https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-55699581 No opening of the border even when the population is vaccinated. People like yourself and Donny-Red are reasonable people. You therefore believe our governments are going to act reasonably, that they hold similar values to your own, that it's obvious they'll do this or that as that's the reasonable and fair thing to do. They're not reasonable and they're not fair. They'll make decisions that benefit themselves and their benefactors.
Didn't really need the analogy I understand the thought process, my point being these border restrictions would need to stay in place for the very long term if we followed a zero Covid policy. Like Australia is now.
I don’t trust the government at all. The government didn’t want to do what they have though, they were basically forced to by the scientists. I also don’t know that Tory benefactors are the ones profiting from a lockdown? They’re losing a lot of money. The only people making money are places like Amazon and other mass customer e-commerce, who generally aren’t Tory donors. Basically everyone else are either losing money or staying the same as usual. The only way the finance industry for example makes any money off this is by betting on a return to normality and making money on the stock market when that happens. A return to normality is what benefits the Tory benefactors. With the exception of course of these PPE contracts. But that’s a small amount of money in reality (in the grand scheme of things I mean)
Interesting. Strange world when Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Mongolia are doing a better job than many first world countries who had ample opportunity to learn lessons of SARS but failed to do so. Australia have a big geographical advantage compared to London in that it's not a major central travel hub, you either go there or return to there when travelling. That said they were spot on with their hard hitting initial and continued approach that's enabled them to have a relatively normal 12 months. I dunno. It will be what it will be.
In almost a full year there have only been 615 deaths of people under 60 with no significant underlying health conditions which is such a small small number of people then why would we need to wait till 80% of the population has been vaccinated before we are allowed to live? Surely as soon as those most at risk are protected we should be allowed to lose the restrictions. You can't protect every single person from this one tiny risk. Even if you previously argued that the significant detrimental effects of restrictions didn't outweigh the benefit of protecting the vulnerable there's no way anyone can argue that it's still the case once the vulnerable are protected. In fact I'd say you can't really argue that case now when the over 70s are protected as the numbers show that only roughly one in six thousand people under 70 years old have passed away 'with' covid. And the extremely vulnerable people below that age should all have been offered the vaccine by now.
Because that’s the way herd immunity works. You don’t just vaccinate those most vulnerable you have to vaccinate as many as physically possible. There’s a not insignificant portion of people that the vaccine will be less than effective for, there’s also people who are unable to have the vaccine. You need to vaccinate enough people to essentially drown the virus out and stop transmission as much as possible.
Are you seriously suggesting staying in lockdown until around September/October? If the most vulnerable are protected we simply have to be allowed to live. You're also forgetting that the estimated 7million people who have had covid and survived have actually got immunity in the same way the vaccine gives. A report I read recently suggested that they had a HIGHER level of immunity than the vaccine gives and the tiny number of reinfections and even smaller number of reinfections which results in a serious case back that up.
I’m suggesting that restrictions should continue to be based on the case and death rate, not on the vaccination rate. After all if enough of the vulnerable being vaccinated is enough to bring that down, that’s the same thing right?
It is happening though, I mentioned it on another thread that infections in Doncaster in the group's vaccinated are dropping significantly.
If that's what you'd said instead of specifically saying 80% of people vaccinated then I'd have agreed with you. The case rate imo shouldn't matter. If 100,000 people are day are testing positive but none are dying then why does that matter? It's the death rate that's important to ending restrictions but even that is quite a long way behind the real situation so it should actually be the hospitalisation rate and that should be modelled two weeks in advance based on the trend of hospitalisations due to the fact that there can be a two week lag between infection and symptoms. The trend has seen over 500 less daily admissions on Wednesday (last figures I can find) compared to the previous Wednesday, 1200 less than were admitted two Wednesday's ago and over 2100 less than 3 Wednesday's ago. If that trend continues in any way then by next week we will be seeing hospitalisations at a low level not seen since November. Combine that with the most vulnerable being vaccinated and all over 70s being vaccinated and there just has to be a serious relaxation of the restrictions in the coming weeks as the risk has been mitigated so much
My 80% comment was because I feel like that’s where we’ll have to be to get to a level where cases and deaths are low enough for no restrictions. I agree that cases are less important once there’s a lower ratio of case-hospitalisation-death observed. However I still don’t like the idea of allowing it to spread unchecked. That seems extremely short sighted and not what we should be aiming for. I also completely disagree about using ‘it will be this low next week’ to make decisions. Wait until it is that low. And before you call me a hypocrite, it’s different going the other way, because saying “it’s looking like it will be this high next week” is important, because once it already is that high it’s too late.
BBC News - Covid-19 pandemic: New Zealand's biggest city ordered into lockdown https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56059960 And now they get to beat COVID again! I think this is the fourth or fifth time? I’m starting to lose count. Still, who doesn’t want their ‘freedom’ to be subject to permanent threat of lockdown. Maybe it is a better approach than our, at this point I don't know. All I do know is life is currently completely $#!t and shows little sign of improving. A year of life lost. Some seem to have adapted to it better than others. For me living like this doesn't feel like living at all.
I see your point but it works both ways. Every day of restrictions is another day that people are committing suicide because of them, another day of businesses going under and lives destroyed so there has to be a balancing act between the two. I dont think that the figures I posted about the hospital admissions coming down is enough to open them up, they were just to show how it's definitely heading the right way. I'd say give it two or three weeks from the 15th (when they've all had or turned down the vaccine) and monitor closely the figures during those few weeks. Logically they will continue to fall from now so you can use the historical data plus the coming days to show a clear trend. If that trend is downwards, and considering figures now are pre lockdown, then in two or three weeks we should see the admission rates low AND a trend downwards and then reopen things. And when I say reopen, I mean everything domestically. We have vaccinated the vulnerable, admissions have dropped, at that point there really is nothing else that can be done
I've just been on the phone to my niece. She asked me how old I am now. That's coming from someone who for the first 5 years of her life I didn't go more than a few days without seeing.
We just haven't evolved as a species to live like this. I didn't put it on here at the time as I was too upset about it but around 6 weeks ago a good friend of mine tried to kill himself. Luckily his Mum was worried enough to go around and check on him and called 999 in time to save him.
They cant reopen the borders without mass quarantine at the arrival points even after vaccinations for Covid. The lack of contact with society both national and international will have had an weakening effect on the immune system. Someone turns up with a particularly harsh asympomatic strain of the flu itll go through them like wildfire.
Y might be right about me being reasonable, but you’d be wrong to think I believe the government will be. we agree completely about their priorities.
It's not the time for this. We've just watched a performance by a Barnsley team that's as good as I've ever seen. But I'm going to do it anyway because I'm an arsehole. The Dowe Jones is at an all time high. The financial markets throughout the rest of the world took a big crash in March last year but have then consistently increased at a rate we have never previously seen before. If you knew when to sell before the crash, which they did, and then when to buy, which they did, because they were told, then there has been more money to be made in the last 12 months than there has ever been made before. Any search for a disparity between rich and poor will show you this. The policies we put in place have nothing to do with the R rate, nothing to do with deaths and everything to do with the market. One of the latest propaganda posters by the government states that a third of people who contract covid display no symptoms. So lock yourself away. It's so mild that you don't even know you've got it and it's the biggest killer we've ever known. I really want you to think about that. I can't believe this isn't questioned. Your safety, the safety of your friends and family, the safety of every single one of us means nothing. It's about money. That's all it is. That really is all it is.
