ADs won't tut when you're stuck in a rut, we're all too busy pouring Amaretto in our porridge

[BogRollBOGOF]

Welcome into another thread of alternative reality as we try to nagivate through the Coronacoaster of life.

We may be up, down, spinning around (generally in confusion at the next random edict drawn up on the back of a fag packet) but never sucking the joy out of life.

@110APiccadilly

Do the Lib Dems have a stance on lockdowns? (Clutching at straws as I bet they support them...)

There was a tiny squeak, then they voted for it.

Farage is forming an anti lockdown party but I mentioned that before. I don’t care who it is though I would have hoped Dr David Bull could have been in charge.

That main vaccine thread is eye-opening, isn't it?? For once I have to say the priorities proposed by the government (or rather proposed by scientists, agreed by the government) makes perfect sense in terms of minimising risk to the most vulnerable and keeping the NHS going. With the rest of us queuing up behind in age order.

@MaudesMum

That main vaccine thread is eye-opening, isn't it?? For once I have to say the priorities proposed by the government (or rather proposed by scientists, agreed by the government) makes perfect sense in terms of minimising risk to the most vulnerable and keeping the NHS going. With the rest of us queuing up behind in age order.

I think there’s quite a few of us, who are normally in favour of vaccines, who won’t take it. So the queue hopefully won’t be as long as they think?

No doubt those threads will scream and call me anti vax.

My DCs are missing out on Scouting. Schools don't have much time or budget for creative, practical activities, and having children whose idea of hell is wholesome parent led activities, Scouting is invaluable for filling those skills that they won't do at home and school can't do.

Football mums at school are not happy at the loss of sports, rightly so.

It is validating finally seeing official confirmation of some of the costs of lockdown that we knew were going on in the background while the smunts were painting rainbows, baking banana bread and enjoying quality time with their darlings and ignoring that it wasn't an equitible experience across society.

Fortunately mine seem to be middling on the toll of formal education. That's with the benefit of time and resources. (And that is no judgement on families that are stretched thin)

I'm glad a practical vaccine is drawing close. Am I selfish to be glad we're nowhere near the priority lists? Thing is there are unknowns, and we would be bloody unlucky to have permanent complications from Covid, so I would need to be confident that the risks of the vaccine are lower than that. For 88 yo MiL, a vaccine would give her more confidence to see family and improve her quality of life. Worst case scenario, the amount of potential life years affected is far, far less. She's 8 years off the age where her mother died at 96. It's over 50 years until I get to my great-grandma's 91. It's not Covid (or the fear of) affecting my quality of life, it's the rest of the measures to manage it.

Just seen this on BBC news

More than 23,000 people have been tested for Covid-19 in Liverpool's mass trial with 154 testing positive.

bbc.in/2U9xOgL

Blimey

What a volatile market

www.standard.co.uk/business/zoom-shares-plunge-as-investors-bet-work-from-home-boom-could-be-over-after-pfizer-covid-vaccine-breakthrough-b60618.html

The the 5 year old daughter of a friend was in class one day and their was a new toy to play with. She sidled up to the teacher and said.

"Do you think it would be a good idea to say girls with straight black hair and red trousers should be allowed to play with it first?"

Do you think she'd make a good teacher? She'd certainly fit in with the MN lot

[quote LivinLaVidaLoki]Just seen this on BBC news

More than 23,000 people have been tested for Covid-19 in Liverpool's mass trial with 154 testing positive.

bbc.in/2U9xOgL[/quote]
That's a lower positively rate than I'd expect - isn't the current ONS estimate that about 1% overall are infected? Interesting though I'm not sure I can see why you'd get that result.

Yes I don't understand the numbers either. False positives? False negatives? That reflects asymptomatic people, presumably symptomatic people weren't tested as their be tested through the usual system and be quarantining?
According to the data, Liverpool is well past its peak and numbers are coming way down. Does it reflect that?

Might it depend on how representative of the whole 500,000 inhabitants of Liverpool the 23,000 tested so far are?

Covid does seem to be worse in poorer areas/social-economic groups - so it could depend on which part of the population has been tested so far. Though it might just be past the peak infection and it really is good news.

It does say they are moving to test all the secondary pupils - be interesting to see those results.

People puzzled by Liverpool figures - did you think they’d be lower?

My DCs are missing out on Scouting. Schools don't have much time or budget for creative, practical activities, and having children whose idea of hell is wholesome parent led activities, Scouting is invaluable for filling those skills that they won't do at home and school can't do.

I am worried that DS will be too old by time it comes back here - and I'm not sure if the guide group will make it back at all for DD2.

We've often found it useful that they just have a social thing outside of school if school starts to have problems for them.

We should find out today what's happening with DD1 Welsh GCSEs - bar that I think our kids are some of the lucky ones old enough not to need constant attention, they had access to tech and educated parents with just enough time to help them.

I'm very keen to travel again, and sit in crowded theatre auditoriums and bars and generally get out in the world. I'm nearly 60, am overweight and have a minor health condition, so I suspect that the risks to me of getting Covid are probably more than the risks of the vaccine. So, I'll be queuing up to get it when I can - but wouldn't judge anyone who made a different decision. It'll be interesting to see what happens when all the most vulnerable groups and NHS staff have been vaccinated though - what'll be the justification of keeping restrictions in place especially for under 20s who are unlikely to be vaccinated for a very very long time??

It's spread out to the suburbs around me.
My area is looking bad at present. We have one small primary school, and a lot are educated in surrounding suburbs, half the secondary go to the nearest secondary, and half bus out to other areas. So there is quite a lot of community exposure to other areas.

The inner city was one of the earliest national peaks, and cases rumbled on through the summer, and while they have gone up in the last month, not nearly as much as the suburbs, so I am suspecting growing community immunity in those areas, while the suburbs now play catch-up. At least we seem to be timing our peak for this mockdown. Hopefully the worst will pass and we'll stay at our new tier 2 which I think we had 5 days of before mockdown started?

Thing is, it's dopey area. There's 3 pubs scattered around. A cafe, bookies and couple of hairdressers shut. Most people are at the family stage of life or empty nest. I don't know how much practical difference mockdown will make to the way people live on top of the existing restrictions.

@AcornAutumn

When I think about it, Im torn. On the one hand I expected a low positivity rate as the people getting tested will be the wee and the curious and anyone with symptoms will generally be getting tested through the usual route.

But then I think about how prevalent we have been told asymptomatic covid is and I thought it may have been higher....

Sorry my thoughts going round in circles on this arent massively helpful are they?

@LadyOfTheImprovisedBath

My DCs are missing out on Scouting. Schools don't have much time or budget for creative, practical activities, and having children whose idea of hell is wholesome parent led activities, Scouting is invaluable for filling those skills that they won't do at home and school can't do.

I am worried that DS will be too old by time it comes back here - and I'm not sure if the guide group will make it back at all for DD2.

We've often found it useful that they just have a social thing outside of school if school starts to have problems for them.

We should find out today what's happening with DD1 Welsh GCSEs - bar that I think our kids are some of the lucky ones old enough not to need constant attention, they had access to tech and educated parents with just enough time to help them.

I think DS2 is done with Beavers. He'll be 8 at Easter, and with the attitude of our scout group (I'm a section assistant so in the leaders' group chats) I can't see them being back in person before his birthday. He was 6 last time he went in March. DS1 will be 10 next month so he has a little while to go in his Cubs.

It stings that my Brownies in the same neighbourhood are doing the best we can to have an inclusive, balanced programme when we can. (I was a leader for a few years before having children that turned out to be sons and kept it up because we are a fab unit)

If my children had XX chromosomes, they'd both be in my unit and get much more out of it.

Isn't it a good thing if there are less assymopmatic spreaders in society gojng out and causing mass death undetected.

I wonder if some of those symptomless positives would go on to be pre-symptomatic and show symptoms in a few days.

Assympomatic is less likely to have the vial load and symptoms to be super spreaders anyway. It's good if it turns out that daring to breathe without having a hanky strapped to your face is actually low risk anyway.

@AcornAutumn I was expecting the rate for Liverpool to be higher, given that there were a lot of asymptomatic cases picked up when they did the mass testing of students. I would have expected more like 1%. However, others have made good points about the type of people who might turn up to be treated without symptoms, so maybe 0.7% isn't surprising.

*tested without symptoms. Not treated!

Re the numbers

I’ve not been worried about covid past the sort of Feb half term stage. Then I was worried about mum, not me.

I think asymptomatic transmission is vanishingly rare and I think WHO said but retracted ot, like with masks.

I was just curious what other people thought.

I don’t think in terms of Covid, just lockdown, T&T, loss of rights etc. So I was curious to know what people were expecting to see from mass testing.

If my children had XX chromosomes, they'd both be in my unit and get much more out of it.

No need for female chromosomes in guiding! Just train them to utter the magic words "bit I am a girl" and they're in.

Morning all. Am cautiousness optimistic about the vaccine. Am imagining them concocting reasons to keep us all locked up even once the old, cev and NHS staff are vaccinated, but I can't tell anymore if that's a reasonable concern or tin hat thinking (or anxiety). Fingers crossed it gives gov a face saving way out of all this.

I'm not fussed for getting it - am in my thirties, no health conditions, a bit tubby but not too bad. Happy to sit at the back of the queue, but I'll have it if it means travelling abroad is back on, or going to a non-socially-distanced theatre or restaurant. Basically I want my life back.

They're doing Nottinghamshire next for the on demand testing apparently.

I can vouch for the toll lockdown took on our kids - we had real chatterboxes (DD1's friends and they ALL never ever shut up) losing speech fluency and starting to stumble over words... DD2 lost so much of her speech therapy progress (I'd put it at a good year+ worth of regression) and she forgot how to play with other kids - we went to a BBQ when we were allowed to mingle a bit in the summer and she was looking at me, looking at the other kids and then looking at me with a "what am I allowed to do here mum" look on her face - and DD2 has NEVER been a timid child - she is so empathic and the first to claim random "friends" at the park.

I will have the vaccine but have no problem with others making a different decision providing they don't expect me to wear a mask and stay home etc. I can't imagine that would be anyone on here.

@Jourdain11 Precisely, about Bliar's dodgy dossier. Bliar and the hysterical media are the reason I don't believe anything the government says, full stop. When he was newly elected, it was "Blair pledges this, Blair pledges that, Blair pledges the moon on a stick". And in his time, we were sold:

• Armageddon from the Millennium Bug.
• Your mobile phone is killing you.
• Weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Bliar and his lies are the reason I don't, and will probably never trust government ever again; and Saint Boris has basically carved my resolve in stone; the difference with him is that he's much less convincing than Blair.

And now, summer exams in Wales cancelled. Sigh. Will there now be "pressure on Boris to do the same"?

Meanwhile, with the vaccine, the three bellends (except Boris; it looks like he's been typecast as the pessimist) are queueing up to pledge the moon on a stick, eager to distract the public from all the shit they've thrown at us this year. The public won't forget this is a hurry: I expect there will be a public discontentment with government in general, which will last for YEARS.