Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Scosha]

14 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

I know we've all had a joke about subservient British public etc but there is a definite rumbling of pushback to this building up.

I’m still trying to take comfort from comments by Whitty and JVT in public only weeks ago saying that we’re going to have to learn to just live with this and find an acceptable number of deaths. 
If they do indeed keep restrictions in place until autumn, folk will just start blatantly ignoring the rules. And you can bet your house on it that the slightest up turn in cases in autumn would result in us being asked to sit in the house and not see anyone for another 6 months, and repeat. 

[djchapsticks]

1 minute ago, Scosha said:

I’m still trying to take comfort from comments by Whitty and JVT in public only weeks ago saying that we’re going to have to learn to just live with this and find an acceptable number of deaths. 
If they do indeed keep restrictions in place until autumn, folk will just start blatantly ignoring the rules. And you can bet your house on it that the slightest up turn in cases in autumn would result in us being asked to sit in the house and not see anyone for another 6 months, and repeat. 

As I say, the rational part of my brain is saying that they are testing the waters to gauge response and will deny that the Times front page is correct.

 

[Todd_is_God]

26 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

I know we've all had a joke about subservient British public etc but there is a definite rumbling of pushback to this building up.

Too many people not getting unicorns for their birthdays IMO.

[GiGi]

Wonder if more taxes on unhealthy foods will come as a result of returning to normal (whenever that is) and just point out that while we have to live with the virus, your chances of coping with it will not be any good with a BMI of over 40. Difficult one morally as obesity is often linked with poverty.

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

8 minutes ago, GiGi said:

Wonder if more taxes on unhealthy foods will come as a result of returning to normal (whenever that is) and just point out that while we have to live with the virus, your chances of coping with it will not be any good with a BMI of over 40. Difficult one morally as obesity is often linked with poverty.

Hopefully. Something needs to be done, there’s far too many fat people in this country. My bird was saying at the hospital they have winches to lift fatties and also send folk to the zoo for scans. That’s a disgrace.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6665529/obese-more-deadly-than-smoking/amp/

 

Edited February 12, 2021 by Bonksy+HisChristianParade

[Todd_is_God]

1 minute ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Hopefully. Something needs to be done, there’s far too many fat people in this country. My bird was saying at the hospital they have winches to lift fatties and also send folk to the zoo for scans. That’s a disgrace.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6665529/obese-more-deadly-than-smoking/amp/

 

Hopefully not the usual, lazy, thing which is to punish everyone with blanket bans or taxes.

Perhaps subsidising / incentivising healthier lifestyle choices would be a better option.

[super_carson]

9 minutes ago, GiGi said:

Wonder if more taxes on unhealthy foods will come as a result of returning to normal (whenever that is) and just point out that while we have to live with the virus, your chances of coping with it will not be any good with a BMI of over 40. Difficult one morally as obesity is often linked with poverty.

Was in the news today that obesity now is the largest cause of deaths in Scotland, 23.1%.  That’s a shocking reflection on our society. We need  a massive programme of legislation and intervention to tackle it.  The response to COVID has shown that it’s possible to take such actions (and let’s face it, tackling obesity wouldn’t require anything as draconian).  It needs to start at an early age and we need to change Scotland’s attitude to diet and exercise; I see more and more kids who can’t run the length of the playground without stopping and wheezing and it’s quite worrying, really.  

But what was our government’s idea last year? Close the gyms and five a sides for longest but reopen takeaways first.  

[D.A.F.C]

Fast food is just too common and in your face these days. It’s far too easy to order as well, I see it similar to a drug. People are addicted to this shite and they’re not educated properly in how to cook or feed themselves nutritious food. As much as I dislike Jamie Oliver his work with schools was good and more of this needs done. Thing is they’ll get home and get fed rubbish, again it’s down to money and business. It’s not good but too many people enjoy it or make money from it. Getting sent to a zoo would be a low point, maybe send some half way fatties there to scare them.

 

[Bairnardo]

The health and wellbeing of the people in this country is absolutely of no interest to the govt. Leave aside all the rather over simplified "folk are fat" talk and just consider "health and wellbeing" On top of the obesity crisis, theres the state of the NHS, the state of mental healthcare provision and awareness, theres the employment laws increasingly designed to make people work more, for less leaving little time or money to do things that make them happy or keep them healthy, the fucked up welfare system resulting in generation by generation decline in health as we see kids growing up without ever having had a fighting chance of a happy and healthy existence, constantly shifting pension laws making a fruitful retirement a rapidly moving target for all of us.

That's before you get into provision of exercise facilities in the community, be it gyms or outdoor stuff.

This country is a fucking shambles on a health score, and the Tories and their attitude towards 99.99% of people who aren't daddy's boy Etonians are front and centre for the blame.

[Frankie S]

2 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

The above from, say, April until September would be better than nothing, as long as daft shit like no music, no alcohol unless you are eating, and curfews aren't part of it.

No doubt whatever WM do will be too risky for NS, though, so we'll end up with some delayed, watered down version.

The recorded music ban (that only ever applied in Scotland) is one of the few restrictions that Scot Gov has lifted, after massive pushback from the hospitality industry. 

Music ban lifted

It was lifted in December, but no-one in the sector has had a chance to gain any benefit from it as we’ve all been shut since then. At least we’ll be able to make a passable attempt at having some atmosphere when we finally reopen, even though we already know from Sturgeon, Leitch et al’s comments that  social distancing and 6 from 2 will be with us for the foreseeable future. 

I had optimistically thought that we (those of us that run pubs / restaurants) would be able to reopen in April after the vulnerable (+health care workers) had been vaccinated, and before furlough ended, but the mood music from both WM and Scot Gov has been so overwhelmingly negative of late that we fully expect furlough to be pushed on (at least sector-specific for those business forced to stay shut) for a few months and for us not to be allowed to reopen until early summer, by which time vaccinations should have scaled up and deaths and hospitalisations scaled down sufficiently, allied to ever-improving treatments, and the virus’s natural summer downturn that we saw last year. It’s possible it might be late summer / early autumn though given the excessive caution likely to be deployed. 

Amongst the many reasons I’m getting increasingly less optimistic of any kind of return to normality (as opposed to Sturgeon’s ‘greater normality’) this year, is the persistent rumour (I have my ear to the grapevine on this, so it’s a bit more than a ‘rumour’ tbh) that Scot Gov has already advised the Edinburgh Fringe not to expect to be able to stage any indoor events this year, and that’s in August. The expectation is for the Fringe to be reduced to a limited number of outdoor, socially-distanced events, with alcohol either strictly limited or banned altogether (pop-up bars are a no no apparently - entirely consistent with Scot Gov’s Calvinist puritanical streak). A fairly dismal prospect, given we’ll be a full 18 months into this absolute shitstorm by then.

As someone who runs  live music venues, I know almost all tours are now being pushed back to 2022. Almost no-one in the sector expects normal indoor gigs to return this year, and everyone (bar seemingly Scot Gov) knows live music simply isn’t viable with social distancing. 

My expectation, sadly, is that pubs and restaurants will be operating with restrictions for the remainder of 2021, even after full vaccination (full in the sense of both doses - for those vaccines that require two shots - offered to all - those who refuse the vaccine shouldn’t be allowed to dictate government policy) of the adult population, and even after deaths and hospitalisations diminish to minimal levels. My gut feeling (hope I’m wrong) is that we’ll be operating with some restrictions (including 1m+ SD) until spring 2022, just in case. Irrespective of how low cases are in the summer and autumn, the media and the zero Covid nutters will prime us for a (however unlikely to materialise) huge upswing in the winter due to speculative super-powered vaccine-resistant new variants etc, even when the vaccines have been tweaked and boosters primed and ready to cope with known variants. 

Everyone with half a clue (including the likes of Whitty, Vallance and JVT, all of whom I’d trust for a realistic scientific assessment above the likes of Leitch, Sridhar etc.) knows that Covid won’t be completely eliminated - it will simply become an endemic seasonal virus with a lower CFR than the flu (the efficacy of existing Covid vaccines greatly exceeds that of the flu vaccines), which gives me some hope that WM at least won’t countenance restrictions being rolled on too far beyond their sell-by date, but things will doubtless move a bit slower in Scotland, as we know.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Frankie S

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

Funny that the people who are seemingly not letting Todd forget a comment in August are the ones who seem happiest to forget the comments the government have been making all the way through this pandemic which have turned out to be wrong. 

[ayrmad]

5 hours ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Hopefully. Something needs to be done, there’s far too many fat people in this country. My bird was saying at the hospital they have winches to lift fatties and also send folk to the zoo for scans. That’s a disgrace.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/6665529/obese-more-deadly-than-smoking/amp/

 

If only we had trim nurses to dish out advice about obesity, usually the cleaner that's skinny when I'm around Ayr hospital. 

[Aufc]

Dont want to take it off topic too much and i am probably at risk kf sounding like ayrmad

However the biggest problem with obesity in this country is that people dont want to offend by calling people fat when it is a simple fact. For most people, it is a case of eating less and moving more. They dont need a fancy gym or equipment but use it as an excuse. Almost everyone has access to the internet so there is no reason why they are unable to access information about being healthy. A lot of people who are overweight look for excuses as to why they are unable to lose weight. Yes the government could do more but it is not all of their responsibility.

People need to take ownership. You have popular magazines with obese woman on the front saying “this is beautiful”. Now i am not saying that the woman is ugly but the simple fact is she is unhealthy and promoting this to the nation makes it acceptable. It also works on the other side with models who are stick thin.

I say this as someone who used to be overweight. I also appreciate that some people have an issue with eating whereby it is not easy to just stop eating less. However it is too easy for some people to hide behind this.

[ayrmad]

4 minutes ago, Aufc said:

Dont want to take it off topic too much and i am probably at risk kf sounding like ayrmad

However the biggest problem with obesity in this country is that people dont want to offend by calling people fat when it is a simple fact. For most people, it is a case of eating less and moving more. They dont need a fancy gym or equipment but use it as an excuse. Almost everyone has access to the internet so there is no reason why they are unable to access information about being healthy. A lot of people who are overweight look for excuses as to why they are unable to lose weight. Yes the government could do more but it is not all of their responsibility.

People need to take ownership. You have popular magazines with obese woman on the front saying “this is beautiful”. Now i am not saying that the woman is ugly but the simple fact is she is unhealthy and promoting this to the nation makes it acceptable. It also works on the other side with models who are stick thin.

I say this as someone who used to be overweight. I also appreciate that some people have an issue with eating whereby it is not easy to just stop eating less. However it is too easy for some people to hide behind this.

Far more complex IMO. 

[Aufc]

Far more complex IMO. 

For some people it is. For a lot of people it really is as simple as eat less and move more

[Dons_1988]

14 minutes ago, Aufc said:

Dont want to take it off topic too much and i am probably at risk kf sounding like ayrmad

However the biggest problem with obesity in this country is that people dont want to offend by calling people fat when it is a simple fact. For most people, it is a case of eating less and moving more. They dont need a fancy gym or equipment but use it as an excuse. Almost everyone has access to the internet so there is no reason why they are unable to access information about being healthy. A lot of people who are overweight look for excuses as to why they are unable to lose weight. Yes the government could do more but it is not all of their responsibility.

People need to take ownership. You have popular magazines with obese woman on the front saying “this is beautiful”. Now i am not saying that the woman is ugly but the simple fact is she is unhealthy and promoting this to the nation makes it acceptable. It also works on the other side with models who are stick thin.

I say this as someone who used to be overweight. I also appreciate that some people have an issue with eating whereby it is not easy to just stop eating less. However it is too easy for some people to hide behind this.

I think this is true for a good number of people. I would say losing weight (for most) is really difficult but it's not complicated. It requires hard work, discipline, patience and as you say just a personal responsibility to do it. I think there's too much in the media that allows people to blame something else. There was someone on the radio yesterday saying she has put on weight this lockdown because it's cold and it's too easy to have biscuits with her tea. I'm afraid that's just your poor decision making.

I would re-iterate that it is really difficult, particularly in the first few weeks/months, and it's easy to sound dismissive, but I think more people could just make a strong choice to live their lives in a healthier way, one day at a time, and they'd see a massive difference.

[superbigal]

I note the English road map statement is due Monday 22nd February.
Allow me to predict Scotgov statement on Tuesday 16th to have some cock and bull excuse to kick roadmap out of lockdown down the road till the 23rd.
Hope I’m wrong and they actually take the bull by the horn, due to our infection rates, hospital admissions, deaths all being close to half of English rates.
Predictions anyone ?

[ayrmad]

1 minute ago, Aufc said:

 

For some people it is. For a lot of people it really is as simple as eat less and move more

 

And for a lot of people it isn't, I'll generalise, it is easier to keep trim if you work 9 to 5 than it is working into the wee small hours fir various reasons. 

[ayrmad]

3 minutes ago, superbigal said:

I note the English road map statement is due Monday 22nd February.
Allow me to predict Scotgov statement on Tuesday 16th to have some cock and bull excuse to kick roadmap out of lockdown down the road till the 23rd.
Hope I’m wrong and they actually take the bull by the horn, due to our infection rates, hospital admissions, deaths all being close to half of English rates.
Predictions anyone ?

I predict that the SG will be required to alter theirs if they announce it first, politics trumps everything when we're pitching Westminster against Holyrood. 

[Billy Jean King]

I know we've all had a joke about subservient British public etc but there is a definite rumbling of pushback to this building up.

Where ? Outside of this echo chamber every poll you see supports the measures hugely. Last weekend I read one where 45% want TIGHTENING of restrictions. I see no public wavering on these issues at all.

Even the local Facebook groups are full of 'get the borders shut' bar the odd poppy daft, are brave boiz types.