Hally
Well-Known Member
I'll more than happily settle for pool and balcony party at the minuteI think something will be possible. 8k people with sweaty armpits in each others faces in ushuaia as planes fly over, not as confident
☣ Coronavirus ☣
- Thread starter ibiza77
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MrHullMysterious
Well-Known Member
I think that at least is highly probableI'll more than happily settle for pool and balcony party at the minute
djedwardsmith
Active Member
Whilst that is great news - Would just urge caution and make sure he continues to rest for the next few days - we thought my mum was through it all when after a week she was able to get up and about but then it hit her hard after about 8/9 days.Father in law out of bed this afternoon after a pretty rough last 5 days!
hopefully he is on the mend!
kimajy
Well-Known Member
I want to go to Ibiza
So do I .... but when you think about the whole situation top-down it really doesn't make sense for people to be going abroad on holidays.
All the variants are already all over. What’s the difference especially if there is testing along the way?
kimajy
Well-Known Member
Different variants are dominant in different countries, and vaccines are not all effective against transmission / different variants. Testing without supervised lengthy quarantine basically doesn't work. The approach which has worked is the one in Aus / NZ - i.e. virtual closed borders and supervised quarantine for international arrivals as soon as domestic prevalence is driven down to near-negligible.
Unless holidays are scrapped until the world catches up with vaccinations and drives down prevalence in areas with sufficient controls on their own border entry to justify opening travel corridors again, you are going to get importation of variants from high prevalence areas and the cycle begins again. UK is well placed to detect imported and community-transmitted variants but very few other countries have that capability. But UK is likely to vaccinate most people with vaccine that likely does not inhibit transmission of SA variant and domestic mutations could easily follow until incidence is driven low enough that it's unlikely. There is already a drive to root out SA variant here and stamp down hard where it is found, so potentially it could be eliminated here.
Once vaccine development and deployment is sufficiently advanced then testing alone might become viable but until then from a strategic standpoint the obvious thing to keep prohibited until 2022 is leisure travel. In the spirit of "we're all in this together" which impacts areas like the one I live in that has next to no incidence of Covid and is in full lockdown for months, such international travel restrictions would most likely be appropriate regardless of which vaccine people have been given so as not to be discriminatory, and to make sure other countries' permissiveness did not result in vaccine discrimination adversely affecting people who got given less effective vaccines - that is very much the over-riding approach taken in UK to date anyway.
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The UK and SA strains are already everywhere though. Nothing is being completely eliminated so we can forget that. Best we can do is test people coming and going. Isolated places like Ibiza should just rapid test everyone arriving. Not perfect, but good enough. We’re going to have to learn to live with it better and hope the Oxford vaccine keeps people out of the hospital. No country will have the appetite to completely close off borders at this point, and I don’t think that would work anyway.
Not directly related - but just seen that the Government have approved Heathrow airport levying a £8.90 tax on all new flight ticket bookings to help them get back some of the billions they have lost out on / had to back pay to airlines during the pandemic... great! Ignoring the fact that many airlines were in a poor financial situation pre-COVID anyway
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kimajy
Well-Known Member
Only if prevalence is exceptionally low so that every arrival can be lab tested and every positive genomic sequenced. Rapid tests are nowhere near reliable enough to detect many asymptomatic or mild cases / those in incubation and early stages. It's presumably why having those tests at events etc. is already seen as a step towards detection but not really a reliable solution ?
FlatErik
Well-Known Member
For Germans here (although I'm a strong believer this is happening EVERYWHERE) ...the Dutch newspapers are calling this the Panic Paper Scandal.
Secret documents have leaked with details about how science and government worked together to create "fear and pliability" under the German people to create more support for hard measures, such as the lockdown.
The details of the ideas that the scientific world and Seehofers ministry had are close to psychological warfare. "The strong feeling of helplessness must be curbed by the impression of strong state intervention" says one of the policy makers. Another quote says: "We must create a shock effect under the population with scenario's where old people wait in vain for a hospitalbed but die painfully in the end".
www.welt.de
www.welt.de
If this is not the government, scientific world and the MSM creating fear-porn, I don't know what is.
There was an earlier example in Denmark and the Dutch newspapers and talkshows are under fire because it has leaked they were pushed by the government to only invite pro-lockdown guests and promote fear instead of criticism.
Secret documents have leaked with details about how science and government worked together to create "fear and pliability" under the German people to create more support for hard measures, such as the lockdown.
The details of the ideas that the scientific world and Seehofers ministry had are close to psychological warfare. "The strong feeling of helplessness must be curbed by the impression of strong state intervention" says one of the policy makers. Another quote says: "We must create a shock effect under the population with scenario's where old people wait in vain for a hospitalbed but die painfully in the end".
Corona-Papier: Opposition fordert Aufklärung - WELT
Ein Bericht von WELT AM SONNTAG hat gezeigt, wie das Innenministerium für eine Corona-Analyse Wissenschaftler einspannte. Oppositionspolitiker fordern nun Aufklärung im Bundestag – und warnen vor einem Glaubwürdigkeitsschaden für Wissenschaft und Politik.
Interner E-Mail-Verkehr: Innenministerium spannte Wissenschaftler ein - WELT
Ein umfangreicher Schriftwechsel, der WELT AM SONNTAG vorliegt, zeigt: In der ersten Hochphase der Pandemie wirkte das Haus von Innenminister Horst Seehofer auf Forscher ein. Daraufhin lieferten sie Ergebnisse für ein dramatisches „Geheimpapier“ des Ministeriums.
If this is not the government, scientific world and the MSM creating fear-porn, I don't know what is.
There was an earlier example in Denmark and the Dutch newspapers and talkshows are under fire because it has leaked they were pushed by the government to only invite pro-lockdown guests and promote fear instead of criticism.
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djmicd123
Active Member
It seems the goalposts have changed in some minds about what the aim is with these restrictions (including those on travel). The aim at the start of this pandemic was to place limitations on the way we live so that we can reduce the immense pressure on the health service.
Now, there is significant confidence that all currently approved vaccines will stop severe disease and mortality in all strains that have been identified - including the SA variant. People may catch Covid twice (from two different strains) and might become unwell, but the vaccine will almost certainly prevent severe disease.
This means that hospitalisations from Covid should be a thing of the past, once all at risk groups have been vaccinated.
What you've said above @kimajy is about trying to eradicate the illness altogether. Bringing cases down to an absolutely minimal and stopping travel abroad so as to avoid new variants entering. This was never the aim of social restrictions and CMO said from Day 1 that we will be living with this virus forever - it is unrealistic to get cases to zero.
I take the view that we will reach the best possible position in July/August 2021. Most adults in the UK will be vaccinated, preventing serious illness and death, and I don't see it changing much year on year. The point has always been about stopping the health service from being overwhelmed and the current vaccines will almost certainly do that.
Is it right to stop international travel this summer because the virus is in circulation, even if people no longer become seriously ill?
djmicd123
Active Member
I work alongside doctors and nurses and have seen first hand how overwhelmed the NHS has been due to Covid. There is no "fear porn" here, only immense pressure on clinicians. The "fear" you speak of is real and the measures are proportionate given the number of people in hospital and sadly dying.
Interestingly, one Trust I work with have seen a significant number of people between ages 40 and 60 being hospitalised during this second wave (December & January) compared to spring 2020...
FlatErik
Well-Known Member
The fear is not real if you manufacture the fear by letting science write stuff the way you wish...by pushing MSM to show the worst case scenario's instead of realistic ones. Saying I work with doctors who see terrible things or I work in healthcare and we are overwhelmed might be true...but that does not make up the fact that governments are creating a fear climate to push their measures.
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djmicd123
Active Member
If people are in lockdown, as in not leaving their home, surely it is logical that A&E admissions would be down significantly on previous years? I would have thought that's obvious, or am I missing something?
djmicd123
Active Member
You believe what you want. The significant number of patients in ICU are not manufactured by anybody I'm afraid. They are real people becoming seriously ill with Covid.
FlatErik
Well-Known Member
This reply has nothing to do with my post about what's happening in Germany. It's striking serious matters of social importance down with: "People get sick, people are dying, you are selfish etc.". This is what has been happening for over a year now.
Same story. If I would reply now with: Well...we've been scared with images and stories of shortage of ambulances in the UK, this graph does not show this. You would probably say: believe what you want, but hospitals are full with sick people dying etc.
In all countries, society is being manipulated to stay scared and obedient. Even while numbers go down, treatments are getting better, vaccination is underway.
2H76
Well-Known Member
I don't know what to think any more. All I am reading now is that full lockdown will be extended well into summer, May at the earliest for socialising/hospitality.
One part of me thinks that they are using the new strains as an excuse to keep us locked down - harsher for longer. On the other hand I don't want to be seriously ill - even if I've had the jab and probably won't die.
What to do? Well; we know covid goes down in summer as events take place outdoors - so let's relax sporting events, open-air eating and drinking. As for indoors, can we not give cafes, bars, restaurants, cinemas and the like a "Covid Licence" so if they aren't following the rules (ie pot-checks) they get one warning, and if it happens again immediate closure for three months? Might concentrate a few minds on the owners to keep their clients in check?
If this summer (starting from April) was just like last, I'd be happy (except for the lack of foriegn travel) and hpefully by october we are all vaxxed twice and ready for the tweaked ones for next year. AND I'm still hoping those nasel sprays turn out to work.
One part of me thinks that they are using the new strains as an excuse to keep us locked down - harsher for longer. On the other hand I don't want to be seriously ill - even if I've had the jab and probably won't die.
What to do? Well; we know covid goes down in summer as events take place outdoors - so let's relax sporting events, open-air eating and drinking. As for indoors, can we not give cafes, bars, restaurants, cinemas and the like a "Covid Licence" so if they aren't following the rules (ie pot-checks) they get one warning, and if it happens again immediate closure for three months? Might concentrate a few minds on the owners to keep their clients in check?
If this summer (starting from April) was just like last, I'd be happy (except for the lack of foriegn travel) and hpefully by october we are all vaxxed twice and ready for the tweaked ones for next year. AND I'm still hoping those nasel sprays turn out to work.
FlatErik
Well-Known Member
THIS.
That's definitely happening here...and the government is not even hiding it. They have said; While numbers are going down, we are extending the evening curfew because new variants MIGHT cause a new rise in cases.
That's flattening a curve that has not even happened yet. Seen my post about Germany a few post back? I don't think this has only happened there.
djmicd123
Active Member
I recall last year the Government saying that they can't lift the lid off too quick, due to fears of a second wave (which was fair enough).
However, if they've vaccinated everybody in an at risk group (98% of all UK hospitalisations are made up by the 9 groups identified by JVCI), what is the fear this summer of "lifting the lid off too quick"? If the risk of serious disease, mortality and pressure on the NHS is extremely low, surely society has to accept that we've reached a tolerable level and return to normality?
I honestly feel the vaccination programme is redundant if we can't lift the lid off once those at risk have been sorted. I posted a few days ago about Rishi Sunak expressing his concern about how the scientists are pushing for longer periods of data on vaccine results, meaning industries will remain closed for a longer period. But that was never the purpose of the closures in the first place - it was to reduce pressure on the health service.
I think, if we reach a point where there are close to zero hospitalisations during summer months and all at risk groups are vaccinated (i.e. no fear of NHS being overwhelmed in autumn again), there will be havoc in the UK if people aren't allowed to return to a normal way of living. That includes festivals, nightclubs, bars etc. all being allowed to reopen.
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