Generic Virus Thread

[bickster]

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

There is a video on YouTube that won't embed here of the problems that border through that art gallery caused last year with the different Covid rules and mask wearing. Its a crap video that tells you nothing interesting but its existence shows a problem did exist

Thats not the only strange Belgian border issue either, check out the Vennbahn enclaves of Germany, then there's a hotel on the French Swiss Border...

 

[limpid]

31 minutes ago, bickster said:

There is a video on YouTube that won't embed here of the problems that border through that art gallery caused last year with the different Covid rules and mask wearing. Its a crap video that tells you nothing interesting but its existence shows a problem did exist

Thats not the only strange Belgian border issue either, check out the Vennbahn enclaves of Germany, then there's a hotel on the French Swiss Border...

Have you been watching The Tim Traveller? Some of the enclaves must have been fun with Covid causing border closures in the EU.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, limpid said:

Have you been watching The Tim Traveller? Some of the enclaves must have been fun with Covid causing border closures in the EU.

Actually in that rabbit hole right now, I find stuff like this very interesting, I knew about the Netherlands one but now... I'll be lost for hours

[limpid]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

Actually in that rabbit hole right now, I find stuff like this very interesting, I knew about the Netherlands one but now... I'll be lost for hours

Wait until you get to the one where an island changes which country it's in twice a year

[foreveryoung]

Will we ever be able to blow out the candles on a cake again and then share it around. 

[limpid]

26 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Will we ever be able to blow out the candles on a cake again and then share it around. 

If there is one good thing that the virus has done for us, it's ending this disgusting tradition

[Xela]

8 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Has anyone else’s dog gone gay since they switched 5G on?

Woof-ter?

 

 

sorry

Edited January 9, 2022 by Xela

[bannedfromHandV]

Just seen that Clive Dix (never heard of him personally but apparently he was previously Head of the UK vaccine taskforce) has stated that he thinks mass vaccination should stop after this round of booster jabs as it’s no longer effective.

 

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, Xela said:

Woof-ter?

 

 

sorry

Sausage dog.

[chappy]

7 hours ago, bickster said:

 

Thats not the only strange Belgian border issue either, check out the Vennbahn enclaves of Germany

You know this word, enclaves?

 

 

(I know it’s not the right quote)

[HanoiVillan]

20 hours ago, limpid said:

Have you been watching The Tim Traveller? Some of the enclaves must have been fun with Covid causing border closures in the EU.

There's a part of Washington state that is on a peninsula that Canada is on the other end of, called Point Roberts:

Residents typically either shop for most stuff in Canada, or drive to the US border, but Canada has closed the border on more than one occasion in the last two years, effectively isolating them (I believe there's possibly also a boat as well, which mostly hasn't been running?)

[LondonLax]

It’s a similar story in Australia as states have been closing travel to each other for the first time in their history. Cities and towns that were built with little mind for the fact that there is a state boarder running through suddenly having police blockades on each road. 

[HanoiVillan]

Just posting because it's important to remember that a month ago, modellers and the politicians they advise had convinced themselves yet again that there would be more exponential growth in cases than there was ever going to be:

 

[bannedfromHandV]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just posting because it's important to remember that a month ago, modellers and the politicians they advise had convinced themselves yet again that there would be more exponential growth in cases than there was ever going to be:

 

And now the conversation seems to be steering toward the ramping down of vaccinations and getting on with normal life.

A cold can apparently now offer ‘protection’ against Covid, the latest variant seems be nothing more than a small bout of flu in the worst cases, free testing seems to be breaking down slowly.

Hopefully we’re nearing the end of all this shit now.

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just posting because it's important to remember that a month ago, modellers and the politicians they advise had convinced themselves yet again that there would be more exponential growth in cases than there was ever going to be:

 

I can't see twitts properly on this computer, but just as the media and the politicians take one part of what the modellers produce and run with that, for headlines or for other reasons, we should not ideally fall into the same trap.

The modellers calculate potential outcomes under a number of scenarios - worst case, best case, mid case, and so on before the event (obviously). This is then reported on, acted upon (or not) and as a consequence behaviours are changed (or not). So, for example, if the modellers say "a million people could get it", this is then reported on and people, even if the Gov't doesn't put in place any restrictions, think to themselves "that's worrying" and a lot of them then change their behaviours and that turns down the impact and rate of the spread of the virus.

None of that is to say that the models are wholly accurate, they're not. It's also important to note that for Omicron the data put into the models by necessity was incomplete/preliminary. Thus the model output was also subject to a wide margin of error and flagged as such (though this kind of thing gets ignored)

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

the latest variant seems be nothing more than a small bout of flu in the worst cases, free testing seems to be breaking down slowly.

Currently more than 2000 people a day are going to hospital with it (and 37,000 in the last month alone).

Free testing breaking down is a consequence of Tory ideology, and wishful thinking, not some kind of rational decision making on the necessity or otherwise of conducting tests, track and trace and all the rest of it.

[bannedfromHandV]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

More than 2000 people a day are going to hospital with it.

Free testing breaking down is a consequence of Tory ideology, and wishful thinking, not some kind of rational decision making on the necessity or otherwise of conducting tests, track and trace and all the rest of it.

But how many of those are ending up on ventilators and dying? Surely that’s the key metric now.

I remember Whitty, Javid etc attempting to put the fear of god into everyone prior to Christmas, it’s gone the total opposite way if anything.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, bannedfromHandV said:

But how many of those are ending up on ventilators and dying? Surely that’s the key metric now.

3,500+ in the last month

[HanoiVillan]

12 minutes ago, blandy said:

I can't see twitts properly on this computer, but just as the media and the politicians take one part of what the modellers produce and run with that, for headlines or for other reasons, we should not ideally fall into the same trap.

The modellers calculate potential outcomes under a number of scenarios - worst case, best case, mid case, and so on before the event (obviously). This is then reported on, acted upon (or not) and as a consequence behaviours are changed (or not). So, for example, if the modellers say "a million people could get it", this is then reported on and people, even if the Gov't doesn't put in place any restrictions, think to themselves "that's worrying" and a lot of them then change their behaviours and that turns down the impact and rate of the spread of the virus.

None of that is to say that the models are wholly accurate, they're not. It's also important to note that for Omicron the data put into the models by necessity was incomplete/preliminary. Thus the model output was also subject to a wide margin of error and flagged as such (though this kind of thing gets ignored)

This behavioural change idea, which I've seen all over, is a bit of a cop out. It was hardly unforseeable that schools and offices would close over the holidays. It also has the added benefit of being largely unfalsifiable so no-one ever needs to do any actual reflection.

The more prosaic truth, IMO, is that there was a concerted effort on the part of public health figures to pressurise the government into announcing another lockdown. In service of that, the early phase of exponential growth was over-emphasised and projected too far into the future (the actual length of time when there was 2-day doubling in case growth appears to have been a single 24-hour period), and the first-hand evidence from South Africa that the new variant was milder was downplayed. That's how we got this, from the Politico Playbook (the morning email that Westminster types are addicted to) on December 15th:

This email is written by Alex Wickham, a political correspondent, who knows nothing about the strength or otherwise of covid variants. When he writes 'Playbook is sorry to say this, but UK government scientists are warning that . . .' what he means is 'I am being told off the record by members or advisors of Sage that . . .'.

Modelling is politics. Everything is politics, at the end of the day.

[markavfc40]

18 minutes ago, blandy said:

3,500+ in the last month

I always thought under the current government we would reach the stage where there would be an acceptable level of deaths. We are well and truly at that stage now.  I am surprised at how many of us are also prepared to go along with it.