Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Bairnardo]

Reckon the implication that you're going on the naughty list if you don't get your jabs is pretty much spot on for the anti-vax, anti-certification and almost certainly still believes in Santa demographic. Genius.

Did ye aye

[Todd_is_God]

Don't see anything wrong with the Tesco ad tbh. It's a bit of humour using a topical theme. Like Aldi having Colin getting lifted in the background of theirs. Some will find it funny, others won't.

I've absolutely no doubt that @Detournement types down South will try to spin it as some sort of Government backed plan to normalise them before their introduction, though.

[ICTChris]

All these people who are never going to vote SNP again are adding up I see.

 

[williemillersmoustache]

5 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

20 minutes ago, williemillersmoustache said:

Reckon the implication that you're going on the naughty list if you don't get your jabs is pretty much spot on for the anti-vax, anti-certification and almost certainly still believes in Santa demographic. Genius.

Did ye aye

I read your post regarding not following lockdown if imposed again and I assume this is born out of lived experience and hardship, and I have no intention to dispute the disruption and in some cases misery lockdowns caused.

My experience of the pandemic is maybe a little different to others in that I spent much of it caring for my mum who was dying from about 5 different cancers. She beat 4 of them with chemo and radiotherapy but there was this little b*****d of a tumour on her spine which was exceptionally rare, inoperable and because of the blood/brain barrier non responsive to chemo. It meant she was wheelchair bound from about Christmas 2020 onwards and because of the chemo her white blood cell count was regularly zero, and paralysis makes you that much more vulnerable to any infection too. So we lived in an infection control fort knox for most of it and while we should have had up to 4 care visits a day we initially took the decision we just couldn't risk having up to 8 different folk, who had been in multiple different homes every day in the house while the virus raged in the early part of this year. Later we had to weigh up the risks, as we just weren't coping and making mum worse on our own, and then getting the referral for that specialist care and input for what was essentially a non traumatic and unstable spinal injury was horrendous.

While i'll never be able to adequately thank so many folk in the NHS, the Hospice, the Ambulance Service, The GP, The District Nurse Teams for the on occasions heroic but always compassionate and dedicated care mum got, there were several times when we really, really needed help and it just wasn't there because of people redeployed or over worked by Covid and one admission to hospital which almost certainly contributed to her final deterioration, which was a total clusterfuck. 

Now I don't think the world should have stopped just for my mum but, it was so frustrating to see people last year demanding to have holidays, to open the gyms, get fans back in stadiums, to open the nightclubs, we must have xmas, we must have bonfire night, it's just a fucking cold, and the lunacy of never once having effective border controls so we wilfully imported the virus and let it romp across the country unchecked not once, not twice but three fucking times. When it did not need to be like that.

Regarding the hospital admission, some of the issues I'm sure are systemic and not covid related but, the staff there were fucked. Worn out, burnt out, demoralised and just not able to provide the standard of care they wanted to or should have been capable of delivering. And I know from folk who work in the NHS this was replicated across the country in hospitals, local teams, GPs, DNs, Ambulance the lot. So when I consider things like masks and vaccine certs and compulsory jags for staff i think of the times when we'd given her all her meds, then gone to the emergency box full of the really good stuff, then called the district nurse and waited hours to get emergency pain relief while mum was literally screaming at us, and I'd hope these small inconveniences might take just take a bit of pressure off the NHS and hopefully some folk won't have the experiences she and we did.

It's been hard to rationalise a lot of this because we had every possible advantage, we're not short of a few bob, we've got a nice house, we've got loads of doctors in the family, including mum and dad, I'm fortunate to have a great group of friends, several of whom are nurses, who have been really supportive and due to the nature of mums illness we probably would have had a mare anyway. But I can't help believing that it wouldn't have been so bad if this idiot fucking island had taken this thing a bit more seriously. Or that even if you don't think masks or passports are worthwhile or acceptable you'd voice your opinion but comply anyway, just in case you don't know better after all. Everyone's Maw is special and mine was no different, she spent much of her career dedicated to victim support and child protection and made the best fucking minestrone soup on earth and I can't help myself from thinking that she deserved better in her last months, weeks and days.

This as you can imagine has taken its toll on us and I'm just sort of getting to grips with her being gone now. Sort of and I appreciate that I've been and probably will continue to be a bit of a dick on here. But there have been a number of people including business folk, for whom I have every sympathy and again, I won't dispute what they've had to put up with who have shared their lived experience of covid.  This is mine and the prism through which I've viewed the last couple of years. An almost entirely avoidable, selfish, arrogant, anti-intellectual, anti-expert, god awful, sinful, murderous, idiotic, thieving b*****d clusterfuck. Similar to our family and mums illness the UK had every possible advantage to respond to covid but it made a complete c**t of it. Paid for not just in lives lost to covid, of which there are far far too many but in pain and misery inflicted on others who couldn't get the help they needed because of it.
 

FWIW, I doubt very much if there will be any more full lockdowns, the situation is different and better than last year. Also, it's not very fair to label this on @Bairnardo as a reply to a relatively innocuous post, but if nothing else, i've had a drink and smashing this out over an unwise Sunday second bottle of wine has been a welcome catharsis, while committing the cardinal sins of attempting sincerity and giving out personal information. Heads gone thread for this pish etc.

[TheScarf]

10 hours ago, ICTChris said:

All these people who are never going to vote SNP again are adding up I see.

 

51% of the vote for a Nationalist Party.  Get that referendum date set Nicola!

[Left Back]

There's yer vaccine roll-out extended again.  Over 40's to get boosters and 16-17 year olds to get second dose.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-booster-jabs-rollout-extended-to-over-40s-and-second-doses-recommended-for-16-and-17-year-olds-12469172

Edited November 15, 2021 by Left Back

[Michael W]

On 12/11/2021 at 15:10, Michael W said:

 

I will be shocked if the booster programme isn't subsequently changed to encompass all adults. 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-booster-shots-for-the-under-50s-to-prevent-winter-wave-p78z859c2

What a surprise! Shifty shifty goalposts. 

There will be further extensions of boosters I am sure.

FWIW, giving the over 12s only 1 dose was a fucking daft policy in the first place. Do it properly or don't bother. 

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Michael W

[Abdul_Latif]

9 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

There's over 100,000 NHS staff currently unvaccinated.

Who is going to come in to fill those posts give we are already short-staffed as it is?

Weekly doorstep booing at 8pm on a Thursday for the unvaccinated NHS traitors imo.

[scottsdad]

48 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Perhaps one of the guys gleefully supporting mandatory vaccinations for NHS staff can explain something.

There's over 100,000 NHS staff currently unvaccinated.

Who is going to come in to fill those posts give we are already short-staffed as it is?

Same question for care home workers.

I don't know how many times this needs said but there is no scenario in any of this where people do not die as a result of making one decision over another.

The sanctimony is wearing a bit thin.

The "no jab, no job" policy is a fucking shambles. As you rightly point out, it's not as if the NHS and care homes have staff sitting around twiddling their thumbs as they are so underworked at present.

But hey, the government care more and that's what counts.

[gav-ffc]

50 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Perhaps one of the guys gleefully supporting mandatory vaccinations for NHS staff can explain something.

There's over 100,000 NHS staff currently unvaccinated.

Who is going to come in to fill those posts give we are already short-staffed as it is?

Same question for care home workers.

I don't know how many times this needs said but there is no scenario in any of this where people do not die as a result of making one decision over another.

The sanctimony is wearing a bit thin.

Working in the care sector I was shocked how many people weren’t vaccinated, few of them got it recently with the news of job losses down south right enough.

[gav-ffc]

1 minute ago, oaksoft said:

Most of them won't get vaccinated though under any circumstances and the question remains about how the staff shortage is to be plugged.

Bring overseas workers in… oh wait.

[welshbairn]

It won't be anything like 100,000 sacked in April. 

Quote

While 93 per cent of NHS frontline staff have already had their first dose, and 90 per cent are fully vaccinated, the government has estimated this leaves more than 70,000 unvaccinated NHS staff who need to be vaccinated or risk losing their jobs when the grace period ends on 1 April 2022.
The government has said exemptions will be given to those who do not have face-to-face contact with patients, as well as those who are medically exempt.

Don't think any of it applies in Scotland anyway?

Edited November 15, 2021 by welshbairn

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Most of them won't get vaccinated though under any circumstances

How do you know this?

[Michael W]

3 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Most of them won't get vaccinated though under any circumstances and the question remains about how the staff shortage is to be plugged.

This is it. The vaccine has been available to all adults since July. If in that five months someone has chosen not to get it, they don't want it and that's basically the end of it. I know quite a lot of people actually got Covid in June/July and had to wait for their vaccine as well, but there has been ample time now for anyone aged 18+. 

Austria is about to run a live case study of what happens when people are partially excluded from society for being unvaccinated. I can't see it ending well at all. 

I still think the government will back down on their compulsory vaccinations for the NHS and care workers. The law will almost certainly be litigated and in a rare case here, the power is genuinely with the workers. The care system and the NHS will collapse if the present levels of unvaccinated workers simply refuse and are sacked as a result. I can't see the government signing up for that.

[welshbairn]

9 minutes ago, Michael W said:

This is it. The vaccine has been available to all adults since July. If in that five months someone has chosen not to get it, they don't want it and that's basically the end of it.

How many have been told they'll lose their job if they don't get it? Meanwhile most of the people they know will have been double jabbed months ago and suffering no ill effects. 

[vikingTON]

'Losing your job' in the care sector/health service doesn't carry much of a threat when they can walk into an entry level job in hospitality or retail at the moment. 

Giving anyone a shove to leave those two sectors right now for the sake of your own moral self-righteousness is utter stupidity. 

[welshbairn]

6 minutes ago, virginton said:

'Losing your job' in the care sector/health service doesn't carry much of a threat when they can walk into an entry level job in hospitality or retail at the moment. 

Giving anyone a shove to leave those two sectors right now for the sake of your own moral self-righteousness is utter stupidity. 

Most frontline medical staff earn a whole lot more than entry level hospitality or retail and with job security for life. 

 

Edited November 15, 2021 by welshbairn

[The Moonster]

My pal is a respiratory nurse and had one vaccine this year before catching covid just before his second one, he's never bothered to rearrange that second vaccine. He was applying for jobs in a different sector (education) anyway but when he heard this news he just laughed at the number of his colleagues who would just be telling them to ram it. A lot of these people have been exposed to covid/caught it and came through the other side without much fuss. Personally I would have thought medical professionals would take this is a matter of principle, but I can understand why folk haven't bothered. People who haven't ever been exposed to it and only hear the stuff on the news will be far more likely to get a vaccine than people who are exposed to it every day and see the reality of it. 

 

[vikingTON]

12 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Most frontline medical staff earn a whole lot more than entry level hospitality or retail and with job security for life. 

 

Except that you've just removed that job security for life and made it contingent on the 'choice' of getting vaccinated. 

The idea that earnings alone will keep them in the profession does not tally with those already flooding out of the healthcare sector because the working conditions are abysmal. And care staff doing home visits are absolutely not earning a whole lot more than their counterparts in retail. 

Which means they take a new job. Which means there is no care package in place and so fewer available beds in UK hospitals. 

Edited November 15, 2021 by vikingTON

[Michael W]

15 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

How many have been told they'll lose their job if they don't get it? Meanwhile most of the people they know will have been double jabbed months ago and suffering no ill effects. 

Very few. Such an eventuality is however a long way off, unless you're a care worker or NHS frontline. Even then I'm sceptical they will follow through. 

It is true side effects are rare. It is  equally true that the younger cohorts of the non-vaccinated are generally low risk for becoming seriously unwell and many will therefore decide it's not worth the hassle or the very small risk. 

You also then have hardcore anti-vaxxers that simply cannot be convinced to be vaccinated no matter what you say to them. They'll point to vaccinated people getting the virus and being hospitalised and/dying as proof it doesn't work and will ignore the progress we have made in death rates and hospitalisations compared with last December/January. The current caseload we're having each day would have seen well over 1,000 deaths per day previously. It is a zero sum game, unfortunately.