Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Todd_is_God]

This "we must accept restrictions on x but that's ok because we might be able to go to the football" is actually incredible.

Imagine being the type of person willing to quite happily let the government control what you can do and where you can go because "bUt wHaT aBoUt tEh VaRiAntS? "

Everyone laughs at those who put an X in the Tory box in December 2019 because "they knew who and what they were voting for."  And rightfully so. However, if this goes the way it looks like it will, the same can be said for those who vote SNP in May, and they can have no complaints about how long NS wishes to 'care more' for thereafter.

[Paco]

Err, I think you'll find 'the majority of scientists' do not actually expect the current crop of vaccines to go from being as effective as they are to 'don't work' off the back of a small number of mutations. Deaths and hospitalisations will still be prevented. We have to alter and update vaccines against influenza, a virus which is far more unstable than Covid-19, every year. Ultimately, vaccinations will reduce Covid-19 to that same level of threat and risk, at worst. Once countries reach appropriate vaccine coverage and/or immunity in the population, and with appropriate global monitoring in place, there will be zero justification for any restrictions on movement.

Moderna and AZ are literally working on new vaccines in response to the SA variant. While we don’t know that hospitalisations and deaths would follow because the current vaccines are less effective, and some protection against disease should still be there, we don’t know this for sure.

How would you feel if we opened up the borders in summer, imported vaccine-beating variants and were back in this position next winter? Because that’s the questions governments need to ask. It’s precautious. It might even be too cautious. But it’s much better than being gung-ho and sending us back to square one.

So, do we have an end date for this or will we never be able to travel again ?
I'm not getting at you incidentally as I know you're only stating the given reasoning, however I would question whether this is actually in any way feasible in practice.
Variants will likely be with us forever while the virus remains active anywhere throughout the world, so what that means is that life as we all knew it is over, surely not ?????
More to the point, what will I do with all my saved up sol melia loyalty points !!!!

Yeah I agree with you here to be honest. There’s literally no point in doing this if we don’t have an exit plan. Doing this for 2021 as we assess the rest of the world’s vaccination progress, and getting a solid plan in place for winter in response to variants (e.g. a new round of updated vaccines for winter) is fine. Doing it just because we’re terrified of variants is not.

[Billy Jean King]

Where can I book one of these quarantine hotels ?  I assume they are all inclusive with pools and gyms ?   Any reviews on trip advisor ?

Perhaps facility would be a better word

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

2 minutes ago, Burnieman said:

That's the part that is both annoying and frustrating.

I fully support the current measures and quarantine, but what are the conditions that need to be met to remove quarantine, remove travel restrictions and reduce to Level 1 or 0. What are the targets we must meet? We don't need dates as nobody knows, we just need to know what is required.  An exit strategy.

As it stands, it seems like NS is agitating for a complete border closure in 2021 which is what she has always wanted, that won't wash.

Reduce deaths, reduce new infections, reduce the pressure on the NHS.  Those are what I understood to be the targets to meet towards normality, so let's have a bit more meat on the bones and then we know where we all stand. Not "dinnae book foreign holidays" pish.

If the Scottish Government continues the lockdown for the rest of the year, careful now, down with this sort of thing, stuff then i doubt they’ll be the Scottish Government at the end of the year. I know quite a lot of once committed SNP voters quite seriously considering changing their vote in the wake of the clusterfuck of how they handled the last year and their plans for this year. 

[TheScarf]

Nah, The SNP get a landslide for the foreseeable.

[ICTChris]

Viruses are really weird  I read this extract on social media about the 1918 Spanish flu

This virus subsequently mutated and is now fairly common - I likely had a variant of myself in 2009.  

Also, fair play to the public transport in South Africa, a load of people died on the tram but they carried on, got to make your stops.

 

[Elixir]

9 minutes ago, Paco said:

 

Moderna and AZ are literally working on new vaccines in response to the SA variant. While we don’t know that hospitalisations and deaths would follow because the current vaccines are less effective, and some protection against disease should still be there, we don’t know this for sure.

How would you feel if we opened up the borders in summer, imported vaccine-beating variants and were back in this position next winter? Because that’s the questions governments need to ask. It’s precautious. It might even be too cautious. But it’s much better than being gung-ho and sending us back to square one.


Yeah I agree with you here to be honest. There’s literally no point in doing this if we don’t have an exit plan. Doing this for 2021 as we assess the rest of the world’s vaccination progress, and getting a solid plan in place for winter in response to variants (e.g. a new round of updated vaccines for winter) is fine. Doing it just because we’re terrified of variants is not.

 

Err, so vaccine manufacture is also evolving? Who could have thought. Indeed, it is thought unlikely that this will need to happen at scale for another year or two in any case.

We also wouldn't be in this position in future winters even without vaccinations because there will be significant immunity in the population. Please see the pattern of previous pandemics of this magnitude - they all end. Even if re-infections occur more over time, the scientific literature is quite clearly pointing towards asymptomatic/lesser illness, because even a mutating virus is still recognised by the immune system - in the same way you would recognise someone's face when they get a haircut.

This isn't being cautious, or sensible, it is just fucking nonsense - and unnecessary scaremongering.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Elixir

[true_rover]

That's exactly what I meant when I said a program of perpetual vaccination.
 

And why is that a problem? People get a flu jab every year.

[Billy Jean King]

If the Scottish Government continues the lockdown for the rest of the year, careful now, down with this sort of thing, stuff then i doubt they’ll be the Scottish Government at the end of the year. I know quite a lot of once committed SNP voters quite seriously considering changing their vote in the wake of the clusterfuck of how they handled the last year and their plans for this year. 

Where's this chat of SG keeping lockdown for a year ? It was overseas travel that NS talked about wanting to prevent for a year not sure how that has morphed into lockdown.

Lockdown will start to ease in late March or April assuming hospital admissions and deaths fall as expected after vaccination. I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise never mind a full year of this.

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

If the Scottish Government continues the lockdown for the rest of the year, careful now, down with this sort of thing, stuff then i doubt they’ll be the Scottish Government at the end of the year. I know quite a lot of once committed SNP voters quite seriously considering changing their vote in the wake of the clusterfuck of how they handled the last year and their plans for this year. 

Who would they vote for instead though? Who would have made or will make a better job of Covid? Will a minority government needing the agreement of the likes of Douglas Ross, Willie Rennie and whoever be more effective? If it's just a shouting at clouds thing I think it would be counterproductive.

[Detournement]

1 minute ago, true_rover said:

14 minutes ago, Detournement said:

That's exactly what I meant when I said a program of perpetual vaccination.
 

And why is that a problem? People get a flu jab every year.

Because it's apparently going to take 6 months to jab everyone in this wave. If they need a new vaccine for the wave next winter how long will it take?

[Archie McSquackle]

If it's any consolation, they're already testing next year's flu jag based on the recent mutations and it's considered to be a weaker strain than normal.

[Burnieman]

4 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

If the Scottish Government continues the lockdown for the rest of the year, careful now, down with this sort of thing, stuff then i doubt they’ll be the Scottish Government at the end of the year. I know quite a lot of once committed SNP voters quite seriously considering changing their vote in the wake of the clusterfuck of how they handled the last year and their plans for this year. 

They'll win by a landslide, and generally speaking they have done better than most at handling this, that's not to say they have been great.

What frustrates me is the ultra-cautious approach which really hasn't gotten us anywhere these last 10 months, they have to realise we share a border with England, and we are not in control of external borders. So in that respect they need to go along with what they (and Wales and NI) agree with the UK Govt and stop the posturing.  We are not going to be like NZ it's far too late for that, but I really do think NS gets fixated on this, perhaps in part due to the advice she is receiving.

Flexing muscles and saying we're considering tougher restrictions and "dinnae book foreign holidays" is not the way to go about delivering the actual message that there's very much light at the end of the tunnel.  Give us a realistic and reasonable goal to work towards and when we reach it, relax and let us get on with living with Covid as we'll always have to do.

[Detournement]

14 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

This "we must accept restrictions on x but that's ok because we might be able to go to the football" is actually incredible.

Imagine being the type of person willing to quite happily let the government control what you can do and where you can go because "bUt wHaT aBoUt tEh VaRiAntS? "

Everyone laughs at those who put an X in the Tory box in December 2019 because "they knew who and what they were voting for."  And rightfully so. However, if this goes the way it looks like it will, the same can be said for those who vote SNP in May, and they can have no complaints about how long NS wishes to 'care more' for thereafter.

Hopefully we won't have any restrictions other than travel from around May. 

If banning foreign holidays means the chances of no restrictions well into the winter is possible then we have to go down that route.

Anybody that puts a fortnight in Florida/Maya Rivera/Corfu/Mamaris/Mallorca ahead of being able to freely socialise in the UK needs to seriously rethink their life. 

[The Moonster]

10 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

If the Scottish Government continues the lockdown for the rest of the year, careful now, down with this sort of thing, stuff then i doubt they’ll be the Scottish Government at the end of the year. I know quite a lot of once committed SNP voters quite seriously considering changing their vote in the wake of the clusterfuck of how they handled the last year and their plans for this year. 

 

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Who would they vote for instead though? Who would have made or will make a better job of Covid? Will a minority government needing the agreement of the likes of Douglas Ross, Willie Rennie and whoever be more effective? If it's just a shouting at clouds thing I think it would be counterproductive.

I've got to agree with welshbairn here, and it's why I think people south of the border will vote for the Tories again. I don't vote SNP but if you normally vote for them then looking at the alternatives must make you sick. The Greens must be the only palatable party for SNP voters and not enough people are going to shift that way. That leaves you with Labour (deid), Tories (a no go for many) or the Lib Dems (lol).

[djchapsticks]

1 minute ago, Detournement said:

Because it's apparently going to take 6 months to jab everyone in this wave. If they need a new vaccine for the wave next winter how long will it take?

You don't seriously believe that everyone who will have the vaccine (the entire population) will need the new one as well.

It doesn't mutate nearly enough to justify that. It also will not need be rolled out to the population at large at the point when everyone has had it. Only those in need of it.

[Burnieman]

2 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Hopefully we won't have any restrictions other than travel from around May. 

If banning foreign holidays means the chances of no restrictions well into the winter is possible then we have to go down that route.

Anybody that puts a fortnight in Florida/Maya Rivera/Corfu/Mamaris/Mallorca ahead of being able to freely socialise in the UK needs to seriously rethink their life. 

I don't go to any of those places but I want to travel this year, and there is absolutely no reason why that cannot happen at least in the second half of the year, safely.

[Jambomo]

The government will have an exit plan and will have targets they want to reach which will then probably mean a gradual reopening of everything.

There are too many unknowns at the moment to give dates or timelines as to when that will happen. They need to know the vaccine works properly, they need to see that transmission goes down and stays down for probably a few months at least, that deaths and hospitalisation lessen etc.

We have to wait on the vaccine roll-out and then to see the data gathered over a period of time.  I expect that when things start to look like they are staying better and enough of the vulnerable groups are vaccinated then we’ll start getting things back on again.

They won’t tell us targets because as soon as we get near one people will be screaming for the end of lockdown and potentially starting to go “f**k it it’s alright now” and going round their friends houses again. This thread alone shows how bad the general public are for getting information and becoming amateur public health experts and moaning over every single decision.

[djchapsticks]

16 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Nah, The SNP get a landslide for the foreseeable.

None of the other parties are even remotely palatable or worth considering even looking at. 

However, the SNP over the last 12 months have become a lot less palatable than they previously were.

[Detournement]

1 minute ago, Burnieman said:

I don't go to any of those places but I want to travel this year, and there is absolutely no reason why that cannot happen at least in the second half of the year, safely.

It depends where you want to go. Latin America, India, Africa and many other places are still going to be rife with Covid until well into 2022. 

The EU is miles behind us in vaccine roll out and has lower predicted uptake. They aren't estimated to reach herd immunity until the end of October.