ADs and The Brave New World

[BogRollBOGOF]

When you kind of hope that a new thread meanders on quietly because it means that life is being fairly stable...

What are ADs?

Here's the copy and paste job...

Definition of AD
^AD stands for anti dementor.
There are creatures in Harry Potter called dementors, who suck all hope and happiness from you and eventually take your soul. Way back at the start of the pandemic thread after thread was posted on by posters like this and anyone who'd dare question anything or disagree with anything (like putting cheese in your coffee) was bullied off these threads. And so any actual discussion disappeared and it became an echo chamber of misery.^

We are the antidote to that. We follow the rules, but not the "roolz" and we question and discuss with respect to each other. It's all very civil.

It really is the boiling frog analogy isn't it. If I just give a little bit more, I will get my freedom back.
Also a lot of people are so used to their own limited bubbles of experience. Remember how many people, previously judgemental of "benefit scroungers" were shocked with how little Universal Credit paid when the pandemic forced them to have to make a claim. Thing's always happened to other people. There is a lack of being able to see the big picture and how certain actions can lead to worst actions.

@Worldgonecrazy

Perhaps people think if they are ‘good’ then bad things won’t happen to them? A bit like why we like to believe rape myths? If we are not ‘that woman’ we won’t be attacked.

There are actually people still saying ‘if we all would just [insert random sign of compliance] then we would have our normal lives back’ and they actually believe what they are saying. Absolutely crazy!

I think there's a huge amount of that although has faded off since the summer as people have confidence in the vaccine WRT more serious risks and are accepting that like other illnesses, it will catch up at some point.

It just seemed bonkers to be in June 2020 Ireland this August with so much so heavily restricted and tiers of who you could allow in your house according to vaccination. They'd caught up on the vavcination programme by then and just seemed to be waiting endlessly for the winter illness season before opening up

My inner optomist seems to have licked many of its wounds from the past 12-3 months when it did take a battering. For England (and condolences to Wales/ Scotland/ NI) I don't think there is the political appetite to copy Europe for the sake of it. We've managed an exit wave without calamity, and are undulating around in a cope-able way. There won't be the appetite to comply like the first 18m either. Most have had enough and the Ds look increasingly deranged.

If you have Netflix my friend said you must watch this film it's the funniest take on the covid lockdown . I think it's subtitled. She was at one stage a dementor but now sees how much she was misled

What I would love to see is some charts showing causes of death and numbers that died over the last two years. It would be really interesting to see if the numbers for eg heart disease or cancer have decreased, increased or stayed the same. DP knows of someone who had terminal cancer but died of covid iyswim.

Would people change their behaviour / lifestyle if they could see how many people died of diabetes (type 2), heart attacks etc?

The data is probably available (and linked to in the Europe thread) but I don't have the time to do the analysis.

Would people change their behaviour / lifestyle if they could see how many people died of diabetes (type 2), heart attacks etc?

Maybe we should have a daily death toll published for those too. Would be interesting to see.

@justasking111

If you have Netflix my friend said you must watch this film it's the funniest take on the covid lockdown . I think it's subtitled. She was at one stage a dementor but now sees how much she was misled

Just started it. Already love the opening scene... clapping for HCPs so they'll treat you better if you are ill!

Has anyone noticed how much odder some people have got? I get the train with my children on a Friday after school and it’s struck me how many people are being obviously quite odd. There was one lady (ten to 15 years older than me - so older but not old) who had a look of absolute horror on her face and just walked through whole groups of people (including me and my children) with her hands in front.

Then there are the people who appear to sit in mute dismay while the train fills up. I mean, I don’t love it when the train is really full but looking disapprovingly at all the other, beastly people who’ve chosen to travel at the same time won’t make the train less busy.

I suspect that they were always odd but now it’s more acceptable to show it.

Some people obviously now struggle more with being in crowded places, but I also think there's more general oddness. I know a few people (at least one already veered towards eccentric below lockdowns but is much more so now) whose social skills have obviously been affected by lockdowns.

I had my Pfizer booster yesterday, I'd had the first 2 as Astra Zeneca and was knocked out a bit after the first one. The only thing with the Pfizer so far is my arm hurts, so far so good.

On an entirely different subject, happy hatching day to Indie, 1 year old today!

Happy hatching day at the lovely tortoise! It’s so funny, she could have two birthdays - the day her egg was laid and the day she hatched. I’d never thought of that.

Oh, she's lovely. Happy Hatching Day to her!

@CruCru

Happy hatching day at the lovely tortoise! It’s so funny, she could have two birthdays - the day her egg was laid and the day she hatched. I’d never thought of that.

Never thought of that either! She was in a clutch of eggs that hatched between 19th to the 23rd so I had to pick a date, decided to use the same day that I'd been born, though a different month. When I got her she weighed 30 grams, she's 178 now I think. I'll find a picture of her from when she arrived, hang on.

She fitted into her food bowl when we had her, with plenty of room. She wouldn't now!

@Curlygirl06

On an entirely different subject, happy hatching day to Indie, 1 year old today!

She's grown! Happy hatching day!

I thought I might struggle with adjusting back to busyness more particularly as I'm not great with background noise, but I think I've phased back fairly normally. DS1 too.

Last winter, it was really pissing me off irrationally at how busy my normally quiet parks/ countryside was. Not in a how-dare-other-people-be-out way, more my usual pedestrian rage at people blithering around obliviously while I want to get a move on. My solution was to go walking in town instead. Far quieter

I'm also vaguely amused by this year's delightful piles of crisp autumn leaves a year after regularly raging at smunts who were waxing lyrical about such seasonal joys when the reality was that they were a sopping mess barely distinguishable from swamps of mud. Oh well. More enjoyable this year without battling displaced hoardes blithering obliviously and now the natural world is a choice and not the only option.

Happy Hatching Day to Indie! She is gorgeous.

Someone asked elsewhere was it common to put up Xmas decorations in November. Well I recall last year on here we were all dreading the lockdown being threatened were so low in spirit many folks did think it would lift the gloom to put up the decs and outside lights up early

I usually just lurk but we were also in Irel in August (I'm Irish) and it was just so incredibly depressing. My home city is quite young and artsy and full of life, but it was just so....flat? The Irish Government response is mindboggling though - endless restrictions are apparently 100% sustainable and affordable, but offering free lateral flow tests (they're not a thing in Ireland at all) or increasing our abysmal ICU capacity is "too expensive". The Gov's latest galaxy brain idea is to close nightclubs at midnight as Covid only comes out to play on the stroke of twelve.

That turned into a bit of a rant

She's grown upwards as well as outwards. Star tortoises are flat and rounded when they're babies, they start to develop their "stars" from about 4 months I think it is. She's lumping up nicely, bless her. I really love her.

I woke up before Piccalilli today, so have had half an hour to myself first thing in the morning to read and drink coffee, for the first time in 364 days. Happy nearly her birthday to me, right?!

@SomewhereEast

I usually just lurk but we were also in Irel in August (I'm Irish) and it was just so incredibly depressing. My home city is quite young and artsy and full of life, but it was just so....flat? The Irish Government response is mindboggling though - endless restrictions are apparently 100% sustainable and affordable, but offering free lateral flow tests (they're not a thing in Ireland at all) or increasing our abysmal ICU capacity is "too expensive". The Gov's latest galaxy brain idea is to close nightclubs at midnight as Covid only comes out to play on the stroke of twelve.

That turned into a bit of a rant

It was interesting seeing a "what should I do?" chat between relatives in Ireland/ England featuring a Covid exposure (that offficially isn't due to occupation) and visiting a very vulnerable relative. The UK option of check with LFTs just wasn't an option and the Irish testing seemed much more guarded.

I know the UK looks consistently bad compared to others, and constant testing is very debatable, but I find with a younger social circle of u45s with primary children, there is a huge proportion of "cases" that are barely colds, and since the summer it has largely been kept as a more minor illness amongst younger people and away from older people where the healthcare issues arise.

I know more about Ireland than other European countries, but the majority of the EU's approaches boggle my mind. They seemed to completely squander the summer and aim to manually quench the virus when it was lowest, and then open up just in time for the respiritory illness season to get into its stride. It's like the EU is stuck in 2020 right now and feels a year behind the UK. It bothers me that this is dragging the whole thing out into another year as I'd quite like to get out of Britain at some point (not counting this summer's trip to Ireland!) and any of the masks/ testing malarkey is utterly off-putting.

On our visit, DH had a heated discussion with his sibling about the vaccines as sibling had been sold a completely different line about the authorisation/ procurement of the vaccines and thought the UK had been underhand in their deals getting AZ. The EU was still quibbling and hadn't authorised anything at that point. Sibling also thought Pfizer was best and nothing else good enough The UK did do well at authorising, procuring and distributing the vaccines in a good population-level order of need and the second half of 2021 has been much more stable for it.

My brain is not processing Christmas yet. It's been a lovely long autumn (gosh we could have done with that a year ago!) so I'm not feeling wintery, and the school calendar is looking less definite than usual. Annoyingly I can't go to DH's big Christmas do because of babysitting issues. So there's not quite the usual build-up yet and I'm just not ready to get in gear. The neighbourhood lights are creeping up in a low-key way, although next Sunday is advent anyway.

I've been here for many years but the Christmas season doesn't really start for me until after the fourth Thursday in November. It's a sort of ingrained mental habit 🦃

@ISaySteadyOn

I've been here for many years but the Christmas season doesn't really start for me until after the fourth Thursday in November. It's a sort of ingrained mental habit 🦃

Our xmas doesn't start officially until after DH's birthday on 19th December.

Interesting points Bogoff .

On the Europe kicking off some of the non Brits are amazed about LFTs being free. I'm not really in favour of mass asymptomatic testing but having a quick free (for individuals) way to check whether its just a cold does make sense. I do despair when I see unopened boxes littering the routes from our local secondary school.

I agree, Taswama. It's great to have a quick, simple and free way to broadly check if one is probably OK to go to various events/visits etc.

I do find it sad to see on the C boards that these tests have just added another reason for anxiety to some people. It seems that some can't just look at it go 'oops, looks as if I might be positive, I'd better stay in and double check' or 'fine, probably OK to got to [whatever], but as the tests aren't perfect I'll take care around the possibly vulnerable' or even 'that's not clear, I'd better check again in a few hours and be cautious if I need to go out in the meantime'.

There is thread after thread with photographs of their tests, although a photograph is always going to be even less clear than the real thing. People aren't just looking at them, but are shining lights on them and studying them. And, even when it looks completely clear (and I often Mumsnet on my 40" TV), there's always someone who says 'I can see a line'. And the posters, far from being reassured, seem to get quite distressed by their inability to decide what the test means.