Just fuck off with this fucking war shit.

[NaiceHamAndHugs]

Why as humans do we never ever learn? It’s always about testosterone and power and oil.

Fuck off with. Why was it possible for so many countries to pull together when COVID kicked off and now it’s back to slapping their balls on the table to see who has the biggest set.

It just all so unbelievably depressing.

@Tabbacous

I don't think people are calling for billions to be spent are they? By your learning to live with it comment I presume you are comparing a country being invaded by a hostile force to covid (which both countries are affected by on top) which is bloody weird and ignorant.

with a significant proportion of the working age population disabled by Long Covid

Any studies, evidence or whatever else to back up this claim that this is likely to be the case? Not overly arsed what US, a complex and very different country is doing about covid laws to be honest.

ONS has some long covid figures. Note LC is an umbrella term. Some are experiencing organ damage from acute severe covid whilst others are developing an illness even after initial mild covid infection that can reduce functioning significantly due to a form of fatigue whose key feature is post exertional symptom exacerbation whereby small amounts of exertion can only be tolerated before baseline symptoms worsen such as extreme fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, pain etc. Some in this group are recovering after a few months but a year on many have still not recovered. This form of LC has similarities with ME. In one study full recovery rate in adults for ME is 5% so the worry is and the unknown still is how many LC have developed a chronic illness. Hypotheses for pathology could be autoimmunity and/orfragments of virus persisting in tissue, and some studies are showing micro clotting which effects the vascular system stopping sufficient oxygen reaching cells causing much reduced energy function.

Stats from ONS:

An estimated 1.3 million people living in private households in the UK (2.0% of the population) were experiencing self-reported long COVID (symptoms persisting for more than four weeks after the first suspected coronavirus (COVID-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 6 December 2021.

Of people with self-reported long COVID, 270,000 (21%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 less than 12 weeks previously; 892,000 people (70%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, and 506,000 (40%) first had (or suspected they had) COVID-19 at least one year previously.

The proportion of people with self-reported long COVID who reported that it reduced their ability to carry out daily activities remained stable compared with previous months; symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 809,000 people (64% of those with self-reported long COVID), with 247,000 (20%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/6january2022

On initial reading I was persuaded NATO had possibly broken promises about not expanding further East and this is threatening to someone like Putin. However, Putin does seem to be exaggerating what actually happened in the early nineties and this will be for his own nefarious agenda. He clearly has no problem with the idea of denying Ukraine’s sovereignty and his speech on Monday made it clear he views Ukraine as not a state in its own right. It’s extremely worrying.

What sad for everyone is these areas Seem to have caused problems for hundreds of years... Crimea, Afghanistan, Ukraine etc

Now I am am getting worried- terrible news this morning.

Yes, we are certainly living through some scary times. We are all used to a relatively quiet stable life. Unless something is a direct threat to the west, then anything else that happens around the world tends not to cause us too much hassle. There have been plenty of conflicts over the last 30 years, Rwanda, Syria etc, but we have this mentality of out of sight out of mind. We watch the news for 10 mins to "catch up" at the end of the day then go about our lives unaffected by the events we've just watched on the TV.

The end of the Cold War brought relative peace to the west. My boss was telling me the other day that throughout the 60's and 70's there was always the threat of the bomb coming, and that the last 30 years have been quite nice not living with that what-if all the time. I think we're lucky to have lived through a time in history where the west hasn't seen any major conflict on it's own doorstep but the Ukraine invasion has changed that.