Is the 2020/2021 a non starter?

A snowHead

@boobleblooble, not only are you a covidiot, you and people like you are going to be the reason why the rest of us have to live under more restrictions for longer, so just go and do one.

A snowHead

@haggishunter, well said.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I miss @whitegold, he was a proper troll. Sometimes funny, and occasionally even forced us to question our own prejudices (and sanity).

The new trolls just aren't as good. Can we have the old one back please?

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@haggishunter, @Valkyrie, no.

The reason you are living under restrictions such as you are in Scotland is because your elected gov't has decided to do so. I have no influence whatsoever over what they decide. If you feel it is better to turn on those who refuse to comply for its own sake rather than the people that did this to you then the only idiot is you.

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@boobleblooble, no. The reason why we are living under restrictions is because there's a pandemic. Practically every government in the world has imposed restrictions to minimise the impact of the virus. It's idiots like you who don't comply that prolong the hassle for everyone else.

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@Valkyrie, a pandemic with a survival rate of 99.9%. Simply stating that 'everyone else is doing it' is no argument. It is worth pointing out that none of the restrictions so far appear to have worked: the countries with the harshest restrictions frequently have the worst death tolls. The 'successes' such as they are have turned their countries into near-prisons: New Zealand and Australia.

What do you really think would happen if all the restrictions were lifted tomorrow in one go? Do you really think there would be mounds of dead left unburied? Do you even know that at the height of the pandemic in the UK bed occupancy was ~60%? Do you not worry that you might find a lump or have an accident and be refused care as the gov't currently cares for little except the case and death numbers?

Above all, why do you think that we can control it, any more than we can control an earthquake or a tidal wave? You can build stronger buildings or move populations away from the shore but you can't prevent it forever. The price of being social creatures is disease. Out of interest, have you every year without fail had a 'flu jab? Thousands die every year from that disease and it is spread in a similar fashion to C19 but it would be ludicrous to call you an 'idiot' or even 'granny killer' if you missed your jab one year. Yet inevitably you will have spread viruses and bacteria simply by walking about the place and living freely. For all you know, one of those viruses could've been 'flu and killed someone.

No-one however takes anyone to court for such as thing as it is impossible to place blame: you might as well sue God for being struck by a lightning-bolt.

After all it is free

@boobleblooble, strongly put but +1.
In the end it’s a nasty virus for people
Who are overwhelmingly very elderly and with serious health conditions-not talking about being a bit tubby or wheezy either.
Once you take into account life years lost rather than number of lives, the restrictions will end up causing more harm (economic, other health issues not treated, educational, lost future prospects) than the virus because those affected by the restrictions will be much younger than those saved by them.
Globally it is even worse. Hundreds of millions will end up in poverty because of the lack of income from global travel and tourism for example.

@boobleblooble,

Agree with this too, + another 1.

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@boobleblooble, stuff and nonsense. You call NZ and Aus a prison, well if Scotland was a similar ‘prison’ I’d be able to go and have face to face meetings in Glasgow, I’d be able to then go with my colleagues and meet some friends for a few drinks in the pub, I’d be able to visit and stay with family in other parts of Scotland. I can’t because the UK Government throw away the sacrifices we all made in lockdown by opening up all of England while only considering virus prevalence in and around London.

You talk about other harms and other health needs, what you fail to understand is a failure to control covid disrupts all other healthcare, the more out of control covid is the greater the disruption and other health harms. What about individuals who’ve with their doctors been walking a hellish tightrope, stuck between the obvious risk of limiting cancer treatment vs the risk of a medically compromised immune system in a medical system dealing with an unusually infectious and dangerous virus that would likely kill them if they contracted it on their full treatment program. Perhaps they’d rather take their chances in a NZ style ‘prison’?

Did you miss the lockdown in spring, that is why the health service did not collapse. Even if you don’t intend to let it run riot, but try to ‘run hot’ you could suddenly find the situation getting beyond control - some European countries are teetering on the brink just now.

What do you think happens to non covid healthcare when the hospitals are full of covid patients, but due to level of illness there’s not even the staff adequately to look after the covid patients?

What do you think happens to your hypothetical no restriction UK when due to level of illness and death, and thus fear from people previously shielding means that transport is hardly available in our big cities, that distribution networks don’t have enough drivers to keep shops stocked, or there’s not enough safety critical staff to keep the fuel refinery refining?

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@hang11, the quarantine for which you have to pay? Would those be the tourists that employ nearly a tenth of the population?

Speaking of prisons, aren't the gov't there allowed to force you into quarantine facilities along with your family?

For how long will you accept the restrictions on your life and why are you so happy to hand your freedom to the gov't to hand back at their permission?

What happens when you want to open the borders again, or will you ban foreigners w/o residency forever? Do you seriously think that there will be a vaccine that will give complete immunity to C19? Good luck, we've not even managed that with routine (and sometimes deadly) childhood illnesses like whooping cough and meningitis!

@haggishunter - I can only speak for the way it works here in Denmark, but numbers actually suggest it is the other Way around: surgery and important medical Care geeting postponed, due to the fact that all ressources have been allocated to fighting Covid-19. Don’t know if it is the same in the UK. The Health board went on live TV last friday, and announced that they have been looking at death certificates, and 95% of deaths related to infected people, were due to Covid-19 ... monday doctors went on TV, and announced that they were told to put that specific reason down on the certificate if a patient had Corona and died, without investigating the reason.
I told my daughter, that I would go to the alps in november, and she had an outburst saying: You are killing People !!

The fact is, that some professors crunched the numbers, and this have the exactly same signature as the flu, and year to date, Denmark have a smaller mortality rate than anytime else in the 2000’s.

When somebody start calling others covidiot, I seriously wonder who the real covidiot is.

You know it makes sense.

@boobleblooble, you only have to pay under some circumstances - ie coming for a temporary visit. $3k. I'm cool with that, if I want to leave temporarily, it's part of the cost, and I'm not keen on my tax $$ paying for people who want to go overseas for a holiday to quarantine. There's exemptions for family/hardship reasons, not many people have to pay it.

"Quarantine" facilities are all 4/5 star hotels. It's not that much of a hardship.

The tourism thing is interesting. It's caused carnage in very specific locations/industries, but not in the wider economy. A lot of the employment is casual and seasonal travelers, it hasn't created a huge unemployment issue generally. Ski season just gone was the busiest I've ever seen it, the ski fields made more money than a normal year. Their biggest issue was getting staff. A lot of the people out of work in tourism have just taken other work in agriculture etc. A lot of tourism businesses are going OK with domestic tourists unable to go overseas.

Overall in the economy, things are actually pretty rosy here. There aren't restrictions on my life outside of overseas travel being hard. It's that simple. There is no COVID in the community in NZ, and hasn't been to any significant level at all. That's a result of getting on top of the problem quickly, using harsh measures for a few weeks.

So I don't really have to accept any restrictions on my life, as most kiwis don't. So although you may not want to hear it, it's actually not a bad place to be considering what most of the rest of the world is having to deal with.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

On another note - we have had vaccines for measles for more than 50 years, and measles are still here - i seriously dought a vaccine will remove Covid 19 from the face of the Earth. This is in no way an attack om vaccines - just don’t expect it to Solve everything.

A snowHead

@haggishunter, Scotland isn't an island. The UK has over sixty million people in enormous cities: how did you think we were going to copy NZ and Aus? Shoot down planes coming in to land at Gatwick? Please don't bother with this 'UK government' stuff: Sturgeon can hammer Scotland with endless penalties and blame Westminster for the fact that they all fail, as they have everywhere in the world. When the terrible recession we are about to enter hits she will demand more money from the gov't and when it is not forthcoming, despite the extra Scotland receives from the Barnett Formula, she will simply blame the wicked Tories when it was her actions that embeggared Scotland.

As I've already said: C19 has a survival rate of 99.9% across the population. The Hong Kong 'flu killed a relatively similar proportion of the population and we simply soldiered on and no-one has heard of it. We will remember this for generations upon generations. You fail to understand that there are deadlier things than C19 and the immunocompromised can die of any infection, not just C19. Luckily C19 only kills the weak and not everyone but sadly (and I cannot believe I am continually have to say this to grown men and women nowadays) people die. We are all going to die. It is as inevitable as gravity and as inescapable. Normally, around 1,300 Britons die every day. C19 represents about an extra five weeks of deaths.

You talk of 'teetering on the brink': you CANNOT control a virus like the flow of water in a river or crops in a field. It is completely wild and has evolved over millennia to spread through contact: you seem to find this idea new and strange. C19 is going to kill people and much like a my earlier analogy of a tidal wave or earthquake you can either move or do your best and pick up the pieces. You, yourself, can either hide indoors until you die or you can come out and take a very, very mild risk: one which you do not even consider getting in the car and propelling yourself along a road at 70 mph. That kind of speed is completely alien to a human body yet we do it without thought. Just as driving a car is essential to modern life so is social contact to human life.

Staff go off sick in the NHS all the time. Why do you keep saying the country will be overwhelmed when I've already told you that only around 60% of beds were occupied at the height of C19? Why didn't all the fuel refinery staff, bus drivers and shop staff die in their thousands in April? The shops were still full and no-one wore masks then (pointless though they are, at least in medical terms). Can't you realise that this isn't some terrible plague: the numbers just aren't there. If you think it is then why aren't the Chinese, Vietnamese and South Koreans burying their dead with bulldozers? This virus came about in a city bigger than London. If you seriously think that it was stopped from spreading amongst these vast metropolises by track-and-trace or closing the roads you're mad: there is no other way to put it. Mr. Park getting on the tube in Seoul one morning whilst infected would've been impossible to trace by lunchtime.

In short: you are going to die, as are we all, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You have a measure of years so make the most of them. C19 is very, very unlikely to kill you.

Lastly, I'm sorry to say, but all the damage: to businesses, health, our way of life: all of it has been a waste. We have shifted to an authoritarian state where the gov't and Police have exercised power in excess of the laws that they have been given and there are hundreds of thousands who love their submission because it is easier to obey in the hope of safety than to take their own lives into their hands and venture out.

I'm off to bed.

A snowHead

@boobleblooble, the only further point I’ll add is this, it’s not about the risk to YOU, it’s the risk you may unknowingly pose to everyone who happens to be around you.

That you can’t or won’t grasp that makes you are an ASS. Arrogant, Selfish, Stupid.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

It might not kill you but I can tell you the ongoing effects of it once you’ve had it can be pretty awful. And that’s coming from a very fit and active mid 40s guy with no health issues. So simply saying you won’t die is lovely but when 7 months later you are still broken with bizarre symptoms , it doesn’t really wash.

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@DanishRider, I believe the only virus to have been wiped out (by widespread vaccination and a pretty comprehensive global public healthcare campaign) is smallpox.

Seasonal 'flu f'rinstance reappears in different versions each year. The common cold is caused by a whole bundle of pathogens of which only ~30% have actually been identified. ...

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@haggishunter, do you drive and thereby put other road users at risk as well as yourself?
I’m sure you do but the benefit to both yourself individual,y and to society as a whole outweigh the deaths and injuries caused by driving.
People arguing against lockdown restrictions is not about going to the pub or wanting a holiday. It is about keeping millions of people (and that is just in the UK) in employment and earning a living. Judging by some of the economic predictions com8ng out in the last day or so, things are going to get quite messy by the end of November once furlough officially ends and businesses give up trying to stay open over the winter.

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@boobleblooble, your figures are incorrect. The death rate from Covid is currently running between 1 and 4%, not 0.1%. I'm far more inclined to trust the opinions of highly educated scientists than a keyboard warrior. As you were.

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You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You'll need to Register first of course.

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After all it is free

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Is the 2020/2021 a non starter?

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