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Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
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126 | 44.21% |
| No |
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39 | 13.68% |
| I'm Scottish |
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120 | 42.11% |
| Total: | 285 votes | ||
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Rabelais D posted:Is the UK policy currently just "pray that a new variant that is more infectious, deadly and resistant to vaccines doesn't emerge (just like the last few times)"? e: 164CE - The Antonine Wall is abandoned by the Romans.
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Jul 9, 2021 12:14
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There were no vaccines last time
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Jul 9, 2021 12:16
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learnincurve posted:There were no vaccines last time If we get a resistant strain, there'll be no vaccine this time.
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Jul 9, 2021 12:18
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Rabelais D posted:Is the UK policy currently just "pray that a new variant that is more infectious, deadly and resistant to vaccines doesn't emerge (just like the last few times)"? Current policy is just Bob Page from Deus Ex. Why contain it? Let it spill over into the schools and churches. Let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them.
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Jul 9, 2021 12:24
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Jedit posted:If we get a resistant strain, there'll be no vaccine this time. Vaccine resistance is not a magic on/off switch. Its a process of the virus mutating to reshape it's proteins in a way less likely to trigger antibodies for vaccination, and often comes with it's own downsides, as the new configurations are not as optimal as old ones for the processes of the virus.
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Jul 9, 2021 12:29
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Yeah in order to get a more dangerous covid that's vaccine resistant we'd need to be really loving around, providing the virus with constant access to millions of partially vaccinated hosts, then we'd have to get unlucky on top of that
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Jul 9, 2021 12:35
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Communist Thoughts posted:Yeah in order to get a more dangerous covid that's vaccine resistant we'd need to be really loving around, providing the virus with constant access to millions of partially vaccinated hosts, then we'd have to get unlucky on top of that So we need to get unlucky, is what you're saying.
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Jul 9, 2021 12:44
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learnincurve posted:There were no vaccines last time Can I just empty quote this a billion times you bunch of misery guts emos
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Jul 9, 2021 12:54
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the vaccines will stop direct deaths they will not stop the hospitals collapsing from hospitalized cases cases needing hospitalization will then start turning into deaths
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Jul 9, 2021 12:58
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Somewhere between anti maskers saying we should do our patriotic duty and lick each others faces for stong britain, grate herd immunity; Between that extreme and paranoid shutins like myself screaming like feral cats at anyone without ET level hazmat suits; Somewhere between those two poles lies a sensible amount of letting people meet safely, while limiting the risk for vulnerable people, without pretending we don't already have a variant moving through the population that at least one vaccine is less effective against, and an overloaded NHS that is not going to be able to deal with an increase in hospitalisations. And I can't help but feel that whenever T-Paine posts, it's either him accusing us of wanting one extreme, or us accusing him of wanting the other. So to clarify Paine, what level of opening up do you think is sensible? Jedit posted:So we need to get unlucky, is what you're saying. oh no Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 13:00
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who was the poster who fled the city during travel restrictions to live with their parents during lockdown #1 because staying indoors was too hard
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Jul 9, 2021 13:01
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Regarde Aduck posted:the vaccines will stop direct deaths The vaccines do greatly reduce the number of hospitalisations though
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Jul 9, 2021 13:04
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Dominic Cummings
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Jul 9, 2021 13:04
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kecske posted:who was the poster who fled the city during travel restrictions to live with their parents during lockdown #1 because staying indoors was too hard I mean if we're thinking about the same poster they were having pretty serious mental health issues because of the lack of social contact so maybe chill out a bit?
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Jul 9, 2021 13:06
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Noxville posted:The vaccines do greatly reduce the number of hospitalisations though There are plenty of people who haven't or can't get vaccinated, though. Allowing uncontrolled spread of the virus throws those people under the bus, along with the people who beat the odds and die even though they're vaccinated. Allowing dozens of people to die every day for the profits of Wetherspoons and Pret really isn't the way we should be acting.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:06
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Noxville posted:The vaccines do greatly reduce the number of hospitalisations though
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Jul 9, 2021 13:13
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kecske posted:who was the poster who fled the city during travel restrictions to live with their parents during lockdown #1 because staying indoors was too hard If I was in their shoes I'd seriously consider doing exactly the same thing. We just had a check-up with my son's diabetes doctor (which we chose to do online). They aren't seeing kids coming in with Covid, but 2-3 months after a spike in infections they are seeing a lot more kids coming in with diabetes. Diabetes is an auto-immune disease which is often triggered by a viral infection. So hey, let Covid run rampant through schools! You are condemning a bunch of kids to diabetes. Let me tell you, having a kid with diabetes SUCKS for you and for them.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:13
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ThomasPaine posted:Can I just empty quote this a billion times you bunch of misery guts emos You can quote it as much as you, it misses the point. Nobody who is paying attention is saying IT IS AS BAD AS THE SECOND WAVE. It's not. There's less than a 10th of the hospitalisations there were in November or December. The vaccine program has done a fantastic job at reducing the seriousness in the most vulnerable groups. But new cases per day has surged above almost any point in November & December, with numbers especially high in the under 30s. Despite the fraction of hospitalisations, there are hospitals that are at breaking point already. This is bad. I want things to go back to normal. That happens quicker if we don't keep doing these loving imbecilic stop-start lockdowns. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1413205568597204997?s=20
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Jul 9, 2021 13:15
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Good thing we don't have a variant moving through the population that is already developing resistance to pfizer then! The Pfizer vaccine still reduces the damage from the virus, all the vaccines do I even if they are less effective than against the original virus
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Jul 9, 2021 13:16
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1965917 posted:Maybe I haven't listened to enough Thin Lizzy, but seriously, better then Floyd? Watched a doco about Phil Lynott a couple of months ago and the best thing about it was the interviews with his mum who was an incredible badass raising an out of wedlock mixed race child as a single parent in an incredibly racist time. Genuinely worth a look - remarkable and funny lady.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:20
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learnincurve posted:There were no vaccines last time This should be a few months of careful lifting of restrictions, rather than throwing everything out at once.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:21
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kecske posted:who was the poster who fled the city during travel restrictions to live with their parents during lockdown #1 because staying indoors was too hard Dominic Cummings?
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Jul 9, 2021 13:21
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Other countries practically wiped out the virus before we had vaccines, the fact we apparently can't even try to do the same with vaccinations helping is really loving depressing. 'Returning to normal' was the battle cry of lifting restrictions but even thats shifted to 'we must learn to live with infection and death'. I hope that the worst case does not occur but its really loving depressing how poo poo the govenment has and continues to be.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:22
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Noxville posted:The vaccines do greatly reduce the number of hospitalisations though Unfortunately after decades of underfunding it doesn't take much for the hospitals to crack from the pressure https://twitter.com/InvCourier/status/1413174679263584257?s=20 Raigmore Hospital is the only major hospital for an NHS region that stretches from Campbelltown on the Mull of Kintyre (which for reference is further south than parts of England like Berwick) to John O'Groats. It's loving full. The same is true for the biggest hospital in Grampian, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary AND the 2nd largest, in Elgin. Ninewells in Dundee, largest hospital in the NHS Tayside area, is busier than it's been at any other point in the pandemic. NHS Fife are expecting numbers to hit a similar level. It's bad out there.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:32
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Meanwhile, on Thumbperson Social Media:
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Jul 9, 2021 13:36
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Regarde Aduck posted:the vaccines will stop direct deaths The vaccines don't magically stop death and leave everything else as it was before - quite the opposite in fact, because rather grimly your chances of death go *up* if you end up in hospital*. For every death the vaccines stop, they're also stopping more cases reaching hospital. Now obviously there is still an upper limit, and we could still breach that with a combination of bad luck and bad policy, but we're still going to see that coming a long way off, and *so far* it seems like we actually could let the thing rip entirely and still not go past the surge ICU capacity**. *This is a statistical, not a medical, anomaly - a certain proportion of people were always going to die regardless of vaccination status but because the vaccine also reduces the risk of hospitalisation you have instead of 50 dying and 100 living, you get 50 dying, 50 living, and 50 never even needing hospitalisation (numbers are of course purely illustrative). ** Very much back of the envelope here, but the absolute peak in new cases was January 1st (60k/day rolling 7 day average) while the absolute peak in new admissions was a week later (4k/day r7da). On the 1st of July the average was 380/day, but a week before that there were 16k new cases a day. That's a *stark* difference - from 1 in 15 cases ending up in hospital to 1 in 42 - that lines up pretty well with the current fully-vaccinated population (56ish percent with a second jab two weeks before), and in a population where Delta is massively dominant. The next few weeks will tell us which way it's going to go but at this point my money's still on the vaccine.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:39
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xtothez posted:Meanwhile, on Thumbperson Social Media: Lol that's American uniform and weaponry.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:42
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Mr Phillby posted:Other countries practically wiped out the virus before we had vaccines, the fact we apparently can't even try to do the same with vaccinations helping is really loving depressing. 40 years of hollowing out institutions and public services by governments that are fundamentally opposed to the concept of governance will do that for ya There is never going to be normal again, IMO. Things may not get as bad as the first and second waves but we're going to be dealing with variant after variant slowly nibbling away at vaccine effectiveness, causing constant ongoing deaths and permanent injuries and doing gently caress knows what to children (a sowing we won't reap for ten or twenty years) and while boosters will hopefully be a thing I can also see people just not really bothering to keep up. An endless cycle of death and destruction. Britain in a nutshell.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:42
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The hospital admission numbers don’t take into account those people who go to hospital and get sent home that day. They also count people who are in hospital for something else and test positive even if they show no symptoms.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:43
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Somewhere between anti maskers saying we should do our patriotic duty and lick each others faces for stong britain, grate herd immunity; I have not actually expressed an opinion about opening up iirc but my basic take is: - covid was terrifying last year and over winter and more people died then ever should have, mostly because of govt mishandling - the vaccine programme has been well implemented in spite of govt mishandling, because the nhs is very cool - vaccines almost neutralise covid as a serious danger, reducing the odds of catching it by a pile and turning it into a fairly unpleasant but largely unthreatening illness where people do get it, and seem also to mostly prevent long covid - vaccines are also effective against the other variants. A little less so, but still plenty enough - worries that we'll be in intermittent covid lockdown forever are based on observation of case numbers rising, and often the general assumption that this means vaccines are being bypassed by new variants - this is a flawed conclusion. Vaccines are working fine. What we're seeing is a spike mostly due to a relatively small pool of unvaccinated young people mixing, with a minority of mild cases in vaccinated people. That's why deaths and hospital admissions are down. - The idea that this spike is connected to vaccine redundancy, and the related idea that some terrible omega variant will come and dance right past the vaccines is peak facebook-aunt, my dad works at Nintendo level bullshit, because as others have said that's not how vaccines or viruses work. It's theoretically possible but insanely unlikely, and the mrna tech Pfizer uses makes it even more difficult. This stuff gets traction though because a handful of weirdo medical professionals talk out their rear end about it and use their status as an appeal to authority. - 'opening up' at the end of July will probably make little real difference because as far as I can tell most control measures are routinely ignored anyway, especially amongst the younger demographic currently most at risk because they've not been vaccinated. Yes, long covid is a threat to them but another lockdown won't do much to stop if they're still going round each others houses etc, which they will. - that said I don't think 'opening up' just yet is a good move at a symbolic level, you really should wait for critical mass vaccination before you do that, because ofc long covid is a bitch and you want to avoid young people getting it too even if it probably won't kill them, it's important to emphasise that this isn't quite over, while it feels like the angle bojo is going for 'cool, pandemic done'! - I also think continued restrictions are probably vital for a while in places that lack substantial hospital beds etc, like northern Scotland etc - we do also have to balance the covid with everything that hasn't been done because of it, and seriously take into account the social and mental health outcomes of another lockdown particularly over winter. The first one was bad enough. I think another full winter lockdown wound do more harm than good, even with cases as they are now (which is doubtful) - I personally think we should keep things as they are now until we get close to full vaccination and a consistent low case rate. This keeps people mindful of the need to be aware and respectful of one another while essentially allowing most elements of 'normality' with a few caveats. Another full lockdown would do very little to protect anyone, and wound cause a lot of misery. The key right now is to bang out vaccinations as quickly as humanly possible, and make a concerted effort to target young people to encourage them to get it. - this tweet made sense with no vaccines, but doesn't really now: - it's very easy and understandable to be pessimistic, and the govt is poo poo and covid is poo poo, but nothing that is happening now is evidence at all that our long term prospects of ending the pandemic are sunk E: sorry for typos, phoneposting ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 13:45
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What if there was a country that never locked down and still managed to deal with Covid. Even with the delta variant spike, things in Taiwan are still pretty much normal (except everyone wears masks outside/indoors in public spaces). Imagine we had a government that even tried a little bit to not infect everyone with a new and unstudied disease.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:48
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learnincurve posted:The hospital admission numbers don’t take into account those people who go to hospital and get sent home that day. They also count people who are in hospital for something else and test positive even if they show no symptoms. Yeah, but they're an easier proxy indicator than beds occupied.
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Jul 9, 2021 13:49
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All vaccines seem to provide increasingly less protection from the dominant variant strains that emerge, currently there seems to be only marginal differences in protection, like in the case of Pfizer, 94% protection from serious illness against delta vs 96% against the original strain (although the protection aginst symptomatic illness is much lower, which introduces other problems). This is overall still really positive news - if the whole world were being vaccinated with Pfizer. Globally, by far the most administered vaccine is Sinovac, which offers very little protection against delta. Unfortunately variants emerge faster than vaccines can be retooled and, crucially, administered to the populace in order to deal with them. If every country had good quality vaccine coverage like the UK currently does, this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the virus is running rampant across the globe in some of the world's most populous countries, and these variants are being introduced into the UK because we don't have strict quarantine procedures. Basically I think we will generally be OK if we carry on getting everyone double-dosed and booster-shotted regularly, but I'm worried it will never end because we can't control the rest of the world and the government is letting the variants in, so we will need to constantly be on guard. Countries with very strict border controls and good test/trace systems never even really needed the vaccines to begin with, now they're having to choose whether to isolate forever or just give up on their success to open up to the rest of the plague-infested countries like the UK. Rabelais D fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 14:03
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ThomasPaine posted:- this tweet made sense with no vaccines, but doesn't really now: It's not that everything is hopeless and we should be treating this July like we should have treated last October, it's that it wouldn't hurt at to say "lockdown's fully over but masks and distancing for another month or so and maybe holiday at home."
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Jul 9, 2021 14:06
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Of course one reason for doomerism is a sort of guilt over the realisation that we already, as a society, make loads of life vs. convenience decisions every single day. I'm not even talking about big stuff like climate change or poverty, just normal day-to-day stuff. 2,000 people a year die, and ten times as many people are left with life-changing injuries, thanks to car crashes. Mechanically limiting all non-emergency road vehicles (yes, bicycles included) to 5 miles per hour would reduce that to basically zero. Banning all processed sugars and fats would probably save 5 or 6 thousand lives a year. We choose, as a society, to nibble around the edges of these problems for the exact same economic, libertarian, and just plain convenience reasons that are also being deployed by the anti-lockdown people and in fact would all look a bit askance at someone claiming it was time to nerf every vehicle in the country no matter how many graphs they present, so maybe it's not surprising that some people are overcompensating.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:07
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ThomasPaine posted:I have not actually expressed an opinion about opening up iirc but my basic take is: A good post. I think the Bobby was dead-on saying that the two sides of this characterise each other as more extreme than either actually really is. I also think there are a couple of recurring themes, on both sides I suspect, which probably get peoples backs up more. The main ones I notice, and make me want to jump in and get all rah rah you all just are doomers rah rah (which isn’t fair at all) are: 1. Unfounded predictions about terrible things that will definitely come to pass, and the certainty around them. As an example, Barry said a few posts up that we’d reap the effects on children in 10-20 years, and it’s just a bit like, ‘err, what?’. I haven’t seen any evidence that we’ll have terrible problems in the current young generation a few decades down the line, never mind enough to make such a confident assertion. Sorry to single you out btw BF, just the most recent one I can remember, my memory isn’t very good. It’s similar with the certainty that the NHS will collapse. When we get some actual back of envelope calculations (courtesy of twisto) we find that actually this is pretty drat unlikely. It’s hard to feel that things like this are anything but doom mongering but then I also don’t want to characterise posters that way really, and I know it’s all legitimate worry coming from a good place. 2. The idea that the only reason people would be arguing to open up is to appease capitalism. Sure, the Tories just want to get back to making money, but please don’t underestimate the impact lockdown has on people. Some of us might not have found it so bad, but others have found the lack of interaction, socialising and general freedom to go and meet friends and just get out and go to the shops to look at shoes or the cinema or what the gently caress ever really, really rough. Let’s not pretend that lockdown doesn’t have huge, huge negatives as well. Anyway, I think we’re all pretty good people here and should try to be charitable to each other and how we’re feeling about it all. I’ve tried not to really engage in the discussion any more and will continue not to I suspect, but thought it might be worth pointing out a few things and why people like me and TPaine might end up a bit annoyed/combative on these things. If there’s anything our ‘side’ does that has a similar effect I’d be all ears as well. Also it is coming home 
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Jul 9, 2021 14:08
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Guavanaut posted:They're still pushing for 'end everything' 
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Jul 9, 2021 14:09
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Well of course there's little evidence that there are going to be long term health effects because we're only going to find that out in, you know, ten to twenty years. But it's not just me having DOOMS or whatever, the WHO and the Lancet just in the last couple of days have said 'letting rip at this point is incredibly irresponsible and we simply do not know what long term effect it has on children, what the gently caress are you, the UK, specifically, thinking?!' I'm not arguing for another full lockdown forever or whatever, but dropping EVERYTHING in ten days time, explicitly never to reverse course no matter what, is loving mental. Edit https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01589-0/fulltext https://uk.news.yahoo.com/covid-coronavirus-freedom-day-july-19-world-health-organization-170127188.html Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 14:18
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Lol that's American uniform and weaponry. No it isn't! That's a L129 and the body is wearing a 3 Para DZ flash.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:23
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Guavanaut posted:They're still pushing for 'end everything' freedom day bullshit and they should not, and I know no Whitehall government of any stripe ever has cared about Brits causing mass death overseas, but that's another thing that they shouldn't be doing. I agree! Just the image is misleading because it implies a certain permanence. Jakabite posted:A good post. I think the Bobby was dead-on saying that the two sides of this characterise each other as more extreme than either actually really is. I also think there are a couple of recurring themes, on both sides I suspect, which probably get peoples backs up more. The main ones I notice, and make me want to jump in and get all rah rah you all just are doomers rah rah (which isn’t fair at all) are: Yes, I agree with all of this. Funnily enough I went to the barber for the first time in a bit the other day and she was telling me about some poor Indian bloke who'd been in who told her he came over to do a PhD and his conversation with her was the first time he'd spoken in person to anyone since he got here months ago, bar please and thank you in shops. Imagine sitting in a tiny flat by yourself in a city you don't know, unable to go anywhere or meet anyone, and in his case watching on the news as the country where everyone you love is implodes. Lockdown isn't big deal for some people but for others it's a huge, huge sacrifice. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 14:24
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