In short order, Hong Kongers have become one of Britain’s most important immigrant groups. Between January and the end of September, almost 89,000 applied to settle under a new visa scheme created in response to the rapid erosion of civil liberties in the province. For comparison, 184,000 people from all countries applied for work visas in the first nine months of this year.
Let them all in. Cease all sources of Muslim immigration, and replace with Hong Kongers
Job done. Shoot me if you’re angry, I’m basically dead anyway
You can't die. I picked you in the Deadpool as a joke saying that you'd already had the virus three times by now so were clearly susceptible. I do not want to win that, so you can't die.
It's not mild if it's putting kids into hospital...
I just wonder if this 'genius move' of letting millions of kids in the UK be exposed to Delta is going to bite us on the ass down the line when it comes to Omicron, with reliance on so called immunity via exposure not holding up with this variant.
No. Even if there is significant reinfection, prior infection will tend to moderate severity. Besides, I think significant reinfection is overstating things. There has been very little reinfection with delta, so even if omicron is two or three times more able to do so, it’s still not huge. I’m not convinced by the belief that everyone in SA has had Covid argument. We’ve had this tried many times and the antibody evidence doesn’t stack up. It’s pretty certain now that we will see omicron gaining traction here. What effect that has on severe illness, hospitalisation and death is really anyone’s guess right now. My guess is not too much, but I am likely going to be wrong.
There are two versions of “covid is here forever”.
Version 1 is that it ceases being a major public health concern after this winter and floats around like influenza or pneumonia, competing for the same victims, while being annoying or barely noticeable for everyone else.
Version 2 is that we’re locked in a continual race between viral evolution and science, and that 2021 is more or less as good as things get until we get another major scientific breakthrough. There are no doubt many already falling into an almost existential depression at the possibility this might be true.
We listened to the RTÉ SixOne news this evening, which featured the Taoiseach reintroducing various restrictions, including an absurd limit on the number of different households allowed to visit another household, and it certainly feels that, nearly two years in, that there is a big risk of version 2 being our future.
For most of the pandemic so far our attitude has been that this is a temporary emergency and so we will exercise patience and see it out. it did feel like, after we'd been double-dosed, that we could coax ourselves slowly back to pre-pandemic normal. We're now trying to work out what we're going to do if this isn't temporary.
Part 1 is an order for FFP2 masks, so that when we do have to mix with strangers we can worry less about how ineptly they are wearing their masks.
We're talking about part 2 being buying a HEPA air purifier and inviting people round so that we can see friends without having to mix with strangers.
If you believe you need to reduce transmission, actually the household mixing is one of the things that does work. A huge bulk of transmission is within households and in homes via close friends, because people spend hours in each others company, closely interacting and obviously no mask wearing. And especially in the winter when you won't be outside and unlikely to have much ventilation.
Things like mask in gyms on the other hand are just nonsense.
We have never traced the source of all transmission, because our tracing has been crap. So we don't know how much transmission happens in places like gyms.
It's much easier to do tracing in private homes because you know who the other people there are. In fact, at times of high levels of community transmission it's possible that some transmission that happened elsewhere is blamed on coincidental contact in private homes.
I'm wondering whether having a HEPA purifier at home will counterbalance the lack of caution aspects to make home a safer environment than the pub.
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I hereby deem you immortal.
It's much easier to do tracing in private homes because you know who the other people there are. In fact, at times of high levels of community transmission it's possible that some transmission that happened elsewhere is blamed on coincidental contact in private homes.
I'm wondering whether having a HEPA purifier at home will counterbalance the lack of caution aspects to make home a safer environment than the pub.