ADs Not Flouting, Not Flaunting not even Brazenly Defying.

[RealityExistsInTheHumanMind]

Just trying to live a meaningful life in an increasingly bizarre world in which nothing makes sense any more.

Link to previous thread

I follow the No 7 fb page and their Christmas gifts have started to appear in my feed. Mistletoe Ready is the strapline for a No7 lipstick gift set. People are wearing masks. And there will be no parties this year let alone those which feature mistletoe. (though i remember reading that packaging is designed up to 18 months in advaance) How many more Boots stores will close if they cant shift these.

I remember going into my local Boots two years ago and i heard two ppl in suits talking to the staff "how are we going to increase the footfall this year" And thats pre Covid.

When I was young - (going back, way way back.)

Off licenses closed at 10 and pubs closed at 10.30.

Back then they knew what happened- would happen.

I think, crosses fingers x 10, we are on the cusp of change. Students don't like being locked up, Mama bears don't like their offspring being locked up, people are 'revolting'. Along with all this politicians are realising that government is bypassing them and they want a say.

I am hopeful (60 to 80%) that the tide is on the turn.

@Justgivemewine

Although I nearly had a panic attack from not being able to breathe properly through the fecking face rag on my face in the shop with only me and the staff in. Twice now that’s happened. Never had panic attacks before. I don’t give a fuck about people bleating on about how oxygen levels are fine with face masks on. Bollocks. I know when I can’t fucking breathe properly!

This is what happens to me. I call it a panic attack, but it's more of a physical tripping than mental. More than a few stale breaths and I breathe harder which makes it worse and then it's gone haywire and I'm hyperventilating. There is an emotional reponse in there because I obviously don't want it to happen, but it's not a mental trigger that starts it.

I'm notorious for yawning in certain places. There was a particularly stuffy classroom at school, and the room I had a yoga class in with very restricted windows, and I'd start yawning after 10 minutes and it wouldn't stop after that.

I've been to the GP several times since being a teenager querying asthma, but I just get a no. Strong family history including DS2. Breathing was a big issue in learning to swim (at 16) and learning to run (at 32, really couldn't run childhood) it was doing a hypnobirthing relaxing breathing technique that I finally managed in ordee to breathe and run!

My friend's teenager has had physio to manage her breathing technique as shevwasn't using her ribs/ lungs properly/ deeply enough!

@Willow2017 Hancock is supremely dishonest. He specifically said that the first generation of Covid vaccines would not be licensed for children. At the time, I thought this was an exercise in caution after the last example of a rushed pandemic vaccine in 2009 caused dozens of cases of narcolepsy in child recipients. He is looking more and more sinister, I'm afraid.

I think Hancock is a bad man. Johnson is a well meaning incompetent fool but Hancock is relishing his tyranny. I think he loves the fact that people are both obeying and miserable.

And I don't believe the tide will really turn until everyone has had enough of masks. They are a constant visual reminder that we are supposed to look on ourselves and each other not as people but as plague bearers. Did anyone see that picture of a young woman being forcibly masked by police in Australia? How long before that happens here?

@Orangeblossom7777

"Politicians, bawled Sir Desmond, should stop being “in thrall to science”. As for Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, their televised statement the previous week “should have been a sacking offence”. In Sir Desmond’s eyes, it had been nothing but scaremongering.

“What was their purpose in presenting that graph [projecting 50,000 cases a day by mid October]?” he jeered. “It was the purpose of the fat boy in Pickwick Papers: ‘I wants to make yer flesh creep!’ It was Project Fear! It was an attempt to terrify the British people! As if they haven’t been terrified enough!”

MPs stared, agog. Frankly, some of them looked pretty terrified themselves.

On and on Sir Desmond raged. “Interfered in our private lives… Eye-watering costs… Crushing of enterprises… Destruction of livelihoods… And all as a consequence of an overreaction!”

At last the harangue reached its end. “There may be a virus one day that threatens our very way of life,” snapped Sir Desmond. “But this isn’t it! Even if we’re behaving as if it were!”

I didn't see this but I'm going to have to find it now...

You have to ask yourself a simple question if you are outraged at Covid restrictions (as many on here seem to be).

Are you questioning the basic principle of a government becoming more authoritarian based on a national emergency or are you just questioning the severity of this particular emergency?

If the former, I assume you think that a lockdown and wearing of masks (with enforcement) would be wrong even in response to a genuine existential threat?

If the latter, you are questioning the scientific judgment of the vast majority of our epidemiologists and statisticians.

You may well prove to be right but I think that erring on the side of caution until we know that is sensible.

There is a strange logic here that a populist conservative government wants to restrict freedom and imprison its citizens. Boris is the antithesis of this (look at his initial response). He is a party loving bon viveur.

The current thinking is that within 6 months we can start vaccinating. As soon as we start, we can ease restrictions. Hopefully by spring next year, we can start opening up and by summer next year, things can be pretty much back to normal.

If the vaccine does not work or cases (and hospital admissions) don’t rise over winter, we can adjust. However, planning is made around a central scenario.

The idea that anyone enjoys this is ridiculous.

I think Hancock is a bad man. Johnson is a well meaning incompetent fool but Hancock is relishing his tyranny. I think he loves the fact that people are both obeying and miserable.

I'm not sure Johnson is well-meaning towards anyone other than B.Johnson. I don't think he's actively trying to do harm either though. If anything, he's amoral rather than immoral. Hancock though... "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

@larrygrylls That’s a good point. I think I am questioning the severity of this particular emergency. Why? Because it’s so hard to tell when we are faced with a real emergency, because previous governments and the media are constantly doom-mongering about something or other. We had the millennium bug, your mobile phone is killing you, there are weapons of mass destruction. Because of all the other times government and the media have cried wolf, they lose credibility. Even now, they talk of cases sky-rocketing. How do we know they’re not making it up? All those graphs look scary, but they’re easily manipulated. That one showing “50,000 cases by mid October”; I wonder what the actual graph will look like? The constant sly tricks of “positive tests = cases = deaths”. We are being hoodwinked at every turn; for all we know, Matt Wanksock is bribing the “independent” scientists to recite his script. This is why we are questioning the severity.

And what I want to know is: when the pandemic is over, will that Orwellian app disappear? Will it? Will it?? Even if the masks are eventually consigned to the landfill of history, I won’t be at all surprised if that app stays, “just in case”.

@ISaySteadyOn

I think Hancock is a bad man. Johnson is a well meaning incompetent fool but Hancock is relishing his tyranny. I think he loves the fact that people are both obeying and miserable.

And I don't believe the tide will really turn until everyone has had enough of masks. They are a constant visual reminder that we are supposed to look on ourselves and each other not as people but as plague bearers. Did anyone see that picture of a young woman being forcibly masked by police in Australia? How long before that happens here?

The masks are totally grinding because there is zero fucking escape from the bastards.

At least in April I could go for a run in the arse end of nowhere, see pretty much no one for the majority of it and it was an escape into normality. Now the fucking facerags are stealing that from me as a constant reminder that the world is screwed up for the foreseeable future, and the fear of more shit ahead, because anywhere you go you risk encountering an idiot who is plainly terrified of breathing thin air as their usage creeps and creeps. I encountered a masked bush-diver the other day. Did he think that the toxic miasma was oozing out of the Morrisons a mile away (nb, Morrisons was not open yet as it was too early on a Sunday)

Anything where there is advertising. Bam. Facerags. Constant images of the fuckers everywhere. TV. Internet. Plus just general news bulletins on the radio as an hourly reminder.

Then just the generalised stuff like reading a book such as Harry Potter and being reminded of an inept government that doesn't stop and think about what it is doing. Or anything escapism that rubs on your face all the things you can't do.
Homing in on song lyrics.

For most life-shit there is escape. Even in the depths of grief there are patches of light like an evening out and a laugh with friends and there is the mental escape for a while. But this shit show can bitchslap you any place any time and permeates everything.

As a few of you know my son is at uni in America although he's currently still at home with lectures online. His coach has just posted some pics of their training session. All the athletes are doing a sprints training session wearing a mask. Wtaf? Glad he's here for the moment.

The masks will still be in landfill for 500 years. We don't get rid of them that easily!

At least we'll be able to tell that the plastic litter tangled on the hedgerow is of 2020 vintage

@Ibake

As a few of you know my son is at uni in America although he's currently still at home with lectures online. His coach has just posted some pics of their training session. All the athletes are doing a sprints training session wearing a mask. Wtaf? Glad he's here for the moment.

Are they trying to make them pass out? I know people keep wittering on about them not affecting oxygen, but if you're raising your heart rate, you really don't want to be trapping your old carbon dioxide by your face for constant recycling.

Looks like I'm in for an angry day.
Beats numb.
I've never been an angry person. Temporalily cross as needed, but not simmering anger.

Saw some good news from the WHO last night, saying that asymptomatic transmission is very rare, I think the phrase was.

@larrygrylls I'm questioning the Government's encroachment into our private lives, our homes, without any parliamentary scrutiny. A few months ago a friend asked me if I'd come and stay for the weekend, and my first reaction was "is this allowed?" That's the sort of response you'd expect when you live in a totalitarian state. They're doing it for "our own good", and I'm sure they generally believe it, but its a really slippery slope that we're going down.

So.. school off today, should I try to persuade DS into wholesome activity or just accept defeat gracefully and remain in bed reading my book...?

Might do C25K later to assuage any guilt on the laziness front.

I don’t think it’s a very nice day and still have the never ending period.

Have you ever tried a mooncup @WouldBeGood? Have to say that I've found mine great as I suffer with heavy periods. I do have a couple of days each month where I have to think carefully about where I'm going. The one downside is you need access to a washbasin in the cubicle which often means using the diables loo and I feel guilty about that. But I am much more aware of what's going on with my body and don't get caught out in the same way that I did with tampons.

I found it really depressing to see face masks littering a remote area of the North Yorkshire moors. Presumably carried there by corvids or the wind as I can't imagine anyone thought sheep or grouse might be carriers.

Yes, I’m a fully signed up menstrual cupper, though have one with more capacity. I feel no guilt about using a disabled loo as the carnage that can ensue makes me feel justified, and also spares other people the battlefield like scenes.

@Ibake presumably you are suggesting @larrygrylls is a troll ..... He/she isn't being offensive, just a legitimate question/statement.

@countrygirl99

I found it really depressing to see face masks littering a remote area of the North Yorkshire moors. Presumably carried there by corvids or the wind as I can't imagine anyone thought sheep or grouse might be carriers.

At an outstanding natural beauty spot along the coast I saw people walking outside with masks on. Which makes me fully think that the ones lying on the ground were simply dropped rather than blown there

[quote MaudesMum]@larrygrylls I'm questioning the Government's encroachment into our private lives, our homes, without any parliamentary scrutiny. A few months ago a friend asked me if I'd come and stay for the weekend, and my first reaction was "is this allowed?" That's the sort of response you'd expect when you live in a totalitarian state. They're doing it for "our own good", and I'm sure they generally believe it, but its a really slippery slope that we're going down.[/quote]
This is roughly where I am, plus a cold hearted instinct that the vast majority of the deaths we are "preventing" are actually a only a very short term delay, given the average age and number of comorbidities of a Covid death.

I also think a lot of the massive fear reaction to this virus is born out of a society that no longer has an acceptance and familiarity with death. We have contracted death out - it happens behind closed doors, in hospitals, hospices and care homes. We don't see it. I'm nearly 40 and I've never seen a dead body, never sat by a death bed. Yet I've lost all four grandparents while in adulthood. A couple of generations ago that wouldn't be the case. There seems to be a very strong desire to just stop people dying - the whole "if it saves just one life it's worth it" narrative. But people die all the time. We don't stop the world for anything else. We (as a nation) have consistently voted for a government that cuts public services and NHS funding that would save lives, and yet now no sacrifice is too great. That is illogical to me, and therefore I treat it with a great amount of skepticism.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the fact the U.K. is fifth in death tolls. Out government have been so busy scrabbling to count anyone who tested positive as a death to keep us scared, the figures now look ridiculous. I know their handling has been inept but not that inept!