Generic Virus Thread

[bickster]

15 minutes ago, a m ole said:

The country is by and large vaccinated.

It actually isn't, we only passed 50% of the adult population fully vaccinated this last week or the week before

And thats fully vaccinated at two jabs, not two jabs and a further three weeks

3 minutes ago, a m ole said:

Yep, although the critical half.

No younger people are much more susceptible to Long Covid, of which there are currently 400,000 suffers in the UK and many of those have been suffering for over a year

[Jareth]

16 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Anyone on here refusing the Vaccine?

[a m ole]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

It actually isn't, we only passed 50% of the adult population fully vaccinated this last week or the week before

And thats fully vaccinated at two jabs, not two jabs and a further three weeks

No younger people are much more susceptible to Long Covid, of which there are currently 400,000 suffers in the UK and many of those have been suffering for over a year

Ok. And people wanting to go to a country with very low cases and take a test after they arrive back in the country is going to contribute to youth-long-covid, how?

Edited June 5, 2021 by a m ole

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

But I think we are in a very different situation to New Zealand and Australia. To the best of my knowledge, ‘they’ don’t get thousands of lorry drivers from dozens of countries arriving on a daily basis and they don’t share a land border with a foreign state that itself has an open borders arrangement with 20 or so other countries.

This part of your post is unquestionably true. I do find it amusing, though, how many people who simply ignore these inconvenient facts about how we're not really much like Australia and New Zealand at all seem to *also* be the same people - or at least to have the same Twitter hashtags - who chuckled themselves silly for a week or two about Dominic Raab saying he was only just coming to understand how important the Channel crossings are.

[bickster]

32 minutes ago, a m ole said:

Ok. And people wanting to go to a country with very low cases and take a test after they arrive back in the country is going to contribute to youth-long-covid, how?

I didn't say anything about foreign travel, I was countering your point that "by and large the country is vaccinated", when it actually isn't

[blandy]

22 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I do find it amusing, though, how many people who simply ignore these inconvenient facts about how we're not really much like Australia and New Zealand at all…

That’s a bit too binary for my liking. Of course the UK is not the same as those nations, but there are key similarities. Being an island nation is a big factor. Lack of any control of incoming visitors was a massive error. While Wuhan was isolated from the rest of China and while Lombardy was isolated from the rest of Italy, travel from both those places was still happening to the UK. The same applies more recently with travel from India…and so on and so forth.  Utter negligence from the government.

[Chindie]

My thoughts on holidays are roughly in line with those on pubs reopening.

[Rds1983]

Just had the first jab, so far, so good. 

[HanoiVillan]

15 minutes ago, blandy said:

That’s a bit too binary for my liking. Of course the UK is not the same as those nations, but there are key similarities. Being an island nation is a big factor. Lack of any control of incoming visitors was a massive error. While Wuhan was isolated from the rest of China and while Lombardy was isolated from the rest of Italy, travel from both those places was still happening to the UK. The same applies more recently with travel from India…and so on and so forth.  Utter negligence from the government.

We certainly could and should have been testing arrivals at airports sooner than we did, but that doesn't change the fact that we are not 'an island nation' in the way people mean. We depend utterly on our land, sea and air connections to our neighbouring countries. Without them, we would run out of food in a matter of days.

[chrisp65]

19 minutes ago, blandy said:

That’s a bit too binary for my liking. Of course the UK is not the same as those nations, but there are key similarities. Being an island nation is a big factor. Lack of any control of incoming visitors was a massive error. While Wuhan was isolated from the rest of China and while Lombardy was isolated from the rest of Italy, travel from both those places was still happening to the UK. The same applies more recently with travel from India…and so on and so forth.  Utter negligence from the government.

We are not an island nation.

That kinda stopped being the case 100 years ago. 

This appears to be part of the whole Brexit problem, people are told we are an island and happily believe that. Like maps don’t exist.

 

[blandy]

16 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

We certainly could and should have been testing arrivals at airports sooner than we did, but that doesn't change the fact that we are not 'an island nation' in the way people mean. We depend utterly on our land, sea and air connections to our neighbouring countries. Without them, we would run out of food in a matter of days.

Aus is the same in that regard and I imagine NZ too. It’s true that we have the ferries and tunnel, but truck deliveries are not the same as tourists, family visitors and so on coming for weeks with no controls or limits. Essential travel , whether food delivery or whatever can and should be controlled in terms of protocols, the rest pretty much  should have been stopped last year, just the same as NZ and Australia did. We blew it. 

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

We are not an island nation

We are. Yes we’re several islands , one of which has a border with another part of an island, but the notion that control of the travel into the British Isles couldn’t and shouldn’t have been far better managed during the ongoing pandemic is bonkers. I mean even if it couldn’t have been and the movement between the Rep of Ireland and NI had been the major source of infection getting into the UK, measures could have been put in place between NI and GB. But obviously the problem was not that route. 

[chrisp65]

52 minutes ago, blandy said:

We are. Yes we’re several islands , one of which has a border with another part of an island, but the notion that control of the travel into the British Isles couldn’t and shouldn’t have been far better managed during the ongoing pandemic is bonkers. I mean even if it couldn’t have been and the movement between the Rep of Ireland and NI had been the major source of infection getting into the UK, measures could have been put in place between NI and GB. But obviously the problem was not that route. 

Sentry boxes and passport checks along the Irish border, that would be an interesting option somebody should try some time.

As would quarantining all lorry drivers, or having some sort of driver exchange at the border. Politically we are not an island and in all practicality, relying on ferry ports and tunnels for our food supply stops us being an island. Rail freight and vehicles get here without sight of a ferry. The docks in my own town, I’m not sure they even count as a legitimate port anymore, tiny in comparison with Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Fishguard, Haverfordwest, Holyhead… but we have three or four ships in, from who knows where. They park up, and the sailors, from who knows where, go for a wander around town. Lorry drivers from Ireland, Italy, and Romania are free to go wherever they fancy. Meanwhile, I’m not supposed to visit my parents. This island mentality is terribly misplaced and has lead to a lot of our current problems. 

The one thing we could have done, is greatly restrict air travel for individuals. But we have this thing, about the freedom of movement of individuals with money. It’s an absolute right that people with money can travel anywhere they fancy. It feels like that absolutely should have been done. From day one.

We had an anti science policy of allowing people in to the country from pretty much anywhere, whilst banning access to loved ones in care homes. 

Absolute madness. But what are the media and politicians concerned about? Holidays. We get the politicians we vote for and we get the media we consume.

[HanoiVillan]

. . . to say nothing of the ways in which this border discourse is and has been used against asylum-seekers and the desperate as well.

This liberal shift to loving borders is not something I welcome, and it's not going to have good long-term consequences.

[blandy]

6 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Sentry boxes and passport checks along the Irish border, that would be an interesting option somebody should try some time.

During the lockdowns and the cat 4 things, both last year and this we have had (and had adherence to) "stay at home", stay in your local area and so on. A similar thing across the island of Ireland  - I mean is that achievable? of course - and it happened! We're not talking here about hordes of continentals travelling to Ireland and then just ambling across the border are we? Nor are we talking about (as I said before) travel from Irish Rep. to NI (and on to the mainland) being the cause of the importing of cases from Italy, China, India and so on.

My point is that you can say "the UK isn't an island(s)", but essentially in terms of vaccine incomers it is. The government chose deliberately not to take measures (and no I don't mean sentry towers in armagh) at ports, airports and so on. They didn't ban travel to the UK from blooming anywhere even when it was obvious that they should have done. Too little, too late again and again. It's got off all to do with Irish border posts and passport checks - India, Italy, China, South Africa and so on were the known problem areas. Like I said travel from those places was allowed even when within those places their own governments had banned internal travel (Lombardy, Wuhan...).

If this sounds cross, it's not cross with you, it's cross with a negligent, incompetent Tory government and they look like they're about to **** it up again.

[blandy]

6 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

. . . to say nothing of the ways in which this border discourse is and has been used against asylum-seekers and the desperate as well.

This liberal shift to loving borders is not something I welcome, and it's not going to have good long-term consequences.

As per the above, in a pandemic it is utterly sensible and necessary to restrict travel, when the virus is spread between humans in close proximity - like, y'know, on trains and buses and planes and families in cars and wandering around airports and duty free and all the rest. It's not borders to discriminate against brown people or yellow people or white people - it's borders to stop people dying.

[Nicho]

Have had a cough for about 4 days, it’s my throat not my lungs though.

No other symptoms and I’ve been self isolating. Blocked nose ect makes me think it’s a cold/hay fever 

[MCU]

2 hours ago, Nicho said:

Have had a cough for about 4 days, it’s my throat not my lungs though.

No other symptoms and I’ve been self isolating. Blocked nose ect makes me think it’s a cold/hay fever 

Order a free lateral flow test for peace of mind ?

[brommy]

2 hours ago, Nicho said:

Have had a cough for about 4 days, it’s my throat not my lungs though.

No other symptoms and I’ve been self isolating. Blocked nose ect makes me think it’s a cold/hay fever 

As @MCU wrote. I ordered a box of 7 NHS lateral flow tests, free of charge online at 4 pm and they were delivered to my door at 9am the very next day. The test is easy to complete and the result is visible in 30 minutes. Not as accurate as a PCR test but if you don’t want to visit your local NHS test centre for a free PCR test, they offer some peace of mind.

[Genie]

Quote

American author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after spreading vaccine misinformation.

Dr Wolf, well known for her acclaimed third-wave feminist book The Beauty Myth, posted a wide-range of unfounded theories about vaccines.

One tweet claimed that vaccines were a "software platform that can receive uploads".

She also compared Dr Anthony Fauci, the top Covid adviser in the US, to "Satan" to her more than 140,000 followers.

Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and faeces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.

Link

Good news, I’d also like to see people who blatantly spread lies to face charges.