Generic Virus Thread

[chrisp65]

This rewrite of our recent past where 2019 was some halcyon time of personal freedom not dragged down by others petty needs.

People thinking (in the loosest possible meaning of the word) that improving ventilation or improving hygiene or improving the mapping of disease can be rejected as a negative mental attitude, and boasting about their ignorance on social media just to flag up to the world what a word removed they are.

I guess there was the same outcry about limiting personal freedom 150 years ago when people were asked to stop throwing their shit and piss out of the window and in to the street. There will always be someone howling about the good old days when, if you were too slow or weak to dodge piss, perhaps you should stay indoors, not try and inflict the costs of communal sanitation on people that are smarter than you.

 

 

 

 

 

[El Zen]

I’m not sure how this tone is very helpful at all. It’s certainly not as simple as a matter of ‘selfish’ vs. ‘unselfish’. The Norwegian goverment just removed all mandatory measures, explicitly leaving it up to each of us to consider what is common sense, our personal risk assessment and to respect other people’s personal boundries. Much like we have always dealt with transmittable disease forever. 

Is this really giving in to selfishness? Or is it just acknowledging that this is what should be normal, and how we should live our lives if it isn’t overwhelmingly necessary to do otherwise? 

[chrisp65]

29 minutes ago, El Zen said:

I’m not sure how this tone is very helpful at all. It’s certainly not as simple as a matter of ‘selfish’ vs. ‘unselfish’. The Norwegian goverment just removed all mandatory measures, explicitly leaving it up to each of us to consider what is common sense, our personal risk assessment and to respect other people’s personal boundries. Much like we have always dealt with transmittable disease forever. 

Is this really giving in to selfishness? Or is it just acknowledging that this is what should be normal, and how we should live our lives if it isn’t overwhelmingly necessary to do otherwise? 

 

I’m doing a fair bit of travelling at the moment, and that’s been the case for the last two years. Sometimes there have been restrictions, sometimes there haven’t.

In hotels at the moment the rules on masks are a bit ‘vague’. You can stay at a hotel, you can drink in the bar again. If you are in the bar, you don’t need a mask. If you are in a small lift, you should wear a mask. That mask wearing in that lift has a negligible impact on anyone’s health prospects. But the staff that work there all day and interact with dozens of strangers have put up signs asking for masks in lifts and corridors.

So I wear my mask in the corridor and the lift. I can’t say its a big deal one way or the other.

However, some people have decided all measures are all defunct for everyone, and they will happily stand by the mask sign without a mask, call a lift, and get in the lift without a mask next to someone that has a mask.

It’s just rude. It’s selfish. It’s actually also a little bit thick, because I doubt many of those people that don’t think I need a mask know where I’ve been working all day, or yesterday, or the day before.

We have posts here in within the last couple of pages bemoaning the negative attitude of someone that advocated improving indoor ventilation. How the merry **** can you be against improved ventilation? 

So, I don’t know what the word is, is it ‘selfish’? Or is there a better description?

I’m not suggesting a 5 year lockdown, I’m suggesting some basic manners where there is almost zero inconvenience.

 

[foreveryoung]

It isn't selfishness, it's education. I shit you not, 80% of people do not know wearing a mask protects others, they think it just protects themselves. Which is why you see younger people and many adults not wearing them, as they now think 'personally' they are safe.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, foreveryoung said:

I shit you not, 80% of people do not know wearing a mask protects others, they think it just protects themselves.

An admission you were wrong. Brilliant, well done!

[foreveryoung]

36 minutes ago, bickster said:

An admission you were wrong. Brilliant, well done!

I dunno, I still don't really see it as fact, but will give you the benefit of my doubt.

[Xann]

Quote

 

A future variant of Covid-19 could be much more dangerous and cause far higher numbers of deaths and cases of serious illness than Omicron, leading UK scientists have warned.

As a result, many of them say that caution needs to be taken in lifting the last Covid restrictions in England, as Boris Johnson plans to do next week.

At the same time, demands are growing for Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the government’s most senior advisers on Covid, to hold a press conference to reveal what evidence there was to back the decision to end all pandemic restrictions.

The dangers posed by accepting the widespread assumption that Covid-19 variants would continue to get milder in their impact was highlighted by epidemiologist Prof Mark Woolhouse, of Edinburgh University.

“The Omicron variant did not come from the Delta variant. It came from a completely different part of the virus’s family tree. And since we don’t know where in the virus’s family tree a new variant is going to come from, we cannot know how pathogenic it might be. It could be less pathogenic but it could, just as easily, be more pathogenic,” he said.

This point was backed by virologist Prof Lawrence Young of Warwick University. “People seem to think there has been a linear evolution of the virus from Alpha to Beta to Delta to Omicron,” he told the Observer. “But that is simply not the case. The idea that virus variants will continue to get milder is wrong. A new one could turn out to be even more pathogenic than the Delta variant, for example.”

 

Observer

On immunosuppressants?

You might want to invest in a better mask?

[mjmooney]

7 minutes ago, Xann said:

On immunosuppressants?

My wife is. She's not happy about the current changes. 

[Genie]

It’s very hypothetical though isn’t it, something in the future “might” be something bad. 
 

[Xann]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

It’s very hypothetical though isn’t it, something in the future “might” be something bad. 

The more we mix the bigger the 'might'.

Some get flattened by the vaccines and boosters anyway.

It's likely that masks for some are here to stay.

[Demitri_C]

59 minutes ago, Xann said:

Observer

On immunosuppressants?

You might want to invest in a better mask?

They said the same about the omicron. 

[nick76]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

It’s very hypothetical though isn’t it, something in the future “might” be something bad. 
 

Given how light the current restrictions are, wouldn't it be better to be safe than sorry for a bit longer given the possible consequences.  Most people are still living normal lives so a few precautions surely don’t need to be dropped by the government so quickly.  

Same usual people will say ‘No’ and the same other usual people will say ‘Yes’ on this site and society I’m guessing but it’s all a bit premature and I’m with those scientists in the comment above.

[Xann]

16 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

They said the same about the omicron. 

At the beginning they weren't aware that Omicron had lost the protein group that took the virus deep into the lungs, which was the real killer.

Though Omicron doesn't pack the same punch, it is very infectious so you're much more likely to come across it.

The threat quotient comes from the numbers of carriers going up, then crossing paths with someone that's vulnerable.

Propagation of the bug also gives it chances to mutate. It is possible to lose badly on that coinflip.

[Demitri_C]

7 hours ago, Xann said:

At the beginning they weren't aware that Omicron had lost the protein group that took the virus deep into the lungs, which was the real killer.

Though Omicron doesn't pack the same punch, it is very infectious so you're much more likely to come across it.

The threat quotient comes from the numbers of carriers going up, then crossing paths with someone that's vulnerable.

Propagation of the bug also gives it chances to mutate. It is possible to lose badly on that coinflip.

So how do they know a more deadlier virus is coning if it hasnt happened yet? What evidence do they have? Imagine if they had made all these failed predictions after the spanish flu we would not have any form form of joyeous life.

Its all doom and gloom, this aint life. Its just constant negativity. No wonder people are always miserable over here. The news is just utterly depressing thats why i try to avoid it now and just enjoy life and try look at it from a positive outlook now. 

[Seat68]

37 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

So how do they know a more deadlier virus is coning if it hasnt happened yet? What evidence do they have? Imagine if they had made all these failed predictions after the spanish flu we would not have any form form of joyeous life.

Its all doom and gloom, this aint life. Its just constant negativity. No wonder people are always miserable over here. The news is just utterly depressing thats why i try to avoid it now and just enjoy life and try look at it from a positive outlook now. 

There are more varients. They are developing all the time, there are about 12 varients at the moment. The 13th might be worse than Delta or it may be no more than a sniffle. 

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

There are more varients. They are developing all the time, there are about 12 varients at the moment. The 13th might be worse than Delta or it may be no more than a sniffle. 

Virus's mutate, its nothing uncommon. 

[Stevo985]

21 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

I shit you not, 80% of people do not know wearing a mask protects others, they think it just protects themselves.

This is hilarious  

[mjmooney]

7 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

This is hilarious  

Sadly, I think there's some truth in it. 

[Stevo985]

36 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Sadly, I think there's some truth in it. 

That's not the hilarious part.

The hilarious part is someone who demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge of how masks work, guffawing at other people who don't know how masks work

[mjmooney]

6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

That's not the hilarious part.

The hilarious part is someone who demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge of how masks work, guffawing at other people who don't know how masks work

Well yes. Although to be fair to the OP, I'm not sure he was really 'guffawing'.