stumigoo

I’ve got to the stage where I’m pretty much ignoring the case numbers and that I look forward to just the hospital and ICU figures. The continuous falling in both of those categories is brilliant.

I enjoyed yesterday. When we’ve played in that fashion this season - a high press and a decent amount of intensity - we’ve more often than not ended up with a positive result. Mellon promised that brand of football when he arrived so I hope that it is something we see more often next season (and post-split). Over the course of the year you can see that despite Aberdeen, and Hibs, having poor runs, their squads are very strong and at the moment they should really be beyond what we can hope for. However, after Rangers, Celtic, Aberdeen and Hibs the rest of league is very tight and at a similar level. We really should be able to achieve a top six finish next year, with some decent recruitment and Mellon sticking to the tactics we have seen only in brief spells this season.

This needs to be a proper, structured 4231 with wingers who can actually help our full-backs. I’m not a huge fan of Bolton but at least if you stuck him at right-wing he’s capable of helping out and offering an outlet. Sporle and Bolton on with McNulty and Clark (or Harkes) at least moves us to something with a bit more structure.

Just realised my vaccine appointment clashes with Nicola. Hopefully by the time I get home this thread will be full of excitement after the Scottish Government decides to just go mental and open everything up by the end of the April...

Agreed, I know plenty United fans that don’t live in Dundee (and not just in Angus...) I just think they will keep away sections closed for a while to reduce movement of people. From a purely business perspective it would be terrible for clubs due to larger crowds from certain teams. I think for us we always seemed to be a team who managed to utilise having three stands we could give to a couple of sides and a guarantee of good sized crowds for a few others. Even with full stadiums opened for just home fans there is still a fairly sizeable chunk of revenue being blocked. Celtic fans should be given a pass for us though. We can just have them all travel from Lochee, no bother at all.

I wouldn't expect away fans to be allowed in for some time yet, but I am feeling more optimistic that at of the start of next season we will see a sizeable percentage (if not all) of home fans being allowed to go to games. Certainly this season is a write-off but by August you are looking at the entire population being offered a vaccine (with priority groups pretty much completed their entire two dose schedule hopefully). Add to this a full summer of hospital, ICU and death figures to look at, which will hopefully show enough to allow fans back in. I would not be surprised that things are pulled back a little in the winter depending on how difficult things are at that time of year, but I am certainly much more optimistic than I was just even a few weeks ago.

The credits at the end with all the different countries is a Disney+ thing. We have it on constantly in the house with our son and even all the 4 minute cartoon episodes have 5 minute long credits that go through each individual language!

Just for reference -

Tory boy on Andrew Marr saying that he and his wee Covid Recovery group are basically saying - By the end of April, groups that account for 99% of deaths and 80% of hospitalisations and serious illness will be fully vaccinated, so we just need to go for it after that. Andrew Marr asked him if he was worried the R rate and numbers will shoot up after schools open but the Tory said that we shouldn't be thinking about case numbers (and that Hancock said similar the other day). He said numbers and R rates don't matter if the deaths and hospitalisations are seriously reduced. Feel a little bit sick agreeing with a Tory, but...

As a family we’ve followed the rules and our jobs mean we are acutely aware of being as careful as we can. However last night we were talking about how our three year old hadn’t seen my wife’s parents since last summer. In our job we now get tested twice a week. I have my vaccine on Tuesday and her parents get theirs on Wednesday. Now, we’re not all of a sudden going to just fire our wee one to Glasgow but across the board there will be more and more families who will begin to be in positions where they might be tempted to start pushing things given the additional testing in some industries and the vaccine itself. The government need to find a balance because you would think that numbers of people who are willing to push the boundaries is going to increase massively (if it hasn’t so already).

If it is ‘near the end’ care they can visit. My mother in law was in hospital a couple of weeks ago because her dad was just receiving end of life comfort care and they allowed a couple of visits before he passed away.

I got offered a vaccine. Totally out of the blue and didn’t expect one for ages. Tuesday afternoon. I’ve got asthma, not severe but enough to give me very bad flus and chest infections when I get them. My wife is delighted as she was seriously worried I’d be on the way out if I got Covid! Now, where’s that vaccine passport?

I did notice this image on Twitter, it’s a cracker.

What's the procedure if you get a +ve LFT , book a PCR for confirmation ? Yeah. Every test, regardless if positive or negative needs to be logged online and if it is positive then we need to arrange for a follow-up.

Collected my box of tests this morning. Will be testing twice a week due to being in school Monday - Friday. As more tests become available the actual numbers will possibly remain reasonably high, but as long as the overall percentage reduces and, has been discussed in great detail on here, the hospital figures and ICU + Death figures decline then we should be moving forward and using those as the benchmarks for success.

The line about being more cautious than last year is the saddest bit for me. f**k sake.

Yeah we’ve been told that as of this week we all have packs of tests available to take away with us. Results recorded online but tests are not mandatory. With a lot of staff still purely working from home, initially it is just people who are in the school building. One test a week if you are only in for a day or two, with two tests a week if you are in most days.

I agree, it’s more the caution and hesitancy of the government rather than the numbers that has me looking at May.

We probably all have different timescales but I’ve resigned to February and all of March as much more of the same. In my mind I’m still seeing late April/May as the possible shift in narrative from case numbers to it being more about hospital and ICU figures.

This is absolutely where I want us to be. We are not getting rid of it, we will have to live with it. As long as we have suitable treatments (including booster injections for the most vulnerable)and we have control over hospital and ICU numbers then for me we are in a good place and can move forward with returning things back to normal.

It’s difficult, each school will be different depending on their location. We are lucky as we can stagger and we do have enough around the school for pupils to go out. However, and I’m just playing devils advocate, we do have a number of smaller businesses who I know we’re absolutely desperate for the kids to be back as they make up such a huge percentage of their business. I also know that for some, the moment the pupils returned in August they completely pulled back from any distancing, masks etc in their own shops, because they were so desperate for the additional revenue, which I can sympathise with. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to manage (especially when it involves a thousand teenagers).

We were told to empty the building at every break and every lunch. Kids could get food at those times from the canteen but they had to pre-order in the morning and then as soon as they got their food they had to leave. This was for both the internal cleaning of the building each lunch hour and to minimise the number of people in an enclosed space at a time of incredibly high traffic.

Yaaassss!!

Micky Mellon’s (stuck in the house) Tangerine Army.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3770674