Do you still 'feel' like you're in the Covid-19 Pandemic?

[ChrisC]

Things are looking more cheery now from the pub !

Best place to be.

I switched on the tv at 4pm and put the BBC News Channel on to see if there was any news about the bad weather. It is, after all, quite rare for parts of the U.K. to have a red storm warning. 22 minutes later and no news of the bad weather as the whole time has been scaremongering about the new variant. Even when the latest update was given for today it just focussed on the fact that there were just over 50,000 people tested positive. They were also very keen to point out that the R rate in England has risen above 1 this week. No mention that the hospital admissions are 10.5% down for the last 7 days and deaths down a massive 15.5%.

 

[yorksrob]

Best place to be.

I switched on the tv at 4pm and put the BBC News Channel on to see if there was any news about the bad weather. It is, after all, quite rare for parts of the U.K. to have a red storm warning. 22 minutes later and no news of the bad weather as the whole time has been scaremongering about the new variant. Even when the latest update was given for today it just focussed on the fact that there were just over 50,000 people tested positive. They were also very keen to point out that the R rate in England has risen above 1 this week. No mention that the hospital admissions are 10.5% down for the last 7 days and deaths down a massive 15.5%.

Yes, TV news is a no go for me nowadays.

 

[Class 33]

Best place to be.

I switched on the tv at 4pm and put the BBC News Channel on to see if there was any news about the bad weather. It is, after all, quite rare for parts of the U.K. to have a red storm warning. 22 minutes later and no news of the bad weather as the whole time has been scaremongering about the new variant. Even when the latest update was given for today it just focussed on the fact that there were just over 50,000 people tested positive. They were also very keen to point out that the R rate in England has risen above 1 this week. No mention that the hospital admissions are 10.5% down for the last 7 days and deaths down a massive 15.5%.

As I mentioned this morning I checked all the news channels/programmes at 7 this morning and they were all going on about this new variant. I swiftly switched off. Apart from watching the ITV News West Country at 6 tonight which usually tends to have very little(if any) coverage about Covid(unlike BBC Points West!), I haven't and won't be watching any TV news today/tonight and probably tomorrow too. As they'll be up to their usual panic and hysteria about this new variant that's come along, along with rising cases and cases going over 50,000 again. All focusing on the negative and what MIGHT happen. And as you say the positive things like hospital admissions and deaths still continuing to fall, they barely even mention!

 

[greyman42]

Did we not have the Mink variant about a year ago which the media flogged for about a week and then never mentioned again?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Does anyone take notice of how certain mainland European countries are attempting to deal with the situation and the public unrest making itself felt in some of those countries.

 

[DustyBin]

Does anyone take notice of how certain mainland European countries are attempting to deal with the situation and the public unrest making itself felt in some of those countries.

Yes - there’s a thread about Austria (and others).

 

[yorksrob]

Chris Whitty is being quoted on the BBC as saying that his "biggest worry" is whether the public will accept fresh restrictions.

I think that he is right to be "worried" about that point.

I'm not convinced that the public will accept the sort of crap that we had to put up with last year.

 

[kristiang85]

Chris Whitty is being quoted on the BBC as saying that his "biggest worry" is whether the public will accept fresh restrictions.

I think that he is right to be "worried" about that point.

I'm not convinced that the public will accept the sort of crap that we had to put up with last year.

Yep, esepcially if it involves any kind of Christmas restrictions. I think many were happy to do it once, having been told the vaccines are coming and we'd be able to do our family events at Easter.

As it turned out, Easter was also completely cancelled and we are still subjected to the same nonsense a year later.

Not to mention many people in 2021 probably have had COVID themselves and realised it's not really worth all this panic for.

 

[yorksrob]

Yep, esepcially if it involves any kind of Christmas restrictions. I think many were happy to do it once, having been told the vaccines are coming and we'd be able to do our family events at Easter.

As it turned out, Easter was also completely cancelled and we are still subjected to the same nonsense a year later.

Not to mention many people in 2021 probably have had COVID themselves and realised it's not really worth all this panic for.

There's the ridiculous regional restrictions that apparently work in a small enclosed country, even though the WHO apparently doesn't think they work between countries on opposite sides of the world.

There's the nonsense about having to have a scotch egg with a pint, or having to kick out of the pub at the same time.

The idea that we're all supposed to suffer whatever deprivation is ordered, just so preferred activities that probably involve more transmission anyway, can carry on etc.

No. I'm not supporting it.

 

[Class 33]

Whitty can stuff his "restrictions"(god I'm sick of seeing and hearing that word!). We really do NOT need any of that nonsence coming back again. We put up with all that for far too long before as it was! IF these "restrictions" do return such as "The rule of 6" or not meeting anyone outside your household unless within your bubble, or whatever, I expect many people will ignore all that this time. Indeed by the time of the third lockdown, many people were ignoring these rules anyway! And if the mandatory mask wearing nonsense returns, I really hope many people will ignore this this time. Enough is enough. No more blasted restrictions returning! It really is time to move on from all this and get completely back to NORMAL!

 

[brad465]

Chris Whitty is being quoted on the BBC as saying that his "biggest worry" is whether the public will accept fresh restrictions.

I think that he is right to be "worried" about that point.

I'm not convinced that the public will accept the sort of crap that we had to put up with last year.

Yep, esepcially if it involves any kind of Christmas restrictions. I think many were happy to do it once, having been told the vaccines are coming and we'd be able to do our family events at Easter.

As it turned out, Easter was also completely cancelled and we are still subjected to the same nonsense a year later.

Not to mention many people in 2021 probably have had COVID themselves and realised it's not really worth all this panic for.

I think politicians and scientific advisors fail to understand that one cannot just decide what the biggest risk in individuals' lives is. Even if covid is a genuine concern for some, especially those considered vulnerable to it, for others there will be other health conditions that they get but are getting ignored, there'll be financial concerns and job security, both issues that stop people trying to comply with covid measures, and the general sustainability of restrictions and their financial cost to the public finances. One cannot repeatedly big up the idea that "vaccines are the way out" and then expect people to suddenly accept restrictions returning when they've had two doses or more of said vaccine.

Whitty can stuff his "restrictions"(god I'm sick of seeing and hearing that word!). We really do NOT need any of that nonsence coming back again. We put up with all that for far too long before as it was! IF these "restrictions" do return such as "The rule of 6" or not meeting anyone outside your household unless within your bubble, or whatever, I expect many people will ignore all that this time. Indeed by the time of the third lockdown, many people were ignoring these rules anyway! And if the mandatory mask wearing nonsense returns, I really hope many people will ignore this this time. Enough is enough. No more blasted restrictions returning! It really is time to move on from all this and get completely back to NORMAL!

What Whitty has said here is the closest someone official has come to acknowledging that it's one thing to have a desirable strategy, but it's another thing entirely for that strategy to be realistically achievable. There will never be 100% compliance and support for anything in life, covid or not covid. Therefore we need to go for a strategy that is realistically achievable while having resilience for it's weaknesses (e.g. increasing healthcare capacity), something lockdowns and whatnot have not considered well enough, and/or is not sustainable.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I think politicians and scientific advisors fail to understand that one cannot just decide what the biggest risk in individuals' lives is. Even if covid is a genuine concern for some, especially those considered vulnerable to it, for others there will be other health conditions that they get but are getting ignored, there'll be financial concerns and job security, both issues that stop people trying to comply with covid measures, and the general sustainability of restrictions and their financial cost to the public finances. One cannot repeatedly big up the idea that "vaccines are the way out" and then expect people to suddenly accept restrictions returning when they've had two doses or more of said vaccine.

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

 

[bramling]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

Without wishing to sound too flippant, China “dealt” with this by passing it to the rest of the world. I don’t think that can be regarded as anything resembling a success story.

I’d be quite happy to have a China-style lockdown were elimination to be a viable outcome from it, but it simply isn’t. That’s where we are, unfortunately.

 

[brad465]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

And you trust China's statistics and handling of the pandemic released to the outside world, given they're a communist dictatorship (something I'd thought you'd very strongly oppose)? Besides, they've actually had problems with covid in recent months that have disrupted things for them, such as this story on locking down a theme park and testing thousands of visitors at the start of this month. If their strategy worked so well back then, then the latter incident would never have happened as elimination would have worked.

 

[DustyBin]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

Emulating the (failed) strategy of an oppressive dictatorship really isn’t something we should assent to in my opinion. It’s not about any kind of exceptionalism. I’d also argue that the restrictions we’ve seen do rather more than disrupt peoples lifestyles……

 

[bramling]

And you trust China's statistics and handling of the pandemic released to the outside world, given they're a communist dictatorship (something I'd thought you'd very strongly oppose)? Besides, they've actually had problems with covid in recent months that have disrupted things for them, such as this story on locking down a theme park and testing thousands of visitors at the start of this month. If their strategy worked so well back then, then the latter incident would never have happened as elimination would have worked.

The real “problem” is that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t *that* deadly. Were that to be the case, it simply wouldn’t spread so readily.

Being fair to China, it was quite possibly already too far gone by the time they implemented a response, however I don’t think anyone can say China in any way dealt with it. Had they done so then we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

 

[yorkie]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

Our lifestyle does not involve being forcibly rounded up into detention centres; if anyone wants that, they can move to China if they wish.

We would not accept forced quarantines (removing people from homes into field hospitals) and intense contact tracing with no regard for privacy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...avirus-lockdown-strategy-brutal-but-effective

transport into and out of the city was closed, with no exceptions even for personal and medical emergencies.

Initially people were allowed out of their homes, but restrictions soon tightened. ...

the policy became even more aggressive, with officials going door to door for health checks, and forcing anyone ill into isolation. A disabled boy reportedly died after he was left without food, water or help when his his father and brother were quarantined.

If you want to know more about their quarantine centres, see https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/22/asia/china-coronavirus-roundup-intl-hnk/index.html

But on Tuesday, despite having recovered from the illness and been given the all-clear, the 30-year-old lawyer said she was forced into a makeshift quarantine center at a technology park....

 

[yorksrob]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

I'll have more interest in how the Chinese Government deals with things when it manages to stop it's territory becoming the origin of a new deadly virus every ten years.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.

I'll have more interest in how the Chinese Government deals with things when it manages to stop it's territory becoming the origin of a new deadly virus every ten years.

Let us be thankful that certain deadly matters from sub-Saharan Africa such as Ebola do not seem to be as prevalent in the northern hemisphere.

 

[yorksrob]

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.

Would those be the same flu admissions that have been exacerbated by lots of people being locked away from eachother and having lost natural immunity over the last two years then ?

Yes, I think they would.

Let us be thankful that certain deadly matters from sub-Saharan Africa such as Ebola do not seem to be as prevalent in the northern hemisphere.

Indeed, although they tend to be more noticeable as a result of their high mortality rate.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Would those be the same flu admissions that have been exacerbated by lots of people being locked away from each other and having lost natural immunity over the last two years then ?

Yes, I think they would.

For quite a while, the flu inoculation has been available not only in doctors surgeries, but in pharmacies. If people choose to ignore the benefits of the flu inoculation, then they have only got themselves to blame. In the six houses on our small "rather nice" housing development, every single person has had both the Pfizer Covid-19 inoculations and also the booster inoculations, plus the flu inoculation. Mind you, we are all either septuagenarians and octogenarians, but we are all as one mindful of the protection so afforded.

Remember, it seems a different variant of flu appears every year, so any natural immunity from one variant does not transfer across to a new strain. This is why the pharmaceutical companies work on a never-ending research programme.

 

[greyman42]

Whitty can stuff his "restrictions"(god I'm sick of seeing and hearing that word!). We really do NOT need any of that nonsence coming back again. We put up with all that for far too long before as it was! IF these "restrictions" do return such as "The rule of 6" or not meeting anyone outside your household unless within your bubble, or whatever, I expect many people will ignore all that this time. Indeed by the time of the third lockdown, many people were ignoring these rules anyway! And if the mandatory mask wearing nonsense returns, I really hope many people will ignore this this time. Enough is enough. No more blasted restrictions returning! It really is time to move on from all this and get completely back to NORMAL!

To be fair to Whitty, i don't think he is calling for a return of such restrictions and he seems optimistic that this variant will not be the apocalypse that the likes of BBC and SKY are making it out to be.

 

[Bantamzen]

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

You are surely not suggesting that the Chinese got it right are you? If so, I'd suggest you do a bit more research on how the CCP deal with any problems. A starting point might be the following YouTube channel from a South African guy who lived, worked and married in China for more than a decade. He has some very robust opinions on his experiences living under the regime of the CCP.

https://youtube.com/c/serpentza

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.


Let us be thankful that certain deadly matters from sub-Saharan Africa such as Ebola do not seem to be as prevalent in the northern hemisphere.

The problems facing the NHS are not primarily due to Covid, but as a result of kicking more or less everything else health related down the road for more than a year. The NHS struggles every single year, and has done for decades. Covid is now just another excuse for badly performing NHS bosses and severe underfunding from successive governments on both sides of the political divide.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Covid is now just another excuse for badly performing NHS bosses and severe underfunding from successive governments on both sides of the political divide.

That is a rather heartless statement concerning the NHS part of your quote above to make above and I am indeed sorry that you chose to make you make no mention whatsoever of the front-line hospital staff who are the ones actually dealing with matters in the NHS part of your quote.

 

[kristiang85]

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.

Whilst I do feel for them, to put it bluntly that's what the NHS is for. I understood and supported the first lockdown as we had no idea what we were dealing with. The second and third lockdowns were by and large pointless. Restrictions have not helped either. So I'm wholly against putting the population through another winter of misery to "protect" an institution that has had 20 months to prepare. Yes if the staff are overrun in some hospitals that is awful for them, but it's the same every winter, and the citizens of the UK who pay handsomely for this service should not be the ones bailing out poor management.

As someone who's married to a teacher who i barely have any time with during the week because she's working 14 hour days, I can tell you that it's not just NHS staff who are completely overworked and underpaid in the public sector. There has to be a sea change in how we treat our essential public servants like nurses, teachers, emergency services, police, etc but putting more pressure on them all by implementing largely useless NPIs isn't the answer.

Let us be thankful that certain deadly matters from sub-Saharan Africa such as Ebola do not seem to be as prevalent in the northern hemisphere.

To be honest, if ebola was on the loose here you wouldn't need government mandated restrictions to keep people inside.

 

[Bantamzen]

That is a rather heartless statement concerning the NHS part of your quote above to make above and I am indeed sorry that you chose to make you make no mention whatsoever of the front-line hospital staff who are the ones actually dealing with matters in the NHS part of your quote.

Let's go back in time, say the winter of 1993. I had recently moved in with my new girlfriend,, who was a student nurse at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield. Yet despite living with her we rarely saw each other, because even though she was just a student nurse she was expected to regularly pull 18 hour shifts because there was a massive shortfall of staff. And she was one of the "lucky" ones, junior doctors there often spent up to 72 hours on site, literally taking naps in empty offices when they could. The corridors of the hospital were often filled with patients waiting to be seen, and people often died as a result. And Pinderfields Hospital was far from the worst performing hospital in the UK.

The NHS is not a charity, it is not a stricken puppy or a poorly child. It is a government run, publicly funded service. And it has been chronically underfunded and terribly managed for decades. It's response to covid was terrible, it was more or less shut down to everything but covid. Indeed my better half had to wait months to be tested and receive results to what her GP believed might have been ovarian cancer. Thankfully when the results finally came through she was negative, but that delay could have been fatal had she been positive. And many, many people had similar experiences. Indeed many people have died because the NHS wasn't prepared to deal with them.

Right now covid is not the cause of the NHS problems, it is the severe backlog of patients who have been ignored for 18 months. So if you think it is heartless to blame politicians and NHS bosses for the terrible decisions so be it. But I think it is worse to let them off the hook.

 

[kristiang85]

Let's go back in time, say the winter of 1993. I had recently moved in with my new girlfriend,, who was a student nurse at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield. Yet despite living with her we rarely saw each other, because even though she was just a student nurse she was expected to regularly pull 18 hour shifts because there was a massive shortfall of staff. And she was one of the "lucky" ones, junior doctors there often spent up to 72 hours on site, literally taking naps in empty offices when they could. The corridors of the hospital were often filled with patients waiting to be seen, and people often died as a result. And Pinderfields Hospital was far from the worst performing hospital in the UK.

The NHS is not a charity, it is not a stricken puppy or a poorly child. It is a government run, publicly funded service. And it has been chronically underfunded and terribly managed for decades. It's response to covid was terrible, it was more or less shut down to everything but covid. Indeed my better half had to wait months to be tested and receive results to what her GP believed might have been ovarian cancer. Thankfully when the results finally came through she was negative, but that delay could have been fatal had she been positive. And many, many people had similar experiences. Indeed many people have died because the NHS wasn't prepared to deal with them.

Right now covid is not the cause of the NHS problems, it is the severe backlog of patients who have been ignored for 18 months. So if you think it is heartless to blame politicians and NHS bosses for the terrible decisions so be it. But I think it is worse to let them off the hook.

Indeed. Did you see the Macmillan report this week? The numbers were horrific.

 

[DustyBin]

That is a rather heartless statement concerning the NHS part of your quote above to make above and I am indeed sorry that you chose to make you make no mention whatsoever of the front-line hospital staff who are the ones actually dealing with matters in the NHS part of your quote.

@Bantamzen specifically took aim at NHS bosses and successive governments; what’s heartless about that? Covid is nothing more than a get-out-of-jail-free card for these people.

Some of the most scathing criticism of the NHS that I’ve heard has came from NHS employees. Indeed my fiancée eloquently described it as a “raging money fuelled bonfire” and it was her job to know about these things (she left the NHS a few years ago). I have another relative who is very much front-line and she’s completely exasperated, more so with the NHS as an institution than the day-to-day difficulties (the latter being exacerbated by the incompetence of the former).

The NHS is not beyond reproach, as more and more people are realising.

 

[NorthKent1989]

In England I don’t feel we’re in a pandemic anymore, I feel we have a vocal minority of hysterical types who want to continue this nonsense for another year, they don’t get that Covid is here to stay and it has a 99% survival rate.

Whitty should be worried that the public won’t abide by another lockdown, it’s time to move on and get back to normal, the hysterical types can stay at home if they want to indefinitely but I don’t see why the rest of us have to continue to give up our lives for this.

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but I for one am not prepared to give up a third year of my life for a health service which is clearly in need of major reforms, having restrictions indefinitely will kill off the NHS far quicker than not having restrictions and just getting on with Covid.

Go back to the start of the pandemic and see how the Chinese government dealt with the matter in the very large area of Wuhan.

Not really sure if China can be held as a credible nation of honesty in dealing with Covid seeing as thanks to them we’ve had two years of disruption.

A reading of some of these postings would suggest that certain people feel that being British gives them the freedom to ignore anything that disrupts their lifestyle.

Well we do value our freedoms in England anyway, seeing as Scotland and Wales have seemingly given up on freedoms for a virus with a 99% survival rate.

 

[greyman42]

Looking at the situation as it stands at this moment in time, let us then ignore what people like Whitty say and listen to what the front line hospital staff have to say, who are now seemingly very near the end of their capacity to deal with both the Covid-19 related medical problems but also the usual end of the year flu hospital admissions. I think that whilst we seem to wish to defend our personal freedoms, let us not forget those good people who work in hospitals.

I think we know what the front line hospital staff have to say but we need to look at the wider economy, which is where the money comes from that pays their wages.