Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Father Ted]

4 hours ago, Detournement said:

The total for Test and Trace has went up to £37 billion.  For some comparison that is equivalent to the entire annual GDP of Bulgaria. 

Very strange indeed.

Or 15 Mars rovers. 

People should be getting jailed on the back of this, absurd robbery on the public purse.

4 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

An amazing amount to spend on something with would appear to have made absolutely no difference.

I'm sure it has made a difference to Dildo Harding and her Tory donor husband. Their cocaine habit must be through the roof.

[s_dog]

1 hour ago, Elixir said:

Would any of the Scottish Government simps on here like to have a go at squaring why Sturgeon is pathologically lying and/or being disingenuous with damaging/scaremongering statements like this:

 

It may have something to do with what happened in the summer when foreign holidays were found to be the main driver in Scotland's Coronavirus resurgence after almost eliminating it, and very little to do with anyone lying or scaremongering?

Covid in Scotland: Second wave reignited by summer holidays

[MrWorldwideJr]

26 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Still haven’t once been asked what I was doing on foot or in the car. Almost a year now, not that I’m complaining obviously I’m glad but this is a kiddy on lockdown

It staggers me that anyone who has lived through the last year can call this a 'kiddy on lockdown'. The obsession so many people in this country have with measures having to be agressively enforced by the police for them to count is really weird and concerning.

If you were regularly stopping folk just for being outside you would barely catch any actual rule breakers because the vast majority of people who are out and about are either following the rules or can very easily pretend they are in a way you can't disprove (eg. exercise, dropping food off for a relative) so it wouldn't achieve its purpose. And by policing the idea of being outside as something you shouldn't really be doing and need an excuse for you would actively discourage people from going out to exercise. We know at this stage that outdoor transmission is pretty negligible. Its a spectacular failure of messaging that so many people seem to be unaware of this and think that the right to be outside doing something that poses barely any risk should be more strictly policed. Its security theatre, not effective public health policy.

So much of the public response to coronavirus in this country seems to have been based on the idea that the more we suffer, the worse things are, the better we are responding. It ties into the whole blitz spirit thing we seem to have a national obsession with. I can understand a pretty much blanket 'don't  do anything' at the start whilst we worked things out but one of the first priorities should have been identifying things we could do which don't have a high risk of transmission and communicating this to the public. Instead we've created a culture where leaving the house for any reason is viewed with suspicion, we have regular front page moral panics about people sitting distanced from each other in parks and folk think that we aren't taking it seriously because the police aren't out checking that you're behaving yourself when you go for a walk.

[craigkillie]

2 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

Ah yes. Because spending £37b and still managing to rack up the 5th highest total number of cases and total deaths in the world (despite having the 21st highest population) was a rip-roaring success.

At least it helped keep outbreaks contained though and avoided a further two lockdowns...

"Absolutely no difference" was the phrase used. It's entirely reasonable to say that it was hugely expensive due to corruption, run incompentently and not as effective as it should have been, but that doesn't mean it made no difference at all.

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, Steven W said:

 The longer this nonsense goes on the more not having fans at sport becomes normalised.

Why yes.

There's a real danger that when this really is completely and utterly all over, they'll simply forget to let fans in.

[Elixir]

3 minutes ago, s_dog said:

It may have something to do with what happened in the summer when foreign holidays were found to be the main driver in Scotland's Coronavirus resurgence after almost eliminating it, and very little to do with anyone lying or scaremongering?

Covid in Scotland: Second wave reignited by summer holidays

Oh dear. You mean this utter babbling drivel which has subsequently been laughed away by one of her senior scientific advisers - an actual epidemiologist, not a dentist or nutritionist - for the misleading nonsense it is, with Clownshoes Leitch also recently being pulled up for lying at the daily briefings.

Good, though unsurprising, to see it had you fooled.

 

[Todd_is_God]

7 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

"Absolutely no difference" was the phrase used. It's entirely reasonable to say that it was hugely expensive due to corruption, run incompentently and not as effective as it should have been, but that doesn't mean it made no difference at all.

Semantics. It completely failed.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[printer]

My and Mrs p's blue envelopes arrived this morning. Appointments on 18th March.

[s_dog]

6 minutes ago, Elixir said:

Oh dear. You mean this utter babbling drivel which has subsequently been laughed away by one of her senior scientific advisers - an actual epidemiologist, not a dentist or nutritionist - for the misleading nonsense it is, with Clownshoes Leitch also recently being pulled up for lying at the daily briefings.

Good, though unsurprising, to see it had you fooled.

 

 

The report came from SAGE/Covid Genomics UK and its more about the impact that European holidays had in the resurgence of Coronavirus in Scotland during the summer.

The almost eliminating relates to the genomic testing showing that there was very little of the original strains of the virus from the first wave, most was from Europe/England. Which is completely unrelated to the stuff Prof Mark Woolhouse was claiming about modelling showing there was never less than 500 cases so therefore not close to elimination.

No surprise that you just take the simple & wrong route to get to the answer you want though. 

[super_carson]

555 cases, 3% positivity (if we're using the SG criteria) with 27 less in hospital, 1 less in ICU. 

[Todd_is_God]

24 minutes ago, s_dog said:

 

The report came from SAGE/Covid Genomics UK and its more about the impact that European holidays had in the resurgence of Coronavirus in Scotland during the summer.

The almost eliminating relates to the genomic testing showing that there was very little of the original strains of the virus from the first wave, most was from Europe/England. Which is completely unrelated to the stuff Prof Mark Woolhouse was claiming about modelling showing there was never less than 500 cases so therefore not close to elimination.

No surprise that you just take the simple & wrong route to get to the answer you want though. 

Given the now domimant strain originated in England, you must surely see the fallacy in proclaiming that banning foreign travel is the big lesson to learn from summer 2020.

Blanket border closures / travel bans are not the way forward. An extensive roll out of the incredibly effective vaccine is.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[D.V.T.]

Yellow card for Holyrood

[Todd_is_God]

8 minutes ago, D.V.T. said:

 

 

Yellow card for Holyrood

 

Why do they not need to wear masks anyway? They are indoors.

[Steven W]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Why yes.

There's a real danger that when this really is completely and utterly all over, they'll simply forget to let fans in.

When will it be completely and utterly all over?

[WhiteRoseKillie]

I never thought that T&T would be effective - not because of the principle - it could have worked - but because of previous public sector IT projects.

It's always been the same - systems that are not fit for purpose because the contract is given to the usual suspects.

Here it is worse because the contracts were given to cronies with zero experience of delivering such a project.

Which part of T&T would you describe as Public Sector?
The only thing public about it was the money thrown at Tory cronies.

[madwullie]

31 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Why do they not need to wear masks anyway? They are indoors.

Seriously? Do they not have to wear masks at HR? I didn't know that - what a farce 

[Forest_Fifer]

BLM protest.

Bigot Lives Matter?

[Todd_is_God]

5 minutes ago, madwullie said:

Seriously? Do they not have to wear masks at HR? I didn't know that - what a farce 

They certainly don't wear them during FMQs or Covid updates, which I've always thought was a bit odd.

If I need to wear one because I work indoors (despite having dividing screens etc which, btw, they don't) then I don't see why they get away with not wearing them.

[craigkillie]

I'd have assumed they don't wear them during those for the same reason everyone on TV doesn't wear one - it makes it more difficult to be understood. I'd imagine there may be equality reasons too given that deaf people may be helped by lip-reading.

[Michael W]

1 hour ago, D.V.T. said:

 

 

Yellow card for Holyrood

 

The virus doesn't care about the colour of the rosette.