Categories
The Masque of the Red Death – politicalbetting.com
The Masque of the Red Death – politicalbetting.com
Who are you planning to kill this Christmas? Is there an aged aunt who you haven’t seen for a while? Perhaps your parents? If you’re young enough, maybe you have your grandparents in your sights. After all, it is the time to spread peace, goodwill and Covid-19 to all mankind.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I think the government's overwhelming priority is to avoid the scenes we saw in Italy and presumably aren't seeing in Poland at the moment. It's not especially nice for the staff in the NHS who are probably having to work extra hard in not especially nice conditions to keep things this way.
Life is about making tough choices and what we have at the moment is about as tough as it gets. The patterns across Europe are strikingly similar. What they say to me is that when it comes to it, a lot of people aren't nearly as inclined to protect the vulnerable from COVID as Alastair Meeks is.
Planning on it being just the two of us for xmas day.
Great for the kids to open their presents but for me I enjoy christmas films and Christmas songs and can happily leave everything else.
On the contrary, that is exactly what we’ve been doing in schools for the last three months, which is why even as infections stabilise in other groups they are skyrocketing among teenagers.
This is particularly difficult as the government are now ordering that most of those in close contact with positive cases should not be sent home, as it does too much damage to their attendance records. So only the children sitting within one metre of a positive case are quarantined, not those who have been with them in a poorly ventilated room for six hours.
Biden 1.04
Democrats 1.04
Biden PV 1.03
Biden PV 49-51.9% 1.04
Trump PV 46-48.9% 1.04
Trump ECV 210-239 1.07
Biden ECV 300-329 1.07
Biden ECV Hcap -48.5 1.06
Biden ECV Hcap -63.5 1.07
Trump ECV Hcap +81.5 1.02
AZ Dem 1.04
GA Dem 1.04
MI Dem 1.03
NV Dem 1.03
PA Dem 1.04
WI Dem 1.05
Trump to leave before end of term NO 1.1
Trump exit date 2021 1.09
The real problem isn't families gathering for a week, it's people out and about, especially boozing. But the 'hospitality industry' is worth maybe 1/4 of the country's GDP so taking the sword to it is problematic.
The Gov't are doing okay at the moment with the controls. What we really should be emphasising above all else is WEAR A BLOODY MASK
I’ve been considering a complaint to the ASA about that ad they’ve put out telling people to look at their website for new information, when actually they don’t have the information yet.
I mention this because she is refusing to have a gathering this year, citing precisely your point Edmund.
I enjoy Boris bashing as a pastime but I can't see what the Gov't have done wrong. In fact they seem to be finally getting a balance on control of the virus.
The real problem is that people are idiots and will flout the rules. Again. And do stupid things like NOT WEAR A MASK! They go out shopping, boozing, meeting up maskless and clueless. In summertime they flock to the beach.
The real message should be to drill home mask wearing until the vaccine programme rolls out.
Seriously though I was involved in a discussion about this yesterday. It's not just 'family getting together'. No man, as Donne said, is an island. Grannie and Grandpa might not have been out anywhere, been in the same room as anyone else and so on, for two months, but, as @ydoethur said, any children aged between 5-18 have been at school, and students will have been at university and quite probably several of any family group will have been to work. And if there are two sets of grandparents the potential spread could reasonably be described as exponential.
But they are so stubborn and arrogant they won’t do it. One trust in Yorkshire that has worked out it can’t possibly continue like this and will be closing early has been ordered to change its mind (although it has refused; as is, amusingly, its right under Cummings’ botched reforms). Meanwhile they continue to talk as if exams are going to be happening next year, when the only way to make that happen is send all year groups home apart from 11 and 13, which they’ve also ruled out.
I hope when all this is over these bastards are jailed good and hard. Because they will deserve it.
Turkey’s standing by the door...
What else can one reasonably do?
And the burden of proof is on the plaintiff.
On topic, it is hard to understand this obsession with the great Christmas family gathering. One thought: why not have an extra bank holiday in the summer after the vaccine is here to allow for a delayed family celebration, announced at the same time as an extension of current rules through year-end? Give people something to look forward to.
However, for a politician to tie up years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars suing somebody for so transparent and ludicrous a lie, with no certainty of winning (as proving malice is quite hard) is unlikely. Much more probable that they will try to get her struck from the bar on the grounds that she has lied about the law.
Events are unwinding very much in the fashion described by Sinclair Lewis in the novel It Can't Happen Here. Trump = Buzz Windrip.
Often I have had stray junior doctors over on Christmas or Boxing Day, particularly those working over the holidays with no local family. It seems appreciated, but not really on the cards this year though.
For me, this is the key. I am willing to take the risk for myself and let the younger members of my family make their own choices. For all bar 1% of those who get this it is a relatively trivial illness that many do not even know they've had. Whether the more vulnerable members can take part really depends on the vaccine. Here's hoping.
Thus we see once again the country (and indeed all humankind) divide broadly into the two great tribes of the Altruists and the Selfish.
It's like those selfish bastards who roar around on motorbikes. Lots of lovely fun for them, but the noise pollution for those who live within a couple of miles of the road is no fun.
I've been making the point for ages about the release of students from university being a super-spreader event. It doesn't matter how desperate the pubs may be for drunken singalongs to "Last Christmas" (eugh) and big sitdown Christmas dinners. It doesn't matter how desperate people may be to see Granny and Aunt Flo and Cousin Vinny. It isn't safe. But it will be in the not to distant future.
If we had a responsible government whose credibility on these matters was clear, then it would be a simple message. You've had to put up with so many privations this year and we have to ask for one more. But 2021 will be better than 2020 - the vaccine is nearly hear and we will defeat Covid. But until then it Isn't Safe for you to meet up with friends and family unless you want them or possibly you to die before the vaccine rolls out.
Sadly we have wazzocks as a government so I won't be at all surprised to see Shagger announce something barely credible and a quarter baked, with knobbers like Jenrick sent onto the media to confuse it even further. The result? Too many people will go "fuck this" and January will be sobering.
Yes I know Hancock has said everything will be in place, but that's all we've got to go von.
If we had no prospect of a vaccine, I'd be shrugging my shoulders and thinking I'm going to catch it at some point anyway - but with a vaccine only months away why risk catching Covid now?
How stupid that would be.
Re Christmas, I suspect the government are having to allow some relaxation, because they know it will happen anyway. For all our sakes we should try to be good as much as possible, but this has been a rubbish year, and for many Christmas is a valuable time.
Fine work there.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-understand-color-office.pdf
So mask wearing clearly isn't a key element of the answer. That doesn't make it a bad thing, and it should remain part of the strategy, but overly focussing on it, as a few PB'ers tend to do, is missing that the difference it is making appears to be at the margins.
First, would any other Prime Minister be contemplating letting people have a week off from a crisis like this? We know that a week of fun and extended family will take about a month of restrictions to claw back.
Second, the government has prided itself on not giving into pressure when it comes to sacking members of the government. Yet on something that actually matters, it appears set to give into the worst sort of pressure without even trying.
And on Christmas my wife and I have already cancelled our family get together of 10 and will spend Christmas day on our own
Somebody shoot me.
To a certain extent, therefore, the government is doing no more than bowing to the inevitable. Whether they should or not is more complicated. Personally, I would go for robust advice but make it clear that there will be no enforcement. I think being mealy mouthed about the advice is the worst of both worlds and increases the proportion who will be reckless.
Given the record systems we have, or ought to have, in GP surgeries, getting everyone done ought to be possible, but there are quite a lot of people who are not registered with a GP, or are registered with GP's away from their current homes. That situation may well have improved, of course, since I had anything to do with it, of course.
If we were going to have some other arrangement, then there will have to be some system for identifying people who have had jab one, and ensuring they are called for jab two.
Mr. Stopper, ha. I must say I like both Easter and Bonfire Night a lot more. For Easter, it's cheaper and easier, and you don't really have to bother if you don't want to. Likewise, you can turn up to bonfires at night or not bother and no-one cares.
Christmas present-buying is not great fun.
Mrs Big - "Well doctor, my husband and I aren't getting as much pleasure from love making as in the past ...."-
Doctor - "Ok, that's perfectly natural as you're both in your eighties, and when did you notice this problem?"
Mr Big - "Five times last night and twice this morning ..."
.....................................................................................
As they say the old ones are the best .... in more than one sense .....
Is it to do with the chap in Robinson Crusoe?
Well done Alastair. I am becoming increasingly skeptical that covid 19 is of such severity that it demands all these restrictions. There is no second wave of deaths comparable to the first. Perhaps 'long covid' is a sufficient threat to demand it but we aren't getting much data on it.
It is recognised that covid causes severe clotting problems that persist for a couple of months, causing strokes, heart attacks etc.
ICU is gruelling, ventilation particularly so, both physically and psychologically and take months to recover. The physically frail have very low survival rates on covid ICU. 90% of those on British ICU had no severe pre existing morbidities. Quite a few younger adults of all ethnicities when Mrs Foxy was working there last week.
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-and-immunity-important.html
I'll wait. I fail to see how normal safety testing of any vaccine can be complete before end 2021, even though governments have signed blank cheques (and as usual, indemnified producers against legal claims).
Leclerc's odds to be best of the rest have lengthened a little to 3.25. I think it's likelier to be a toss up between him and Perez (whose 1.67 is way too short with three races to go and just 4 points covering those two and Ricciardo).
I've got an elderly uncle in Penzance who says he'd like to see me soon. I'll ber glad to, when we've been vaccinated. I wouldn't dream of gonig sooner.
I have disliked governments before. I have liked governments before. I've been indifferent.
I fucking despise this government and everything it represents. Corrupt, Inept, Arrogant, Hypocritical.
And best wishes for your trip to Cornwall; lovely place to go, shame about the way the economics have gone.
Then, on the other hand, you have things like this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/22/let-us-disobey-churches-defy-lockdown-with-secret-meetings
Whatever people tell opinion polls many will find an excuse for exempting the things they want to do. Permanent lockdown, with no strategy for bringing it to an end, will not hold.
I'm not sure the vaccine is a big enough carrot. Everyone has already been told to expect only some people to receive it by mid-2021.
I think it's possible that more people will die of Covid after the vaccine announcement on the 9th November then died before it.