Plan -C

But as harsh as it sounds how do you know you haven't been responsible for doing just that many times when you've had a cold or flu (which just like covid many have and are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms) and passed it onto someone who has passed it onto someone who has died? Chances are that quite a lot of us have done that at some point in our lives but we never really cared until it was called covid.

 

Fair point but at least I've not done it by being irresponsible at a time when we all know the risks.

 

More likely to be facism.

 

Sorry, I probably didn’t write that very clearly. I meant no links to travel from countries in Southern Africa. With the earliest omicron cases in the UK they all had history of recent travel to one of those countries (or were household contacts of someone who had). So effectively they were ‘imported’ cases - they picked it up in Africa but came back to the UK and tested positive. Now we’re seeing positive cases with no travel history or close contacts with travel history. So they’ve basically picked it up in Tesco/down the pub/on the bus from someone who has recently travelled (or from someone who’s picked it up from someone who has recently travelled etc etc).

 

Ah I see, thank you for expanding on that, it makes more sense now.

One observation, which I don't hold out much hope for, is that we, I.e. the public, the media, the government (chortle) have to be careful not to talk up this new variant as a super-spreader/deadly without any sufficient evidence. There seems to be big reactions to any new twist in the tale, and the more hysterical the narrative gets, the more people are adversely affected. Mental health is something that few talk about when it comes to this pandemic, it's time we shone a light on it and acted sensibly to any new development. Kneejerk comments such as 'we should have never made masks voluntary' or 'we should lockdown now' to a variant that we don't know anything about, I will never understand. Talking it up I.e. 'this thing is going to take off big time,' 'by January I dread to think what the country will look like' etc, it's all guesswork.

 

You can't pussy foot around with a variant which is so transmissible, it can infect the vast majority of people in a room. You take precautionary steps until you know the prognosis for those who are currently experiencing mild symptoms and the impact it will have on our older population once it reaches them. The scientist who founded the Zoe app sums it up.
"[early indications] show that Omicron is breaking through in vaccinated people, but it’s causing milder cold-like symptoms.
“However, this is not a reason to be relaxed about Omicron.
“Covid is unpredictable and, even if most only feel like they’ve got a cold, there are far more long-term risks than a cold carries.
"If numbers skyrocket, it doesn't matter if the percentage of people being hospitalised or dying remain low - it's about volume, not percentages."

 

Not sure what variant Thomas had but it’s claimed an upstart
https://www.punknews.org/article/76185/angelic-upstarts-mensforth-in-icu-due-to-covid

 

Has that been confirmed? I don't think it has. As for the comments by 'the scientist' that really doesn't say anything at all, other than we know very little, don't underestimate it, be sensible. You could say that about any strain of flu or cold.

 

Been DJing in Leeds City Centre tonight. As taxis are impossible to get I had to wade home with a big record box to the night bus. Less than 20% of people wearing masks. Young people don't give a **** about Boris's rules by the looks. No real surprise TBH. Any idea that the government are going to be listened to by the under 30's is just a joke.

 

My post was about why there has to be precautionary action now, rather than waiting for the science to catch up. It wasn't an attempt to prove anything and was in response to you saying "these measures appear to be quite extreme in reaction to a variant that we seem to know so little about".

 

120 daily deaths is not zero.

 

Nobody has died anywhere in the world of the new variant that Boris has put restrictions on our lives because of. It won't happen because Starmer has forgotten what leader of the 'opposition' means so will baaaa baaaa baaaaa be a sheep to the Tory plans to get them through next Tuesday.

 

Plan B should have been happening this winter because of Delta anyway.

 

The figures for our European neighbours who use vaccine passports and masks in most settings show restrictions don't work as we've done far better here without them. We don't need plan B when hospital admissions are flat. I could understand if hospital admissions were shooting up but they aren't and every stat (hospital admissions, hospital covid patients, deaths) are all way below the useless scaremongering SAGE who have got predictions wrong all the time said they would be.

 

You keep making claims it's impossible to be certain of. Even in the UK, we only genomically sequence 20% of positive cases and only half of our labs are capable of detecting the S gene target failure.

 

We can only go on what we know and not what could or might be. Everyone is in or the fear factor and it's disappointing. Take here in Kirklees for example where yesterday their weekly update said "The rate for new infections in Kirklees is still below the national average"

https://kirkleestogether.co.uk/2021...spital-admissions-have-increased-in-kirklees/

True as that is they could have been more positive for the people they represent and mention how for pretty much the past week now on the daily updates we've been the safest place in the whole of the UK to be out of 149 areas or how there isn't any known cases of Omicron in the whole of Yorkshire yet......

https://public.tableau.com/app/prof...oronaviruscasesKirklees/PublicFacingDashboard

 

It doesn't mean opposing anything and everything just for the sake of it. How is that going to make you look like a future prime minister?

 

He doesn't oppose much at all though. If anything he usually thinks restrictions on our lives doesn't go far enough. Voters will remember at the next election if their MP votes for Plan B. MPs I am sure realise their political futures are on the line. If they vote for plan B they will be lucky to be elected again.

 

Because of Ferguson's Fisher-Price computer predictions..

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