I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
As opposed to being biased by the views of the Daily Mail? The point is that personal bias is exactly that, personal. You may beleive that objectively they are wrong, but that is kind of the point about democracy, a lot of personal bias choses a government. Objectively Johnson was a very poor choice to be PM, but here we are.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
If only there was a huge talent pool on out doorstep we could tap into... “Hotels turning guests away through lack of staff, restaurants limiting opening times because can’t find a chef. Just when trying to recover from pandemic, being held back..right across economy, 78% firms tell us theyre struggling to recruit.
Struggling to recruit *for the wages being offered*.
Supply and demand. Ask Sir Stuart Rose.
Indeed.
Also, UK businesses have mostly given up on training and proper upskilling. Every business wants skilled staff, without the cost, faff and risk of training them.
They’re reaping what they sowed.
There is slightly more to this than Brexit.
In the year of the Referendum the UK population was 65,648,000. By the end of this year it is expected to be 67,440,000.
It is not the case that some mysterious depopulation is taking place, either due to Brexit or any other reason.
In the light of those figures the lack of employees feels a bit inexplicable.
I don't think they are all on benefits, and the state pension age has risen in recent years.
??
For every person that turns up, more services are needed. For an extra 2m population, business need more staff and some businesses will not find the staff they need in those 2m arrivals, particularly if that 2m comes from areas where cultures discourage women and girls from working.
Or it could be that the 2m increase are all babies who will not be working for at least a decade unless JRM becomes PM and match selling, chimney sweeping and mining become necessary for kids to help families make ends meet.
Raw numbers are not overly helpful
Thanks.
If you are right then the one thing that won't work is finding the employees needed by taking them from other countries. Since 'more services are needed' for each extra unit of labour (and their dependents).
The extra are not all babies. Birth rate is currently falling, though obviously those there are should be sent down mines and up chimneys from the age of 5 or so.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
covid LFT test positivity now above 10%. 14 in London
12% of the medical staff in my dept are off with it this week. Leicester schools break up on the 8th July, so will hit at peak holiday time here. Quite a lot of admissions too with respiratory symptoms.
Yeh gads. Will this ever end?
QTWAIN.
Shirkers with a line on a test but who aren't actually sick should get themselves into work. And stop being hypochondriacs taking tests in the first place.
I'm not for any legal restrictions, but wanting medical staff who knowingly have covid to head into hospitals is just daft. Would you want them in with the flu ? +ve test = wfh in our office, and we're all back in.
If they're fit and able to work, and the only reason you know they have the flu is due to a line on the test? Yes I would.
Abolish all Covid testing, unless its necessary for some reason for critical diagnostic purposes. Operate on symptoms only. If people are too sick to work then they shouldn't be working, whether that be due to Covid/Flu/Common Cold or A.N.Other bug. If people are carrying a virus that is widespread in the community anyway but are fit and able to work, then get to work.
Even if the evidence was that they were infectious?
As a business owner, if someone comes in and gets their colleagues sick, and I think lose five days of peoples' work rather than one, I would be absolutely furious.
Yes, absolutely, even if the evidence was that they are infectious.
Your claim about losing colleagues is a fallacy since its acting as if, ceteris paribus, the infected individuals would have dodged the infection were it not for their perfectly healthy but infectious colleague coming into work.
Except that's not the case, the virus is widespread in the community and is spreading either way. Whether your employees get infected by their healthy colleague, or by someone else, what difference does it make?
Anyone who is sick shouldn't be in, but anyone who is healthy and not sick should be able to be, even if they are infectious, yes.
Sure, they will probably all get it.
But they won't all get it at the same time, unless I'm exceptionally unlucky.
It's massively worse for me if half of customer service team gets Covid at the same time, than if they get it over the course of a couple of months.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
Take a break, Barty, you are being truly ridiculous. It is almost unheard of for colds to hospitalise or kill people, and you know it.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
"the UK’s current account deficit was 8.3 per cent of gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2022"
I have a horrible feeling that might be an all time record.
Biggest since 1955 when records began apparently. (Surely they kept them before that? Perhaps differently?) Nonetheless, the economic news is all grim again.
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
It is not the common cold.
It is endemic like the common cold or flu. It will be forever more.
You work - from time-to-time - on off-shore oil rigs. The day rates on those are astronomical. If you have a Covid outbreak, and a quarter of the people on the rig are unable to work then the cost would be enormous. I would absolutely insist (and assume that operators do) on all employees passing a lateral flow Covid test before coming on board.
Covid is highly contagious, and - while not particularly likely to kill you any more - can easily incapacitate you for three or four days.
Now, if you're a postman, and you test negative but feel fine, then knock yourself out and go to work. But if you are in a confined area with a lot of people you might make sick, then I'd rather you stayed home.
My postie, obviously not feeling 100% this morning, distanced herself a little more to drop a small parcel off, and said as much.
That was fine. Horses for courses. But with home working having become more a thing, and with COVID a bit more serious, the new normal balance ought to have tipped a little.
I'd have happily gone into work with a bit of a cold 3 years ago despite already doing the odd day from home. I'd only mucus troop now if and for the duration it was essential to do so and would be more aware of distance, ventilation and the like.
Yep! I had a cold a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t the plague because I went and got tested. Told the office I would WFH for a few days, not a problem.
Go back to 2019, and I’ve have been that guy sitting at his desk sneezing, blowing his nose every few minutes and probably making everyone else in the office have a cold the following week. Maybe the boss would have shown some pity and sent me home, but more likely he would have praised me for coming in.
The pandemic has led to changed attitudes on this, at least for white-collar office jobs. Hourly-paid jobs in retail, warehouses and hospitality, not so much.
If only there was a huge talent pool on out doorstep we could tap into... “Hotels turning guests away through lack of staff, restaurants limiting opening times because can’t find a chef. Just when trying to recover from pandemic, being held back..right across economy, 78% firms tell us theyre struggling to recruit.
Struggling to recruit *for the wages being offered*.
Supply and demand. Ask Sir Stuart Rose.
Indeed.
Also, UK businesses have mostly given up on training and proper upskilling. Every business wants skilled staff, without the cost, faff and risk of training them.
They’re reaping what they sowed.
There is slightly more to this than Brexit.
In the year of the Referendum the UK population was 65,648,000. By the end of this year it is expected to be 67,440,000.
It is not the case that some mysterious depopulation is taking place, either due to Brexit or any other reason.
In the light of those figures the lack of employees feels a bit inexplicable.
I don't think they are all on benefits, and the state pension age has risen in recent years.
??
For every person that turns up, more services are needed. For an extra 2m population, business need more staff and some businesses will not find the staff they need in those 2m arrivals, particularly if that 2m comes from areas where cultures discourage women and girls from working.
Or it could be that the 2m increase are all babies who will not be working for at least a decade unless JRM becomes PM and match selling, chimney sweeping and mining become necessary for kids to help families make ends meet.
Raw numbers are not overly helpful
England & Wales / 2011 / 2021 / Change 2011 to 2021 School & Education (0-19) / 13,430,523 / 13,747,200 / 316,677 Working (20 - 64) / 33,422,316 / 34,786,900 / 1,364,584 Retired (65-90+) / 9,223,073 / 11,063,400 / 1,840,327
Well, there you go then, 2.5m either retired or at school, 1.3m extra working age people not all of whom will be capable of working.
I cannot remember the precise number, but it takes 4 workers to support 1 retiree. It is the grey vote dragging us down again...
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
Well, judging from what Daughter and Husband are telling me it is nothing like the common cold but much worse.
If someone had a tubercular cough, we wouldn't want them at work, would we?
What Son was cross about was being lied to by his colleague. Plus being put at risk himself and putting me at risk.
BA5 seems to be a bit nastier than earlier omicron variants. I hope they both get through soon.
As ever on covid we have extreme views on either side. It is clearly more dangerous than 'just a cold'. However it is also less dangerous than flu (certainly among our vaccinated public). The difference is the sheer number of people who are infected at the moment. We would not expect to see on in 40 people in the country with flu at any one time.
There is balance to be struck. I think healthcare going back to masks for all for the next period of time is sensible, and not really a hardship for the public (more so for the medics). I think serious thought needs to be had about boosters. I know there is an autumn campaign coming for those who normally get the flu shot, but I wonder that it ought to be widened? I'm not sure either way. Most in the country will have had a bought of omicron (various flavours) so that in itself will provide some assistance, even if its not the greatest at provoking antibodies to fight future infection.
I have a suspicion that those who oppose the return of masks in clinical settings and complain about testing are secretly worried about new lockdown style restrictions. I simply don't think that is on the cards. Can't afford it as a country for one reason.
We couldn't afford the first three either.
Debatable for sure. We had little choice in March 2020.
In hindsight, we did, and we made the wrong choice.
With regret, Sweden called this right, and we did not. 👎
You know that:
(a) over the course of the pandemic, Swedish policy changed, and by mid 2021 Stockholm and the other cities had very similar policies to the UK (b) opinion polls in Sweden are that they got their response wrong, and that there is currently a public enquiry asking why they called it wrong
If you want to know where called it right, it's Denmark. No economic hit. Hardly any excess deaths. Smart policies that minimized the hit to peoples' freedom, and which bought time to allow pretty much everyone to get vaccinated. And they got rid of their last restrictions before Stockholm or the UK.
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
As opposed to being biased by the views of the Daily Mail? The point is that personal bias is exactly that, personal. You may beleive that objectively they are wrong, but that is kind of the point about democracy, a lot of personal bias choses a government. Objectively Johnson was a very poor choice to be PM, but here we are.
Bare opinion between binary options in surveys has its uses. Mostly in filling the media space and giving PB something to talk about.
But for actual insight, truth, all those sorts of boring old fashioned things, it would be great if occasionally surveys went a little deeper into what people's rational or otherwise justifications are for their binary choices.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
If only there was a huge talent pool on out doorstep we could tap into... “Hotels turning guests away through lack of staff, restaurants limiting opening times because can’t find a chef. Just when trying to recover from pandemic, being held back..right across economy, 78% firms tell us theyre struggling to recruit.
Struggling to recruit *for the wages being offered*.
Supply and demand. Ask Sir Stuart Rose.
Indeed.
Also, UK businesses have mostly given up on training and proper upskilling. Every business wants skilled staff, without the cost, faff and risk of training them.
They’re reaping what they sowed.
There is slightly more to this than Brexit.
In the year of the Referendum the UK population was 65,648,000. By the end of this year it is expected to be 67,440,000.
It is not the case that some mysterious depopulation is taking place, either due to Brexit or any other reason.
In the light of those figures the lack of employees feels a bit inexplicable.
I don't think they are all on benefits, and the state pension age has risen in recent years.
??
For every person that turns up, more services are needed. For an extra 2m population, business need more staff and some businesses will not find the staff they need in those 2m arrivals, particularly if that 2m comes from areas where cultures discourage women and girls from working.
Or it could be that the 2m increase are all babies who will not be working for at least a decade unless JRM becomes PM and match selling, chimney sweeping and mining become necessary for kids to help families make ends meet.
Raw numbers are not overly helpful
Immigrants from the EU are more likely to work and less likely to claim benefits than either the UK born or immigrants from other places.
covid LFT test positivity now above 10%. 14 in London
12% of the medical staff in my dept are off with it this week. Leicester schools break up on the 8th July, so will hit at peak holiday time here. Quite a lot of admissions too with respiratory symptoms.
Yeh gads. Will this ever end?
QTWAIN.
Shirkers with a line on a test but who aren't actually sick should get themselves into work. And stop being hypochondriacs taking tests in the first place.
I'm not for any legal restrictions, but wanting medical staff who knowingly have covid to head into hospitals is just daft. Would you want them in with the flu ? +ve test = wfh in our office, and we're all back in.
If they're fit and able to work, and the only reason you know they have the flu is due to a line on the test? Yes I would.
Abolish all testing. Operate on symptoms only. If people are too sick to work then they shouldn't be working, whether that be due to Covid/Flu/Common Cold or A.N.Other bug. If people are carry a virus but are fit and able to work, then get to work.
And then other people get too sick to work.
There is this concept you ought to read up. It's called "contagion".
The virus is widespread in the community anyway. People are going to get it.
Contagion doesn't matter. If 14% of the community has it anyway, then any healthy but virus-carrying colleagues not turning up to work just means you've lost the healthy colleague's assistance, not prevented contagion which is an impossibility.
You only have 14% of the community with it in the first place because of attitudes like yours.
We can easily and should reduce the transmission of contagious illnesses. We did this before COVID and should continue to do so.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
Take a break, Barty, you are being truly ridiculous. It is almost unheard of for colds to hospitalise or kill people, and you know it.
It is absolutely not almost unheard of for colds to hospitalise or kill immunocompromised, vulnerable and elderly people.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien The fight over Snake Island reveals something that seems to be a pattern in this war. If the Russians can’t rely on overwhelming artillery firepower, they struggle accomplish anything. In any engagement requiring initiative and adaptability, the Ukrainians seem to prevail.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
Indeed. For a start, we don't have a vaccine for the common cold...
Partly because there is no such thing as the common cold - its a suite of pathogens that cause similar illness.
I see the Spurs haters on this forum doth protest too much again.
Funny old world.
You seem to be confusing laughter with hatred.
Richarlison is a decent player when he can be arsed, but a liability when he cannot be, and I suspect is part of a toxic dressing room at Everton. Not worth this price though.
Mind you, waiting for new signings at Leicester is a re-run of Waiting for Godot...
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
If the primary infection led to the secondary infection then that's a distinction without a difference. The point is that infections can kill, especially the vulnerable, but we have to live with them.
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
It is not the common cold.
It is endemic like the common cold or flu. It will be forever more.
You work - from time-to-time - on off-shore oil rigs. The day rates on those are astronomical. If you have a Covid outbreak, and a quarter of the people on the rig are unable to work then the cost would be enormous. I would absolutely insist (and assume that operators do) on all employees passing a lateral flow Covid test before coming on board.
Covid is highly contagious, and - while not particularly likely to kill you any more - can easily incapacitate you for three or four days.
Now, if you're a postman, and you test negative but feel fine, then knock yourself out and go to work. But if you are in a confined area with a lot of people you might make sick, then I'd rather you stayed home.
We maintained a strict quarantine on the rigs throughout the epidemic. Testing for a week prior to people going out, daily testing for everyone offshore, isolation helicopters to evacuate those infected. That worked extremely well.
We have now abandoned all the controls since 1st June and it is still working extremely well. If someone develops symptoms and is unable to work they are evacuated. If they are still able to work they carry on. We are seeing no impact at all on operations from following this new policy. In spite of having people offshore with covid.
This is following the recommendations from the authorities.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
Who is still testing without symptoms?
I admire your dedication to not answering the question.
I think if everyone acted in the way St Bart advocated, covid prevalence would be permanently around 30% of the population or so. Perhaps higher. We'd all get more cases than Keir Starmer.
As opposed to the 10-14% prevalence it is now?
Oh well, if that happened, then our immune system would be very primed for the virus whenever we got it, wouldn't it? What exactly would be wrong with that?
We'd have more cases, but those cases would evolve to being the common cold not just as endemic as it.
We had Alpha and Delta that were both evolutions that were more infections and more virulent. Omicron is the first variant that decreased virulence while increasing infectivity.
It is entirely a matter of faith that it would become more like the common cold with mass infection.
I don't think mass infection will reduce virulence because of its evolution, I think mass infection will reduce virulence because our immune systems will be well-primed rather than naive to the virus when its encountered.
Its endemic, we need to live with it. Its not going to stop being endemic.
Rabies. HIV. Smallpox. Polio. Hepatitis.
All viruses that became endemic. Virulence not reduced to that of the common cold.
They are not virally endemic at high prevalence with people getting them repeatedly.
We have almost all (and possibly all) had Covid, possibly multiple times. We have not all had rabies.
Because we take sensible public health measures so as not to get rabies.
We can take sensible public health measures so as not to get COVID-19, starting with vaccination, but also supporting good ventilation and air filtration, appropriate mask wearing, tackling presenteeism, good public health advice and information, etc. These measures will not eliminate COVID-19, but they will reduce morbidity and mortality, just as appropriate virus-specific measures do with flu, rabies, HIV/AIDS etc.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
Who is still testing without symptoms?
I admire your dedication to not answering the question.
Answering the question is a huge breach of libertarian principles, compared to making your colleague sick and killing their granny.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
Just finished a biography of Antiochos III yesterday. Not quite sure if his or Pyrrhus' death was the least impressive end to an adventurous life.
Pyrrhus got killed in Argos by a woman throwing a roof tile at his head, Antiochos tried robbing a temple of its treasures but despite his massive nearby army didn't take enough soldiers and got killed by the locals.
Edited extra bit: I should say that Pyrrhus was invading Argos at the time.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
A dog has four legs, my cat has four legs therefore my cat is a dog.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
I see the Spurs haters on this forum doth protest too much again.
Funny old world.
You seem to be confusing laughter with hatred.
Richarlison is a decent player when he can be arsed, but a liability when he cannot be, and I suspect is part of a toxic dressing room at Everton. Not worth this price though.
Mind you, waiting for new signings at Leicester is a re-run of Waiting for Godot...
I suspect it is the ludicrous FFP (Big Six Protection) rules, which outweigh all else in this. It's a new accounting year tomorrow.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
covid LFT test positivity now above 10%. 14 in London
12% of the medical staff in my dept are off with it this week. Leicester schools break up on the 8th July, so will hit at peak holiday time here. Quite a lot of admissions too with respiratory symptoms.
Yeh gads. Will this ever end?
QTWAIN.
Shirkers with a line on a test but who aren't actually sick should get themselves into work. And stop being hypochondriacs taking tests in the first place.
I'm not for any legal restrictions, but wanting medical staff who knowingly have covid to head into hospitals is just daft. Would you want them in with the flu ? +ve test = wfh in our office, and we're all back in.
If they're fit and able to work, and the only reason you know they have the flu is due to a line on the test? Yes I would.
Abolish all testing. Operate on symptoms only. If people are too sick to work then they shouldn't be working, whether that be due to Covid/Flu/Common Cold or A.N.Other bug. If people are carry a virus but are fit and able to work, then get to work.
And then other people get too sick to work.
There is this concept you ought to read up. It's called "contagion".
The virus is widespread in the community anyway. People are going to get it.
Contagion doesn't matter. If 14% of the community has it anyway, then any healthy but virus-carrying colleagues not turning up to work just means you've lost the healthy colleague's assistance, not prevented contagion which is an impossibility.
You only have 14% of the community with it in the first place because of attitudes like yours.
We can easily and should reduce the transmission of contagious illnesses. We did this before COVID and should continue to do so.
Prevalence is not 14%, it is more like 2-4%. Positivity is 14%.
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
Easy answer for the "worse" category. Half the country has probably now been abroad, mostly to the EU, and they will have seen the slightly/vastly longer passport queues for Brits in the non-EU lane
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
A dog has four legs, my cat has four legs therefore my cat is a dog.
Your dog is in many ways like a cat, yes.
I specifically said that covid is not the cold, but that it is like one in many respects. Cats are like dogs in many respects too.
If you had a positive Covid test but no symptoms would you go and visit an immunocompromised friend without taking any precautions?
Does your answer change if you have mild symptoms?
I wouldn't take a test.
I wouldn't visit an immunocompromised friend if I had symptoms of any disease. Common cold, influenza, Covid or A.N. Other.
Psoriasis, asthma, sciatica, heart disease? Lots of diseases are not caused by an infectious agent. I hope your immunocompromised friend is not missing out on your company because of all of those!
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
The Balkan taxi driver oracle has spoken!
Wait til you hear what his Albanian cousin says about AI, aliens and lab leak
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Who is actually saying this? If you are ill, you should rest at home, whether it be covid, flu or a cold.
This whole conversation is based on Bart saying someone with a positive Covid should not stay at home.
"having a positive test for SARS-CoV-2" is not the same thing as "being ill".
It doesn't matter if you are "ill" it matters if you are infectious. A positive LFD means you are almost certainly infectious.
I don't give a shit if you have symptoms, you feeling unwell doesn't affect me in the slightest - I give a shit if you are knowingly spreading a virus.
How do you know if you don't have symptoms and don't take tests?
That's. Not. The. Scenario.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
Who is still testing without symptoms?
Those of us, for example, with a family member who just came down with Covid.
It's not complicated, or burdensome, and prevents passing it on to a lot of other people.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
People are talking about it, quite unprompted, here too. Largely because shedloads appear to have it again. All anecdotal, but it has returned as a topic of conversation.
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
It is not the common cold.
It is endemic like the common cold or flu. It will be forever more.
You work - from time-to-time - on off-shore oil rigs. The day rates on those are astronomical. If you have a Covid outbreak, and a quarter of the people on the rig are unable to work then the cost would be enormous. I would absolutely insist (and assume that operators do) on all employees passing a lateral flow Covid test before coming on board.
Covid is highly contagious, and - while not particularly likely to kill you any more - can easily incapacitate you for three or four days.
Now, if you're a postman, and you test negative but feel fine, then knock yourself out and go to work. But if you are in a confined area with a lot of people you might make sick, then I'd rather you stayed home.
My postie, obviously not feeling 100% this morning, distanced herself a little more to drop a small parcel off, and said as much.
That was fine. Horses for courses. But with home working having become more a thing, and with COVID a bit more serious, the new normal balance ought to have tipped a little.
I'd have happily gone into work with a bit of a cold 3 years ago despite already doing the odd day from home. I'd only mucus troop now if and for the duration it was essential to do so and would be more aware of distance, ventilation and the like.
Yep! I had a cold a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t the plague because I went and got tested. Told the office I would WFH for a few days, not a problem.
Go back to 2019, and I’ve have been that guy sitting at his desk sneezing, blowing his nose every few minutes and probably making everyone else in the office have a cold the following week. Maybe the boss would have shown some pity and sent me home, but more likely he would have praised me for coming in.
The pandemic has led to changed attitudes on this, at least for white-collar office jobs. Hourly-paid jobs in retail, warehouses and hospitality, not so much.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
It's the combination of a bad flu season and a covid wave thanks to BA.6 or whatever we will be on to and waning immunity that's gonna be the real cause of crisis if both happen.
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
Well, judging from what Daughter and Husband are telling me it is nothing like the common cold but much worse.
If someone had a tubercular cough, we wouldn't want them at work, would we?
What Son was cross about was being lied to by his colleague. Plus being put at risk himself and putting me at risk.
BA5 seems to be a bit nastier than earlier omicron variants. I hope they both get through soon.
As ever on covid we have extreme views on either side. It is clearly more dangerous than 'just a cold'. However it is also less dangerous than flu (certainly among our vaccinated public). The difference is the sheer number of people who are infected at the moment. We would not expect to see on in 40 people in the country with flu at any one time.
There is balance to be struck. I think healthcare going back to masks for all for the next period of time is sensible, and not really a hardship for the public (more so for the medics). I think serious thought needs to be had about boosters. I know there is an autumn campaign coming for those who normally get the flu shot, but I wonder that it ought to be widened? I'm not sure either way. Most in the country will have had a bought of omicron (various flavours) so that in itself will provide some assistance, even if its not the greatest at provoking antibodies to fight future infection.
I have a suspicion that those who oppose the return of masks in clinical settings and complain about testing are secretly worried about new lockdown style restrictions. I simply don't think that is on the cards. Can't afford it as a country for one reason.
We couldn't afford the first three either.
Debatable for sure. We had little choice in March 2020.
In hindsight, we did, and we made the wrong choice.
With regret, Sweden called this right, and we did not. 👎
You know that:
(a) over the course of the pandemic, Swedish policy changed, and by mid 2021 Stockholm and the other cities had very similar policies to the UK (b) opinion polls in Sweden are that they got their response wrong, and that there is currently a public enquiry asking why they called it wrong
If you want to know where called it right, it's Denmark. No economic hit. Hardly any excess deaths. Smart policies that minimized the hit to peoples' freedom, and which bought time to allow pretty much everyone to get vaccinated. And they got rid of their last restrictions before Stockholm or the UK.
Japan: much lower infection rate, much lower mortality, no mandated national lockdowns, but lots of mask wearing.
Did this ever happen in the navy, @Dura_Ace ? Few incidents of military corruption in Russia were more shameless than the destroyer captain who stole the bronze propellers from his own ship, replacing them with cheaper steel ones to net 39 million rubles. A final 🧵 on the impact of corruption on Russia's military.
Their military procurement makes the MoD look positively efficient.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
It's the combination of a bad flu season and a covid wave thanks to BA.6 or whatever we will be on to and waning immunity that's gonna be the real cause of crisis if both happen.
iirc Australian has had a bad flu season.
Covid is still a problem in Oz. 36,000 cases and 60 deaths yesterday, multiply by 2.5 to get the UK equivalent
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
Easy answer for the "worse" category. Half the country has probably now been abroad, mostly to the EU, and they will have seen the slightly/vastly longer passport queues for Brits in the non-EU lane
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
Life is pretty rough in all Western countries right now. They all have basically the same policy approach and they all have the same problems.
A potential recession is stalking all of these countries- if they aren't in recession already. Meanwhile inflation rages everywhere (Spain 10.2%) I don;t see how being in or out of Europe really makes that much difference.
The Europeans have the same problems we do. The ECB is preparing to pump money into the debt markets of the weaker economies just to wean the whole thing off negative rates.
A colleague of son came to work yesterday coughing. Denied that he had Covid. Then son heard from manager that colleague did indeed have Covid. Son now worried that he may have caught it and will pass it on to me.
I realise that we have to live with it. But I do think that if you have an infectious disease going to to work and passing it onto colleagues and customers etc is a bit off, no?
Respectfully, no, I wholeheartedly disagree.
There is no legal, or in my view ethical, reason not to go to work with any virus. If all it is, is a cough, then people have forever gone to work with coughs.
We need to start treating Covid like we do the common cold, which its almost as prevalent as. If your son's colleague had the common cold would you object to him being at work with a cough?
Well, judging from what Daughter and Husband are telling me it is nothing like the common cold but much worse.
If someone had a tubercular cough, we wouldn't want them at work, would we?
What Son was cross about was being lied to by his colleague. Plus being put at risk himself and putting me at risk.
BA5 seems to be a bit nastier than earlier omicron variants. I hope they both get through soon.
As ever on covid we have extreme views on either side. It is clearly more dangerous than 'just a cold'. However it is also less dangerous than flu (certainly among our vaccinated public). The difference is the sheer number of people who are infected at the moment. We would not expect to see on in 40 people in the country with flu at any one time.
There is balance to be struck. I think healthcare going back to masks for all for the next period of time is sensible, and not really a hardship for the public (more so for the medics). I think serious thought needs to be had about boosters. I know there is an autumn campaign coming for those who normally get the flu shot, but I wonder that it ought to be widened? I'm not sure either way. Most in the country will have had a bought of omicron (various flavours) so that in itself will provide some assistance, even if its not the greatest at provoking antibodies to fight future infection.
I have a suspicion that those who oppose the return of masks in clinical settings and complain about testing are secretly worried about new lockdown style restrictions. I simply don't think that is on the cards. Can't afford it as a country for one reason.
We couldn't afford the first three either.
Debatable for sure. We had little choice in March 2020.
In hindsight, we did, and we made the wrong choice.
With regret, Sweden called this right, and we did not. 👎
You know that:
(a) over the course of the pandemic, Swedish policy changed, and by mid 2021 Stockholm and the other cities had very similar policies to the UK (b) opinion polls in Sweden are that they got their response wrong, and that there is currently a public enquiry asking why they called it wrong
If you want to know where called it right, it's Denmark. No economic hit. Hardly any excess deaths. Smart policies that minimized the hit to peoples' freedom, and which bought time to allow pretty much everyone to get vaccinated. And they got rid of their last restrictions before Stockholm or the UK.
Japan: much lower infection rate, much lower mortality, no mandated national lockdowns, but lots of mask wearing.
And a better understanding of the importance of ventilation ?
I think if everyone acted in the way St Bart advocated, covid prevalence would be permanently around 30% of the population or so. Perhaps higher. We'd all get more cases than Keir Starmer.
As opposed to the 10-14% prevalence it is now?
Oh well, if that happened, then our immune system would be very primed for the virus whenever we got it, wouldn't it? What exactly would be wrong with that?
We'd have more cases, but those cases would evolve to being the common cold not just as endemic as it.
We had Alpha and Delta that were both evolutions that were more infections and more virulent. Omicron is the first variant that decreased virulence while increasing infectivity.
It is entirely a matter of faith that it would become more like the common cold with mass infection.
I don't think mass infection will reduce virulence because of its evolution, I think mass infection will reduce virulence because our immune systems will be well-primed rather than naive to the virus when its encountered.
Its endemic, we need to live with it. Its not going to stop being endemic.
Rabies. HIV. Smallpox. Polio. Hepatitis.
All viruses that became endemic. Virulence not reduced to that of the common cold.
They are not virally endemic at high prevalence with people getting them repeatedly.
We have almost all (and possibly all) had Covid, possibly multiple times. We have not all had rabies.
Because we take sensible public health measures so as not to get rabies.
We can take sensible public health measures so as not to get COVID-19, starting with vaccination, but also supporting good ventilation and air filtration, appropriate mask wearing, tackling presenteeism, good public health advice and information, etc. These measures will not eliminate COVID-19, but they will reduce morbidity and mortality, just as appropriate virus-specific measures do with flu, rabies, HIV/AIDS etc.
And a fair bit of that is worth doing anyway to deal with all the other airborne diseases out there. Putting air filters in schools, hospitals and other public places ought to be a no-brainer, but we've not tried.
It's the difference between "Living with Covid" as a plan, and as a slogan.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
Easy answer for the "worse" category. Half the country has probably now been abroad, mostly to the EU, and they will have seen the slightly/vastly longer passport queues for Brits in the non-EU lane
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
Life is pretty rough in all Western countries right now. They all have basically the same policy approach and they all have the same problems.
A potential recession is stalking all of these countries- if they aren't in recession already. Meanwhile inflation rages everywhere (Spain 10.2%) I don;t see how being in or out of Europe really makes that much difference.
The Europeans have the same problems we do. The ECB is preparing to pump money into the debt markets of the weaker economies just to wean the whole thing off negative rates.
I wasn't making a comment on Brexit "good or bad". I was saying there is an obvious reason for the big shift in public opinion to "Brexit has made life worse"
If you're travelling to the EU, life is modestly worse, because passport queues, and you can see a sign over your head explaining why: "non EU passport holders"
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
Did this ever happen in the navy, @Dura_Ace ? Few incidents of military corruption in Russia were more shameless than the destroyer captain who stole the bronze propellers from his own ship, replacing them with cheaper steel ones to net 39 million rubles. A final 🧵 on the impact of corruption on Russia's military.
Their military procurement makes the MoD look positively efficient.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
People are talking about it, quite unprompted, here too. Largely because shedloads appear to have it again. All anecdotal, but it has returned as a topic of conversation.
On the street mask wearing in Edinburgh has shot up from basically non existent to about 10% of people. People donning masks before entering shops is way higher as well.
I think Ukraine has only one or two of these in service - prototypes at the start of the invasion. With rocket assisted shells it has a range of over 50km.
https://mobile.twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1542448134411980801 As Russians rapidly withdraw from the famous Snake Island, the Ukrainian army shows how they regularly targeted it- here we see a Ukrainian-developed Bohdana 155mm self-propelled howitzer destroying Russian positions on the island with fire correction from a TB2 drone.
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
People are talking about it, quite unprompted, here too. Largely because shedloads appear to have it again. All anecdotal, but it has returned as a topic of conversation.
Yep, we are definitely getting Season 3. A friend of Mrs DA just emailed me to ask if I can sell her husband's car because he's just died of covid!
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
People are talking about it, quite unprompted, here too. Largely because shedloads appear to have it again. All anecdotal, but it has returned as a topic of conversation.
It’s not mere anecdote. We’re definitely in another wave of infections.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
It's these deep but nuanced insights that makes PB invaluable.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
Relaying forecasts from cab drivers about what might happen at some vaguely defined point in the future with a purely hypothetical new variant in a country 1,900 miles away is as close as one can safely come to Peak PB.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
Let's try that with guns.
Can kill? True. Can make people sick? If injuries count, true. Endemic? True in the USA. Highly prevalent? True in the USA. Can leave people with the sniffles? Not true. Can lead to hospitalisations? True. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? Anything that can injure or make ill is true on this. Airborne? Not true. But the bullets are. Give this half a point.
There we have it. In the USA, guns are 6.5/8 identical to the common cold. In the rest of the world, still 4.5/8, so more alike than unalike.
And yes, I'm being ridiculous, but so was the original statement.
It's coming across that you're so desperate for covid to be nothing more than a common cold that you will go into outright denial and ridiculousness to argue the point.
Covid is not similar to the common cold. Covid is covid. It is itself, and it is its own, unique public health challenge. 4% prevalence is not 100% prevalence. If someone avoids an infection this morning, it does not mean they MUST catch it this afternoon. And "you'll all catch it sooner or later" is a variable feast: how often will they catch it? How many times do they have to roll the dice over the severity of the outcome?
It is always wise to minimise the number of times one becomes diseased. And it is always more altruistic to reduce the number of times one spreads disease to others if it is possible and even quite easy to do such reduction.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
16-year olds are about Goodall's level.
Great to see you in the don't listen to people with votes ranks.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
Easy answer for the "worse" category. Half the country has probably now been abroad, mostly to the EU, and they will have seen the slightly/vastly longer passport queues for Brits in the non-EU lane
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
Life is pretty rough in all Western countries right now. They all have basically the same policy approach and they all have the same problems.
A potential recession is stalking all of these countries- if they aren't in recession already. Meanwhile inflation rages everywhere (Spain 10.2%) I don;t see how being in or out of Europe really makes that much difference.
The Europeans have the same problems we do. The ECB is preparing to pump money into the debt markets of the weaker economies just to wean the whole thing off negative rates.
I wasn't making a comment on Brexit "good or bad". I was saying there is an obvious reason for the big shift in public opinion to "Brexit has made life worse"
If you're travelling to the EU, life is modestly worse, because passport queues, and you can see a sign over your head explaining why: "non EU passport holders"
Not just that - the import/export small businesses, lorry drivers, farmers and fisherfolk all have friend and relatives, and many people are quite capable of joining the dots. And people know that shutting out EU workers will have exacerbated the labour shortages post-pandemic. Some may even understand that a weak currency has helped make everything more expensive.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats. You need to read the prior paragraph too:
“There were 148,606 deaths where COVID-19 was identified as the underlying cause of death in England and Wales between the weeks ending 13 March 2020 and 1 April 2022, compared with 35,007 deaths due to flu and pneumonia.
“In contrast, there were 170,600 deaths, where COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate as cause or contributory factor, compared to 219,207 deaths involving flu and pneumonia.”
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats.
No I haven't. The ONS specifically lists them as the same. It draws the distinction between primary cause and contributory which does show a bigger difference but in the end if you die and covid or flu has some part to play in it then it doesn't really matter if it was the primary cause or only contributory.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats.
No I haven't. The ONS specifically lists them as the same. It draws the distinction between primary cause and contributory which does show a bigger difference but in the end if you die and covid or flu has some part to play in it then it doesn't really matter if it was the primary cause or only contributory.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been the underlying cause of death in more than four times as many deaths as flu and pneumonia in England and Wales since March 2020. Annually, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than those due to flu and pneumonia in any year since 1929.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
16-year olds are about Goodall's level.
Great to see you in the don't listen to people with votes ranks.
16 year olds can't vote in UK general elections, even if the UK government allowed indyref2 it could make voting limited to 18 and over
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats.
No I haven't. The ONS specifically lists them as the same. It draws the distinction between primary cause and contributory which does show a bigger difference but in the end if you die and covid or flu has some part to play in it then it doesn't really matter if it was the primary cause or only contributory.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been the underlying cause of death in more than four times as many deaths as flu and pneumonia in England and Wales since March 2020. Annually, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than those due to flu and pneumonia in any year since 1929.
Yes but as I said, whether it is the primary cause or just contributory is pretty immaterial if you are dead.
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats.
No I haven't. The ONS specifically lists them as the same. It draws the distinction between primary cause and contributory which does show a bigger difference but in the end if you die and covid or flu has some part to play in it then it doesn't really matter if it was the primary cause or only contributory.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been the underlying cause of death in more than four times as many deaths as flu and pneumonia in England and Wales since March 2020. Annually, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than those due to flu and pneumonia in any year since 1929.
And, of course, it varies depending on whether covid has been suppressed or is in a big wave:
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats. You need to read the prior paragraph too:
“There were 148,606 deaths where COVID-19 was identified as the underlying cause of death in England and Wales between the weeks ending 13 March 2020 and 1 April 2022, compared with 35,007 deaths due to flu and pneumonia.
“In contrast, there were 170,600 deaths, where COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate as cause or contributory factor, compared to 219,207 deaths involving flu and pneumonia.”
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
16-year olds are about Goodall's level.
Great to see you in the don't listen to people with votes ranks.
16 year olds can't vote in UK general elections, even if the UK government allowed indyref2 it could make voting limited to 18 and over
Not a chance. They would not reverse the decision of the last referendum where 16 year olds had the vote.
I would like to ask all those that replied to give a concrete example of how as I suspect most are simply biased by their own views of Brexit.
Easy answer for the "worse" category. Half the country has probably now been abroad, mostly to the EU, and they will have seen the slightly/vastly longer passport queues for Brits in the non-EU lane
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
Life is pretty rough in all Western countries right now. They all have basically the same policy approach and they all have the same problems.
A potential recession is stalking all of these countries- if they aren't in recession already. Meanwhile inflation rages everywhere (Spain 10.2%) I don;t see how being in or out of Europe really makes that much difference.
The Europeans have the same problems we do. The ECB is preparing to pump money into the debt markets of the weaker economies just to wean the whole thing off negative rates.
I wasn't making a comment on Brexit "good or bad". I was saying there is an obvious reason for the big shift in public opinion to "Brexit has made life worse"
If you're travelling to the EU, life is modestly worse, because passport queues, and you can see a sign over your head explaining why: "non EU passport holders"
I had an unexpected Brexit benefit this week. I ordered some new walking boots from the EU (not in my size in UK stock) and paid less than the UK price as no VAT was charged on the invoice, as outside the EU. I expected 20% VAT and perhaps customs duty, but none was asked for on delivery. Presumably because even after 6 years of foreknowledge our government lets things come in un-inspected.
The £50 pound saving has gone to the same website, for some sandals and other bits. Sorry about that trade deficit Rishi, but cost of living and all that...
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
The common cold is now something our bodies fully understand how to handle so we get the sniffles for a couple of days but there is little (0.01% say) chance that if we spread a cold round it will kill people.
That ain't the case with COVID at the moment - your it's just like a cold response doesn't tally with the fact that Covid can kill people...
The cold can kill people.
Driving can kill people.
People rarely die of the cold virus, more likely secondary infections in the elderly.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
The common cold isn’t even one disease. It’s mostly rhinovirus infection, although something like a sixth of colds are a coronavirus (particularly OC43, which is distantly related to SARS-CoV-2) and there’s dozens of other viruses that can be the cause.
Interesting though that, according to the ONS, since the start of the pandemic we have had 170,000 deaths where covid is recorded as cause or contributing factor but in the same period we have had 220,000 deaths where flu or pneumonia is listed as a cause or contributing factor.
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
You’ve misunderstood those stats.
No I haven't. The ONS specifically lists them as the same. It draws the distinction between primary cause and contributory which does show a bigger difference but in the end if you die and covid or flu has some part to play in it then it doesn't really matter if it was the primary cause or only contributory.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been the underlying cause of death in more than four times as many deaths as flu and pneumonia in England and Wales since March 2020. Annually, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than those due to flu and pneumonia in any year since 1929.
Yes but as I said, whether it is the primary cause or just contributory is pretty immaterial if you are dead.
Yes, we've had too often people say that eg the common cold or influenza don't kill, but secondary infections they bring about can.
It doesn't make much of a real difference if the secondary infection the primary infection trigger is what killed, or the primary infection did directly.
Would you take part in a referendum held without a Section 30 order?
Would 67% Would not 17%
Whoops!! Douglas Ross needs a wee rethink.
If a third of Scots don't vote in a Scottish indyref2 after the UK government tells them to boycott it that would be well down on 2014.
53% of Scots oppose an indyref2 too and of course the UK government would correctly ignore the result and refuse to make any change whatsoever to the Union after it
Where did the 1/3 come from? And below what percentage of the total electorate voting does it take for a result to be invalid?
The fact only 67% say they would vote even before the UK government tells Scots to boycott it (and No is still on 51%). This government would of course refuse to grant a s30 so the result would be invalid whatever the turnout.
However there is also now a strong chance Boris will call a UK general election either in the autumn or next Spring on a ticket of stopping a weakening of Brexit and indyref2 with a coalition of chaos of Labour, the LDs and SNP ie before October 2023
You missed the question. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. My question was where did the 1/3 come from and what turnout is acceptable?
No turnout is acceptable as the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government would ignore the result whatever the turnout
You may be right, but a majority on a respectable turn out might be difficult to ignore, as the SNP use it as grist for the grievance mill. The only way to settle it w beould be with a sanctioned referendum. While I don't think Independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, the idea that Scotland has the right to independence if it chooses is broadly popular. It helps Unionists to be sensitive to that.
Of course, it seems the SNP have jettisoned The Settled Will notion in favour of an attempt to eek out a narrow majority for independence. I also think this is risky, ala Brexit. You don't want to start your political project with half the country against you.
You’re assuming that all No voters are anti-Scottish. They’re not.
Not all Unionists are cowardly hypocrites either. I think folk who are for the Union but feel pretty strongly that it's up to people in Scotland to decide whether there's a referendum or not are going to be an important factor, eg
They had a referendum in 2014, they are not getting another for a generation
16-year olds are about Goodall's level.
Great to see you in the don't listen to people with votes ranks.
16 year olds can't vote in UK general elections, even if the UK government allowed indyref2 it could make voting limited to 18 and over
R Rate of Flu during the 1918 global pandemic: About 1.8 at most R Rate of Omicron: Greater than 10.
No idea if that is true or not, but assuming it is... so what? What do you propose we 'do' about it?
In the real world, people are getting on with their lives. Waves of covid and flu come and go. They will presumably do so forever.
What exactly can or indeed should be 'done' about any of this, beyond annual boosters?
If you are person who couldn't have the covid vaccine then the comparison is: If you come in contact with someone with flu you probably won't get flu If you come in contact with someone with covid you will probably get covid.
This is all predicated on "Should people who knowingly have covid and are infectious just head on out into the world and spread it about like a selfish fuckwit"
And the answer from some is "flu/colds exists so people should spread covid about like a selfish fuckwit"
My point is that Covid is vastly more infectious that other diseases so the blithe assumption that you can treat it like the spread of flu/cold is wrong.
Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally.
People who are immunocompromised are more likely to catch the cold than Covid as the prevalence of it is higher, so yes you can treat it the same. They might get the cold, they might get Covid, but viruses exist and it is for the immunocompromised to determine how they want to treat their own health, not every other person on the planet to live as if they and everyone else were immunocompromised too.
"Yes people should spread it about, and doing so is not being a selfish fuckwit but just acting rationally."
I've a lot of time for you in general and many times have agreed with you on covid, but you've jumped the shark on this one. If you know you have covid, even assymptomatically, its the right thing to do to avoid contact with others. It just is.
We can't eliminate covid. The chinese ensured that in late 2019 and early 2020 when they deliberately covered up and let flights spread the disease world wide. But you can still practice basic disease control to reduce the disease burden. Its not normal to have so many people with one disease at the same time. We all hope this state doesn't continue forever. Happily most of normal life is back - such as Glastonbury, full crowds at sport and so on. But taking simple measures to protect others when you know you are a potential risk is so simple I can't believe you would argue against it.
BiB: Yes it is. It is absolutely normal and standard to have so many airborne viruses like common cold at the same time.
Yes, I know, COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal.
" COVID isn't the common cold, but it's like it and yes that disease absolutely is normal."
This is your error. Its so far away from being like the common cold to be untrue.
How?
Can kill? True for both. Can make people sick? True for both. Endemic? True for both. Highly prevalent? True for both. Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both. Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both. Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both. Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
1972 Mini vs 2015 Bugatti Veyron.
Covid is dangerous. It just is. Its buggering up the NHS right now, and people will be dying of other things. Would you really want a sick relative in hospital treated by someone who is covid positive? Even with all the masking and other PPE?
Morning all. On covid, there will be no new restrictions, figures are moving to a weekly dump from tomorrow, SAGE doesnt meet any more over it, patients in intensive care/ventilation remain at a low end level compared to the entire pandemic and these waves will come and go for years. The media will grafually become less and less obsessive as people increasingly ignore the fluctuations of another endemic virus.
Or, ya know, we can go back to taping off paperbacks and compulsory masking up for the gauntlet of doom run from pub table to toilet and the weekly Sainsbury cough raffle.
I agree with this, pretty much, and yet...
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
Calm down - no-one knows what the winter will look like. The challenge in this country is getting the NHS ready in case there is a large wave.
Throughout the various waves of Covid no-one in my immediate circles got it. This last week has seen my best friend and my niece's husband succumb - and both from different sources. I have tested negative as has my niece.
Comments
Can kill? True for both.
Can make people sick? True for both.
Endemic? True for both.
Highly prevalent? True for both.
Can leave people with the sniffles? True for both.
Can lead to hospitalisations? True for both.
Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? True for both.
Airborne? True for both.
In what way is it not remotely similar?
If you had a positive Covid test but no symptoms would you go and visit an immunocompromised friend without taking any precautions?
Does your answer change if you have mild symptoms?
If you are right then the one thing that won't work is finding the employees needed by taking them from other countries. Since 'more services are needed' for each extra unit of labour (and their dependents).
The extra are not all babies. Birth rate is currently falling, though obviously those there are should be sent down mines and up chimneys from the age of 5 or so.
I wouldn't visit an immunocompromised friend if I had symptoms of any disease. Common cold, influenza, Covid or A.N. Other.
But they won't all get it at the same time, unless I'm exceptionally unlucky.
It's massively worse for me if half of customer service team gets Covid at the same time, than if they get it over the course of a couple of months.
(Surely they kept them before that? Perhaps differently?)
Nonetheless, the economic news is all grim again.
Go back to 2019, and I’ve have been that guy sitting at his desk sneezing, blowing his nose every few minutes and probably making everyone else in the office have a cold the following week. Maybe the boss would have shown some pity and sent me home, but more likely he would have praised me for coming in.
The pandemic has led to changed attitudes on this, at least for white-collar office jobs. Hourly-paid jobs in retail, warehouses and hospitality, not so much.
I cannot remember the precise number, but it takes 4 workers to support 1 retiree. It is the grey vote dragging us down again...
(a) over the course of the pandemic, Swedish policy changed, and by mid 2021 Stockholm and the other cities had very similar policies to the UK
(b) opinion polls in Sweden are that they got their response wrong, and that there is currently a public enquiry asking why they called it wrong
If you want to know where called it right, it's Denmark. No economic hit. Hardly any excess deaths. Smart policies that minimized the hit to peoples' freedom, and which bought time to allow pretty much everyone to get vaccinated. And they got rid of their last restrictions before Stockholm or the UK.
But for actual insight, truth, all those sorts of boring old fashioned things, it would be great if occasionally surveys went a little deeper into what people's rational or otherwise justifications are for their binary choices.
The scenario is someone who has tested and got a positive result.
We can easily and should reduce the transmission of contagious illnesses. We did this before COVID and should continue to do so.
The Brexit unforced error is going to be a weight round the Conservative Party’s neck for decades.
Driving? Around 8 to 10 a day nationally. Even after vaccines etc we are at best losing 50 a day to covid.
Phillips P. OBrien
@PhillipsPOBrien
The fight over Snake Island reveals something that seems to be a pattern in this war. If the Russians can’t rely on overwhelming artillery firepower, they struggle accomplish anything. In any engagement requiring initiative and adaptability, the Ukrainians seem to prevail.
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1542442281717882880
You have a positive Covid test but no symptoms, do you visit your immunocompromised friend without taking any precautions?
Mind you, waiting for new signings at Leicester is a re-run of Waiting for Godot...
We can take sensible public health measures so as not to get COVID-19, starting with vaccination, but also supporting good ventilation and air filtration, appropriate mask wearing, tackling presenteeism, good public health advice and information, etc. These measures will not eliminate COVID-19, but they will reduce morbidity and mortality, just as appropriate virus-specific measures do with flu, rabies, HIV/AIDS etc.
Today for the first time in ages someone spoke to me spontaneously about Covid as a returning threat in the future. I got a cab to Tivat airport, to hire a car, and the taxi driver wanted to chat about it. Cases are just picking up again here - only 200 a day, but it is a tiny country and that's the worst since Feb
He reckoned we are in for a brutal winter with New New Covid plus economic meltdown
He's a cab driver not a virologist, of course, but the fact people are talking about it once more, and people like him have the new case numbers to hand, is a concern. A tiny straw in a faintly ominous wind
Pyrrhus got killed in Argos by a woman throwing a roof tile at his head, Antiochos tried robbing a temple of its treasures but despite his massive nearby army didn't take enough soldiers and got killed by the locals.
Edited extra bit: I should say that Pyrrhus was invading Argos at the time.
A dog has four legs, my cat has four legs therefore my cat is a dog.
It's a new accounting year tomorrow.
That's enough to say "it is making life worse", and it is also concrete and irrefutable. It's not a vague thing that can be explained away by other factors
Even though its a 80 seat majority government whose Cabinet is rammed with ultra leavers.
I specifically said that covid is not the cold, but that it is like one in many respects. Cats are like dogs in many respects too.
It's not complicated, or burdensome, and prevents passing it on to a lot of other people.
Largely because shedloads appear to have it again. All anecdotal, but it has returned as a topic of conversation.
iirc Australian has had a bad flu season.
Few incidents of military corruption in Russia were more shameless than the destroyer captain who stole the bronze propellers from his own ship, replacing them with cheaper steel ones to net 39 million rubles. A final 🧵 on the impact of corruption on Russia's military.
Their military procurement makes the MoD look positively efficient.
Not terrible, but not great
A potential recession is stalking all of these countries- if they aren't in recession already. Meanwhile inflation rages everywhere (Spain 10.2%) I don;t see how being in or out of Europe really makes that much difference.
The Europeans have the same problems we do. The ECB is preparing to pump money into the debt markets of the weaker economies just to wean the whole thing off negative rates.
It's the difference between "Living with Covid" as a plan, and as a slogan.
If you're travelling to the EU, life is modestly worse, because passport queues, and you can see a sign over your head explaining why: "non EU passport holders"
With rocket assisted shells it has a range of over 50km.
https://mobile.twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1542448134411980801
As Russians rapidly withdraw from the famous Snake Island, the Ukrainian army shows how they regularly targeted it- here we see a Ukrainian-developed Bohdana 155mm self-propelled howitzer destroying Russian positions on the island with fire correction from a TB2 drone.
Can kill? True.
Can make people sick? If injuries count, true.
Endemic? True in the USA.
Highly prevalent? True in the USA.
Can leave people with the sniffles? Not true.
Can lead to hospitalisations? True.
Affects those immunocompromised or otherwise health-impaired worse? Anything that can injure or make ill is true on this.
Airborne? Not true. But the bullets are. Give this half a point.
There we have it. In the USA, guns are 6.5/8 identical to the common cold. In the rest of the world, still 4.5/8, so more alike than unalike.
And yes, I'm being ridiculous, but so was the original statement.
It's coming across that you're so desperate for covid to be nothing more than a common cold that you will go into outright denial and ridiculousness to argue the point.
Covid is not similar to the common cold. Covid is covid. It is itself, and it is its own, unique public health challenge.
4% prevalence is not 100% prevalence. If someone avoids an infection this morning, it does not mean they MUST catch it this afternoon. And "you'll all catch it sooner or later" is a variable feast: how often will they catch it? How many times do they have to roll the dice over the severity of the outcome?
It is always wise to minimise the number of times one becomes diseased. And it is always more altruistic to reduce the number of times one spreads disease to others if it is possible and even quite easy to do such reduction.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/howcoronaviruscovid19compareswithfluasacauseofdeath/2022-05-23
I am not sure people would have thought that was the case. As I said, the current reaction to covid (not least amongst commentators on here) is very different to that for Flu or pneumonia.
And again it is worth repeating I think people should stay at home if they are confirmed with covid - just as they would with flu or pneumonia.
“There were 148,606 deaths where COVID-19 was identified as the underlying cause of death in England and Wales between the weeks ending 13 March 2020 and 1 April 2022, compared with 35,007 deaths due to flu and pneumonia.
“In contrast, there were 170,600 deaths, where COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate as cause or contributory factor, compared to 219,207 deaths involving flu and pneumonia.”
So it still had an impact.
You are defending the indefensible.
The £50 pound saving has gone to the same website, for some sandals and other bits. Sorry about that trade deficit Rishi, but cost of living and all that...
It doesn't make much of a real difference if the secondary infection the primary infection trigger is what killed, or the primary infection did directly.
https://youtu.be/DAYyMIZNxfM
Covid is dangerous. It just is. Its buggering up the NHS right now, and people will be dying of other things. Would you really want a sick relative in hospital treated by someone who is covid positive? Even with all the masking and other PPE?