ADs are elite athletes and can run very fast

[BogRollBOGOF]

Another thread in the saga filled up (so no forwards link)

I think maybe we're endurance athletes, or maybe multievent like a decathlon

@WouldBeGood

Our governments don’t give a shit about our well-being.

They don’t care if we die. What they don’t want is to be seen to preside over the total collapse of health services, as it’s bad for votes.

How very true. They also don’t care if the plebs’ children get an education.

@Aztectrousers my view is that the lockdowns don’t make a difference and this is just the natural and inevitable course of the virus, combined with the usual winter deaths and hospitalisation of the elderly.

It’s also been very cold, and Covid is very much a hospitality acquired infection now.

NOT hospitality!!! Hospital

@Aztectrousers

I heard on the radio yesterday about the number of deaths 1300 and was really shocked about this, also the number of daily cases. This thing is really getting out of control now and I just don’t know what we can do about it. Is locking down going to make any difference or is this just the fallout from Christmas Day mingling? Are any of you going to get the vaccine. It’s being offered at my work now and I was going to hang on a while.

I think it's because we can't lockdown like March. People need to work so they have made a decision to decimate a small number of businesses and let the others operate. Coupled with a strain that spreads better, being winter when more people are inside which is much better for viruses then I don't think the increase is much of a surprise.

As for the vaccine I am not even on the list to get it (under 50). But if it was offered to me then I would take it as I can imagine it would be hard to get back on the list if you refuse due to the millions of other people. I also want to travel again and I can imagine it might end up as a requirement for many countries.

I suspect that by the time the vaccine filters down to me (not currently on any priority lists), I'll feel OK about having it. I wasn't sharpening my elbows to push anyone out of the way for it.

My lifestyle is low risk so I need to be confident that the risk of the vaccine is lower than the illness to make it worthwhile. Things look promising at present though. I've always accepted things like flu vaccines when members of the household have been eligible.

I want to apologise about the video upthread. I could not sleep and felt rotten and that summed up how I felt in tears at 2 in the morning.

I am still very sad. And I am afraid that, despite your attempt to reassure @Furries, I don't trust the government or the Dfe anymore whatever their intentions, they have shown me precisely what they think I am worth. I just need to accept it, expect nothing, and be grateful for crumbs

And I too am low priority for the vaccine.

@ISaySteadyOn

I want to apologise about the video upthread. I could not sleep and felt rotten and that summed up how I felt in tears at 2 in the morning.

I am still very sad. And I am afraid that, despite your attempt to reassure @Furries, I don't trust the government or the Dfe anymore whatever their intentions, they have shown me precisely what they think I am worth. I just need to accept it, expect nothing, and be grateful for crumbs

Don't apologise - this is a space to vent and I'm quite uncomfortable at people deciding to come in and control what is permissible to say.

For perspective, english hospital deaths by day are here. There is a lot of backdating in the latest figures for both tests and deaths because of the Christmas holidays. It's high, but nowhere near what is being reported.

@Aztectrousers

I heard on the radio yesterday about the number of deaths 1300 and was really shocked about this, also the number of daily cases. This thing is really getting out of control now and I just don’t know what we can do about it. Is locking down going to make any difference or is this just the fallout from Christmas Day mingling? Are any of you going to get the vaccine. It’s being offered at my work now and I was going to hang on a while.

Locking up healthy people is not an infection control measure.

Infection control should be concentrated in hospitals - who STILL have patients in open bays which could have been sorted ages ago - and we need proper quarantine facilities.

What we have been asked to do is pointless and no more should be asked, it doesnt work, it just wrecks lives.

Something that might help those home learning a little bit that we've discovered helped dyspraxic on another planet DD2...

I made a board (I'd actually ordered a proper one which has just come this morning) with a page divided into 3 - to do, doing, done - then went through her day's tasks with her and wrote each one on a post it note and put them in the to-do column. We've been teaching her to move them into the "doing" and then "done" column - and it seems to be working - she's actually got a little bit more independence and a feeling of control over what she's doing and where she is in her day.

I bought a proper one from ourboards but it's only just come - but the low tech sheet of paper and post it notes system was working well too.

I work in a hospital so the are offering the vaccine to all staff but I haven’t turned it down, you have to apply for it which I shall probably do when the initial stampede has died down.
I’m not sure about needing it for travel abroad though. How would that work because you can still get covid and presumably still spread? I think it’s more likely that you’ll need a negative test result before travelling to start with. I suppose having the vaccine could impact travel insurance though.

While awake in the night, I've been working my way through various bits of classic children's literature. I've just got to Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday. That's the one where the potentially mumps infected children are allowed to continue to roam most of the Lake District, as long as they don't go back to boarding school.

Just saying...

Two people I know are having the vaccine this week, one over 80 and another works in care.

Thought this looked quite factual and useful about numbers with covid and age ranges, vast majority of admissions in the over 85s.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55586994

What we have been asked to do is pointless and no more should be asked, it doesnt work, it just wrecks lives.

I'm in the give it two to three weeks camp. We've gone from tier 3 to lockdown to tier 4, then this, so been under restrictions for a long time and our numbers wobbled down then straight back up again.
It doesn't seem to be working, I agree. I also note that our numbers were coming down before the November lockdown was introduced then went straight back up to previous pre-lockdown levels and I'm puzzled about what could account for that.

I want to know was anything done over summer to try to prepare the NHS better for what was to come. I realise you can't just pluck qualified doctors and nurses from thin air and that reported difficulties with oxygen are due to flow in systems installed and not actually oxygen shortages. But surely there must have been some sort of contingency planning to try to mitigate for some of the known difficulties, rather than just keeping fingers crossed and planning to lock us all down yet again when the worst inevitably happened.

I feel shocked too @Aztectrousers, and worried about hospitals not coping. I'm also worried when I read that the govt is pushing the "act like you've got the virus & stay at home" message. I really worry that the only thing we have outside of the home- buying food & going for a walk- might also be taken away. Thinking about the negative impacts of lockdown on society is overwhelming. It all feels very sad.

Need to put my phone in a drawer today, I think.

PS I've had the vaccine, as have many colleagues. No ill-effects to report so far.

We might think 30s parenting was worse than ours, but at least they weren't expected to lock their children up if they'd been in contact with an ill person. (The boarding school thing is a bit different - you can see why a school wouldn't want to risk having to look after a load of ill pupils. I don't think normal schools required health certificates?)

@Aztectrousers

I work in a hospital so the are offering the vaccine to all staff but I haven’t turned it down, you have to apply for it which I shall probably do when the initial stampede has died down. I’m not sure about needing it for travel abroad though. How would that work because you can still get covid and presumably still spread? I think it’s more likely that you’ll need a negative test result before travelling to start with. I suppose having the vaccine could impact travel insurance though.

I was wondering if it will become an either or for travelling e.g. vaccine or test/isolate thing. Some countries have requirements for mandatory vaccines like yellow fever. Given some countries response to travel and covid it wouldn't surprise me.

I think lockdown works for about a month, and if there's concrete helpful actions you can take in that month, I can see the point. After that, fatigue sets in and compliance starts to drop.

(I'm not commenting here on the separate issue of whether it's proportionate even for a month.)

I agree @AcornAutumn

Tmp "I'm in the give it two to three weeks camp. We've gone from tier 3 to lockdown to tier 4, then this, so been under restrictions for a long time and our numbers wobbled down then straight back up again.
It doesn't seem to be working, I agree. I also note that our numbers were coming down before the November lockdown was introduced then went straight back up to previous pre-lockdown levels and I'm puzzled about what could account for that."

London has been in Tier 4 for 3 weeks.

Re November, why are you puzzled that a season virus is behaving seasonally?

I'm going to have to come off here again for a bit as i still can't fathom how people think lockdown is infection control!

@110APiccadilly

While awake in the night, I've been working my way through various bits of classic children's literature. I've just got to Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday. That's the one where the potentially mumps infected children are allowed to continue to roam most of the Lake District, as long as they don't go back to boarding school.

Just saying...

I love that one. Especially Peggy trying so hard to be Nancy .

I aspire to Mrs Walker, but am probably Mrs. Blackett.

And @Tmpnamechange it appears no contingency planning or shoring up the NHS has been done. I really don’t get it.

Re November, why are you puzzled that a season virus is behaving seasonally?

I'm not! It I was posting with my proper username you would see me lamenting over being locked up in spring and summer, with kids off school and not taking advantage of seasonality.

I am curious that for a seasonal virus it was going down, or plateauing in November anyway before lockdown.
The lockdown seems to have encouraged a very fast bounce back up once it was released.

Cynical me again...

I think in the rarified world of politics lockdowns were, initially, perceived as being usefully cheaper, quicker and more decisive than investing in hospital capacity, staffing, structure and equipment. (Of course none of these are true. But perception counts for a lot in politics and they were dealing with a rapidly unfolding situation from a nation not famed for its transparency and reliable data.)

The government has taken a gamble — and it really has been an ‘all life savings on red’ thing — that covid would be a one-off. Therefore spending billions to rapidly and majorly reconfigure hospitals around an illness that might naturally peter out in two years — like most pandemics do, apart from HIV — might have been viewed at the time as a waste of money. (Again, probably wrong. But — elected officials fail to think beyond election cycle shocker.)

Furthermore — and this is where the cynic in me truly comes out — there was an opportunity to try to rally the country behind the NHS, at a time when the acute effects of Brexit plus decades of government underfunding had the service properly on the ropes. Get people clapping and shitting rainbows and a lot of them start to forget about £350 million on the side of a bus. Get people focused on the people who work for the NHS and they start to forget about the fuck-ups who fund it.

There’s an axiom in politics: we must do something, this is something, so we must do this. Lockdowns happened to be the thing that everyone was talking about because China had done them, so that’s what everyone else did too.

It was a lot of desperation, combined with a bit of cynicism. I don’t believe anyone in politics believed it would actually ‘work’ (whatever that means, beyond a claimed intent of reducing strain on health services it was always kept pretty vague).