Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Billy Jean King]

I'll take "things no-one is saying for £250", please

So why the gum bumping about schools reopening. What do those doing the gum bumping think should be reopening instead of schools ???

[H Wragg]

Watching this just now, I wonder if NS's hand waving beside the interpreter as she talks actually inadvertently translates into anything in sign language, e.g. "big knob" 
Also, when they say it continues it on the (new) BBC Scotland channel, all I see on that is an off-air blank screen. Anyone else have this? 

Still showing fine on my BBC Scotland channel (on Sky).

[vikingTON]

25 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

The message I hear loud and clear from the SG is that they recognise the risk but are willing to take it for the sake of Education. Risk and reward.

Good for them. Why should the rest of society continue following their clearly contradictory rules instead of now being able to take their own risks though? Why should a bunch of 17 year olds refrain from congregating in a massive group in a local park at the weekend because Jason Leitch says no, while the same clownshoes figure is more than happy to chuck 30 of them inside a Higher classroom from Monday-Friday? 

Just because the government and parents think that this is an acceptable trade-off for literally everyone else in the country to make doesn't actually mean that it is the case. 

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Nowhere have I heard anyone from the SG that there is no risk in returning to school but life has to return to normal and schooling is an enormous part of that.

As opposed to gyms, outdoor sporting events and countless other businesses and cultural activities that carry an objectively much lower risk of infection? Righto. Let's just put those on the back-burner indefinitely while we pretend that the biggest source of a second outbreak must continue almost unchanged from its pre-pandemic setting for reasons. 

Can't imagine why that argument is not gaining 100% public compliance right now tbh. 

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Schooling is more important than most other aspects of life.

Except that the choice isn't actually between 'schooling' and 'not schooling' but rather 'patently unsafe schooling now' or 'reduced, blended learning now; catch-up schooling later'. Literally nobody has suggested that we just patch all education for the sake of the pandemic and never actually carry it out, so you're arguing against a ridiculous straw man here.

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It's a gamble worth taking.

Tell that to the small business owners up and down the country who will be going bankrupt because the SG is restricting and/or shutting down their sectors of the economy again just because parents don't want to look after their sprogs for a few months. 

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Getting children back to something approaching normality is one of the most important aspects of getting life in general back to normal.

No matter how many times that you repeat this mantra, it just isn't true though. 

Edited August 18, 2020 by vikingTON

[Gaz]

5 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

25 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I'll take "things no-one is saying for £250", please

So why the gum bumping about schools reopening. What do those doing the gum bumping think should be reopening instead of schools ???

I havent't seen anyone say things should be opening instead of schools.

I've seen plenty people say that things should be opening as well as schools.

[Todd_is_God]

Telling that Gregor admitted that he knows the tests are not 100% specific, but declined to elaborate on how specific he believed them to be. That has obvious implications for targetted testing.

They really did not like the question about asymptomatic cases at all.

[Billy Jean King]

No matter how many times that you repeat this mantra, it just isn't true though. 

Clearly everyone has their own priorities and clearly education isn't one of yours, fair enough. It is for me and despite my son being in 6th year him getting the grades he requires is personally for me more important than getting to a pub, restaurant or even the football. If it's deemed not possible for us to do both (I think if we just let it settle for a few weeks we might find it is) then I personally would take the hit to keep kids in full time face to face teaching but as I stress that's my opinion and those without kids will undoubtedly not share those priorities.

[Thereisalight..]

49 minutes ago, Michael W said:

I don't see why we can't have both. I agree that the schools need to go back but they are also high risk and I don't see why lower-risk activity is being sacrificed for them. 

Me either. I don’t see why we have to have one and not the other. Comparing schools and football crowds is like comparing North Korea with America, pointless. I honestly don’t see why they can’t have a few hundred punters at least, at grounds that can hold 10000 

[coprolite]

6 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Me either. I don’t see why we have to have one and not the other. Comparing schools and football crowds is like comparing North Korea with America, pointless. I honestly don’t see why they can’t have a few hundred punters at least, at grounds that can hold 10000 

Football fans have always been treated as potential criminals and will be the last people the government trusts to behave.  

[Alert Mongoose]

Surely the schools thing and kids not passing it on so much is just down to them largely avoiding symptoms. I dare say you can still pass it on but if you are not coughing and spluttering everywhere then the chances of spreading it around are lower.

[Todd_is_God]

9 minutes ago, Alert Mongoose said:

Surely the schools thing and kids not passing it on so much is just down to them largely avoiding symptoms. I dare say you can still pass it on but if you are not coughing and spluttering everywhere then the chances of spreading it around are lower.

Good point.

I think it's a bit daft of NS to highlight the low number of positive cases in young children, as they are meaningless without context.

If most infections in children are extremely mild or asymptomatic, they won't have been getting tested. If you don't get tested, you can't get counted.

Blanket testing of school children will absolutely change that. It doesn't mean it's anymore dangerous. Particularly if the studies which showed children were no less likely to catch covid-19 than anyone else, but that they were unlikely to pass it on, or were less likely to display anything other than mild symptoms are correct.

They will seemingly never will learn that using a single statistic to justify a measure will backfire on you if that statistic changes.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[madwullie]

45 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Me either. I don’t see why we have to have one and not the other. Comparing schools and football crowds is like comparing North Korea with America, pointless. I honestly don’t see why they can’t have a few hundred punters at least, at grounds that can hold 10000 

I mean this is the decision they've made. They're mitigating risk. They're not saying football is more risky than opening schools, they're saying it's more important and if you can only have one they've decided to have schools. It really is as simple as that. Whether or not you agree that you can only have one is a different matter obvs. 

Edit: given how overly cautious she's been, I reckon if she could make the absolute choice she probably wouldn't have schools fully open either yet

Edited August 18, 2020 by madwullie

[rainbowrising]

2 hours ago, virginton said:

There are a number of 'research studies' (most likely just the same one over and over again) being promoted by both governments and the media who want to ram 1000 children inside a school all week while blaming pubs/inconsiderate youths/footballers if it all starts going tits up. That's what's actually happening here.

That this convenient tall tale flies in the face of everything we know about how outbreaks of cold, flu and every other seasonal respiratory disease develop isn't really important because protecting public health is now on the back-burner compared to 'avoiding politically damaging griping'. 

Really.  So the weeks of Government closing down schools was just a mirage? all part of the conspiracy.  When you say it's 'likely' the same one over and over, are you able to identify that one 'likely' report rather than the many being carried out across countries across the world as they try to understand this virus (whilst being part of the pub/football conspiracy obviously)?

[Thereisalight..]

15 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I mean this is the decision they've made. They're mitigating risk. They're not saying football is more risky than opening schools, they're saying it's more important and if you can only have one they've decided to have schools. It really is as simple as that. Whether or not you agree that you can only have one is a different matter obvs. 

Edit: given how overly cautious she's been, I reckon if she could make the absolute choice she probably wouldn't have schools fully open either yet

Schools should be back. Crowds at football should be back. We’ve had no covid deaths for over a month, people know to wear a face covering and sanitise their hands. Keeping things shut now just reeks of this “covid elimination” utopia that the SG seem hell bent on 

[Stellaboz]

Just now, Thereisalight.. said:

people know to wear a face covering and sanitise their hands

Maybe they know how to, but many still choose fucking not to. There are many disgusting, dirty people out there. 

[Todd_is_God]

21 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I mean this is the decision they've made. They're mitigating risk. They're not saying football is more risky than opening schools, they're saying it's more important and if you can only have one they've decided to have schools. It really is as simple as that. Whether or not you agree that you can only have one is a different matter obvs. 

Edit: given how overly cautious she's been, I reckon if she could make the absolute choice she probably wouldn't have schools fully open either yet

NS has a problem which will come to a head at the review on 10th September.

If she doesn't give assurances that all businesses that she has currently kept closed can re-open by 1st November, mass redundancies etc will occur almost straight away as redundancy notice periods will start to kick in, or businesses will simply close.

If she does allow all of those businesses to open, it is a complete u-turn on the painfully cautious approach until now.

Schools are important, obviously, but not at the expense of everything else.

That we are in a situation where people still can't go to the gym and are still being given a row for seeing our friends the wrong way 5 months down the line, with just 1 death in 41 days is absolutely incredible.

Anywhere else in the world where a government had such tunnel vision on an unachieveable target no one asked for after moving the goalposts drastically from the start, that had overseen an exams fiasco, that had compounded the economic recession and rise in unemployment by being overly cautious, and that had overseen an outrageous error in moving infected patients into care homes, all within a handful of months, would be out on their arse in the next election.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[101]

1 hour ago, virginton said:

Good for them. Why should the rest of society continue following their clearly contradictory rules instead of now being able to take their own risks though? Why should a bunch of 17 year olds refrain from congregating in a massive group in a local park at the weekend because Jason Leitch says no, while the same clownshoes figure is more than happy to chuck 30 of them inside a Higher classroom from Monday-Friday? 

Just because the government and parents think that this is an acceptable trade-off for literally everyone else in the country to make doesn't actually mean that it is the case. 

As opposed to gyms, outdoor sporting events and countless other businesses and cultural activities that carry an objectively much lower risk of infection? Righto. Let's just put those on the back-burner indefinitely while we pretend that the biggest source of a second outbreak must continue almost unchanged from its pre-pandemic setting for reasons. 

Can't imagine why that argument is not gaining 100% public compliance right now tbh. 

Except that the choice isn't actually between 'schooling' and 'not schooling' but rather 'patently unsafe schooling now' or 'reduced, blended learning now; catch-up schooling later'. Literally nobody has suggested that we just patch all education for the sake of the pandemic and never actually carry it out, so you're arguing against a ridiculous straw man here.

Tell that to the small business owners up and down the country who will be going bankrupt because the SG is restricting and/or shutting down their sectors of the economy again just because parents don't want to look after their sprogs for a few months. 

No matter how many times that you repeat this mantra, it just isn't true though. 

Do you not think its the right thing to do to have these business shut or on a much reduced opening whilst there is funding available to help them cope? Obviously the funding is not enough but we sadly lack the full fiscal power to help in any meaningful way i.e. we couldn't finance a furlough scheme.

No one knows what the lockdown will have done to the growth of school age and pre-school age children - I would imagine it will have had an adverse effect on them hopefully by getting them back now will help reverse the impact, whilst restrictions are in place to give us room for the rate of infection to climb without being a major threat to the NHS or public health. 

I completely agree that blended learning probably should have been to go to as it reduces the risk of the return to school but the power parents and education unions have, especially in an election year, is immense, although it does look like they are now pedalling back saying we shouldn't have kids back full time yet. 

[ICTChris]

1 minute ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Schools should be back. Crowds at football should be back. We’ve had no covid deaths for over a month, people know to wear a face covering and sanitise their hands. Keeping things shut now just reeks of this “covid elimination” utopia that the SG seem hell bent on 

The Scottish Government do not have a covid elimination strategy.  There is no mention of this in any government document as far as I'm aware.

[rainbowrising]

2 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Schools should be back. Crowds at football should be back. We’ve had no covid deaths for over a month, people know to wear a face covering and sanitise their hands. Keeping things shut now just reeks of this “covid elimination” utopia that the SG seem hell bent on 

Its weird how the Government is accused by some of a 'covid elimination' policy where we are all locked down whilst also being tagged as a Government prepared to risk outbreaks with the return of schools opening up.  

[Thereisalight..]

4 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

Maybe they know how to, but many still choose fucking not to. There are many disgusting, dirty people out there. 

There sure is, but have we all to suffer because of manky kunts? Go to the football, wear a scarf over your face or a mask and take some hand sanitiser incase the phlebs brush past   

[Thereisalight..]

2 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The Scottish Government do not have a covid elimination strategy.  There is no mention of this in any government document as far as I'm aware.

They're sure making a good impression of it