2019 it would have been regarded as an absurd imposition on freedoms.

Edited by HanoiVillan
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An example of what I would consider fairly 'magical thinking' about the possibilities of testing lie in the government's plans for secondary schools after March 8th. The plan is for three tests to be done at school or college in the first week back, then for students to receive 2 tests per week to self-apply each week thereafter (this is for secondary schools and colleges; a bit different for primary schools).

I can't help but feel that, as usual, the Tories' mental model of pupils is of a 3- or 4-person, two-parent family where mummy gives Johnny a swab in the bathroom before sending him to school with his lunchbox in one hand and his accurately-completed covid test safely stored in the other. But while that might work for some families, it's hard to believe it will work for everyone, and it seems to me that the likelihood is of exacerbating education divides, rather than reducing them.

My wife works in an FE college here in the Midlands. She teaches GCSE English to students who failed the first time, but who need a pass mark to get a vocational qualification. Attendance among these students is low, and coursework submission is lower still. The *target* success rate is to get 30% of students to a pass mark. There are students from all kinds of backgrounds; there are travellers, people living in group homes or with distant family members, people in chaotic family environments, and lots of students with complex learning needs. If the *price of admission* for schooling is shoving a swab so far up their nose it's basically rubbing their brain twice a week, are they going to pay that price or are they going to use it as another barrier between themselves and education? I can't say I'm optimistic.

Edited by HanoiVillan
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15 hours ago, sidcow said:

Going back to the working from home mass adoption, I was just thinking about my formative years in my job. 

For the first 3 or 4 years I was sat next to a couple of old boys.  It's astonishing to think about all the knowledge and information I absorbed from them in those years.  Hearing them talking on the phone, listening in when colleagues brought their own problems and issues to them, being able to question them on the spot about things I didn't understand or work I had in front of me, them just suddenly thinking about something they thought I should know, them listening to me on the phone then talking to me about it afterwards. 

Then I moved to a new company to look after much bigger and more complex clients and the whole process started again with the people around me who knew that level was new to me. 

I know you can attend training sessions and have referral points to ask questions but it's just not the same thing. 

I am 100% sure I wouldn't be as good at my job without those years of working side by side with those people learning the ropes. 

I'm sure if most people looked back at their early days they would feel the same. Think about your own experiences, makes you wonder. 

I'm against permanently working from home. but I'm fully behind a more flexible approach from most companies. Obviously not all jobs are the same. But there is absolutely no way I need to be in the office 5 days a week, and neither does anyone in my office to be honest.

I think exposure to work environments is important and I wouldn't like a mass adoption of everyone working from home all the time. But a middle ground between that and the old fashioned style of everyone needing to be in the building from dead on 8am until no earlier than 5pm is ideal.

One of the biggest silver linings from the pandemic is that it's forced companies who are too old fashioned or too stubborn (mine!) into realising that people generally get the job done, whether they're sat in an office or they're sat at a desk at home.

Edited by Stevo985
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Can't believe people are getting their knickers in a twist about vaccine passports before it's even been announced as official and even then before the details are known. 

They've said all along they won't have them if it's discriminatory.  I can guarantee it will either 1) allow a negative test procedure if the vaccine has yet to be offered or 2) not come in till everyone has had the chance to get a jab.   Most probably 2.

It's like when some random website links us to signing Andy Carol and everyone kicks off saying they're never going to Villa again and saying the owners should leave. 

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7 minutes ago, sidcow said:

It's like when some random website links us to signing Andy Carol and everyone kicks off saying they're never going to Villa again and saying the owners should leave. 

It's not really though is it?

The PM mentioned it in his roadmap press conference yesterday.

It would be like Dean Smith stating publicly we're looking into the idea of signing Andy Carroll.

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1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

There needs to be an acknowledgement that creating separate classes of services for people based on their medical history is frankly dystopian.

Along with a possibility that some kind of version of it may well begin to be implemented from June onwards - less likely as some sort of government-led mandatory scheme but bit by bit, sector by sector perhaps as some sort of licencing condition beginning with nightclubs, live events with large crowds, &c..

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7 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

It's not really though is it?

The PM mentioned it in his roadmap press conference yesterday.

It would be like Dean Smith stating publicly we're looking into the idea of signing Andy Carroll.

No, it would be like him saying we're looking for a forward and everyone getting hysterical saying it's going to be Andy Caroll and it ends up being Louie Barry i.e one for the future. 

It wasn't meant to be a literal comparison anyway, I just meant let's see the detail before people start the riot. 

They can't organise ANYTHING at speed so I bet it won't even start till next year, if it does at all. 

Edited by sidcow
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42 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Along with a possibility that some kind of version of it may well begin to be implemented from June onwards - less likely as some sort of government-led mandatory scheme but bit by bit, sector by sector perhaps as some sort of licencing condition beginning with nightclubs, live events with large crowds, &c..

Yes, we're more likely to need the government to legislate to *prevent* this type of discrimination.

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