SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

[RonaldoVII]

Yeah, we definitely need to punish those suffering the most from the virus more. They’d had such an easy ride.

I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.

 

[acnumber9]

I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.

Good for you.

 

[noodlehair]

I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.

I don't see how you fairly punish people for breaking the rules when the rules themselves make no sense and no one knows the situation an individual is breaking the rules in or why.

If someone who's been on their own all year in tier 4, self isolates for 2 weeks to go and spend Christmas with their family in tier 2, do you think they deserve to be punished? What if doing that is the only thing that gets them through this? What if they say they are forming a support bubble with their family? How do you prove whether that's a lie?

Who's going to judge where the line is between being irresponsible and making reasoned judgements to try and maintain a quality of life? and who's going to judge if someone has or hasn't crossed it? Particularly considering the most irresponsible and inconsistent people during the whole pandemic have been the British government.

Short of throwing large lockdown parties or being a mask conspiracy weirdo I find it hard to judge anyone at this point. No one knows what anyone else has been through since March or what circumstances they are making their decisions under.

 

[Brwned]

I don't see how you fairly punish people for breaking the rules when the rules themselves make no sense and no one knows the situation an individual is breaking the rules in or why.

If someone who's been on their own all year in tier 4, self isolates for 2 weeks to go and spend Christmas with their family in tier 2, do you think they deserve to be punished? What if doing that is the only thing that gets them through this? What if they say they are forming a support bubble with their family? How do you prove whether that's a lie?

Who's going to judge where the line is between being irresponsible and making reasoned judgements to try and maintain a quality of life? and who's going to judge if someone has or hasn't crossed it? Particularly considering the most irresponsible and inconsistent people during the whole pandemic have been the British government.

Short of throwing large lockdown parties or being a mask conspiracy weirdo I find it hard to judge anyone at this point. No one knows what anyone else has been through since March or what circumstances they are making their decisions under.

Surely it's beyond question at this point that the more personal judgment we've allowed people to make during the pandemic, the more the virus has spread? The population hasn't self regulated in the way that is necessary to minimise harm to itself. So the people advocating for people to take decisions into their own hands because the government haven't earned that legitimacy are directly advocating for a position that will in all likelihood lead to more harm. Suspending judgement on that individual position seems problematic in that context.

It will make the spread worse and it will require more draconian rules on commerce and socialising at a later point, because it simply isn't manageable with the resources we have for people to just do what they think is best. That's just the evidence we have. There is no reason to believe that individual judgment in this scenario will result in better outcomes for the population than the idiotic governments decisions. It might result in better outcomes for the individual, but that's a dangerous view to take, with obvious longer-term risks.

So while it is a valid position to take, from at least one perspective, it's important to acknowledge it is not a harm-free choice. It is a choice about which harms you prefer, and you're making decisions that impact on other people. They should be judged because that's part of the social contract. That is one of the things that helps maintain the overall health of societies.

 

[GloryHunter07]

A friend of mine just sent me a photo from inside the Westfield shopping centre, in London. Throngs of people. Loads without masks. Is that normal in the UK?!

In Ireland you could go days without seeing a single maskless person in an indoor space. I know the benefits of masks are kind of uncertain but to me it’s a marker of general civic spiritedness during the pandemic. If they can’t be bothered wearing a mask in a shopping centre then chances are you’re taking the piss in other ways too.

All very well moaning about Boris and the gang but that photo really shocked me. Looks like the British public need to up their fecking game or reap the consequences.

To be fair, people rushed to Westfield before the shops shut. Easily avoided if Govt had its shit together.

 

[Wibble]

I know it is a very different situation but NSW has locked down the 250000 people who live on Sydney's north shore with a stay at home order to contain an outbreak of 68 cases. Restrictions have increased slightly in the rest of Sydney e.g. back to 1 person per 4sq m in restaurants and pubs. The other states are locking their borders with us because this is viewed as far too lax an approach.

 

[Brwned]

To be fair, people rushed to Westfield before the shops shut. Easily avoided if Govt had its shit together.

Isn't it also easily avoided by people not needing to go to the shops so close to Christmas in the midst of a pandemic, either by having bought online or bought in the shops weeks back, when London was in a less precarious position? Or if they absolutely had to go, to only go with masks? Sure, the government created a problem, so people had to make choices. Shouldn't we expect them not to make choices like this? When the government makes bad choices it doesn't give licence to people to make their own bad choices, surely?

 

[Eire Red United]

Any still listening to this shite?

 

[Shakesy]

It's actually at a point where I can see it ending in full on riots.... People aren't so stupid that they can't tell complete bollocks from reason, and using complete bollocks to take people's freedoms away is dangerous at the best of times.

You know, that's what I thought at the beginning of this pandemic. Now I'm starting to lean towards the opinion that most people are law-abiding. Masks and lockdowns are well outside their comfort zones, but to go rioting is a step too far.

To date society and rule of law have generally held up quite nicely.

 

[Brwned]

For those sceptical about the relevance of this mutation, here's a couple of outside perspectives:

“This spread is happening at a moment in time when there are already many lineages circulating, and despite that it is displacing them all,” said Kristian Andersen, a geneticist at the Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif. “We can’t say for sure, but to me it looks like this very explosive growth is primarily because” of its new mutations.

The new variant in Britain shares a crucial mutation with a lineage that is growing just as explosively in South Africa. At a World Health Organization meeting early this month, scientists reported that the South African variant accounted for 80 to 90 percent of newly identified infections, driving an explosive second wave.

“We normally see 20 to 30 lineages in our samples at a given time,” said Tulio de Oliveira, a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, in Durban, who first flagged the variant. “Now, we see only one.”

They need more testing to verify the claims of being "up to 70% more transmissible" and it obviously doubles up as convenient political cover, but at the very least there's reason to think this requires a change in tactic. And while the UK is criticised for its slow response in most things, if it is the case that Nervtag only shared their analysis the day before (which eventually becomes public record), then I don't think there's much to argue about. The UK were noted in that article in nature as being particularly proactive on studying the generic variations:

The clearest sign that D614G has an effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in humans comes from an ambitious UK effort called the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, which has analysed genomes of around 25,000 viral samples. From these data, researchers have identified more than 1,300 instances in which a virus entered the United Kingdom and spread, including examples of D- and G-type viruses.

A team led by Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, epidemiologist Erik Volz, at Imperial College London, and biologist Thomas Connor at Cardiff University, studied the UK spread of 62 COVID-19 clusters seeded by D viruses and 245 by G viruses7. The researchers found no clinical differences in people infected with either virus. However, G viruses tended to transmit slightly faster than lineages that didn’t carry the change, and formed larger clusters of infections. Their estimates of the difference in transmission rates hover around 20%, Volz says, but the true value could be a bit higher or lower. “There’s not a large effect in absolute terms,” says Rambaut.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

These are genuine experts in their fields working on these things, and when looking at that new strain before they were happy to say the effects were relatively muted. 20%, not 70%. For them to have mistakenly understood this one or greatly exaggerated the changes would be really unusual. It can't be put down to just bumbling Boris.

 

[calodo2003]

So many in this thread want to blame the government but not foist any blame on the populace. It’s not all the government. It’s at best half & half with probably more blame on the populace.

There’s absolutely no reason for pictures like this. This picture isn’t due to the idiocy of the government, it’s due to the idiocy of the populace.

When will people finally realize this?

 

[Acole9]

Aside from the worst government and prime minister in history doing a terrible job, what you've posted above is also part of the reason why the infection rates here are so high and the worst in Europe.

We're in tier 4 where I am, my family made the decision earlier in the week to cancel our Christmas plans, it's just not worth it.

The people who live in the house at the back have been constantly flouting, they had people over yesterday even though we were in tier 3 at that time. If I see anymore people over there I'm tempted to call the police (Although I think the Mrs will probably try to stop me)

 

[Penna]

So many in this thread want to blame the government but not foist any blame on the populace. It’s not all the government. It’s at best half & half with probably more blame on the populace.

There’s absolutely no reason for pictures like this. This picture isn’t due to the idiocy of the government, it’s due to the idiocy of the populace.

When will people finally realize this?

Unfortunately, a significant number of people will always do what they want, without a thought for "the others". The people who comply with the rules aren't enough on their own.

 

[calodo2003]

Unfortunately, a significant number of people will always do what they want, without a thought for "the others". The people who comply with the rules aren't enough on their own.

And then these mensas will create an uproar when truly severe lockdown measures are enacted.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

For those sceptical about the relevance of this mutation, here's a couple of outside perspectives:



They need more testing to verify the claims of being "up to 70% more transmissible" and it obviously doubles up as convenient political cover, but at the very least there's reason to think this requires a change in tactic. And while the UK is criticised for its slow response in most things, if it is the case that Nervtag only shared their analysis the day before (which eventually becomes public record), then I don't think there's much to argue about. The UK were noted in that article in nature as being particularly proactive on studying the generic variations:



https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

These are genuine experts in their fields working on these things, and when looking at that new strain before they were happy to say the effects were relatively muted. 20%, not 70%. For them to have mistakenly understood this one or greatly exaggerated the changes would be really unusual. It can't be put down to just bumbling Boris.

I did a bit of reading on this myself. The concern is legitimate. The mutations are in regions which could plausibly cause the virus to be more virulent. And there’s hard evidence that it’s involved in a very big outbreak. However, what we know about super-spreaders and exponential growth means we still can’t separate correlation and causation.

There was similar discussions earlier in the pandemic when a new strain seemed to spread much more rapidly in Europe than any previous strains had in China but that turned out to be a property of the society it was infecting, rather than any change in the way the virus itself behaved. And it’s not hard to think of less sinister reasons for explosive outbreaks when you see images of those maskless crowds in London shops.

We’ll know for certain soon enough, after the long suffering meeces have been put through the ringer once again.

 

[SilentWitness]

Anyone know if theory test centres will be open in tier 4 areas? GOV site hasn’t been updated yet and can’t find information anywhere else.

 

[Champ]

Came into effect 17 minutes ago.

Those videos were tweeted during tier 3 restrictions.
Still don't make it right but the context of them was wrong.

 

[VorZakone]

So a new strain/mutation was found in the UK that's more transmissible?

 

[Smores]

Its a mess entirely of the governments making, the resurgence is nothing more than their relaxation and its absurd to say they couldnt have known, they knew and decided to string the population along. There's a reason Essex were begging to go into a higher tier and why the experts even then said it wasnt enough to stop the spread. You can't relax the law and then get confused that people are relaxing their behaviours. New variant a good cover for the Tories going by the paper headlines though.

We travelled to family last night, we were on day 7 of a self imposed quarantine so there was no way we weren't going. We'll be quarantining as a bubble for another 10 days now but worth it.

Then my missus has Facebook friends complaining who have seen family every week and been shopping in London with their kids. No sense it's their own fault because the government said it was fine.

 

[F-Red]

Anyone know if theory test centres will be open in tier 4 areas? GOV site hasn’t been updated yet and can’t find information anywhere else.

They’re closed in tier 4 areas -https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-theory-tests

 

[Murder on Zidanes Floor]

Concerning they knew about this in September and October but only released the info Monday via Matt Hancock.

Honestly this government man.

 

[Buster15]

I did a bit of reading on this myself. The concern is legitimate. The mutations are in regions which could plausibly cause the virus to be more virulent. And there’s hard evidence that it’s involved in a very big outbreak. However, what we know about super-spreaders and exponential growth means we still can’t separate correlation and causation.

There was similar discussions earlier in the pandemic when a new strain seemed to spread much more rapidly in Europe than any previous strains had in China but that turned out to be a property of the society it was infecting, rather than any change in the way the virus itself behaved. And it’s not hard to think of less sinister reasons for explosive outbreaks when you see images of those maskless crowds in London shops.

We’ll know for certain soon enough, after the long suffering meeces have been put through the ringer once again.

Quick question.
Is this mutation or new strain of the corona virus only in the UK or is it or similar variants seen elsewhere.

 

[Buster15]

So a new strain/mutation was found in the UK that's more transmissible?

That is what we are being told and they say that it is 70% more infectious.

 

[onemanarmy]

Borders between the UK and Belgium/Netherlands will be closed for at least 24 hours.

 

[That'sHernandez]

Its a mess entirely of the governments making, the resurgence is nothing more than their relaxation and its absurd to say they couldnt have known, they knew and decided to string the population along. There's a reason Essex were begging to go into a higher tier and why the experts even then said it wasnt enough to stop the spread. You can't relax the law and then get confused that people are relaxing their behaviours. New variant a good cover for the Tories going by the paper headlines though.

We travelled to family last night, we were on day 7 of a self imposed quarantine so there was no way we weren't going. We'll be quarantining as a bubble for another 10 days now but worth it.

Then my missus has Facebook friends complaining who have seen family every week and been shopping in London with their kids. No sense it's their own fault because the government said it was fine.

And the reluctance to put London into tier 3 for economic reasons despite clear evidence the transmission rate was faster than regions in tier 3. The fact they had to switch from tier 2, to tier 3 and then invent tier 4 to put them in within the space of a week speaks to that. I hate this government and wish the north of England could join Scotland and vote leave in indyref2

 

[dwd]

Those videos were tweeted during tier 3 restrictions.
Still don't make it right but the context of them was wrong.

The people standing round having a chin wag were idiots, no matter when it was. I can sort of understand the chaos at train stations if people only had until midnight to get out.

 

[Sparky Rhiwabon]

Don't viruses normally become weaker as they mutate?

 

[That'sHernandez]

Don't viruses normally become weaker as they mutate?

Not necessarily. It’s evolution on steroids

 

[fergies coat]

You could see the infection rate was rising in London, and falling in greater Manchester, yet they kept London in tier 2, despite it being obvious to everyone apart from the government that was the wrong decision.

I am doing what I want to do. I'll make my own decisions, rather than listening to these absolute idiots in charge.

 

[Buster15]

You could see the infection rate was rising in London, and falling in greater Manchester, yet they kept London in tier 2, despite it being obvious to everyone apart from the government that was the wrong decision.

I am doing what I want to do. I'll make my own decisions, rather than listening to these absolute idiots in charge.

Quite right. There is more than enough information, as opposed to mis-information to make informed decisions.

 

[Buster15]

Don't viruses normally become weaker as they mutate?

They are living things. And as a result, the strongest will have the best chance of surviving and therefore replicating.

 

[Champ]

The people standing round having a chin wag were idiots, no matter when it was. I can sort of understand the chaos at train stations if people only had until midnight to get out.

Yeah, I'm not saying thats acceptable behaviour in these times, just merely the tweets expressing outrage are slightly misguided.

 

[jojojo]

So a new strain/mutation was found in the UK that's more transmissible?

More transmissible versions have occurred a few times, but they haven't necessarily been more transmissible in the ways that I think most people imagine - it's not a "last week it would have taken 2000 virus particles to infect you, this week it only takes 1200" sort of thing. It could be that a mutation increases the asymptomatic but infectious period, or changes the initial symptoms - like losing your appetite, instead of getting a cough.

In other words, people may be spreading the covid virus for longer without realising. Add that to going into winter - closed windows/doors, longer nights and more time indoors - and behaviours (like sitting round a table chatting) that were OK for a while in the summer are suddenly a recipe for disaster.

There are also strains that become dominant through certain super-spreader events/environments. It's thought the Wuhan strain mutated in Europe in January/February into what became a dominant European strain responsible for it racing across Europe. That may have less to do with the mutation than to the fact it spread through ski resorts at high speed, affecting first the apres-ski party places, then the halfterm school holiday visitors and school trips. The summer brought another European strain that seems to have started with camps of summer workers (grape pickers etc) and then moved out through the cities and the resort areas.

In other words, the new strain may look like it's growing fast because of what amount to some superspreader events/activities/environments either reopening or moving indoors. Or their might be some technical advantage (like symptom changes) that strict social distancing (hands, face, space!) can combat but that mislead us into letting our guard down.

 

[Brwned]

I did a bit of reading on this myself. The concern is legitimate. The mutations are in regions which could plausibly cause the virus to be more virulent. And there’s hard evidence that it’s involved in a very big outbreak. However, what we know about super-spreaders and exponential growth means we still can’t separate correlation and causation.

There was similar discussions earlier in the pandemic when a new strain seemed to spread much more rapidly in Europe than any previous strains had in China but that turned out to be a property of the society it was infecting, rather than any change in the way the virus itself behaved. And it’s not hard to think of less sinister reasons for explosive outbreaks when you see images of those maskless crowds in London shops.

We’ll know for certain soon enough, after the long suffering meeces have been put through the ringer once again.

Yeah that other strain is the D614G strain that was discussed in the nature article. The UK team that identified this were one of the ones to determine it wasn't a game changer!

Totally agree that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions but I'd say it's fair enough to err on the side of caution here given the available evidence. Aside from where the muttions have occured, the fact there are 17 (?) is unusual:

Other genome data have emphasized this stability — more than 90,000 isolates have been sequenced and made public (see www.gisaid.org). Two SARS-CoV-2 viruses collected from anywhere in the world differ by an average of just 10 RNA letters out of 29,903, says Lucy Van Dorp, a computational geneticist at University College London, who is tracking the differences for signs that they confer an evolutionary advantage.

And the fact one strain is winning out so handily, like in South Africa. There's definitely other possible explanaIn this case the solution works regardless of whether it's the virus behaviour or human behaviour that's the soure of the problem, which makes it easier for the scientists, but I think you can take them on their original premise

Concerning they knew about this in September and October but only released the info Monday via Matt Hancock.

Honestly this government man.

That isn't how it works; There have been literally thousands of mutations that aren't worth talking about, and it takes a while to run through tests of each indiviudal one, so it takes a very long time to properly evaluate all of them. It's not when they discovered the mutation but when they discovered the importane of the muttion that matters. They definitely didn't know that months ago. At best they had hypotheses.

Quick question.
Is this mutation or new strain of the corona virus only in the UK or is it or similar variants seen elsewhere.

It has been found in the Netherlands and a a variant with similar properties has been seen in South Africa, which is also experiencing a sharp rise that almost entirely centres around that one strain too. It's expectdd to be in other countries too. Maybe it is part of the reason Germany's methods are less effective.

 

[Buster15]

Yeah that other strain is the D614G strain that was discussed in the nature article. The UK team that identified this were one of the ones to determine it wasn't a game changer!

Totally agree that we shouldn't jump to any conclusions but I'd say it's fair enough to err on the side of caution here given the available evidence. Aside from where the muttions have occured, the fact there are 17 (?) is unusual:



And the fact one strain is winning out so handily, like in South Africa. There's definitely other possible explanaIn this case the solution works regardless of whether it's the virus behaviour or human behaviour that's the soure of the problem, which makes it easier for the scientists, but I think you can take them on their original premise



That isn't how it works; There have been literally thousands of mutations that aren't worth talking about, and it takes a while to run through tests of each indiviudal one, so it takes a very long time to properly evaluate all of them. It's not when they discovered the mutation but when they discovered the importane of the muttion that matters. They definitely didn't know that months ago. At best they had hypotheses.



It has been found in the Netherlands and a a variant with similar properties has been seen in South Africa, which is also experiencing a sharp rise that almost entirely centres around that one strain too. It's expectdd to be in other countries too. Maybe it is part of the reason Germany's methods are less effective.

Appreciate that.
Would that possibly infer a common source. There are strong links between T Netherlands and South Africa and the UK.?

 

[Stanley Road]

My instagram timeline is full of people "escaping London" planning parties as a feck you or saying they are sticking to their original plans.

This is what happens when the government use bullshit to try and retrospectively move the goalposts. They aren't trying to save lives because announcing these changes at this stage when it's obvious so many people wont stick to them is going to be of very little help. They are trying to save face by pretending they are doing the right thing while tricking people into thinking they would have a Christmas so they'd go out and spend money on it.

I've had my mum on the phone crying three times. I'm going to have to still go see her at the very least because cutting her off from the world for Christmas with this little notice when she can't even isolate or form a bubble to get around it is cruel, and it's a lesser evil for me to break the rules at this point than do that to someone. That's the dilemna this bullshit has put hundreds of thousands of people in.

There was no reason not to come to this decision 2-3 weeks ago or longer if it was ever going to be a possibility. Nothing has changed in that time to make where we are at now a surprise in terms of the infection rate. Only 3 days ago they "reviewed" the tiers supposedly. Only a day before they were forcing Schools in London and Essex to stay open despite requests from the schools to close a week early due to the infection transmission being linked directly to school aged people.

It's actually at a point where I can see it ending in full on riots. People aren't so stupid that they can't tell complete bollocks from reason, and using complete bollocks to take people's freedoms away is dangerous at the best of times.

Do you really believe all of that post?

If people aren't stupid then why do they need to be told to cancel xmas at all? They would use common sense and cancel it themselves.

We dont actually need rules and tiers, the numbers should be coming down with personal fear of catching the feckin virus. My mrs hasn't given her dad a hug for nearly a year because its unwise. Govts aren't to blame for stupidity but maybe for relaxing the rules when numbers were decreasing.

 

[redshaw]

Germany have seen an explosion of death and cases. They've had 700-850 deaths a day and are looking into this more transmissible strain as a reason.
Coronavirus: Neue Variante ist 70 Prozent ansteckender - DER SPIEGEL

People saying this is some UK government covering themselves is a silly kneejerk conspiracy. They don't do this lightly and we're already on a Netherlands banned travel list, it has serious ramifications.

Also there's thousands of strains but mostly are the same in general and it takes time for the cases and data to come in. You have to see it clearly happen to say this strain is more transmissible.

Germany used to be the one reasonably good large European country to have a have a handle on the virus but now they look like any badly performing European country.

Poland is another that's been hit very hard, they've had the equivalent of 1000 a day deaths

 

[Brwned]

Appreciate that.
Would that possibly infer a common source. There are strong links between T Netherlands and South Africa and the UK.?

There's a quick summary of a few things in the BMJ here, and they touch briefly on that point.

Nick Loman, professor of microbial genomics and bioinformation at the University of Birmingham, told a briefing by the Science Media Centre on 15 December that the variant was first spotted in late September and now accounts for 20% of viruses sequenced in Norfolk, 10% in Essex, and 3% in Suffolk. “There are no data to suggest it had been imported from abroad, so it is likely to have evolved in the UK,” he said.

I'd read another article that said they very much suspect the Netherlands variant was imported from the UK, with fits up with the notion that it evolved here originally. Hence why they're closing their borders and I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of borders closed temporarily while we learn more about this. Although we might end up finding out it's in a lot of places already.

It's definitely possible that it went from the UK to South Africa too, but I haven't seen anyone suggesting that's likely. We'll know more once the WHO use some of their resources to do the international comparison, because they already had the strain to look at from Durban (South Africa) late last month I think. Until now I'd guess no-one was looking closely at those two particular mutations so it'd be unlikely to pop out. But it wouldn't be at all unusual for a similar kind of mutation to happen in different parts of the world.

 

[sammsky1]

My instagram timeline is full of people "escaping London" planning parties as a feck you or saying they are sticking to their original plans.This is what happens when the government use bullshit to try and retrospectively move the goalposts. They aren't trying to save lives because announcing these changes at this stage when it's obvious so many people wont stick to them is going to be of very little help. They are trying to save face by pretending they are doing the right thing while tricking people into thinking they would have a Christmas so they'd go out and spend money on it.
I've had my mum on the phone crying three times. I'm going to have to still go see her at the very least because cutting her off from the world for Christmas with this little notice when she can't even isolate or form a bubble to get around it is cruel, and it's a lesser evil for me to break the rules at this point than do that to someone. That's the dilemna this bullshit has put hundreds of thousands of people in.
There was no reason not to come to this decision 2-3 weeks ago or longer if it was ever going to be a possibility. Nothing has changed in that time to make where we are at now a surprise in terms of the infection rate. Only 3 days ago they "reviewed" the tiers supposedly. Only a day before they were forcing Schools in London and Essex to stay open despite requests from the schools to close a week early due to the infection transmission being linked directly to school aged people.

It's actually at a point where I can see it ending in full on riots. People aren't so stupid that they can't tell complete bollocks from reason, and using complete bollocks to take people's freedoms away is dangerous at the best of times.

I also think this is true. It's exactly what tories would do: Open all the shops for 3 weeks and encourage everyone to empty their bank accounts, knowing all the while it was highly likely they would then have to cancel the permission in the first place. There is going o be a lot of wasted turkey and food because of Boris idiotic management ... which isn't funny at all either, given the planetary issues we also face.

Hell knows how 4 of us in my home are going to polish off a 6kg turkey and all the other stuff, which I only got because we were planning to have 3 households on xmas and boxing day!

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Blows me away that people aren’t stating the simple fact that mutations are only really possible in areas of poor response.

The more a virus is in circulation, the more chances it has to change.

“It’s not our fault, it’s a new strain” should really be expressed as “The new strain is our fault. We let a virus run rampant and it’s now evolved into something worse”.

If Australia saw a new strain develop in the community you could argue bad luck. The math Would be with you.

For the Uk to do it, it’s just another point of condemnation. No sympathy.