Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[renton]

10 hours ago, virginton said:

The SG will close down just about everything else on no valid grounds whatsoever and tip the economy into another double digit plunge before it dares piss off self-entitled parents who want their state childcare running. They'll just be crossing their fingers for some minor breach of rules by a footballer or a minor pub-linked cluster to emerge to keep deflecting away attention.

We're a month and a half away from the Furlough scheme winding up. There will be little opportunity of shutting down anything at that point. Even temporarily shutting down local areas is going to become difficult without tipping businesses into the void.

With that in mind, it's particularly important to have schools back and running now. Even if you are of the opinion that parents are self entitled and that far from bothering to adequately educate the next generation, children should be mulched down into protein shakes to provide sustenance for Graduates in the Humanties, there is a simple practical issue associated with the economy, if there isn't a full time education system running. 

The best the SG can hope for is to try and push the daily infection rates back down a bit, and act to constrain clusters when they are still in single digits, and try and avoid a super spreading event like in Grampian which necessitated a massive backwards step to lockdown. 

They are currently trying to get testing up to 65,000 a day, and to widen access, well and good. Maybe that means mandatory sample testing at schools on a periodic basis. Maybe masks for everyone in schools (or football grounds) becomes mandatory on a statutory basis. 

They've tried the honours system and it's been a mixed bag. In order to get everything open on a sustainable basis, drive up  consumer demand and limit the spread of the virus to vulnerable groups they will likely have to put a lot more restrictive measures into law, unless they get a working vaccine in the next month or two.

[Marshmallo]

Schools being back is probably the most important thing across society for a variety of reasons. The hard man act from Leitch and Sturgeon about other things in life while downplaying any legitimate concerns about transmission rates in schools is tiresome.

It's essentially this meme come to life, with their behaviour towards boozers and football on the left and schools on the right. 

[rainbowrising]

9 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

Schools being back is probably the most important thing across society for a variety of reasons. The hard man act from Leitch and Sturgeon about other things in life while downplaying any legitimate concerns about transmission rates in schools is tiresome.

It's essentially this meme come to life, with their behaviour towards boozers and football on the left and schools on the right. 

There are a number of research studies across Europe indicating children passing on C19 is very low.  Some of the stories just now appear to be more of the 'young adult' pupils attending parties with their pals and picking it up there.  Considering schools were closed by the Government for months, leading to a huge argument over exam results, I am struggling to see where the downplaying applys.  They certainly didn't downplay it in March.  I have no doubt if outbreaks linked to schools rise it will be locked down again.  Sturgeon has played 'hard man' with all aspects of society and I don't have a problem with that.  I know this is a football forum but we seen to be riddled with a consliracy that Sturgeon wants to destroy Scottish football.  Given the state of the economy across the UK as well as Scotland someone will need to explain to me why destroying football appears to be at the top of the agenda for the Government?

[Todd_is_God]

19 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

Schools being back is probably the most important thing across society for a variety of reasons. The hard man act from Leitch and Sturgeon about other things in life while downplaying any legitimate concerns about transmission rates in schools is tiresome.

It's essentially this meme come to life, with their behaviour towards boozers and football on the left and schools on the right. 

Live pictures from NS & Leitch's latest discussion

Edited August 18, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Marshmallo]

4 minutes ago, rainbowrising said:

There are a number of research studies across Europe indicating children passing on C19 is very low.  Some of the stories just now appear to be more of the 'young adult' pupils attending parties with their pals and picking it up there.  Considering schools were closed by the Government for months, leading to a huge argument over exam results, I am struggling to see where the downplaying applys.  They certainly didn't downplay it in March.  I have no doubt if outbreaks linked to schools rise it will be locked down again.  Sturgeon has played 'hard man' with all aspects of society and I don't have a problem with that.  I know this is a football forum but we seen to be riddled with a consliracy that Sturgeon wants to destroy Scottish football.  Given the state of the economy across the UK as well as Scotland someone will need to explain to me why destroying football appears to be at the top of the agenda for the Government?

There are literally teenagers sitting in classes with people who have tested positive for covid and we are being told it's "low risk" for those who were in the classroom hahaha

[rainbowrising]

5 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

There are literally teenagers sitting in classes with people who have tested positive for covid and we are being told it's "low risk" for those who were in the classroom hahaha

There are 'literally' teenagers sitting in rooms under controlled conditions that don't reflect a normal school day.  Whilst you are laughing, consider this quote with a current positive test

"it had identified 41 close contacts of the positive cases, which includes some school pupils and staff. "   There is a form of track and trace in place now.  Those people are advised to stay at home.  It doesn't mean they have it but at least a test strategy is in place unlike in the spring and most of the summer.

As I stated, if C19 does show it is spreading in schools they will need to be shut down, which I presume will be another hilarious incident for you.  You will probably have to dig up another example somewhere of how Scottish football is being targeted and deliberately destroyed by Sturgeon.

[Marshmallo]

7 minutes ago, rainbowrising said:

As I stated, if C19 does show it is spreading in schools they will need to be shut down

I predict this will not happen unless we get a nationwide R rate comparable to March.

EDIT: Which is probably the correct decision btw - my bugbear is with this insistence that risk is lower in schools with no social distancing and hundreds of people from different households crossing paths, as opposed to eg a group of 5 Scottish Championship footballers walking through an outdoor training session being tantamount to running through a minefield.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Marshmallo

[vikingTON]

12 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

Folk not realising that if the schools shut again the baws burst then naw?

If you're a parent who doesn't want to look after their own screaming weans all day, indeed it is. If you're a restaurant manager with no kids whose business would get shut down again as a 'sacrifice' to keep the schools open and go under as a result then it really isn't. 

If there was a pressing wartime-style emergency to get as many people into the workplace as possible right now then there'd be a clear society-level reason to prioritise schools. But there isn't. By the end of autumn, jobs will be sloughing off everywhere and there will be excess workers and capacity everywhere, so a bit of home schooling your sprogs while the rest of society carries on is actually the logical 'sacrifice' to be made here. We already have hubs in place for the mythical 'key worker issue' that kept schools open to circulate the virus like wildfire until the third week in March. Kids can then catch up with extra classes when it is actually safe to return to a crowded indoor environment.

This will never happen of course because governments are in thrall to parents who will scream blue murder if their career and family planning choices ever conflict with each other - even in the face of a pandemic.

Edited August 18, 2020 by vikingTON

[ICTChris]

My wife is a teacher and the measures in her school are pretty stringent.  The area around her desk is taped off so people can't get too close to her, there is hand sanitiser in the room, at the end of every lesson the pupils have to clean their desks with sanitising spray and paper towels.  Teachers don't give out worksheets or pens or anything really.  Teachers don't walk among the pupils to help them, all the desks are set up individually facing the front, there's no group work.  It's kind of going back to quite old school teaching, teacher at the board.  I'm not sure she's allowed to throw chalk at the kids nowadays, political correctness gone mad IMO.

An outbreak is considered to be two positive cases in two weeks so if there's a single positive case the school will not be closed.

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, rainbowrising said:

There are a number of research studies across Europe indicating children passing on C19 is very low.  Some of the stories just now appear to be more of the 'young adult' pupils attending parties with their pals and picking it up there.  

There are a number of 'research studies' (most likely just the same one over and over again) being promoted by both governments and the media who want to ram 1000 children inside a school all week while blaming pubs/inconsiderate youths/footballers if it all starts going tits up. That's what's actually happening here.

That this convenient tall tale flies in the face of everything we know about how outbreaks of cold, flu and every other seasonal respiratory disease develop isn't really important because protecting public health is now on the back-burner compared to 'avoiding politically damaging griping'. 

[Todd_is_God]

Standing still again on Thursday

[madwullie]

1 hour ago, Marshmallo said:

I predict this will not happen unless we get a nationwide R rate comparable to March.

EDIT: Which is probably the correct decision btw - my bugbear is with this insistence that risk is lower in schools with no social distancing and hundreds of people from different households crossing paths, as opposed to eg a group of 5 Scottish Championship footballers walking through an outdoor training session being tantamount to running through a minefield.

When there's inconsistency like this it is frustrating, but NS won't risk opening up the football AND the schools, so it's being calculated that economy wise schools are more important to be open than the football, so that's the risk they take. 

[Billy Jean King]

Beggars belief that some roasters don't want kids at school !

I want the kids home schooled to get the fitba back and keep pubs open....get a fukin grip of yourselves.

[Thereisalight..]

Just don’t understand their reluctance in getting some sort of crowds back into games. Most punters have a scarf anyway so only allow them entry if they’re compliant on wearing a face covering. As for the argument about players being in contact with one another, most of the lower league players will have been in contact with colleagues for months now. Look at supermarket workers when deaths/cases were so high, they were still working in close proximity to colleagues and customers without PPE. Honestly don’t know why there’s hasn’t been more of a clamber for a response from the SG as to when exactly we’ll be allowed back to games. No deaths in over a month and we’re still accepting their rules in their quest for “zero covid”

[Marshmallo]

7 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

Beggars belief that some roasters don't want kids at school !

I want the kids home schooled to get the fitba back and keep pubs open....get a fukin grip of yourselves.

Who is saying that?

[Todd_is_God]

Imagine being a journalist, getting to ask a question directly to NS, and then using that question to suggest we should introduce blended learning 

#minter

Absolutely no chance of winning an independence referendum whilst simultaneously being a nation of shitebags

Edited August 18, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Gaz]

10 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

Beggars belief that some roasters don't want kids at school !

I want the kids home schooled to get the fitba back and keep pubs open....get a fukin grip of yourselves.

I'll take "things no-one is saying for £250", please

Edited August 18, 2020 by Gaz

[vikingTON]

2 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

Beggars belief that some roasters don't want kids at school !

I want the kids home schooled to get the fitba back and keep pubs open....get a fukin grip of yourselves.

Here was me thinking that the coronavirus was an 'unprecedented pandemic' and that protecting public health would therefore be our top priority until an effective treatment was widely available (governments everywhere, April 2020, when shutting things down and crashing the economy into a brick wall for a generation). That being the case, we should run our restart plan on the sole principle of infection risk and not 'inconvenience to parents/governments' which is not actually relevant at all.

Schools are the biggest breeding ground of any respiratory disease and so should be the last things to reopen and the first to be closed in the event of any new outbreak. The idea that it is legitimate on public health grounds to keep 1000 weans indoors all week while telling adults that they can't meet people from more than three households in a restaurant or ever go to a Stranraer v Albion Rovers game outdoors because of the unacceptable transmission risk is quite clearly a giant stack of fucking nonsense - which is why the government's other restrictions/advisories are now being selectively chucked in the bin by its people. 

[Michael W]

23 minutes ago, madwullie said:

When there's inconsistency like this it is frustrating, but NS won't risk opening up the football AND the schools, so it's being calculated that economy wise schools are more important to be open than the football, so that's the risk they take. 

There is no rational argument for allowing a few hundred to gather indoors (even with measures in place) and not allowing a few hundred to stand outside and watch a game of football. The risk of transmission outdoors is very much reduced and there will be similar measures in place constraining capacity. 

I don't see why we can't have both. I agree that the schools need to go back but they are also high risk and I don't see why lower-risk activity is being sacrificed for them. 

Edited August 18, 2020 by Michael W

[Hedgecutter]

Watching this just now, I wonder if NS's hand waving beside the interpreter as she talks actually inadvertently translates into anything in sign language, e.g. "big knob" 

Also, when they say it continues it on the (new) BBC Scotland channel, all I see on that is an off-air blank screen. Anyone else have this?