My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
And what is your justification for saying they should be vaccinated for some diseases - as is the case now - but not for Covid? Particularly given that Covid is far more infectious and seems to be more of a risk to precisely the sorts of people Health and Care workers are dealing with?
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
Self-id is not "supported by science". Biological sex (unchangeable in mammals) is an important characteristic for certain situations and that should be the case in law. They include women's sports, refuges, prisons, changing facilities etc. Allowing access to self-id trans individuals who have not transitioned medically? What could possibly go wrong? (Clue: it already has.) Access to transitioned individuals is reasonable in some cases. In some situations gender-id including self-id should apply but not at the expense of female rights. Another real problem is age of consent to irreversible medical procedures.
I didn't say it was supported by science. Neither does science preclude it. Birth sex is a fact. Legal gender is a fact. They are aligned for most, for a minority not. The questions are (i) what should the process be for changing gender? and (ii) what controls are needed for safety and fairness?
I'm in favour of self-Id as the basis for a legal change of gender and a default of trans inclusion for single sex spaces. Exclusion should be limited to areas (eg sports, sex offender prisoners) where it can be justified on the basis of reason not prejudice.
You and others (which I know is most on here) are welcome to disagree. But please note that the Commons Committee looked at this, took evidence and submission from all sides, and concluded in support of self-Id. Self-Id is in place in several countries and has not led to serious problems. Germany is about to adopt this approach.
This is not a 'science vs feelings' or a 'commonsense vs woke' debate. It gets presented that way but it isn't. Much of the argument for self-Id is evidence led and rational. Much of the argument against it is emotive and illogical.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard being vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
On vaccination, Omicron may be less serious for most people. It is not less serious for people with underlying conditions which put them at higher risk.
Like me for instance.
Now is it fair to expect someone in that position who goes into hospital to be treated by a nurse who is not vaccinated and who may pass on the disease to someone whose response to it may be very much more serious. If there are alternatives which minimise the risk, fine. But I think the presumption should be that if you are a health worker you take all necessary steps not to put your patients at risk. If you are not prepared to do that then what the hell are you doing being a health worker?
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Nope because if they are not vaccinated they have far more chance of giving her the virus.
On vaccination, Omicron may be less serious for most people. It is not less serious for people with underlying conditions which put them at higher risk.
Like me for instance.
Now is it fair to expect someone in that position who goes into hospital to be treated by a nurse who is not vaccinated and who may pass on the disease to someone whose response to it may be very much more serious. If there are alternatives which minimise the risk, fine. But I think the presumption should be that if you are a health worker you take all necessary steps not to put your patients at risk. If you are not prepared to do that then what the hell are you doing being a health worker?
But they may pass on the disease even if they are vaccinated?
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard beign vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
My understanding is it greatly reduces the likelihood of being positive, are less likely to be symptomatic and emitting less virus while positive, and are likely to be infectious for a smaller period of time too.
So overall vaccines are a triple-win for reducing the spread to those in your care.
Scanning it, there's lots of stuff about how the UK is doing great things, and much less about how those great things wouldn't've been possible when we were an EU member.
For example: "We are announcing the development of a new UK Quantum Strategy to be published later this year. We want to see the UK evolve into a sustainable and diverse hub of quantum innovation in the coming years and our new strategy will set out a plan for how we can achieve this. In line with the pillars of the UK’s Innovation Strategy, the Quantum Strategy will focus on supporting early-stage, innovative businesses; making the UK the most attractive place for global quantum talent; and making sure that our research and development institutions support businesses across the UK. We will also look to run missions to tackle major societal challenges using quantum technologies. We will expand our centres of regional strength in the UK—the photonics and quantum cluster in Scotland, the advanced semiconductor and manufacturing cluster in South Wales and academic centres of excellence in Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere."
Another: "The UK is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation, with world-leading science infrastructure and the highest calibre of researchers from around the world. We will do even more to coordinate research and innovation priorities across research councils, government, industry and consumers; pull through our research and development to real life application; and draw global investment to the UK."
Or there's stuff about doing things in the future where the lack of detail sidesteps all the difficult questions over what choices exactly are you going to make. For example: "Brexit provides a significant opportunity to drive growth and innovation further, supercharging the digital economy cementing the UK’s position as a global tech hub. We are now writing our own rule book for digital technologies, one that encourages growth and innovation, while protecting businesses and consumers against the most serious downsides of tech."
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard beign vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
You can still get it when you're vaxxed, but the window during which you are infectious to others becomes greatly reduced.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Nope because if they are not vaccinated they have far more chance of giving her the virus.
Do we have clear data on the reduction on chance of transmission?
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard beign vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
My understanding is it greatly reduces the likelihood of being positive, are less likely to be symptomatic and emitting less virus while positive, and are likely to be infectious for a smaller period of time too.
So overall vaccines are a triple-win for reducing the spread to those in your care.
I don't dispute all that.
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Nope because if they are not vaccinated they have far more chance of giving her the virus.
Do we have clear data on the reduction on chance of transmission?
Well, we had the CDC data (see below) that unvaccinated vs boostered people *get* COVID 5x more.
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
Self-id is not "supported by science". Biological sex (unchangeable in mammals) is an important characteristic for certain situations and that should be the case in law. They include women's sports, refuges, prisons, changing facilities etc. Allowing access to self-id trans individuals who have not transitioned medically? What could possibly go wrong? (Clue: it already has.) Access to transitioned individuals is reasonable in some cases. In some situations gender-id including self-id should apply but not at the expense of female rights. Another real problem is age of consent to irreversible medical procedures.
I didn't say it was supported by science. Neither does science preclude it. Birth sex is a fact. Legal gender is a fact. They are aligned for most, for a minority not. The questions are (i) what should the process be for changing gender? and (ii) what controls are needed for safety and fairness?
I'm in favour of self-Id as the basis for a legal change of gender and a default of trans inclusion for single sex spaces. Exclusion should be limited to areas (eg sports, sex offender prisoners) where it can be justified on the basis of reason not prejudice.
You and others (which I know is most on here) are welcome to disagree. But please note that the Commons Committee looked at this, took evidence and submission from all sides, and concluded in support of self-Id. Self-Id is in place in several countries and has not led to serious problems. Germany is about to adopt this approach.
This is not a 'science vs feelings' or a 'commonsense vs woke' debate. It gets presented that way but it isn't. Much of the argument for self-Id is evidence led and rational. Much of the argument against it is emotive and illogical.
The Commons Committee report did not understand the current process and has made some considerable factual mistakes in its report. Your reliance on it is unwise given those factual mistakes. The government did an even wider consultation on reform and came to a different conclusion.
Your argument that self-ID has not caused problems is untrue. I could give you numerous examples of the problems caused in other countries and here in cases where de facto self-ID has occurred.
The facts and science simply do not support the claims made by TRAs - one reason why the activists and lobby groups are so determined to have "no debate" and no challenge and attack anyone challenging them, including transwomen who have actually transitioned.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard beign vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
My understanding is it greatly reduces the likelihood of being positive, are less likely to be symptomatic and emitting less virus while positive, and are likely to be infectious for a smaller period of time too.
So overall vaccines are a triple-win for reducing the spread to those in your care.
I don't dispute all that.
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Which is entirely reasonable.
Protecting the vulnerable is the NHS frontline and care workers job.
It isn't everybody else's job.
If you don't want to care for the vulnerable, that should be your choice. Don't work in health and social care then though.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
And what is your justification for saying they should be vaccinated for some diseases - as is the case now - but not for Covid? Particularly given that Covid is far more infectious and seems to be more of a risk to precisely the sorts of people Health and Care workers are dealing with?
My principles for other diseases would be the sae: encourage uptake; consider what risk mitigations are possible for those who do not; and, if necessary, consider what roles (e.g. surgery, care homes) are out of scope for those that don't comply.
I can't comment on how those principles apply for every infectious disease as it's not my expertise.
But the previous proposal was a blanket ban across those who worked for the NHS was clearly not evidence-based. To take an example, a friend of mine is employed by the NHS as a children's speech and language therapist and primarily works in schools. Firing some of her colleagues based on their failure to be vaccinated would clearly be ridiculous.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Nope because if they are not vaccinated they have far more chance of giving her the virus.
Do we have clear data on the reduction on chance of transmission?
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard being vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Scanning it, there's lots of stuff about how the UK is doing great things, and much less about how those great things wouldn't've been possible when we were an EU member.
For example: "We are announcing the development of a new UK Quantum Strategy to be published later this year. We want to see the UK evolve into a sustainable and diverse hub of quantum innovation in the coming years and our new strategy will set out a plan for how we can achieve this. In line with the pillars of the UK’s Innovation Strategy, the Quantum Strategy will focus on supporting early-stage, innovative businesses; making the UK the most attractive place for global quantum talent; and making sure that our research and development institutions support businesses across the UK. We will also look to run missions to tackle major societal challenges using quantum technologies. We will expand our centres of regional strength in the UK—the photonics and quantum cluster in Scotland, the advanced semiconductor and manufacturing cluster in South Wales and academic centres of excellence in Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere."
Another: "The UK is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation, with world-leading science infrastructure and the highest calibre of researchers from around the world. We will do even more to coordinate research and innovation priorities across research councils, government, industry and consumers; pull through our research and development to real life application; and draw global investment to the UK."
Or there's stuff about doing things in the future where the lack of detail sidesteps all the difficult questions over what choices exactly are you going to make. For example: "Brexit provides a significant opportunity to drive growth and innovation further, supercharging the digital economy cementing the UK’s position as a global tech hub. We are now writing our own rule book for digital technologies, one that encourages growth and innovation, while protecting businesses and consumers against the most serious downsides of tech."
Hmm. So they'd claim the fact that the sun came up this morning as a Brexit benefit.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
It's not a voodoo poll. It's high quality research. It's from less than a year ago.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
And what is your justification for saying they should be vaccinated for some diseases - as is the case now - but not for Covid? Particularly given that Covid is far more infectious and seems to be more of a risk to precisely the sorts of people Health and Care workers are dealing with?
My principles for other diseases would be the sae: encourage uptake; consider what risk mitigations are possible for those who do not; and, if necessary, consider what roles (e.g. surgery, care homes) are out of scope for those that don't comply.
I can't comment on how those principles apply for every infectious disease as it's not my expertise.
But the previous proposal was a blanket ban across those who worked for the NHS was clearly not evidence-based. To take an example, a friend of mine is employed by the NHS as a children's speech and language therapist and primarily works in schools. Firing some of her colleagues based on their failure to be vaccinated would clearly be ridiculous.
And yet that blanket ban effectively exists for anyone refusing to be vaccinated against MMR or TB. Why not Covid?
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
Just occurred to me that Curzon Street Station includes the old L&BR terminus - the Brummie oppo of the Euston Arch, and every bit as classical. Though not quite so obvious a place to put a statue on top.
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
I think I've mentioned before the pious fiction that Pontius Pilate really really wanted to be remembered after his death.
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Exactly if the aim is to reduce deaths by Covid then carry on with the NPIs. Until further notice. Because having people socially distanced, masked up in the pub or on the train will overall save more lives than having all healthcare workers vaccinated.
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
Boris is lucky enough that currently people can put him and cake in the same question. Two other historical figures have the same luxury
Marie Antoinette and King Alfred - as all good things come in threes there is still space for Boris.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
And who should be doing the paying? The NHS?
Yes. Sack the NHS workers who don't believe in medicine and hire new NHS workers.
Recruitment is the NHS's responsibility.
Pay is set by HM Government
Pay is too low to attract sufficient staff
I would have thought supply and demand was basics for PB Tories
UK GPs and hospital doctors are amongst the highest compensated in the world (excluding US), particularly if you include pensions. Other hospital workers, such as nurses etc. have the opportunity to move into hospital management roles which are similarly highly compensated. They are all pretty much "jobs for life", if you excuse the pun. The idea that the NHS pays people poorly is a myth.
You will be telling us next 100,000 vacancies is a myth
Er, no. Vacancies are not solved by plucking from the magic money tree. You could double all healthcare salaries and you would not solve this problem. It was tested to destruction as an idea by the Blair government, and the BMA rubbed their hands. There is a healthcare skill shortage all round the world. Money should not be thrown at salaries and pensions, it should be thrown at training and needs and skills forecasting. The latter seems to have been done very badly.
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Exactly if the aim is to reduce deaths by Covid then carry on with the NPIs. Until further notice. Because having people socially distanced, masked up in the pub or on the train will overall save more lives than having all healthcare workers vaccinated.
Absolutely not. NPIs aren't necessarily dealing with societies most vulnerable people who can shield from the pub if they don't want to go.
Healthcare workers are dealing with societies most vulnerable people, who have no choice but to get the care that they need.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
I think I've mentioned before the pious fiction that Pontius Pilate really really wanted to be remembered after his death.
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
Boris is lucky enough that currently people can put him and cake in the same question. Two other historical figures have the same luxury
Marie Antoinette and King Alfred - as all good things come in threes there is still space for Boris.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard being vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Nope because if they are not vaccinated they have far more chance of giving her the virus.
Do we have clear data on the reduction on chance of transmission?
Vaccines reduce the chances of infection by 40-50%
Which is why it is an outrage that anyone who has a role in caring for the vulnerable should try and claim it is "their right" to refuse. Nothing short of selfish at best and negligent at worst. In fact, it could be argued that if an anti-vax healthcare worker passes Covid to someone else they have been clinically negligent.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
The report is interesting, but the majority of answers are collated from a "free text" answer to “What should society do if people don’t get vaccinated against COVID-19?” (April to June 2021 but cohort based on Dec. 2020)
While insightful in and of itself it is very far from the question people appear to think it is which is "Do you support mandatory vaccination?"
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
Self-id is not "supported by science". Biological sex (unchangeable in mammals) is an important characteristic for certain situations and that should be the case in law. They include women's sports, refuges, prisons, changing facilities etc. Allowing access to self-id trans individuals who have not transitioned medically? What could possibly go wrong? (Clue: it already has.) Access to transitioned individuals is reasonable in some cases. In some situations gender-id including self-id should apply but not at the expense of female rights. Another real problem is age of consent to irreversible medical procedures.
I didn't say it was supported by science. Neither does science preclude it. Birth sex is a fact. Legal gender is a fact. They are aligned for most, for a minority not. The questions are (i) what should the process be for changing gender? and (ii) what controls are needed for safety and fairness?
I'm in favour of self-Id as the basis for a legal change of gender and a default of trans inclusion for single sex spaces. Exclusion should be limited to areas (eg sports, sex offender prisoners) where it can be justified on the basis of reason not prejudice.
You and others (which I know is most on here) are welcome to disagree. But please note that the Commons Committee looked at this, took evidence and submission from all sides, and concluded in support of self-Id. Self-Id is in place in several countries and has not led to serious problems. Germany is about to adopt this approach.
This is not a 'science vs feelings' or a 'commonsense vs woke' debate. It gets presented that way but it isn't. Much of the argument for self-Id is evidence led and rational. Much of the argument against it is emotive and illogical.
Great - we can agree on all of that. Once one accepts that gender is different from sex, and that an individual is at liberty to identify as any gender they like, then much of the way forward is clear.
Scanning it, there's lots of stuff about how the UK is doing great things, and much less about how those great things wouldn't've been possible when we were an EU member.
For example: "We are announcing the development of a new UK Quantum Strategy to be published later this year. We want to see the UK evolve into a sustainable and diverse hub of quantum innovation in the coming years and our new strategy will set out a plan for how we can achieve this. In line with the pillars of the UK’s Innovation Strategy, the Quantum Strategy will focus on supporting early-stage, innovative businesses; making the UK the most attractive place for global quantum talent; and making sure that our research and development institutions support businesses across the UK. We will also look to run missions to tackle major societal challenges using quantum technologies. We will expand our centres of regional strength in the UK—the photonics and quantum cluster in Scotland, the advanced semiconductor and manufacturing cluster in South Wales and academic centres of excellence in Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere."
Another: "The UK is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation, with world-leading science infrastructure and the highest calibre of researchers from around the world. We will do even more to coordinate research and innovation priorities across research councils, government, industry and consumers; pull through our research and development to real life application; and draw global investment to the UK."
Or there's stuff about doing things in the future where the lack of detail sidesteps all the difficult questions over what choices exactly are you going to make. For example: "Brexit provides a significant opportunity to drive growth and innovation further, supercharging the digital economy cementing the UK’s position as a global tech hub. We are now writing our own rule book for digital technologies, one that encourages growth and innovation, while protecting businesses and consumers against the most serious downsides of tech."
I wonder if whoever wrote this has the foggiest idea about 'quantum innovation' or whether this is just another buzz word. My son and his girlfriend are amongst the very brightest people on the planet (and yes I can justify that statement easily). Both have some not inconsiderable involvement in this area and they struggle with it. Any explanation to me went right over my head.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
Look, in an ideal world I accept everyone doling out front line care would be vaccinated from covid. Fair enough.
We don't however, live in an ideal world. And in the real world banning unvaccinated care staff from care homes carries very significant risks that are not being talked about. Deadly risks. Especially in the post vaccination real world.
For me now, post vaccination and boosting of care home residents, the risks of this banning policy far outweigh the advantages. Before vaccination the banning argument would have been much stronger, perhaps.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
And what is your justification for saying they should be vaccinated for some diseases - as is the case now - but not for Covid? Particularly given that Covid is far more infectious and seems to be more of a risk to precisely the sorts of people Health and Care workers are dealing with?
My principles for other diseases would be the sae: encourage uptake; consider what risk mitigations are possible for those who do not; and, if necessary, consider what roles (e.g. surgery, care homes) are out of scope for those that don't comply.
I can't comment on how those principles apply for every infectious disease as it's not my expertise.
But the previous proposal was a blanket ban across those who worked for the NHS was clearly not evidence-based. To take an example, a friend of mine is employed by the NHS as a children's speech and language therapist and primarily works in schools. Firing some of her colleagues based on their failure to be vaccinated would clearly be ridiculous.
And yet that blanket ban effectively exists for anyone refusing to be vaccinated against MMR or TB. Why not Covid?
If I spent the time studying all evidence around MMR or TB, I strongly suspect I'd come out against a blanket ban there as well.
Opposing mandatory vaccination for Covid doesn't make you hypocritical just because you haven't studied the merits of current NHS policy in relation every infectious disease under the sun.
It is from Cummings so it could well be a lie, but it kind of fits with the Boris Johnson psychological profile:
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
Boris is lucky enough that currently people can put him and cake in the same question. Two other historical figures have the same luxury
Marie Antoinette and King Alfred - as all good things come in threes there is still space for Boris.
The latter was renowned for his piety rather than his party. The former is more akin to Johnson, even if she never really said "let them eat cake/brioche"
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Exactly if the aim is to reduce deaths by Covid then carry on with the NPIs. Until further notice. Because having people socially distanced, masked up in the pub or on the train will overall save more lives than having all healthcare workers vaccinated.
Absolutely not. NPIs aren't necessarily dealing with societies most vulnerable people who can shield from the pub if they don't want to go.
Healthcare workers are dealing with societies most vulnerable people, who have no choice but to get the care that they need.
You're a hypocrite trying to link the two.
Do you want to reduce deaths or don't you. Are you telling me that your let it rip strategy won't cause deaths (I believe you said so what or words to that effect at some point). So what's the big hierarchy of needs as regards people not dying of Covid.
Bloke on the No.9 bus because you coughed in his face - no problem. Bloke in Ward No 9 because a HCW coughed in his face - problem.
What is the aim here for you. If it is to protect vulnerable people then you are being illogical and a hypocrite. If it is to prove some NHS vaxxed or redundant thing then you are being illogical and a hypocrite.
You are I assume very happy with masks in hospitals for everyone for evermore.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
Look, in an ideal world I accept everyone doling out front line care would be vaccinated from covid. Fair enough.
We don't however, live in an ideal world. And in the real world banning unvaccinated care staff from care homes carries very significant risks that are not being talked about. Deadly risks. Especially in the post vaccination real world.
For me now, post vaccination and boosting of care home residents, the risks of this banning policy far outweigh the advantages. Before vaccination the banning argument would have been much stronger, perhaps.
Bullshit.
Considering that unvaccinated care staff from care homes were banned months ago now, as I've said to you repeatedly ... Considering that unvaccinated care staff were all sacked months ago now, when the law was implemented ... Considering that reportedly most unvaccinated staff chose the vaccine over getting sacked ...
... what possible "real world" risk is there to banning something that is already banned now?
Its like you are refusing to understand the ban is already in place for care homes.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
Your aunt has an interest in not being treated/cared for by someone who actually has the virus. This is much more germane that whether the person happens to be vaccinated or not.
Being vaccinated massively reduces your probability of getting COVID. Which massively reduces your ability to be infectious.
Does it reduce the possibility of your getting Covid? Everyone is getting it now. Why @Chris told us that 800k/day have or had it. Not all of those are unvaxxed.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard being vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
Yes I saw that but could this equate not having it with having it asymptomatically. ie if you LFT +ve but don't report it because you feel fine.
It's the US - so it will be nearly all PCR tests.
From the links to the actual papers in the Arstechnica article -
A COVID-19 case in a fully vaccinated person occurred when SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen was detected in a respiratory specimen collected ≥14 days after completing the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine with FDA approval or emergency use authorization. A COVID-19 case in an unvaccinated person occurred when the person did not receive any FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine doses before the specimen collection date.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
The report is interesting, but the majority of answers are collated from a "free text" answer to “What should society do if people don’t get vaccinated against COVID-19?” (April to June 2021 but cohort based on Dec. 2020)
While insightful in and of itself it is very far from the question people appear to think it is which is "Do you support mandatory vaccination?"
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
Scanning it, there's lots of stuff about how the UK is doing great things, and much less about how those great things wouldn't've been possible when we were an EU member.
For example: "We are announcing the development of a new UK Quantum Strategy to be published later this year. We want to see the UK evolve into a sustainable and diverse hub of quantum innovation in the coming years and our new strategy will set out a plan for how we can achieve this. In line with the pillars of the UK’s Innovation Strategy, the Quantum Strategy will focus on supporting early-stage, innovative businesses; making the UK the most attractive place for global quantum talent; and making sure that our research and development institutions support businesses across the UK. We will also look to run missions to tackle major societal challenges using quantum technologies. We will expand our centres of regional strength in the UK—the photonics and quantum cluster in Scotland, the advanced semiconductor and manufacturing cluster in South Wales and academic centres of excellence in Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere."
Another: "The UK is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation, with world-leading science infrastructure and the highest calibre of researchers from around the world. We will do even more to coordinate research and innovation priorities across research councils, government, industry and consumers; pull through our research and development to real life application; and draw global investment to the UK."
Or there's stuff about doing things in the future where the lack of detail sidesteps all the difficult questions over what choices exactly are you going to make. For example: "Brexit provides a significant opportunity to drive growth and innovation further, supercharging the digital economy cementing the UK’s position as a global tech hub. We are now writing our own rule book for digital technologies, one that encourages growth and innovation, while protecting businesses and consumers against the most serious downsides of tech."
I wonder if whoever wrote this has the foggiest idea about 'quantum innovation' or whether this is just another buzz word. My son and his girlfriend are amongst the very brightest people on the planet (and yes I can justify that statement easily). Both have some not inconsiderable involvement in this area and they struggle with it. Any explanation to me went right over my head.
Chief Quinn : I'll bet any quantum mechanic in the service would give the rest of his life to fool around with this gadget.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
So you are for lockdowns (self-imposed so as not to be coughed on by you) and you are happy that mask wearing in hospital should stay for evermore. V interesting.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
So you are for lockdowns (self-imposed so as not to be coughed on by you) and you are happy that mask wearing in hospital should stay for evermore. V interesting.
I'm in favour of people having the freedom to choose.
If people wish to self-impose a lockdown upon themselves that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose. If they don't, that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose.
In hospital there should be whatever clinical medical standards as required for the safety of their patients, not in the rest of the world, yes.
Elliot has been a Brexiter - or a Lexiter, to be precise - since the very beginning, though, so he's not exactly a neutral observer weighing up the pros and cons. His mention that downside predictions rest on "neoliberal assumptions" , is also unfortunately a bit mistimed, too, given today's noises on a more back-to-basics, plutocrats' Brexit, and bonfire of "red tape".
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
I can't even imagine what an anti-trans case would look like. It's bloody hard to construct a case from the bible that God hates gays, though people manage it, and 100 times as hard to show he hates the trans. Christ seems OK with self-castration which is surely a pretty big clue.
The only problem here is numbers, and noise-to-signal. As I've said before, a high end estimate of m birth sex f gender people is 1 in 20,000, an estimate of men who are opportunistic c--ts is say 1 in 200 rising to 1 in 50 of the prison population. When you look at the number of m prisoners suddenly deciding they are f including lovely blokes like Ian Huntley, there's some fairly easy math you can do. And we should hate the fakers precisely for muddying the waters for the genuine.
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
Is what people such as @Malmesbury and the rest are struggling with. Yes it would be forever. And should have been for the past five and more decades on account of the flu. Which would have killed @Malmesbury's aunt had someone visited or treated her with it is the thinking.
It would have to be forever. For @BartholomewRoberts it would be masks and social distancing and NPIs in hospitals forever. Because there are vulnerable people in hospitals. Even those he might pass on their way out for a crafty fag. .
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
Until she thinks the risk has diminished. Given that she was doing medical research, including risk modelling, I'd say she has the right to judge her risk.
All her friends and family don't think getting vaccinated taking some LFTs and wearing a mask is that much trouble.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
So you are for lockdowns (self-imposed so as not to be coughed on by you) and you are happy that mask wearing in hospital should stay for evermore. V interesting.
I'm in favour of people having the freedom to choose.
If people wish to self-impose a lockdown upon themselves that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose. If they don't, that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose.
In hospital there should be whatever clinical medical standards as required for the safety of their patients, not in the rest of the world, yes.
Let's take a step back. What is your aim here, is it to reduce deaths from Covid.
Edit: and what is your answer to the masks and NPIs in hospitals forever.
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
Is what people such as @Malmesbury and the rest are struggling with. Yes it would be forever. And should have been for the past five and more decades on account of the flu. Which would have killed @Malmesbury's aunt had someone visited or treated her with it is the thinking.
It would have to be forever. For @BartholomewRoberts it would be masks and social distancing and NPIs in hospitals forever. Because there are vulnerable people in hospitals. Even those he might pass on their way out for a crafty fag. .
And also Malmesbury and others (contra Foxy, as per his posts below which carry bags more authority than mine) will not accept that coming in close contact with someone with the virus is more germane than whether that person is vaccinated or not. Remarkable really.
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
I can't even imagine what an anti-trans case would look like. It's bloody hard to construct a case from the bible that God hates gays, though people manage it, and 100 times as hard to show he hates the trans. Christ seems OK with self-castration which is surely a pretty big clue.
The only problem here is numbers, and noise-to-signal. As I've said before, a high end estimate of m birth sex f gender people is 1 in 20,000, an estimate of men who are opportunistic c--ts is say 1 in 200 rising to 1 in 50 of the prison population. When you look at the number of m prisoners suddenly deciding they are f including lovely blokes like Ian Huntley, there's some fairly easy math you can do. And we should hate the fakers precisely for muddying the waters for the genuine.
A sensible comment - but where does JC say it's OK to chop off one's wollocks? (I do know about that odd self-castrating sect in Old Russia, but not on the biblical exegesis of that.)
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
Is what people such as @Malmesbury and the rest are struggling with. Yes it would be forever. And should have been for the past five and more decades on account of the flu. Which would have killed @Malmesbury's aunt had someone visited or treated her with it is the thinking.
It would have to be forever. For @BartholomewRoberts it would be masks and social distancing and NPIs in hospitals forever. Because there are vulnerable people in hospitals. Even those he might pass on their way out for a crafty fag. .
Flu is less lethal to old people than COVID - by a rather considerable margin.
My point about my aunt was that a number of people seem to be making their risk judgements for people in care/sheltered accommodation as if the people in question aren't... people. With their own views etc.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
So you are for lockdowns (self-imposed so as not to be coughed on by you) and you are happy that mask wearing in hospital should stay for evermore. V interesting.
I'm in favour of people having the freedom to choose.
If people wish to self-impose a lockdown upon themselves that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose. If they don't, that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose.
In hospital there should be whatever clinical medical standards as required for the safety of their patients, not in the rest of the world, yes.
Let's take a step back. What is your aim here, is it to reduce deaths from Covid.
Edit: and what is your answer to the masks and NPIs in hospitals forever.
No.
My aim is to ensure those who are entrusted to the care of health and care workers are treated in the best way possible and least vulnerable way possible. Which is what those workers are paid for.
I'm fine with masks and NPIs in hospital forever, if that's what is determined to be clinically required. I'd have been fine with that pre-Covid too. Hospitals are for the sick and looking after the sick makes sense.
What's with the new posters suddenly popping up to argue with Malc?
That is their standard remit, they gang up on people and accuse them of transphobia, never have any arguments to support their positions unless it is downright lies.
That seems to be the M.O. of the Trans Rights Fanatics. No arguments to support their views just wild accusations and blatant misrepresentations.
The Womens & Equalities Committee of the House of Commons has looked into this and reported in favour of self-Id (see my link previously). So did the UK government when they studied it in 2018. Self-Id is in place in several countries without serious problems. Germany is about to adopt it. You can disagree, of course you can, but it's false to say there isn't a rational, evidence-led argument to engage with.
So a rich guy offers some money to someone to stop tracking him and making the results public . Then withdraws the offer.
Not sure what is new and what is dystopian about this.
Firstly, someone is publishing real-time information, to the entire world, on an individual's location*. That's an element of the panopticon right there.
Then they are demanding payment to take that information down.
It's bad enough to have Google's servers tracking me and hassling me to review places I've been to, but at least they aren't asking for money not to put it up on twitter.
* Sure, actually only the jet, but amounts to the same thing often enough.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
1) even if the visitor is vaccinated? and 2) what - forever?
Until she thinks the risk has diminished. Given that she was doing medical research, including risk modelling, I'd say she has the right to judge her risk.
All her friends and family don't think getting vaccinated taking some LFTs and wearing a mask is that much trouble.
Not sure that bringing risk modelling modelling into it bolsters your argument. (Joke.)
So a rich guy offers some money to someone to stop tracking him and making the results public . Then withdraws the offer.
Not sure what is new and what is dystopian about this.
Firstly, someone is publishing real-time information, to the entire world, in an individual's location*. That's an element of the panopticon right there.
Then they are demanding payment to take that information down.
It's bad enough to have Google's servers tracking me and hassling me to review places I've been to, but at least they aren't asking for money not to put it up on twitter.
* Sure, actually only the jet, but amounts to the same thing often enough.
Is that not already visible on flightradar and similar?
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
I can't even imagine what an anti-trans case would look like. It's bloody hard to construct a case from the bible that God hates gays, though people manage it, and 100 times as hard to show he hates the trans. Christ seems OK with self-castration which is surely a pretty big clue.
The only problem here is numbers, and noise-to-signal. As I've said before, a high end estimate of m birth sex f gender people is 1 in 20,000, an estimate of men who are opportunistic c--ts is say 1 in 200 rising to 1 in 50 of the prison population. When you look at the number of m prisoners suddenly deciding they are f including lovely blokes like Ian Huntley, there's some fairly easy math you can do. And we should hate the fakers precisely for muddying the waters for the genuine.
And from the opposite direction, an m scrote who will say they are f to get into female changing rooms will not, if thwarted, stop being a scrote and will likely as not commit some crime elsewhere. A scrote is a scrote. The question is does society tolerate those scrotes who try it on with m => f and accept there will be incidents as a result, or do they stop that - and thereby impact many genuine and thoroughly nice m => f people - and say no you self-id, and expect the scrote elsewhere, as 100% m to commit an offence.
Sky keep interviewing antivaxx loons who are unvaccinated NHS workers.
We should abolish all the Covid theatre but the more that these NHS workers are speaking the more it seems the NHS would be better off without people who don't believe in medicine.
I am so conflicted. My gut reaction is to tell them to All F Off, but if Omicron is not a risk and we need them, so as not to do more harm, you don't want to do more damage for a principle. In the long term though get them out. It needs to be a requirement that you don't unnecessarily pass on disease to patients.
There isn;t much evidence that vaccination either stops you getting covid or prevents you passing it on at the same rate as an unvaccinated person.
The argument now is vaccination means you get less severely, which is surely why it should apply much more to patients more than those who treat them.
Yes but if they aren't vaccinated now they weren't when we didn't know that and they refused then. They are anti science people working in medicine. I don't generally want to be treated by people with those views.
Note my point that because of what you said I wouldn't throw them out now and do more harm on a principle, but in the long term these people are unsuitable to serve in these roles.
What if the only and best brain surgeon in the country was an anti-vaxxer and you needed surgery that only they could perform.
Then pay whatever fee is needed to import a brain surgeon from overseas.
Your whatabouterisms are absurd.
You're not so good at the whole theoretical principles thing. Let's try again. What if the marginal anti-vax care home worker was the one that would have prevented your granny from dying.
I've given you my answer: Sack her and hire a new care worker that's vaccinated.
Have you not been following the shortage of care workers/NHS staff thingy?
If a care worker is committing gross misconduct jeopardising the safety of those in their care, should they be kept on just because of a shortage of staff?
So by your reckoning a convicted sex offender that is triple vaccinated is more qualified to look after vulnerable people than an unvaccinated care worker with a 30-year unblemished track record?
Morality is a complex issue, surely and thankfully not subject to the one size fits all judgement of yourself and people like you.
Nice trolling attempt but why do you think a convicted sex offender would pass the DBS check that care workers need to undergo before being recruited?
You keep stretching for antivaxx lies but some are stupider than others and that one is a doozy.
Have standards for NHS but for everyone else get back to normal.
Perfectly consistent. The NHS already requires vaccines like Hep B. The NHS also requires PPE be worn etc. No need for national restrictions for any of that though, and anyone who doesn't want to maintain healthcare standards can work anywhere other than the healthcare sector.
Ask anyone with a vulnerable relative and they will tell you that the primary 'standard' for people working in the care sector is that they care.
For you, its quite impossible for anybody at ll that is unvaccinated to care about a fully vaccinated vulnerable person. Im sorry but that is a patent absurdity, and its also a quite dangerous absurdity.
Personally I would regard it as criminal negligence. If you are willing to put someone's life at risk in that way then yes I would contend you certainly don't care enough.
I'll tell you what criminal negligence is. Criminal negligence is leaving care homes short of staff, or short of staff that actually give a damn about the vulnerable people being cared for. Indifference and neglect lead to suffering and death and quite quickly.
In the real world, past your moral preening, that is what your policy is exposing people in care homes to. Your policy is a license for criminal negligence on an immense scale, with the details of the immense suffering and deaths only emerging years later, as with the Cawston case I posted earlier.
Like BR, you have no idea what you are talking about.
There are also the wishes of the people being cared for.
My Aunt is living in sheltered accommodation.
Before she retired, she worked in medical research.
She considers that anyone who won't vaccinate against a disease that has a 35% case/mortality rate in her age group can fuck right off. And keep fucking off until they are over the visible horizon.
How does she feel about covid positive people no longer having to isolate?
Perhaps including staff and visitors, or their families.
Either visitors to her flat can take an LFT and wear an FFP3 or they can fuck off. And keep.... etc etc
Look, in an ideal world I accept everyone doling out front line care would be vaccinated from covid. Fair enough.
We don't however, live in an ideal world. And in the real world banning unvaccinated care staff from care homes carries very significant risks that are not being talked about. Deadly risks. Especially in the post vaccination real world.
For me now, post vaccination and boosting of care home residents, the risks of this banning policy far outweigh the advantages. Before vaccination the banning argument would have been much stronger, perhaps.
Bullshit.
Considering that unvaccinated care staff from care homes were banned months ago now, as I've said to you repeatedly ... Considering that unvaccinated care staff were all sacked months ago now, when the law was implemented ... Considering that reportedly most unvaccinated staff chose the vaccine over getting sacked ...
... what possible "real world" risk is there to banning something that is already banned now?
Its like you are refusing to understand the ban is already in place for care homes.
I understand its in place, I want it overturned.
You are refusing to understand or admit the obvious risks than the ban is creating. The damage is being done right now.
Shortages of staff = indifference and neglect.
Indifference and neglect = suffering and death.
Sadly, as with the Cawston example, these will only emerge years after they have happened. I have read anecdotal evidence its happening already, as exhausted and short handed care teams struggle to cope, but I am not going to cite that here.
The official verdict will be years in the making. As with the lockdown, the verdict will be a damning one. This is a destructive and immoral policy.
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
I can't even imagine what an anti-trans case would look like. It's bloody hard to construct a case from the bible that God hates gays, though people manage it, and 100 times as hard to show he hates the trans. Christ seems OK with self-castration which is surely a pretty big clue.
The only problem here is numbers, and noise-to-signal. As I've said before, a high end estimate of m birth sex f gender people is 1 in 20,000, an estimate of men who are opportunistic c--ts is say 1 in 200 rising to 1 in 50 of the prison population. When you look at the number of m prisoners suddenly deciding they are f including lovely blokes like Ian Huntley, there's some fairly easy math you can do. And we should hate the fakers precisely for muddying the waters for the genuine.
A sensible comment - but where does JC say it's OK to chop off one's wollocks? (I do know about that odd self-castrating sect in Old Russia, but not on the biblical exegesis of that.)
Matthew
19. 1 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan;
2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.
12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Fuck knows what he is on about, theology not really my bag
ETA Mind you, if I were an anti trans Xtian I'd place a lot of weight on "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female..."
It occurs to me that the big problem for Johnson was the volume of scandal exceeding the capacity of 54 MPs to put up with it. And, so, in a very real way, the only strategy open to him was to stretch the dirt over a longer period; 'to flatten the curve'.
At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.
iii. At times it seems there was too little thought given to what was happening across the country in considering the appropriateness of some of these gatherings, the risks they presented to public health and how they might appear to the public. There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times. Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.
Amidst all the prizes, praise, Nobels, fanclubs, lifetime awards and so on, I think one remarkable aspect of this remarkable book has gone missing. It is shit. Unreadable, meandering, half-arsed, incoherent SHIT
On vaccination, Omicron may be less serious for most people. It is not less serious for people with underlying conditions which put them at higher risk.
Like me for instance.
Now is it fair to expect someone in that position who goes into hospital to be treated by a nurse who is not vaccinated and who may pass on the disease to someone whose response to it may be very much more serious. If there are alternatives which minimise the risk, fine. But I think the presumption should be that if you are a health worker you take all necessary steps not to put your patients at risk. If you are not prepared to do that then what the hell are you doing being a health worker?
But they may pass on the disease even if they are vaccinated?
The issues with how the SNP is approaching the trans issue raises issues which are far wider than the trans issue itself, which I am not going to go into.
These other issues are these:-
1. Consultation - the SNP's consultation appears to be limited to those organisations which support its policy and which are funded by it (see the next point). It is very determinedly not consulting those with reservations or concerns. It describes those concerns as "not valid" without bothering to hear them let alone engage with them. This is arrogant and leads to bad policy making.
2. Funding and the role of charities - there are quite a few charities which are very significantly or majority funded by government and use those funds for lobbying. It is a very closed circle and the question arises whether they can really be considered charities at all. If the only bodies you consult are those you fund and you only fund those bodies who agree with you you are simply talking to yourself. In a place where one party is electorally dominant this is dangerous. It leads to a lack of scrutiny. There is an issue with regulatory capture by lobby groups which needs closer scrutiny than it has been getting.
3. A lack of research - there is a marked reluctance to look for the actual facts relevant to the debate, something which a government should do before enacting far-reaching legal changes.
4. A failure - or refusal, perhaps - to understand that rights for one group need to be weighed in the balance against rights for other groups and other considerations. This is basic stuff, which is the very essence of law and the ECHR etc. Even the most cursory understanding of human rights law would tell you this and, yet, the Scottish government appears to be adopting an absolutist position which is - or may well be - contrary to the law applicable to Scotland.
5. Which brings me to the position of the EHRC - the body legally charged with overseeing human rights, specifically the rights under the Equality Act. The EHRC has raised concerns which need to be addressed and has, for its pains, received a load of abuse from some of the charities agitating for this change, some of whom have rather arrogantly said that they are cutting ties with it. As if the law - the Equality Act - is something that they can choose to ignore if they don't get their way. We ought all to be concerned, no matter what our views on the underlying issues, when bodies which seem to have such an influence on policy-making throw tantrums like this, behave like bulllies and adopt a "no debate" stance.
The approach recommended recently by the House of Commons Women & Equalities Committee is as below. It was completed after hearing submissions from all interested parties and comes down in favour of a de-medicalized gender transition process based on self-ID. Such is already the case in several countries.
It's being ignored by the UK government for reasons of populism not logic or science. So I really don't think it's fair to portray all of the cool calm rationality as being on one side of this debate and all of the jaundice and bullshit on the other.
The difficulty with that report is that, as has already been pointed out - by people who have actually transitioned - is that it contains some pretty fundamental mistakes about the current process. A report which does not understand the current law or gender recognition process and makes such mistakes is not really one to be relied on. See my point 3.
I'm not saying it's gospel but it is an authoritative report in an area prone to much misinformation and false assumption. And it comes down in favour of self-Id. As did the government when it looked into this in 2018. This approach is already taken by several countries and is about to be implemented in Germany.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
But that is exactly what is demanded - by Stonewall amongst others. They have publicly stated that they want the removal of all reference to sex in equalities legislation and the removal of all sex-based exemptions in the Equality Act. That does mean - whether you like it or not - the removal of existing rights for women. How do you think that the laws on equal pay work if there is no reference to sex?
Discrimination based on sex does not disappear just because you remove references to sex. It continues. But what does happen is that women no longer have a way of talking about it or taking action against it. Violence against women because of their sex will continue to happen. But women will not be able to describe what happens to them in their own words. And action against violence against women - 98% of which comes from men - will no longer be taken.
If the category of woman includes a man - merely on his say so - with no checks or requirements or conditions - then that category is meaningless. Great. You have changed the words. But you have not changed the reality of womens' lives. They will continue to be attacked and discriminated against because they are women but you will have made it impossible for anyone to describe that accurately or do anything effective about it.
My feeling is that mandatory vaccination for health workers is driven by emotions not facts. There are plenty of reasonable alternatives such as the following for those staff members not vaccinated:
- Antibody testing for proof of prior infection - Regular PCR testing
Some combination of by the above would mean the patients are at no more risk than from a vaccinated staff member. And frankly, other factors such as whether a staff member has school age children will have a similar impact on infection risk.
The drive feels driven by the moral sense it is only right people in such a job should do all they can to protect others. I understand the sentiment, but the reality is a minority will never say yes and we are better off mitigating the risk in other ways than sacking a bunch of otherwise good workers.
Super interesting. Only 18% of HCWs favour mandatory vaccination. Still, I'm sure @BartholomewRoberts and @Richard_Tyndall know a lot more about it all than them. .
If you are having to quote voodoo polls from a year ago then you must be getting desperate.
Nah I quoted a PB contributor and looked at the executive summary.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is not to "save lives" by locking down society.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
What's so special about the vulnerable when you are killing them if they get the bus. Or would you rather they self-locked down. But no. Because you are against lockdowns.
What's so special is the element of choice.
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not. People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not. People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
So you are for lockdowns (self-imposed so as not to be coughed on by you) and you are happy that mask wearing in hospital should stay for evermore. V interesting.
I'm in favour of people having the freedom to choose.
If people wish to self-impose a lockdown upon themselves that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose. If they don't, that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose.
In hospital there should be whatever clinical medical standards as required for the safety of their patients, not in the rest of the world, yes.
Let's take a step back. What is your aim here, is it to reduce deaths from Covid.
Edit: and what is your answer to the masks and NPIs in hospitals forever.
No.
My aim is to ensure those who are entrusted to the care of health and care workers are treated in the best way possible and least vulnerable way possible. Which is what those workers are paid for.
I'm fine with masks and NPIs in hospital forever, if that's what is determined to be clinically required. I'd have been fine with that pre-Covid too. Hospitals are for the sick and looking after the sick makes sense.
So do you at least accept that you are arbitrarily choosing who should live and die from Covid. In your books "the vulnerable" in hospital should die less than "the vulnerable" on the No.9 bus.
And it's interesting to hear that you support NPIs in hospital forever. And presumably all health environments such as the GPs, the dentists, etc.
i. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify.
ii. At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.
So a rich guy offers some money to someone to stop tracking him and making the results public . Then withdraws the offer.
Not sure what is new and what is dystopian about this.
Firstly, someone is publishing real-time information, to the entire world, in an individual's location*. That's an element of the panopticon right there.
Then they are demanding payment to take that information down.
It's bad enough to have Google's servers tracking me and hassling me to review places I've been to, but at least they aren't asking for money not to put it up on twitter.
* Sure, actually only the jet, but amounts to the same thing often enough.
The transponder of the jet in question is being live broadcast, without the teenager.
He's just making the data a *little* bit easier to find....
The only people who turn their transponders off are the military in war time. And the Russia Airforce, when they are trying to prove that Putin has a really tiny dick.
"The Metropolitan Police has now confirmed that as a result of information provided by the Cabinet Office investigation team, as well as assessments made by Metropolitan Police officers, they are investigating the events on the dates set out above with the exception of the gatherings on: • 15 May 2020 • 27 November 2020 • 10 December 2020 • 15 December 2020"
Comments
I'm in favour of self-Id as the basis for a legal change of gender and a default of trans inclusion for single sex spaces. Exclusion should be limited to areas (eg sports, sex offender prisoners) where it can be justified on the basis of reason not prejudice.
You and others (which I know is most on here) are welcome to disagree. But please note that the Commons Committee looked at this, took evidence and submission from all sides, and concluded in support of self-Id. Self-Id is in place in several countries and has not led to serious problems. Germany is about to adopt this approach.
This is not a 'science vs feelings' or a 'commonsense vs woke' debate. It gets presented that way but it isn't. Much of the argument for self-Id is evidence led and rational. Much of the argument against it is emotive and illogical.
Unvaxxed leaves you hugely vulnerable to the disease but I hadn't heard being vaxxed prevented you from getting it in the first place.
Like me for instance.
Now is it fair to expect someone in that position who goes into hospital to be treated by a nurse who is not vaccinated and who may pass on the disease to someone whose response to it may be very much more serious. If there are alternatives which minimise the risk, fine. But I think the presumption should be that if you are a health worker you take all necessary steps not to put your patients at risk. If you are not prepared to do that then what the hell are you doing being a health worker?
.
So overall vaccines are a triple-win for reducing the spread to those in your care.
For example: "We are announcing the development of a new UK Quantum Strategy to be published later this year. We want to see the UK evolve into a sustainable and diverse hub of quantum innovation in the coming years and our new strategy will set out a plan for how we can achieve this. In line with the pillars of the UK’s
Innovation Strategy, the Quantum Strategy will focus on supporting early-stage, innovative businesses; making the UK the most attractive place for global quantum talent; and making sure that our research and development institutions support businesses across the UK. We will also look to run missions to tackle major societal challenges using quantum technologies. We will expand our centres of regional strength in the UK—the photonics and quantum cluster in Scotland, the advanced semiconductor and manufacturing cluster in South Wales and academic centres of excellence in Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere."
Another: "The UK is at the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation, with world-leading science infrastructure and the highest calibre of researchers from around the world. We will do even more to coordinate
research and innovation priorities across research councils, government, industry and consumers; pull through our research and development to real life application; and draw global investment to the UK."
Or there's stuff about doing things in the future where the lack of detail sidesteps all the difficult questions over what choices exactly are you going to make. For example: "Brexit provides a significant opportunity to drive growth and innovation further, supercharging the digital economy cementing the UK’s position as a global tech hub. We are now writing our own rule book for digital technologies, one that encourages growth and
innovation, while protecting businesses and consumers against the most serious downsides of tech."
It is just that isolation of positive cases is probably by far the most effective other control measure, and is simultaneously being abolished in England.
Starmer next PM is the value bet.
Your argument that self-ID has not caused problems is untrue. I could give you numerous examples of the problems caused in other countries and here in cases where de facto self-ID has occurred.
The facts and science simply do not support the claims made by TRAs - one reason why the activists and lobby groups are so determined to have "no debate" and no challenge and attack anyone challenging them, including transwomen who have actually transitioned.
Protecting the vulnerable is the NHS frontline and care workers job.
It isn't everybody else's job.
If you don't want to care for the vulnerable, that should be your choice. Don't work in health and social care then though.
I can't comment on how those principles apply for every infectious disease as it's not my expertise.
But the previous proposal was a blanket ban across those who worked for the NHS was clearly not evidence-based. To take an example, a friend of mine is employed by the NHS as a children's speech and language therapist and primarily works in schools. Firing some of her colleagues based on their failure to be vaccinated would clearly be ridiculous.
https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/19848708.well-vaccines-stop-us-catching-spreading-omicron/
Vaccines reduce the chances of infection by 40-50%
Mr Cummings said the PM fantasises about “monuments to him in an Augustine fashion. ‘I will provide the money. I will be a river to my people. I will provide the money that builds the train station in Birmingham.’ Or whatever. ‘And it will have statues to me, and people will remember me after I am dead like they did the Roman emperors.’"
So God gave him what we wanted.
Marie Antoinette and King Alfred - as all good things come in threes there is still space for Boris.
Healthcare workers are dealing with societies most vulnerable people, who have no choice but to get the care that they need.
You're a hypocrite trying to link the two.
My position is clear and it seems accords with @Foxy's although I guess I'm probably more out there than him.
If the aim is to save lives then NPIs should remain. Social distancing, masks, isolation. Because that will save far more lives than having the remaining HCWs vaxxed and will also save lives vs having those people thrown out of a job as @MISTY has so eloquently explained (why out of interest are you sure you know more than him about it - you are a geologist in the field aren't you?).
Also , why is it a voodoo poll out of interest.
My aim is to protect the vulnerable, who are entrusted to the care of health and social care workers and not pub goers.
My point really is that the "pro trans" case - agree with it or not - has plenty of reason and evidence behind it. It isn't a matter of howling superwoke twitter activists setting their face against biology and commonsense, hellbent on trampling all over women's rights.
While insightful in and of itself it is very far from the question people appear to think it is which is "Do you support mandatory vaccination?"
We don't however, live in an ideal world. And in the real world banning unvaccinated care staff from care homes carries very significant risks that are not being talked about. Deadly risks. Especially in the post vaccination real world.
For me now, post vaccination and boosting of care home residents, the risks of this banning policy far outweigh the advantages. Before vaccination the banning argument would have been much stronger, perhaps.
Opposing mandatory vaccination for Covid doesn't make you hypocritical just because you haven't studied the merits of current NHS policy in relation every infectious disease under the sun.
https://twitter.com/robclevedonuk/status/1488092010540146689
Bloke on the No.9 bus because you coughed in his face - no problem.
Bloke in Ward No 9 because a HCW coughed in his face - problem.
What is the aim here for you. If it is to protect vulnerable people then you are being illogical and a hypocrite. If it is to prove some NHS vaxxed or redundant thing then you are being illogical and a hypocrite.
You are I assume very happy with masks in hospitals for everyone for evermore.
Considering that unvaccinated care staff from care homes were banned months ago now, as I've said to you repeatedly ...
Considering that unvaccinated care staff were all sacked months ago now, when the law was implemented ...
Considering that reportedly most unvaccinated staff chose the vaccine over getting sacked ...
... what possible "real world" risk is there to banning something that is already banned now?
Its like you are refusing to understand the ban is already in place for care homes.
From the links to the actual papers in the Arstechnica article -
A COVID-19 case in a fully vaccinated person occurred when SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen was detected in a respiratory specimen collected ≥14 days after completing the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine with FDA approval or emergency use authorization. A COVID-19 case in an unvaccinated person occurred when the person did not receive any FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine doses before the specimen collection date.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/31/teenager-seeks-50k-delete-twitter-bot-tracking-elon-musk-private-jet
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/31/post-brexit-economic-crisis-labour-eu-britain?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
People can choose whether they're willing to go to the pub or not.
People can choose whether they're willing to go on the bus or not.
People can't choose whether they're required to go to a hospital or care home or not.
You can shield from the pub by choice, you can't shield from a care home or hospital if you need it.
Same reason teachers etc need a DBS but punters going to a pub don't.
Chief Quinn : I'll bet any quantum mechanic in the service would give the rest of his life to fool around with this gadget.
That matters because it means the entire payroll - ministers, aides etc - will be present, rather than just 1922 backbenchers
PM clearly determined to ensure biggest show of support possible
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1488153148262866951
Not sure what is new and what is dystopian about this.
If people wish to self-impose a lockdown upon themselves that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose. If they don't, that's their choice and I respect their freedom to choose.
In hospital there should be whatever clinical medical standards as required for the safety of their patients, not in the rest of the world, yes.
The only problem here is numbers, and noise-to-signal. As I've said before, a high end estimate of m birth sex f gender people is 1 in 20,000, an estimate of men who are opportunistic c--ts is say 1 in 200 rising to 1 in 50 of the prison population. When you look at the number of m prisoners suddenly deciding they are f including lovely blokes like Ian Huntley, there's some fairly easy math you can do. And we should hate the fakers precisely for muddying the waters for the genuine.
It would have to be forever. For @BartholomewRoberts it would be masks and social distancing and NPIs in hospitals forever. Because there are vulnerable people in hospitals. Even those he might pass on their way out for a crafty fag.
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All her friends and family don't think getting vaccinated taking some LFTs and wearing a mask is that much trouble.
Edit: and what is your answer to the masks and NPIs in hospitals forever.
All Britons
Have benefited - 24%
Have not benefited - 65%
Leave voters
Have - 49%
Have not - 39%
Remain voters
Have - 5%
Have not - 91%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2022/01/31/b17f3/1?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_1 https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1488154291311452160/photo/1
Good deal - 7%
Bad deal - 47%
Neither - 31%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2022/01/31/b17f3/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_2 https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1488154299418955776/photo/1
So basically he tried to blackmail a job or some money out of Musk and Musk said no.
Good for Musk.
My point about my aunt was that a number of people seem to be making their risk judgements for people in care/sheltered accommodation as if the people in question aren't... people. With their own views etc.
My aim is to ensure those who are entrusted to the care of health and care workers are treated in the best way possible and least vulnerable way possible. Which is what those workers are paid for.
I'm fine with masks and NPIs in hospital forever, if that's what is determined to be clinically required. I'd have been fine with that pre-Covid too. Hospitals are for the sick and looking after the sick makes sense.
Then they are demanding payment to take that information down.
It's bad enough to have Google's servers tracking me and hassling me to review places I've been to, but at least they aren't asking for money not to put it up on twitter.
* Sure, actually only the jet, but amounts to the same thing often enough.
Fuck knows if I know the answer.
I understand its in place, I want it overturned.
You are refusing to understand or admit the obvious risks than the ban is creating. The damage is being done right now.
Shortages of staff = indifference and neglect.
Indifference and neglect = suffering and death.
Sadly, as with the Cawston example, these will only emerge years after they have happened. I have read anecdotal evidence its happening already, as exhausted and short handed care teams struggle to cope, but I am not going to cite that here.
The official verdict will be years in the making. As with the lockdown, the verdict will be a damning one. This is a destructive and immoral policy.
https://twitter.com/sianwilliams100/status/1488155316642529289
19. 1 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan;
2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.
12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Fuck knows what he is on about, theology not really my bag
ETA Mind you, if I were an anti trans Xtian I'd place a lot of weight on "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female..."
Ironic, isn't it.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1488155114670116865
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1488155630229766153?s=20&t=HNISfcWMA-ZKY1FIjPWlrQ
observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of
Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population
at the time.
iii. At times it seems there was too little thought given to what was happening
across the country in considering the appropriateness of some of these
gatherings, the risks they presented to public health and how they might appear
to the public. There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts
of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times. Some of the events should
not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been
allowed to develop as they did.
Amidst all the prizes, praise, Nobels, fanclubs, lifetime awards and so on, I think one remarkable aspect of this remarkable book has gone missing. It is shit. Unreadable, meandering, half-arsed, incoherent SHIT
Discrimination based on sex does not disappear just because you remove references to sex. It continues. But what does happen is that women no longer have a way of talking about it or taking action against it. Violence against women because of their sex will continue to happen. But women will not be able to describe what happens to them in their own words. And action against violence against women - 98% of which comes from men - will no longer be taken.
If the category of woman includes a man - merely on his say so - with no checks or requirements or conditions - then that category is meaningless. Great. You have changed the words. But you have not changed the reality of womens' lives. They will continue to be attacked and discriminated against because they are women but you will have made it impossible for anyone to describe that accurately or do anything effective about it.
And it's interesting to hear that you support NPIs in hospital forever. And presumably all health environments such as the GPs, the dentists, etc.
i. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify.
ii. At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time.
He's just making the data a *little* bit easier to find....
The only people who turn their transponders off are the military in war time. And the Russia Airforce, when they are trying to prove that Putin has a really tiny dick.
j/k
Will? Nothing in the report to demonstrate that he will.
TONY MORRISON'S BELOVEDSUE GRAY'S REPORT.tia
by the Cabinet Office investigation team, as well as assessments made by
Metropolitan Police officers, they are investigating the events on the dates set out
above with the exception of the gatherings on:
• 15 May 2020
• 27 November 2020
• 10 December 2020
• 15 December 2020"
Bring Cummings into it I think.
Edit: Apologies I misread - ignore above