LongTimeLurker

You can tell he's not the brightest from one of his other recent tweets if he can't immediately tell from how sudden and steep the down slopes are that it's simply an artefact of no official numbers being reported outside of England:

...there's a reason today was chosen for the big announcement. More petty nanny state restrictions were no doubt planned but they bottled it because they knew there would finally have been a major backlash this time in public opinion terms.

If the politicians were not willing/able to make the tough decisions required to genuinely go after zero covid by accepting those costs they shouldn't have targeted politically expedient low risk sectors as a way to make it look like they were actually doing something they weren't. There was a whole charade going on where they were really just letting it rip to save the economy by keeping schools and workplaces open but were constantly guilt tripping people with absurd nanny state rules that were never going to be effective at reversing the wave. Those rules kept getting ratcheted up until the wave finally peaked as it was always going to do anyway.

...and are probably unaware that many colds are caused by....wait for it....drum roll....relatively mild coronaviuses.

That was what was so moronic about a lot of what they were doing earlier this year. You can't pick and choose based on political expediency if you want to make an actual difference to the extent that the Australians were able to. So much high risk stuff was being kept open that the whole process of slowly ramping up the nanny state restrictions over low risk activities like sparsely attended lower league football was a complete waste of time. The wave was still going to keep rising and people were still going to be infected regardless.

They were gearing up for look at us aren't we wonderful we tried to do the right thing unlike Boris who caused the calamity down south, our hands are tied financially though, but these are the extra measures we can do to keep you safe. In the absence of the anticipated calamity due to omicron failing to live up to the dodgy computer modelling hype no additional restrictions was as much of a climbdown as we were going to get for now. If case numbers peak and start to rapidly decline Gauteng style before the three weeks are up, they'll do a complete U-turn at the end of it with an it was better to be safe than sorry.

The wording of the Lowland League constitution was a complete mess when Selkirk folded a few seasons back because it only mentioned the bottom placed club getting relegated and Selkirk were no longer in the league table after their record had been expunged. Looks like that scenario is not happening with Fort William though.

That's a parody account for what it's worth.

He's a wind up merchant. Best not to take the bait.

He used Labour support to deal with backbencher rebellions on this in the past so it's not that simple. Lockdown restrictions should only ever be used in truly dire circumstances because of the damage they inflict on the economy and the issues they can cause on health in other areas, e.g. cancer diagnosis etc. After vaccination and with a milder and more transmissble variant now dominant we are at a tipping point on this issue. The situation we are facing now is very different from a year ago.

You are not seeing the wood for the trees on the first part because the point being made was that viruses are known to actively compete with each other on infection. At no point have I claimed the latter part and all I initially responded to was the notion of "no flu for 2 years". I actually specifically mentioned the possibility of restrictions being a potential factor along with being outcompeted by COVID's much higher R0 only two posts back. You are not responding to what I am actually writing so there is little point in pursuing this any further.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/having-a-cold-blocks-you-from-catching-the-flu/ https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56483445

Make your mind up what you are saying then. Pretty rare means something different from "no flu". Influenza got outcompeted by COVID-19 due to COVID's much higher R0 and the absence of any prior immunity within the population but it wasn't eliminated by it or by the restrictions and will bounce back again in future. To get back to your original point check out what the models claimed should happen with COVID-19 in Sweden in April 2020 when they didn't go completely overboard on restrictions and what actually happened there. The initial modelling that led to Boris going bananas over Dyson ventilators that were never needed and overdoing it on the lockdown restrictions (note I am not saying that there wasn't a need for any restrictions at that point or that none were in place in Sweden) got it wrong because COVID's IFR turned out to be about an order of magnitude lower than what was being fed into the models based on initial CFR numbers from Wuhan.

Was told by somebody who claimed inside knowledge that the sub angle was why his Rangers teammates initially nicknamed him that. After that it took on a life of its own for other reasons.

Think you'll find that the notion that there has been no flu over the last two years is an urban myth.

Not sure about the diddy bit given the way that the pandemic response has shown how much power they can wield over people's lives and it's important to bear in mind that Boris also went overboard on the nanny state approach as well at various points. England definitely wasn't following Sweden on sticking to preexisting pandemic protocols back in April 2020. The key though is that people do need to be made to understand how ultimately futile Sturgeon's chief mammy sort of approach is right now because for most of the population who are out and about to a reasonable extent it really is only a matter of time until they are exposed to something as transmissible as omicron and will have their roll of the dice with it. She isn't really protecting anyone in the long run at this point and is just being a nuisance in people's lives now that the IFR genuinely does appear to be comparable to normal run of the mill seasonal flu pandemics and the population is no longer immunologically naive to COVID-19 courtesy of vaccines or prior infection.

The nickname was more to do with usually being a sub.

Think the third bullet point is dubious at best. Over time there is natural selection pressure for initially deadly viruses that have jumped to humans from other species to mutate to become more transmissible as herd immunity slowly emerges and this usually results over time in far less deadly strains that become endemic. The second bullet point is also questionable where non-high risk groups are concerned. Boosters for healthy younger adults are probably more about politicians feeling a need to be seen to do something at this point. Giving a 25 year old in Blantyre in Scotland a third shot should not be taking priority over a 65 year old in Blantyre in Malawi receiving their first.

Replace delta with omicron and guess what happens.

The positive side of that is that if it is effecting you in a big way it is definitely working in immune system response terms.

The rule wording that has been drafted blocks the OF colt teams from being promoted into the SPFL and takes them out of the equation on determining the LL champion for the Club 42 playoffs. I get that people have very strong opinions on this and don't want them in but this rule change makes it easy for the LL to keep accomodating them moving forward if they so choose so it's premature to conclude that it's one year only at this point.

The problem with that rationale is that it's a bad comparator in the wrong direction if you want to be able justify the extra restrictions. As far as I can see all the things you highlight should have led to a significantly worse outcome for South Africa than would be the case in a UK context, but there has barely even be a blip in excess deaths terms in the real world data for the Gauteng metro areas that peaked first that could be attributed to the impact of the very steep omicron infection wave that had been experienced. There are valid statistical reasons why South African health professionals have been telling anyone who would listen that this is a mild variant and no obvious rational reason why they for the most part haven't been taken seriously elsewhere.

Real world data was already readily available from South Africa for what happens if you carry on as previously during an omicron wave and allow it to peak with no extra restrictions but for whatever reason they chose to ignore that and listen instead to attention seeking computer modelling types with a track record of pushing worst case scenarios on the basis of very flimsy reasoning. What has unfolded over the last few days is laughable.

May just be a contingency plan for now to prepare for what Nicola Sturgeon is liable to do next? Boris still seems to be in let it rip mode so a lot will depend on how quickly case numbers peak.

Meanwhile most of Africa and many other lower income countries have still had little to no vaccination and may wind up being the source of future problematic variants. Doing this beyond the most genuinely at risk groups is mainly about keeping the plebs voting for the same governing parties rather than what's really best to get COVID under control.