Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Todd_is_God]

17 minutes ago, virginton said:

It really is the point though for the public as opposed to government that just wants to keep everyone in their irrelevant, local authority box. If you say that everywhere in the Central Belt containing 3 million plus people is in an equal category of risk then there is absolutely zero legitimate reason to restrict travel between those areas. Particularly given that one of the reasons cited for bunging the entire Central Belt into a useless circuit breaker and then tier three status in the first place was the expectation that, erm, people will be travelling around that entire area! 

The SG wants to have it both ways with this and so the public are quite rightly filing their advice about this in the bin. 

Add to this that the government are happy for the likes of hospitality workers and gym staff to travel wherever they like for work, but if they chose to travel to their place of work to use said facilities on their days off they should be stopped, fined, and publicly flogged.

Meanwhile, Leitch's comments about "14 days buys you 28 days" are ignored as if they didn't happen, with no journalists etc finding it relevant to ask why he was so wrong, and why we should believe anything he says.

It's all ok, though, because Ross County can utilise 4.5% of their capacity on Friday night, to test if the previous test was not a fluke.

Edited November 4, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[101]

1 minute ago, Todd_is_God said:

 

It's all ok, though, because Ross County can utilise 4.5% of their capacity on Friday night, to test if the previous test was not a fluke.

Don't know if I missed something but why is it not a % of each stand? 300 seems a completely arbitrary number especially when it's not a test event if they use only one stand again. Just sillyness.

[Billy Jean King]

It really is the point though for the public as opposed to government that just wants to keep everyone in their irrelevant, local authority box. If you say that everywhere in the Central Belt containing 3 million plus people is in an equal category of risk then there is absolutely zero legitimate reason to restrict travel between those areas. Particularly given that one of the reasons cited for bunging the entire Central Belt into a useless circuit breaker and then tier three status in the first place was the expectation that, erm, people will be travelling around that entire area! 
The SG wants to have it both ways with this and so the public are quite rightly filing their advice about this in the bin. 

I agree, I was making that point however from the point of current restrictions it isn't was what I was trying to get at. T3 to T3 (or T2 to T2 etc) assuming you don't pass through an LA in a different level should be fine. Pointless legislating travel too as totally unenforceable as anyone stopped will just cite one of the many permissible reasons for travelling true or not.

[Todd_is_God]

11 minutes ago, 101 said:

Don't know if I missed something but why is it not a % of each stand? 300 seems a completely arbitrary number especially when it's not a test event if they use only one stand again. Just sillyness.

No point in them changing the habit of a lifetime I suppose.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

I agree, I was making that point however from the point of current restrictions it isn't was what I was trying to get at. T3 to T3 (or T2 to T2 etc) assuming you don't pass through an LA in a different level should be fine. Pointless legislating travel too as totally unenforceable as anyone stopped will just cite one of the many permissible reasons for travelling true or not.

Kinda thought that too.
Like i said before tho they can get their travel restrictions seriously tae f**k. Stop insulting our intelligence. If a situation is serious enough to warrant that then it’s serious enough to curtail schools

[Todd_is_God]

I don't understand why the SG cannot / will not use the briefings to display data like this.

Displaying data by report date is much more useful for gauging the shape of what is happening, and is less sensitive to any bottlenecks with results.

Add to that, as we are now being threatened daily with level 4 lockdowns "to protect the NHS" we really should be talking about overall hospital / ICU capacity and occupancy too (and vs normal levels), rather than just covid. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask, and doing so would reduce the number of people questioning the figures.

A set of of audio only, contextless figures 7½ months down the line is amateur stuff.

Edited November 4, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Juanhourjoe]

41 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

1 hour ago, virginton said:

It really is the point though for the public as opposed to government that just wants to keep everyone in their irrelevant, local authority box. If you say that everywhere in the Central Belt containing 3 million plus people is in an equal category of risk then there is absolutely zero legitimate reason to restrict travel between those areas. Particularly given that one of the reasons cited for bunging the entire Central Belt into a useless circuit breaker and then tier three status in the first place was the expectation that, erm, people will be travelling around that entire area! 
The SG wants to have it both ways with this and so the public are quite rightly filing their advice about this in the bin. 

I agree, I was making that point however from the point of current restrictions it isn't was what I was trying to get at. T3 to T3 (or T2 to T2 etc) assuming you don't pass through an LA in a different level should be fine. Pointless legislating travel too as totally unenforceable as anyone stopped will just cite one of the many permissible reasons for travelling true or not.

During the original lockdown, travel between areas was discouraged. So individual areas within tier 3 aren't going to come down as quick if people travel within the whole tier 3. Doing so, all those council areas are more likely to increase or decrease at a similar rate.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Furious mum bins £23 takeaway and calls cops after hearing about delivery driver's holiday

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/furious-mum-bins-23-takeaway-22952254
A mum binned a £23 takeaway and phoned the police because she thought the delivery driver should be self-isolating.
The 41-year-old, who asked not to be named, ordered from her local Chinese restaurant.
But she was told the Norton China driver had just come back from a holiday to Greece.
She thought this was against the rules and threw out the pricey food before phoning police.
Stoke Sentinel reports that the woman assumed he should be in quarantine.
Fearing that he could be infected with the coronavirus, the Stoke woman binned the meal of chicken fried rice, chips and fillet Cantonese beef he'd dropped off.
Staffordshire Police has since confirmed the driver had been to Greece, but to an area that was not one from which people had to isolate on their return, the Daily Mirror reports.
The woman said she was worried about her son and elderly grandma.
"My concern isn’t really for myself, I'm not at risk," she said.
"But I am responsible for my grandma, who's 91, and is at high risk.
"And I have got a child too. I may as well have got £23 and put it in the bin because that’s what I did last night. I was so disappointed and very angry about it."
There are now only a handful of countries people living in the UK can visit without quarantining.
They are the Canary Islands, Gibraltar, Germany, Greece, Madeira, Azores, Maldives and Sweden.
A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said: "We carried out enquiries and it's been deemed he went to a part of Greece where he didn't have to self-isolate on his return."
Our sister title Mirror Online attempted to contact Norton China for comment.

What a moron.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

I fear that the SNP would be over-stepping the mark with any potential legislation designed to stop people from travelling outwith areas. 

The way to defeat the virus is to encourage and persuade people that the restrictions are necessary, not to take a sledgehammer to a peanut and have the police stopping people all over the country like it's the 2nd world war. 

If you want to lose the goodwill of the population, that's the way to do it. 

[vikingTON]

18 minutes ago, Juanhourjoe said:

During the original lockdown, travel between areas was discouraged. So individual areas within tier 3 aren't going to come down as quick if people travel within the whole tier 3. Doing so, all those council areas are more likely to increase or decrease at a similar rate.

If the government wants to discourage people from travelling to other localities like it did in March then it could try reflecting local circumstances alone in setting up its tiers - which would be the easiest way to discourage travel through genuine hotspots, rather than most of the country - as well as closing their infection factory schools like they did in the spring because the situation is so serious and all.

The idea that fixed penalties should be handed out for being in the wrong council area instead is utterly risible.

Edited November 4, 2020 by vikingTON

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

6 minutes ago, virginton said:

If the government wants to discourage people from travelling to other localities like it did in March then it could try reflecting local circumstances alone in setting up its tiers - which would be the easiest way to discourage travel through genuine hotspots, rather than most of the country - as well as closing their infection factory schools like they did in the spring because the situation is so serious and all.

The idea that fixed penalties should be handed out for being in the wrong council area instead is utterly risible.

I have a feeling that this is one of these ideas being bandied around by the SNP hierarchy, which will be discussed then quietly forgotten about. 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

I fear that the SNP would be over-stepping the mark with any potential legislation designed to stop people from travelling outwith areas. 
The way to defeat the virus is to encourage and persuade people that the restrictions are necessary, not to take a sledgehammer to a peanut and have the police stopping people all over the country like it's the 2nd world war. 
If you want to lose the goodwill of the population, that's the way to do it. 

The problem with guidelines is that if they are advisory there will also be some c***s who take the piss.

That being said - making it legal does not necessarily mean that on the spot fines should be the go to punishment for those breaking the law - maybe a system of warnings before fines kick in?

[Todd_is_God]

7 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The problem with guidelines is that if they are advisory there will also be some c***s who take the piss.

People take the piss with everything, though. But most wouldn't.

By making things mandatory / punishable you just punish those who would follow the guidelines, as those who wouldn't stick to a guideline still won't, and most won't get caught either.

It's like driving. The speed limit on the M74 / M6 is 70mph, yet there are the odd few who think it's an autobahn. Reducing it to 50mph, for example, would punish those who do stick to 70 just now, but wouldn't deter those who don't.

The end result is the majority being frustrated and pissed off, but no reduction in those taking the piss.

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Juanhourjoe]

13 minutes ago, virginton said:

If the government wants to discourage people from travelling to other localities like it did in March then it could try reflecting local circumstances alone in setting up its tiers - which would be the easiest way to discourage travel through genuine hotspots, rather than most of the country - as well as closing their infection factory schools like they did in the spring because the situation is so serious and all.

The idea that fixed penalties should be handed out for being in the wrong council area instead is utterly risible.

Agree the policy around schools have been a joke. But not traveling to other area's keeps the potential down the potential spread. And if people know they're not allowed to go for a wee trip. Why not a fine for doing it anyway?

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

Just now, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The problem with guidelines is that if they are advisory there will also be some c***s who take the piss.

That being said - making it legal does not necessarily mean that on the spot fines should be the go to punishment for those breaking the law - maybe a system of warnings before fines kick in?

I don't necessarily disagree with the first part of that statement, but we're not under martial law here (no matter how serious the virus is). The vast majority of people follow the guidelines, and when it happens that we step in to a grey area like visiting family.....like all of us have done.....people try to take all sensible precautions. 

Fines should be for arseholes we meet up for parties, or do something in groups that constitutes reckless behaviour. They shouldn't be for a couple who take their dog in the car 3 miles into a different area to walk him in the hills. 

The police already have the power to warn people who deliberately or inadvertently overstep the mark, and the power to fine real d1cks. 

That should be enough. 

[Bairnardo]

This is something that NS/The SG really should be pointing out, or that should be the way in which cases are reported (even if it's only weekly).  Today's case rise sounds massive, but if it's actually been spread out over a few days then it should (hopefully)  be a sign that infections are not rising significantly again.  I must admit when I first looked at the PHS dashboard I was always confused as to why the number of cases looked significant different - I think when the specimen was taken is far more significant than when the cases are reported.  
Looking  at NHS Lothian and Edinburgh City's stats on PHS show a clear downward trajectory.  My only concern would be that if they decided Glasgow/Lanarkshire needed to be Tier 4 then we would get lumped in with them due to our relative proximity.  I'm not sure what difference making it law to travel between areas would make, unless they were prepared to put the police on the roads.  I know the Gardai did that in Ireland between counties, but it caused massive delays and I'm not sure how well that would work in terms of the commuter towns around the central belt.  
Personally I can just about handle tier 3 as it is, seeing as I can do some training and my Dad is part of my extended bubble.  Tier 4 in a Scottish winter though, absolutely brutal. 

Was watching some news earlier today, Andrew Neil and some Radio punter were labouring the point about how shit this is going to be over winter. I think there has been a huge dose throughout all of this, of something that really fucks me off as regards mental health. Rewind back to April and lockdown mk 1. Loads of folk went on and on about how big an impact this will have on mental health. But that was it. Folk seem to think that if you acknowledge the existence of a mental health issue that's it dealt with. Meanwhile, the radio guy I heard this morning said that in London last month suicides were up by 70%.

Stop fucking talking about it and do something. Let's see the fucking money, the recognition, the support. The measures being taken against covid are literally, without any degree of exaggeration, destroying people. Their health, their livelihoods, their methods of coping with the shit life already throws at them. I have ranted about this before that tokenism is huge as regards mental health, and it has gotten fully worse with this.


I genuinely dont believe either UK or Scotgov have an idea if whats coming at the back of this.

[Distant Doonhamer]

2 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

 

 

Was watching some news earlier today, Andrew Neil and some Radio punter were labouring the point about how shit this is going to be over winter. I think there has been a huge dose throughout all of this, of something that really fucks me off as regards mental health. Rewind back to April and lockdown mk 1. Loads of folk went on and on about how big an impact this will have on mental health. But that was it. Folk seem to think that if you acknowledge the existence of a mental health issue that's it dealt with. Meanwhile, the radio guy I heard this morning said that in London last month suicides were up by 70%.

Stop fucking talking about it and do something. Let's see the fucking money, the recognition, the support. The measures being taken against covid are literally, without any degree of exaggeration, destroying people. Their health, their livelihoods, their methods of coping with the shit life already throws at them. I have ranted about this before that tokenism is huge as regards mental health, and it has gotten fully worse with this.


I genuinely dont believe either UK or Scotgov have an idea if whats coming at the back of this.

 

I suspect they have every idea. No way they'll acknowledge it at this time though IMHO.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

6 minutes ago, Distant Doonhamer said:

I suspect they have every idea. No way they'll acknowledge it at this time though IMHO.

I reckon most people now know that governments are taking the calculated decision to destroy the economy, make millions unemployed, ruin the future of a generation of teenagers and young people, and sacrifice those with 'non covid' diseases and mental health issues, all with the goal of trying to eradicate something that can't be eradicated. 

The decisions of the last 8 months (and the next 8 months) will have profoundly negative effects on all our lives for years...maybe even decades...to come. 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Bob Mahelp

[Steven W]

Scottish National Airshow at East Fortune, due in July 2021, becomes a new entry for 'Furthest Away Event Cancelled Cause of Covid'

[Bairnardo]

2 minutes ago, Distant Doonhamer said:

I suspect they have every idea. No way they'll acknowledge it at this time though IMHO.

I dont know. I have spoken to a few people in recent days whose outlook has turned to something approaching sheer doom. People who I didnt expect it from. You can argue all you like about what was realistic to expect over winter but the media and Boris have a lot of blame to carry for overstating what was possible. There also the constant downplaying of a vaccine or other measures which effectively follows that normal life is impossible to achieve. That's not how I interpret it but folk can be forgiven for thinking that way based on the coverage. Maybe I am over optimistic. 

 

The governments might have an idea, cant rule that out I suppose but I cant help thinking that by the time they realise the scale of the damage being done, it will be too late. 

For the first time in this whole pandemic, I have been really disheartened recently by the damage I have seen versus the mitigatikns in place.