Yeah, I was taken aback by the lack of checks flying into Heathrow a month or two ago. Although it’s hard to know how effective those check are, even when enforced. Coming into Ireland there’s more paperwork but we were still relying on the honesty of traveller to self isolate throughout most of the pandemic. The whole hotel quarantine thing was an expensive bureaucratic nightmare, which was quickly shelved.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Yeah, I was taken aback by the lack of checks flying into Heathrow a month or two ago. Although it’s hard to know how effective those check are, even when enforced. Coming into Ireland there’s more paperwork but we were still relying on the honesty of traveller to self isolate throughout most of the pandemic. The whole hotel quarantine thing was an expensive bureaucratic nightmare, which was quickly shelved.
So what’s the point of the rule which says you need to get a PCR by day 2 and isolate until you get the result, if all of this is within the bounds of those rules? Makes no sense.
My niece, who spent 45 mins sitting beside my wife the other night, got a positive this evening. So they’re out of Christmas and I guess there’s a chance we are. Now I’m not saying I want my family to fall ill with a potentially fatal virus, but there’s certainly the potential for not having to make small talk with the in-laws about properties none of us own.
I dunno. 2 & 1/2 cheers for Covid, I guess
I dunno. 2 & 1/2 cheers for Covid, I guess
90K and 82K yesterday and today. If there is any weekend lag, which there usually is, the numbers by the middle of the week is likely to be pretty big.
How about that clinician (Toni Ho) who said there could possibly be "a million infections A DAY in the UK"?! That's surely, SURELY too big!
Honestly I'm mostly just ranting. This is the third time the UK has led Europe in cases and likely the third time I'm facing a fecking quarantine when I get back to Italy. All because the government can't keep its house in order.
Well yes. You get 2 days to get to your isolation destination, during which you can do mostly whatever you want.
I would have agreed with that last year. I'm not so sure now. I think lockdowns do more harm than good in a lot of ways.
What about all the businesses who will go bankrupt? The mental health of tens of thousands of people?
I fully understand the reasons of protectibf the vulnerable and especially the NHS, but many don't. Even those that do are starting to get fed up with lockdowns and restrictions, especially when they were told to vaccinate and then there won't be any more lockdowns and they see the daily figures of hospitalisations and deaths remaining low and constant despite massively increasing infections.
How much longer can we go on like this? Are we going to lockdown every year? It's not feasible or practical.
Businesses can't survive, kids at school cant deal with it and are struggling so badly. Their schooling is suffering as is their mental health. The teachers can't deal with it either. So many who live alone or are disabled suffer...
Not to mention the financial ramifications on the generations who have to pay it all back. They need to look at the long term and build specialist Covid hospitals. Surely the cost of furlough could cover most of that?
There's no need for a lockdown anyway. They have frightened everyone to stay in. Most places are deserted as nobody wants to get sick before Christmas. We have been empty since Boris and Chris said people shouldn't socialise. We have just have kids in all weekend. Mainly lads on their 20's. The ones who think they are invincible. You know, bellends....
The damage has been done. He needs to just shut us now and pay my staff. We are back at square one where we were two years ago when he told everyone to stay in and not go to the pubs and everything has been knee jerk or badly thought out like alcohol with food or the stupid eat out to help out scheme. That was insanity.
I wonder if we can sue the floppy haired feckwit?
Really stuck with this one. Need some advice please, if possible.
We've booked Eurostar tickets to see my wife's family in Belgium. She's from there originally, and the last time she saw her family was in August when they came over for our wedding. We've had our tickets booked for weeks and have got all the required documentation, ordered/obtained all of the tests that we need. It's been a faff and pretty expensive.
With the recent news from the last few days, suddenly all of our plans are up in the air, despite there being no "official" confirmation of anything just yet. There's talk of a lockdown before Christmas, after Christmas, "just" restrictions, etc. The trouble is that we leave on Tuesday (21st) and come back on Thursday (30th). To me, there's a real possibility of having to quarantine when we get back, especially if restrictions come back into place. I'm a teacher, so I would most likely then have to miss the first week at least, possibly even most of the second if we have to quarantine.
We're edging towards the cautious route of cancelling the trip...but I really don't know what to do. I feel that we won't hear anything until it's too late. E.g. we might only hear of restrictions in the UK when we are already in Belgium, so may then be affected coming back. Is it likely that (given the way things are going) that we'd have to quarantine coming back? Are we perhaps being too overly negative or are we on the right track with our thinking? We're generally quite cautious/"careful" people, or at least I'd like to think so. The last 72 hours have really thrown us.
Fecking Omicron.
We've booked Eurostar tickets to see my wife's family in Belgium. She's from there originally, and the last time she saw her family was in August when they came over for our wedding. We've had our tickets booked for weeks and have got all the required documentation, ordered/obtained all of the tests that we need. It's been a faff and pretty expensive.
With the recent news from the last few days, suddenly all of our plans are up in the air, despite there being no "official" confirmation of anything just yet. There's talk of a lockdown before Christmas, after Christmas, "just" restrictions, etc. The trouble is that we leave on Tuesday (21st) and come back on Thursday (30th). To me, there's a real possibility of having to quarantine when we get back, especially if restrictions come back into place. I'm a teacher, so I would most likely then have to miss the first week at least, possibly even most of the second if we have to quarantine.
We're edging towards the cautious route of cancelling the trip...but I really don't know what to do. I feel that we won't hear anything until it's too late. E.g. we might only hear of restrictions in the UK when we are already in Belgium, so may then be affected coming back. Is it likely that (given the way things are going) that we'd have to quarantine coming back? Are we perhaps being too overly negative or are we on the right track with our thinking? We're generally quite cautious/"careful" people, or at least I'd like to think so. The last 72 hours have really thrown us.
Fecking Omicron.
You just can't tell. I'm reasonably sure there'll be some kind of lockdown in place after Christmas in England, but who knows for sure? If you have to quarantine when you get back, so be it - the schools may not even be open.
It's unlikely that anything will be announced tomorrow, and then you'll be travelling on Tuesday. I'd be more concerned about whether Belgium will impose restrictions on you when you arrive.
There should be a number of daily hospitalisations at which some restrictions come in place and another level of hospitalisations at which lockdown is put.
I really don’t see why that’s not the strategy. It’s about protecting the nhs and stopping it from getting overwhelmed…by keeping that message and acting in response to that then 1) it’s clear and easy to understand. 2) Most people will understand. 3) There’s no debating we are in in lockdown because hospital admissions are xxxx amount per day, but saying we’re in lockdown because of this worse case forecast or that worse case forecast will naturally lead to skepticism. Even a lockdown due to high infections while hospitalisations remain the same won’t go down well.
Yeah, difficult one, you don't want to disappoint your family, but also don't want to let your children down when you could have avoided it. Technically correct to go of course, but fair? not sure.
Could Mrs Super go on her own? Some would see that as the right thing to do and some wouldn't, and you've not really been married long which won't help.
The hard thing is dragging out making a decision, you could always toss a coin!
That approach would never work because it takes so long for any behaviour change to have an effect. If you decide to make some restrictions when hospitals when number reach x, they’re going to be x+y before they start to come down again. And the value of y will have worst case and best case forecasts. You will always be making future predictions based on uncertain future models. That’s unavoidable.
Two problems. One is how many hospitalisations are too many? Is it when you run out of staff (because too many of them are isolating) or when you run out of beds?
The bigger one is having put a number on it, if you wait for that number (probably around 4k admissions/day) you overshoot and if cases were growing at the current rate prior to that lockdown then you potentially overshoot by around 8 times before the lockdown pulls cases and hospitalisations back down again. Massive numbers of deaths and absolute agony for everyone caught up in it.
In fact if you take the 8x seriously and the % of cases likely to turn into hospitalisations is similar to Delta, we should have locked down hard last week to keep it below 4k.
That's the trouble - you can't pick a number and wait for it. You have to try and read the trends and make the best judgements you can on what the cases per hospitalisation rate will look like.
Do you play it safe or do you gamble on people moderating their own behaviour and the virus looking milder than Delta, in particularly for boosted and previously infected people? It's not straight science, it's about mass behavioural psychology and risk assessments of unknown hazards.
As I say, if you want to play it safe - we lockdown hard now and hope enough delivery drivers are still available to keep us fed.
Nobody knows?
My guess would be no. Returning tourists are the least of the UK's worries.
That said, is there maybe a way for you to get back early if there was a sudden announcement? There's usually at least 24 hours notice, which might be long enough for you (alone or together) to get back as long as you're prepared for it.
Looks like omicron is dominant in Ireland now. Really proud of the whole country for coming together over the Christmas period to eliminate Delta.
There won't be restrictions before Christmas because Boris is too much of a cultural traditionalist for that. There likely won't even be official news about it until Boxing Day at the earliest because he won't want it to be in the headlines on the 25th.
So new rules are probably going to start on the 28th or 29th.
But I'm not sure you'll be necessarily need to quarantine on the way back. That only makes sense if the country you're coming from has a higher prevalence than the country you're going to. And the UK is already one of the global hotspots. A Covid Passport or negative test should likely be enough to get you out and about again on your return.
I think you'll end up being right about the timings. But the actual restrictions probably won't impact your job either way. If it were me, I'd chance it. Happy wife happy life.
The government is already reducing border restrictions and Sajid Javid admitted the other day Omicron is everywhere so no longer any point trying to keep it out.
I think there is a very small chance of you having to quarantine on your return. I think your bigger risk is not being allowed in to Belgium, but there's only another couple of days left to find out about that.
Yes - as are immigration laws on the whole - but that's for another thread I suppose.
My Omicron Diary: Day 1 (virus starting to propagate. Note - I haven't been tested)
No fever. Slight cough. No fatigue. No muscle aches. No loss of taste or smell. Feeling fine.
No fever. Slight cough. No fatigue. No muscle aches. No loss of taste or smell. Feeling fine.
You’ve not been tested but you think you have omicron?
It's not omicron, it's obviously AIDS
I believe I've been exposed, yes. Because 27 unmasked and unsanitized people came to my in-law's 60th. So, I just KNOW! What I wouldn't do for love. Covid hath no fury like a woman scorned.
They could have given you AIDS
WTF is it with you and AIDS?
I get your point. I’d say tiers for hospitalisations might have an effect. Eg they’ve been at 800-900 for 3 or so months, and as yet haven’t gone up despite the drastic rise in infections over the past month.
If we were to say if hospitalisations reach (hypothetical random number) 1300 per day then close large gatherings, restaurants, pubs etc, once they hit 1600 then lockdown. But for each restrictions to be removed hospitalisations have to go beneath a certain amount. So once it’s hit 1600, lockdown is only removed once it’s down to 800 per day, and hospitality reopens once it’s down to 600 a day.
The problem about worse case scenario modelling done by SAGE etc is that they are asked to forecast the absolute worse case scenario. This is of course good to know as long as the best and most likely cases are modelled, but the way it gets reported by the media 1) makes it look like fear mongering to the general public who don’t dig further to see why they forecast like this 2) Each time action is taken on these forecast without any signs of them having even set sail. More of the public loses trust and as we’ve seen with each lockdown compliance gets smaller.
It's a small word. Takes too long to type cancer.
Maybe it's best you don't type at all?
Nobody's got aids!
Ah, you're trying to help me. OK. Let me revise my post.
My omicron (or possibly AIDS) diary: Day 1
No fever. Slight cough. Peter tells me I could have AIDS. Feeling fine.
I like the optimism. Stay strong!
It can be challenging at times. Like when someone tells me I might have aids or cancer. For no reason whatsoever. I love the Caf!
There was a thing on the caf a while ago where everything was "something AIDS". Sorry dude, I thought you may have seen it.
He must have eye AIDS.
Let's compromise. Both of you might be right and you could have covid and aids at the same time.
See? Now everyone is happy
No worries
At least I know about affluent like-minded people and Oleboiii and siuuuu. Now I know about AIDS too. I will use it sparingly.I've definitely had Omicron 20 times, never been tested, never had symptoms but I've had it all the same.
Had aids twice too
Had aids twice too
I've had a pcr...
Well, at least you don't have eye AIDSNo worries