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.

Completely agree picadilly.
This is what has I have envisaged happening from the start. A stealth tax on those opting not to be vaccinated that hits less well off people disproportionately. .

Start stockpiling LFTs!

I see T cell immunity is finally getting focus within the media.

That can only be a good thing!

Just over 21% of the population have tested positive for covid-19. I wonder what proportion of the remains 79% have some level of T cell immunity from prior coronavirus infection?

I know one of the Ds was ranting early on that this was a novel virus and therefore no one would have any level of immunity…..

And if 20% have tested positive (PCR presumably) how many more have had it?

I'm sure there is a not that smalll proportion of the population who can't afford to isolate so are not testing at all.

Have you got a link @Worldgonecrazy ?

Re T cells

Sky News via Apple News apple.news/AxYnGcFzISiWbgdYPnluM6w

Figures in Wales on average 42% testing positive I can't get my head around these figures

Schools only went back today so it's not school kids

Stopping Parkrun has worked well for us then clearly. Or maybe it's all caused by those naughty Chester football fans?

@110APiccadilly

Stopping Parkrun has worked well for us then clearly. Or maybe it's all caused by those naughty Chester football fans?

The masks a roaring success (not) also 🙄

Argh!! It is so frustrating reading Twitter. Lots of ‘I followed the rules because I’m not a selfish star and wanted to protect xxxxx’.

Is this a form of cognitive self protection.

It’s harsh but the actual truth is ‘I followed a rule that didn’t make sense and the people who made the rule knew it didn’t make sense, which is why the people who made the rule didn’t follow or.’

Downing Street held parties because they knew there was little risk.

I am desperately sorry for everyone who has been damaged by following the rules, and many of them will never get that time back, but I do think that the population as a whole should bear some collective responsibility about behaviours, particularly the crazy dementors!

I think the rules were to protect those that were unable to rationalize and work out risk factors unfortunately you couldn't just say some folk are too stupid. Also city life, where population density is so high was and is riskier than more rural communities.

Where people lived cheek by jowel or mixed socially come what may or worked in a high risk environment sharing air viruses of all kinds have always thrived.

There now seem to be plenty of people who are completely unable to assess risk unless an official body does it for them. IMO, the government should have encouraged much more use of the risk calculator which was available online. That would have given people a realistic estimate of their risk, and then they could have worked out how careful they wanted to be. (I'd have also introduced government support for anyone with a risk over a certain level who wanted it.)

If you wanted, you could even, once the risk was calculated, compare it to other, everyday risks for context - e.g., risk of dying in 10 miles of driving. I used the risk calculator and worked out my risk of dying of Covid was of a similar order of magnitude to my risk of dying in childbirth. That certainly helped me to put it in context, but I had to do the calculations myself.

@justasking111 I think there is truth in what you say.

Having pondered further and thinking out loud ….

May 20 was when anyone watching would have noticed that the ONS figures were not inline with the response. Probably why government started bending and breaking rules themselves because they knew the rules didn’t make sense!

At that point in time it would have been nice to follow what has become known as the Swedish model, but the U.K. couldn’t, for a couple of primary reasons.

Our overall population has poorer health and greater poverty. We also have a higher ethnic population, and our ethnic population is also from those ethnicities more at risk from covid complications.

Our sainted NHS, which is unable to cope under normal conditions and is still unable to cope with even a small increase in patients. In addition the early lockdown reduced pressures on much of the NHS massively. Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to attend A&E on a Saturday night will know that pre covid the department would be full of drunks, homeless and mentally ill people. Waits of several hours were not uncommon. Contrast that to early summer 2020 when my own experience of A&E was in and out and fixed within an hour. Unheard of pre covid! Plus the absolute adoration in the media and populace for the angles - cue the sudden wearing of scrubs and flashing of NHS passes! I don’t know how much of the NHS psychosis since then has been deliberate as reduction in patients and no annoying relatives asking questions, or whether there is just massive cognitive dissonance occurring, but there has been a concerted effort to keep the narrative going.

I also think that there actually are those, such as Cummings previously, who are in positions of power, and who have a fascination for human behaviour and are using this as an opportunity to learn more.

With hindsight we should have been working on improving overall population health for decades, we should have been ensuring the NHS was fit for purpose, and we should have come up with methods of protecting the truly vulnerable, instead of terrifying the population into further ill health and poverty.

I am so glad that I had no part of it and bent the rules, and used the loopholes. It saddens me when I read about cev parents spending their last year alone, and so glad my cev mum was having none of that shit and grabbed what bits of life that she could before she died.

People need to stop being frightened, they need to get angry and focus that anger on fixing the things that were broken before covid was a thing, so that we dont end up in this situation again.

Rant over!

….. and breathe ….

Well said.

There are staff in the NHS who can't assess risk whose opinions validated by rheir jobs have been bat shit

@justasking111

There are staff in the NHS who can't assess risk whose opinions validated by rheir jobs have been bat shit

Absolutely. I have great respect for people who work in healthcare, whilst recognising they are neither infallible or lacking in common human traits (including laziness!)

I have been misinformed and misdiagnosed throughout my life, so I guess I naturally question anything I am told by a doctor. I have also been a walking miracle thanks to some NHS doctors , I just dislike lumping them all together as angles and elevating them to sainthood.

Along with the above, I think it is quite clear that the government/Boris Johnson did not expect compliance on anything like the level there was.

He knew he wouldn't comply, his Dad didn't comply and has always been a rule breaker, and part of the conservative ideology is individual freedom and responsibility for self. He, I think, totally expected, people to bend and manipulate the rules, not decide that they weren't harsh enough and make up their own even more severe restrictions.

Boris accepted folks wouldnt comply whereas drake is trying to control Chester city FC because some of their pitch is over the border. He demanded they closed but no they could have any money because they're an English team.

Meanwhile Swansea FC away games are supported by Welsh fans across the border.

The six Nations rugby are looking at booking Welsh matches across the border drakeford is having a conniption threatening all sorts

Twitter just reminded me of this particularly horrific piece of social engineering.

These are the things that make me wonder how much of the social engineering has been because we are just ‘lab rats’ and those doing the engineering want to check which buttons are easiest to push?

Well I bent the rules all the fucking time! Because it was bot a secret that those making the rules were doing the same.

So glad that my family was only negatively impacted a couple of times by roolz followers, though I have despaired of some of my friends who have spent 2 years absolutely terrified of covid yet haven’t joined the dots yet.

Jakers watching Babylon 5 series 2 episode 16 the formation of the night watch, 50 credits a week for snitching on neighbors.

Bearing in mind this was televised in the 90s. They understood the nudge theory then 🙈

Am I right in thinking that T cell immunity means that having had some colds might have been a protective factor? I remember this being discussed ages ago in the context of why children didn't generally get as ill.

So, would that mean that we actually placed at least some people more at risk by locking down? Particularly children (there's a surprise).

@Taswama

And if 20% have tested positive (PCR presumably) how many more have had it?

I'm sure there is a not that smalll proportion of the population who can't afford to isolate so are not testing at all.

I think large families are unlikely to all have testing. Out of our family, 3 of 7 for it confirmed by PCR. The rest of us felt there was no need as it was clear we all had it. My friend's family was similar. One of the adults and 2 of the children didn't test, meaning only 2 confirmed cases in a family of 5. Less than 50 percent confirmed by PCR, despite all having it.

@Worldgonecrazy

Argh!! It is so frustrating reading Twitter. Lots of ‘I followed the rules because I’m not a selfish star and wanted to protect xxxxx’.

Is this a form of cognitive self protection.

It’s harsh but the actual truth is ‘I followed a rule that didn’t make sense and the people who made the rule knew it didn’t make sense, which is why the people who made the rule didn’t follow or.’

Downing Street held parties because they knew there was little risk.

I am desperately sorry for everyone who has been damaged by following the rules, and many of them will never get that time back, but I do think that the population as a whole should bear some collective responsibility about behaviours, particularly the crazy dementors!

I agree. I also don't feel people took enough time to understand what the law actually was and people who pointed it out were accused of looking for loopholes and wanting to kill grannies. To some extent I get it, even the police enforced rules they thought were in the spirit of the law, but not actual law. But lots of heart ache could have been saved if people had only taken time to understand that the exceptions were there for very important reasons and that they were suitably vague that a lot of these heartbreaking stories could have been very different.