Apologies, I was a bit blunt there. I didn't get your point initially but I see where you're coming from now. I don't think the Border Force strikes have anything to do with policy. The Border Force have little to do with anything meaningful really.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Apologies, I was a bit blunt there. I didn't get your point initially but I see where you're coming from now. I don't think the Border Force strikes have anything to do with policy. The Border Force have little to do with anything meaningful really.
"The right call" isn't that simple. This is more about politics and looking like they're doing something than actual science.
Testing people a day before they fly means that you catch only some infectious cases - and you'll catch a lot of people who are already past the infectious stage. Meanwhile the people who were infected in the previous few days, who are about to hit their most infectious phase, will get missed.
If you want to address actual caseload you need to test before and after the flight, and keep testing in quarantine conditions for at least a week. As it happens, numerically speaking, for the UK (like most countries) the extra cases will be a drop in the ocean.
If you want to look for variant data - because you don't trust what China is saying - it would be the post flight tests that matter. Because those you can run through your own, trusted labs.
Right now, the most startling growth in a single variant of unknown severity is coming from the US. If we want to go back to flight controls shouldn't we start with those travellers? Personally, I don't want to see border controls make a comeback - I think they're irrelevant given vaccination and past infection levels in the UK - and I don't think these are more than a PR exercise.
You make a good point about the USA. Read they recorded highest numbers in x amount of time, didn’t know it was an unknown variant.
I think with the USA we have trusted data. Whereas with China the data they give seems to put image first. If the numbers numbers in the USA came close to what was speculated to be the case in China I would want the same applied to US flights. If this US variant turns out to be more dangerous or vaccine immune then i would want the same also.
I really hope that in countries with decent vaccination rates this is heading to a slow end. My experience in my hospital, where I work in A/E admitting patients since the start of pandemic, we can't wait for them to phase out the Covid area, or, what would make a fecking load more sense, turn it into an area for both Covid and Flu. More and more it seems to be that they're indistinguishable in population at risk, seriousness, complications, etc, except Flu is becoming a lot more prevalent again. Which is more or less back to business as usual (still awful this time of year). Covid will become something like Syncytial Respiratory Virus, and other viral differential diagnosis of Flu.
(Mostly as a response to @Pogue Mahone post in previous page).
It makes every sense that if China kept too hard restrictions for too long, and if the elderly are undervaccinated, it would paint a poor scenario. Where is their immunity?
I don't really follow Covid news for the past two years so the second paragraph is genuine questioning. By the way, there's no way it is possible this could be deliberate, is there? Please tell me there isn't.
(Mostly as a response to @Pogue Mahone post in previous page).
It makes every sense that if China kept too hard restrictions for too long, and if the elderly are undervaccinated, it would paint a poor scenario. Where is their immunity?
I don't really follow Covid news for the past two years so the second paragraph is genuine questioning. By the way, there's no way it is possible this could be deliberate, is there? Please tell me there isn't.
update, this is probably the worst cold/flu I’ve ever had. Started with the fever and sinus headaches and severe body aches that kept me out of action for around 4 days. Started feeling a bit better but was still coughing slightly and had a constant runny nose. That was around a week and thought i was improving until yesterday I started feeling severe body aches again and woke up with a stinking blocked nose and sore throat. Went to the toilet this morning and ungodly fluids were flying out of my nose and mouth. Really nasty. Been about 2 weeks now sick, fed up with it.
I'm reading the news about China complaining about anti-COVID curbs imposed by a number of countries (US, UK, Australia, India, Japan, Canada, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, Morocco, Qatar) upon travellers from China. I swear it's pathetic for Beijing to complain when they already have fecked up so badly after going from an extreme to another with zero methodical approach.
This. It is outright pathetic that China cares about their image while people are dying because of reckless negligence.
China was given a chance (3 years) to be as scientifically transparent as possible about the origins of COVID-19, given a chance to buy the best vaccines on the market, given a chance to learn from others on how to reopen as safely as possible, and THEY BLEW IT! They blew it, and it's about time they get told the part in the face.
This. It is outright pathetic that China cares about their image while people are dying because of reckless negligence.
China was given a chance (3 years) to be as scientifically transparent as possible about the origins of COVID-19, given a chance to buy the best vaccines on the market, given a chance to learn from others on how to reopen as safely as possible, and THEY BLEW IT! They blew it, and it's about time they get told the part in the face.
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We talk about protecting people in the midst of a serious health crisis, and they have the nerve to behave like a petulant child?
Don't they (the Chinese government) have any shame? This is the reality on the ground and it is what it is. Wake the feck up, fecking children.
Don't they (the Chinese government) have any shame? This is the reality on the ground and it is what it is. Wake the feck up, fecking children.
Since the outbreak I’ve thought the government of China’s response has been needlessly childish & petty. It’s not s competition, it’s not a shame or source of pride, it’s just a global catastrophe that requires nations to share information, be honest, and occasionally take proactive measures.
Even the way China just took its foot off the breaks and abandoned covid zero seemed to be more about punishing protestors. (Bordering tin pot so I’ll delete if asked to) but to me it defies belief that they didn’t know that cases would sky rocket, we’ve all seen that gradual easing is the best way to go from lockdown to normal.
Basic sense of humanity and/or oaths of service (if there is such in the Chinese government) demand that this issue is treated with no bullshit (sharing information, being honest, be proactive, etc.) indeed. I just don't understand how any government can even air grievances at a time when millions of their constituents are suffering at the moment.
I also hope to not go near tin foil hat territory regarding the decision to go from an extreme to another by the Chinese government either, but I can't do otherwise to ask "What if?". Whoever works in public health or the equivalent of the NIH in China cannot be anything but mad at their government's lack of basic logic so far. It looks like as if the country has a bunch of Donald Trumps at the very top, with no guardrails against total idiocy and pettiness (of which it has become a common theme with the CCP in the last 5-6 years).
By the way, this is South Korea's response to the petty sanctions.
Interesting read. It’s not discriminatory. If 80% of infections in the U.K. were coming from flights arriving from France, we’d (I’d hope) Red list France. Like the South Korean official said these tests are for everyone arriving on flights from China.
Also hate to bring it up. But Chinese New Year is on Jan 22/23. They really should have waited until after that had passed. In unrestricted travel times it usually sees millions of people travelling out of China in a very short space of time.
After being in self isolation for just under 3 years you’d expect a government to test the waters. Open up its society in stages, then next year make travel unrestricted.
Read somewhere that 97% of airline flights in SE Asia had Covid in the wastewater of the planes.
You're probably referring to Forbes.
And just as AlPistacho mentioned, the Lunar New Year is coming around the corner. It is the perfect excuse for a lot of travelling in and out of China, and it is ill-advised in the current context. The first COVID outbreak started the same way as well because no one had the balls to cut the holidays short, even when there were too many unknowns to go business as usual.
I also read this 5-day-old article from the BBC. I don't know if I should either be S(hake)M(y)F(ucking)H(ead), F(uck)M(y)L(ife), or both when I read the part about what some younger Chinese people are doing. Of course I didn't like a number of restrictions on gatherings and parties here in Canada, but I was never foolish enough to be willing to get sick on purpose just as in the following quotes from the article.
If it wasn't for my share of vaccines, I would have been a much bigger mess than what I was when I had COVID back in early December. That virus is never something I wish on anybody.
That’s the article. Shocking numbers.
That thing about people getting intentionally infected is shocking. I heard the same about people in the USA, similar age group, having “covid parties” think their motives were different. Either way both just scream stupidity. It’s not even about themselves what about when they pass it on to others who might not get through.
Finally caught Covid. Had to happen at some point I guess, but doesn’t change the fact that it’s absolutely horrible. Triple jabbed, but the last one was a long time ago.
Had a really bad flu before Christmas, but this does seem different. Either feel freezing or boiling, coughing up surreal amounts of yucky stuff, and completely knackered.
All in all it’s been a winter full of bugs in our household.
Had a really bad flu before Christmas, but this does seem different. Either feel freezing or boiling, coughing up surreal amounts of yucky stuff, and completely knackered.
All in all it’s been a winter full of bugs in our household.
Freedumb in all of its glory.
Seriously though, this is where I wish and hope that a class-action lawsuit against the former administration can be filed on the grounds that the airing of several bits of misleading information has been directly responsible for those deaths.
Surely republican voters average much older than democrat voters. Which would explain that finding.
I guess I had it a couple of weeks ago. No symptoms, but an unbreakable fever from hell. Oh well. Gel.
It’s because the number of antivax morons is so high amongst their idiot base.
I would say older, not much older though. Vaccine rates between the two groups are grossly different which is surreal as one would think that an older set of people would want to do whatever it could to ensure survivability. They were swayed by the disinfo, propaganda, etc.
Both facts are at play.
Maybe? Age has always been the biggest driver of bad outcomes due to covid. For young people a vaccine is rarely the difference between life and death. More likely the difference between a week in bed and a head cold.
The only thing I’m not sure about is the average age of red vs blue voters. And average could be misleading. You really want to know which has the highest number of 60+ voters. In the Uk/Ireland that would most definitely be conservative/right wing parties.
From the article:
“In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” the study said. “Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021—after vaccines were widely available—the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021.”
The study attributes this to the vaccine uptake disparity between Republicans and Democrats, which has been widely documented as more Republicans refused to take the vaccine; the most vocal anti-vax voices were Republican politicians and some conservative news outlets: “The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the study notes.
That’s gas. The amount of times I’ve sneered at people for posting about a tweet without actually reading the linked article. Hoist by my own petard!In my defence, I’ve just got back in from the pub. Couldn’t possibly go the whole nine yards and actually read something like that. All I’ve got is hot takes and one liners.
Age, propensity to be anti-vax, anti-mask and anti-other preventative measures along with a greater likelihood of engaging in high risk behaviors due to their political leanings and their impact on their perception of COVID 19 would be a good summary of contributing factors.
I got symptoms for the very first time on Christmas Eve and by Christmas day i knew i had it (did a test a few days later and confirmed it). Had no cough strangely enough, just a horrible sore throat, lethargy and alternating between being too cold and too hot.
Lucky. The dry, non-productive cough was horrible for me.
Just in case anyone has anti-vax friends or colleagues throw this in your face, remember that is a good example of why vaccines are so safe. The ongoing monitoring of safety picks up even the smallest risks to health and the regulators and manufacturers share that information as soon as it comes to hand. And the bigger the number of doses received the better we are at picking up these sort of safety signals. With covid vaccines we’re talking absolutely enormous numbers.
Exactly right but you'll never convince ant-vaxxers
Especially with an article from that leftist ‘news’ shop Reuters. Can’t wait to show this to my antivax colleagues & see if they will badmouth Reuters like they always do.
I work in medical publishing and can read, if not really understand, most of the science that's been published, but I have in-law relatives that won't have it!
The wife and I did our PhD work on a respiratory pathogen and our lab was involved in vaccine work for said pathogen. We had family and (now former) friends who would argue with us and cite Facebook posts as evidence. Had that happen on here too which is why I self imposed a COVID ban on myself.
I banned my step daughter from our house, she's not anti-vaxx but wouldn't have the COVID ones because she said they weren't tested properly and she wasn't being a guinea pig, that's not a wholly unreasonable argument but I disagreed and she was banned!
Except they were tested properly. The original EUA was followed up by official clearance by the FDA. Ok, I am going back into exile.
The normal turnaround for vaccine approval is a lot longer than what happened here, there's no getting away for that fact, whether that really matters is a different discussion because the question should be why do they normally take so long to be approved
The approvals were essentially no different. The shorter time frames didn't mean anything was skipped. Just that there was a greater imperative to speed up the purely administrative combined with the unusual situation of there being so many infected people to test on.
It is a ludicrous argument and well done making such a hard call.
I was in Perth on holiday this week and when trying to avoid shopping with my wife and SIL I was acosted by and "alternative news" idiot. She was one of those loons who was calm despite drinking the coolaid. I tortured her with fact, logic and data for 30 mins before she ran away. Best fun I've had in ages.
Eric Ten dad
I've still got hair mate, not quite as much as I used to mind