Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[HeartsOfficialMoaner]

18 months without a visit to a dentist.

It's a difficult situation though, it would a lot easier if the vaccines worked. They help but that's not enough.

At the beginning they said 10 years to find a cure so we might still have a long way to go.

A scale and polish please but.

[beesher]

I book our work's Christmas do and it will absolutely be going ahead as planned.

Everyone vaccinated (including a substantial number with 3 doses) a negative lateral flow beforehand, and obviously adhering to the restaurant's own rules while we are there.

We continued to work right through the pandemic and the staff deserve a day out on the company dime. To make that announcement last night is farcical.

 

[Detournement]

8 hours ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Ten days isolation if you come into contact with omicron which data suggests is a less severe strain but you can test and release if youre double vaxxed and its the more severe delta strain? 
Triple vaccinated, no adult conversation, two years of life with massive restrictions, politicians and public health figures flaunting the rules in Scotland and England yet we’ve all to be good little boys and girls. Absolutely f**k this. 

It's obvious Omicron is being used as an excuse for more restrictions.

[Donathan]

If there’s any restrictions on household mixing then there should be mass non-compliance. 

[Paco]

There are a few things to acknowledge right now before anyone, government or public, get hysterical.

We are in for a big wave of Omicron cases in the very near future. People will go to hospital, and people will die. These things are going to happen, it is completely inevitable and screaming ‘it’s mild!!!’ is burying your head in the sand. Government wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t prepare for this as much as possible, and taking any reasonable steps which might help is to be expected.

However, the elderly and those identified as clinically vulnerable already have three vaccine doses. Most of the over 50s will be done as the wave peaks. Three doses are seen, at this stage, as just as good against Omicron as two were against original/Alpha/Delta. And two won’t exactly leave you defenceless, it should still help fight severe disease. Prior infection no longer stops you testing positive but should still give protection against severe disease - at least 12% of the Scottish population has prior infection, and into the bargain this is heavily concentrated in younger age groups who won’t be boosted as the wave hits. This is good news.

The way I see it, more cases always means more hospitalisation and that’s going to happen. Nothing we do will prevent it. There’s maybe a slight gap in the 40-50 age group who are known to sometimes get ill and won’t be boosted en masse (currently 23%) when the wave peaks. But they still have reasonably good protection and in general we’re in almost as good a shape as you could realistically hope for as a new wave hits.

I am genuinely surprised to see Public Health Scotland overreaching and issuing guidance seemingly unilaterally, if this was a mistake released before being announced by politicians it’d have been retracted by now. I’ve always thought there’s no way we’re getting through winter without needing a vaccine passport for the pub and this is the excuse they’ll need, I fear. Prepared for it to happen today.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Having slept on it, I can’t see any major restrictions coming in without England shitting it and reintroducing financial support for the hospitality industry.

As such, I can see a rough idea of the following:

Schools to close one week early
All forms to hospitality to request vaccine passports or negative LFT.
Sporting Stadiums will also require the same.
Self isolation required for anyone returning from abroad.

There’s not much else that can be done without the reintroduction of furlough payments to target a specific industry.

The heads gone from the usual suspects here last night.

Given past experience I'd wait until any actual changes are announced.

There's been several times where new restrictions were expected which didn't materialise - instead we had her usual lecture about behaving etc.

[Todd_is_God]

What time is this dumpster fire of a briefing on at?

[Billy Jean King]

Reports of up to 40 Omicron cases from an A&E dept Christmas bash. Could that be driving the knee jerk PHS plea ?

The isolation changes are the big danger here. Our Christmas bash is still going ahead (as I type anyway) but the threat of isolation over Christmas day is forcing staff to pull out. Several also saying they have elderly relatives coming for Christmas dinner and they just don't want to take any risks. It's all starting to feel very much like last year despite a vaccination program widely hailed as one of the wonders of modern science - it's clearly not fully trusted by the scientists themselves or those in charge as it's clearly no longer the route out of this shit show we had been promised - there appears to be zero incentive for anyone not jabbed to do so or get boosted, it's being thoroughly undermined. Grim, grim times.

[Todd_is_God]

13 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

Reports of up to 40 Omicron cases from an A&E dept Christmas bash. Could that be driving the knee jerk PHS plea ?

The isolation changes are the big danger here. Our Christmas bash is still going ahead (as I type anyway) but the threat of isolation over Christmas day is forcing staff to pull out. Several also saying they have elderly relatives coming for Christmas dinner and they just don't want to take any risks. It's all starting to feel very much like last year despite a vaccination program widely hailed as one of the wonders of modern science - it's clearly not fully trusted by the scientists themselves or those in charge as it's clearly no longer the route out of this shit show we had been promised - there appears to be zero incentive for anyone not jabbed to do so or get boosted, it's being thoroughly undermined. Grim, grim times.

Great point. Even after it becomes clear Omicron is another non-event, NS is very close (depending what she says today) to burning the entire vaccine roll out.

Good luck encouraging people to get vaccinated in future if she pans them later.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[PedroMoutinho]

Another 2 week 8 month circuit breaker incoming?

Edited December 10, 2021 by PedroMoutinho

[Billy Jean King]

Another 2 week 8 month circuit breaker incoming?

Without furlough that's simply not happening. They are limited to what they can mandate without it, it will be vaccine passport expansion but as I said above any further restrictions are totally undermining the vaccine program.

[Todd_is_God]

1 minute ago, Billy Jean King said:

7 minutes ago, PedroMoutinho said:

Another 2 week 8 month circuit breaker incoming?

Without furlough that's simply not happening. They are limited to what they can mandate without it, it will be vaccine passport expansion but as I said above any further restrictions are totally undermining the vaccine program.

Whilst true, they have asked more than once in the last week for funding.

Hopefully BJ told her to do one.

[Jan Vojáček]

On 08/12/2021 at 11:33, Elixir said:

No way can Queen Nicola have us simply on a par with England. Even more shit imminently heading our way because some people will get a cold. Tremendous stuff. Of course, let's not forget the shameless distraction nonsense from the clowns in London either.

None of them are fit to govern.

...

I genuinely believe that, if Johnson hadn't been outed as having a party last year and pressed Plan B as a diversionary tactic, then we wouldn't be getting stricter rules today.

Maybe I'm going mental after almost two years living under this. But it was so ridiculously predictable that we would have to go one step further than England 'because I make no excuse for caring more'. 

Utterly sick of this theatre.

[101]

8 hours ago, Left Back said:

You do realise parliament is on the go Mon-Fri.  Just because the next scheduled update is Tuesday rules can be changed any time the government wants to announce it in parliament.

I’m not agreeing with the boy in discussion btw.  I have no idea who he is.

Friday is their constituency day would be bizzare to call an emergency debate, I hope that over the weekend more comes out about lessened severity of disease which informs decision making rather than it just being more infections. 

Worth remembering the countries it was first found in are largely: poorer, younger, less vaccinated and have a less able health service and yet deaths are not mounting up.

[Detournement]

10 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

...

I genuinely believe that, if Johnson hadn't been outed as having a party last year and pressed Plan B as a diversionary tactic, then we wouldn't be getting stricter rules today.

Wrong way round. 

[Donathan]

The whole thing is a complete pantomime at this point. It’s an utter disgrace that the Scottish Government can’t bear to be seen as being “equally caring” as the UK Government so any more by Boris Johnson to bring English restrictions in line with the tougher measures already in place up north must be met by a further tightening of Scottish rules to re-affirm the fact that the SNP care more about keeping people safe than the big bad Tories.

 

It would be a genuinely fascinating drama if it wasn’t for the fact that the Scottish government (among others) is using a bog standard respiratory virus as a weapon to keep people apart from their loved ones and increase their own popularity. 
 

Boris Johnson is a total charlatan and the Conservative Party in its current state are not fit to govern the UK, but Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are no better and the sooner that the UK collectively hand these absolute c***s their P45, the better.

 

Disgraceful. 

[Detournement]

The government don't need furlough. The isolation rules mean the vast majority of people will avoid pubs, clubs off their own back. 

[Frankie S]

It will be interesting to see what Sturgeon’s strategy for dealing with the Omicron variant will be at her Covid briefing later today. I suspect, as a number of leading epidemiologists have been predicting since the early stages of the pandemic, that Omicron is simply the latest variant in the inevitable evolution of the virus as it transitions from pandemic to endemic - more transmissible and likely less lethal than Delta, in much the same way that Delta was more transmissible and less lethal than Alpha. The likelihood is that by this time next year another more transmissible variant will have supplanted the then dominant strain, and we’ll probably be long past Zeta and onto some convoluted alpha-numeric system as we run out of letters for the emerging variants.

 

Now vaccination levels are near universal, we simply can’t continue with apocalyptic doom-mongering and knee-jerk reimposition of economically disastrous restrictions every time a new variant emerges. We’ll be living with this virus for the foreseeable future, and most of us will contract it more than once over the course of our remaining lifetimes (and despite media hype to the contrary, the vaccines remain highly effective at preventing hospitalisations and deaths) so we need to adapt to that pragmatic reality rather than pursue disastrous and economically ruinous scorched earth policies compelled by idealistic and entirely fanciful notions of elimination.

 

The pandemic was only ever going to end with endemicity rather than elimination, as COVID transitions towards its inevitably reduced status as just another background coronavirus, with annual boosters tweaked to the latest variants available to the vulnerable in the interim.

 

The question then is, when do governments transition from the crude, authoritarian and illiberal strategies required to fight a pandemic to the more sophisticated and less restrictive (both in terms of curtailment of civil liberties and restriction on businesses) approach required to restore the personal freedoms essential to a functioning democratic society, revitalise the economy AND protect the most vulnerable members of that society?

 

It seems self evident to me that a welfare society cannot be supported by a moribund economy, and at some point the oft-stated goal of ‘protecting the NHS’ must transition towards investing in the NHS. As restrictions on business are lifted, as the authoritarian residue of pandemic management is dismantled, I would be in favour of raising corporation tax, with the additional tax revenue ring-fenced to support Scotland’s beleaguered health service, which was dismally under-funded and over-stretched before Covid, and is shockingly unfit for purpose now.

 

In order to achieve the target of raising additional tax revenue for the NHS in Scotland, Scottish businesses must be allowed to trade without governmental interference or onerous restrictions. Put simply the Scottish government needs to stop micro-managing the Scottish business sector, and stop squeezing the life out of it and scapegoating at every opportunity formerly vibrant industries that overwhelmingly employ and cater towards young people, such as hospitality, live music and the events sector. 20,000 Scottish businesses failed during the first 12 months of the pandemic until end of March 2021, and we don’t yet have the figures for the following 9 months, but a greatly reduced pool of Scottish businesses will only be able to generate a correspondingly reduced level of tax revenue, and our existing social services (let alone an upgraded, improved version) simply cannot be subsidised by an emaciated and demoralised business sector. The economy and welfare are not oppositional forces, and this poisonous false dichotomy like so many others in this reductively polarised age must be cast aside, and a holistic approach adopted as we emerge from the pandemic.

 

The Scottish government MUST outline their strategy for transitioning from the pandemic to the endemic phase of this virus, a strategy for revitalising business and investing in, not merely protecting the NHS.

 

The absence of a positive vision for the future and the continuance of ineffective, inconsistent (and often counter-productive) authoritarian governmental policies, crudely fashioned to manage a pandemic, as we transition towards endemicity, would ensure a dismally dystopian and impoverished future for us all, failing to harness the economic power of the young in service of the greater good AND failing to protect the elderly and vulnerable. If that’s our future, then as Sam Goldwyn once said, include me out.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Frankie S

[Honest Saints Fan]

 

[Spider Rico]

She’s teeing things up nicely with selective retweeting