The way the Tory government are acting now makes it feel like all the lockdowns were a waste of time

[Poetrypatty]

Just lifting all the restrictions as if it was all a waste of time. It makes me feel like a mug for everything we went through, especially as they were having their parties and not even following the rules. I think it's bad for peoples mental health as well.

Sick pay is for sick people too sick to work

Not so they can sit at home feeling fine.

There may be more problems down the road, right now,we are GO!!

It's critical that we get out and live whilst we can!!

@Brefugee

Agree with everything you said. Our society is a bit shit and would hope that it would get better, but I'm not sure it will.

Sick pay is for sick people too sick to work
Not so they can sit at home feeling fine.

Alternatively, in a pandemic, it is to keep the asymptomatic but sick away from the healthy and vulnerable and sickpay enables that?

I remember very very early on in the pandemic, when it was still a worrying thing in China, that one of my Taiwanese (but worked in China) colleagues said "it's easy to have a proper lockdown in a dictatorship, good luck in the liberal west!" and when i think about that, i do wonder why people think that any Western-style democracies went into lockdown?

And the reason they give, and i choose to believe it because it makes sense, is that they wanted to do their best to stop a disease rampaging round society like the Black Death and overwhelming hospitals (which weren't a great option at the time of the Black Death, tbh)

Incidentally, as to rethinking our society. The Black Death is a great example. 10% of the population died during that wave. As a result tradespeople managed to get more rights and money, because they were needed and in short supply.

Join a union.

Oh god the naivety

You’re basing that comment on what? The medical judgement of a paper written by economists?

If so, whilst I don’t argue against the harmful effects of lockdowns, trying to give those facts more credibility by disparaging the effects on health, more specifically the spread of an infectious disease, is an odd stance to take. It’s not either/or, it’s both.

The pandemic was always going to move to endemic at some point. Maybe we're there, maybe not

Doesn’t a disease need to be predictable to be defined as endemic? I don’t think we’re there yet personally, we have no idea what level of infection to expect over summer or next winter.

I'm not sure of the exact requirements, but that is the next step from a pandemic.

We live with flu. It is easy to dismiss flu as a heavy cold, but it can be fatal. The flu jab is offered to certain sections of society, and i think that is the least we should be doing, as well as not carrying blithely on with our lives when we have it. (yes, asymptomatic people are a risk with any disease that may present like that)

So even if we're not technically at endemic stage, that's where we're heading and governments will follow their own paths towards how they handle it, hopefully using sensible unbiased medical advice.

Part of the problem that we have in developed democracies is our ability to question government decisions. And governing like policing is by consent: we agree to the rules for the most part but there are always some who laugh in the face of rules.

Unfortunately from where I'm watching, people in the UK seem to be very polarised around what has been going on, there doesn't seem to be much middle ground whether it's marmite, the PM or the rules around Covid-19. The MSM don't help there much, tbh.

And it's not that we don't have issues here in Germany, because oh boy we do.

No @Brefugee

You only get a RAG 3 rolling sicknesses where I work. So no. I will not be wasting one on feeling fine.....when 2 weeks down the line I may need the next for a genuine illness. The third sickness triggers a disciplinary

Some people lose their job at this stage

Also, the stress and mental health of those left in the workplace running round trying to cover these isolators is too much now

So to protect THEM it's right that otherwise healthy people are working doing their share

You only get a RAG 3 rolling sicknesses where I work. So no. I will not be wasting one on feeling fine.....when 2 weeks down the line I may need the next for a genuine illness. The third sickness triggers a disciplinary

Well @GirlInACountrySong if you had read any of my posts (horribly long, i know) you would realise that i have not at any point said that people should risk their livliehoods to stay home when sick.

What i have repeatedly said (not just today but on any occasion it's been discussed) is that the UK (and other countries) need to rethink their attitude to sickness and sick pay and not force people to put themselves (health and livlihood) or others (health) at risk because they can't afford to stay home.

Personally, I'm in a nice m-c job with a nice m-c employer and it's not shit at all. Currently am, as required by employer, at home (working= due to my office buddy testing positive the other day. The other person who was with us that day is now also positive and WFH again, having taken a few days off due to feeling rough.

The difference being that i fully recognise the privilege of being able to do that and instead of a glib "people should get jobs with better conditions" i ask people to vote for better governments who would enable that. And have the utmost sympathy and understanding for anyone who is having to work when they really shouldn't be.

@Brefugee I don’t disagree with your very considered post, pretty much exactly what we’re missing from our leaders right now imho. From Boris yesterday:

“Today is not the day we can declare victory over Covid, because this virus is not going away.

But it is the day when all the efforts of the last two years finally enabled us to protect ourselves while restoring our liberties in full."

You can see how widely that has been interpreted which is no good when we all need to have an unambiguous understanding of the current status of things.

As an addition, I don’t really like the comparisons with flu, most diseases could be compared with flu if we take the milder end of symptoms but that’s not the bit we’re concerned about. Imho covid is one to add to the same categories as measles, chicken pox, rubella etc. By that logic I would be just as concerned about any of those at similar levels of infections around the country.

i think the comparison with flu is ok because of the pandemic in 1918 - when Covid-19 first broke out i read a lot about the pandemic, from an economics pov because that's where i have more experience, and i have been prepared for it to go on for 2-3 years of lockdowns and measures to hopefully prevent the spread.

I agree that from a medical pov something like chicken pox is a better comparison. In fact chicken pox can be deadly, can be relatively easy and spreads like wildfire (in German it's "Windpocken" which means literally wind-pox, because of how easy it is to catch). If covid had spots like that, maybe people would be more careful? who knows

As we see with measles though, people still refuse the vaccination because they personally don't have experience of how bad it can be. I'm probably in one of the last generations who didn't get MMR as a baby (not invented then) and had to have a rubella jab at 12 because it was recognised how serious it was (in my cohort at school it was 100% uptake).

I think in places where governments aren't distrusted as much it's not as difficult to persuade people about public health measures? I may start to investigate that.

For sure this period in time is going to provide study fodder for decades to come!

@GirlInACountrySong

Sick pay is for sick people too sick to work

Not so they can sit at home feeling fine.

This needs to be repeated over and over.

One of the concerns I've got is that as yet we don't know that with Covid you just build up immunity and that's it. The virus will mutate and we don't know what will happen next yet. Also, people can catch it over and over again.

I think we need sick pay to be widespread and we need people to be staying at home if they have the virus. I don't want to be out and about eg at the dentist say, and the dentist has covid but is still working. That's what could happen come April 1st. To me that makes no sense.

They should ease off restrictions more gradually and we need to have a society where people who are sick can be supported to stay home for a few days.

For sure this period in time is going to provide study fodder for decades to come!

Ain’t that the truth! I’m preparing to be interviewed by my grandchildren for homework

@Poetrypatty

One of the concerns I've got is that as yet we don't know that with Covid you just build up immunity and that's it. The virus will mutate and we don't know what will happen next yet. Also, people can catch it over and over again.

I think we need sick pay to be widespread and we need people to be staying at home if they have the virus. I don't want to be out and about eg at the dentist say, and the dentist has covid but is still working. That's what could happen come April 1st. To me that makes no sense.

They should ease off restrictions more gradually and we need to have a society where people who are sick can be supported to stay home for a few days.

So basically you want to live in a virus free world. Not scientifically possible is it? Do you take the same view of the seasonal flu too? Omicron is milder that that.

@Poetrypatty

One of the concerns I've got is that as yet we don't know that with Covid you just build up immunity and that's it. The virus will mutate and we don't know what will happen next yet. Also, people can catch it over and over again.

I think we need sick pay to be widespread and we need people to be staying at home if they have the virus. I don't want to be out and about eg at the dentist say, and the dentist has covid but is still working. That's what could happen come April 1st. To me that makes no sense.

They should ease off restrictions more gradually and we need to have a society where people who are sick can be supported to stay home for a few days.

How much more gradually do you want the restrictions to be eased?! We've only isolation and testing left now as everything else was gradually reduced. And testing had already been gradually reduced to just lft for majority of people. Isolation has been gradually reduced from 10 to 7 to 5 days. Do you want them to go even slower until we're down to isolating for hours?!

So basically you want to live in a virus free world. Not scientifically possible is it?

That’s not what they said is it?

Do you take the same view of the seasonal flu too? Omicron is milder that that

Seasonal flu isn’t particularly mild in a real life sense of the word, it’s certainly something people take time off school/work for and can take a long time to recover from even at the mild end of the scale. It’s also not as prevalent in community generally, annual flu cases are generally projected in the thousands, covid had been consistently in the millions for two years.

@Poetrypatty unfortunately that has got to happen....omicron is so mild theres no point people using up a sickness on it and leaving their colleagues short staffed in the workplace. we no longer have the resources

covid 2020 and covid omicron 2022 are very different

@Giveaschitt an example of a reduction would be to end seven day contact testing and encourage use of LFT’s for symptomatic cases only. PCR’s could be reserved for those who are very ill and ordered by a doctor for confirmation for treatment purposes. There are steps available between testing at the current level and not testing at all.

Yesterday 17:36 Poetrypatty

I appreciate that a lot of masochists are desperate for restrictions to go on forever but most people just want life to go back to normal.

Going back to normal isn't pretending the virus has gone away or not monitoring it any more though. This is to save Boris Johnson's job.

I want normality as much as everyone else.“

Was reported on PM yesterday that the ONS survey will continue, which is the best monitoring tool we have.

@Giveaschitt an example of a reduction would be to end seven day contact testing and encourage use of LFT’s for symptomatic cases only. PCR’s could be reserved for those who are very ill and ordered by a doctor for confirmation for treatment purposes. There are steps available between testing at the current level and not testing at all.

That kind of thing is a good common sense approach. I'd like scientists and doctors to be at the forefront of decision making, not the right wing of the Tory party.

[quote Poetrypatty]**@Giveaschitt an example of a reduction would be to end seven day contact testing and encourage use of LFT’s for symptomatic cases only. PCR’s could be reserved for those who are very ill and ordered by a doctor for confirmation for treatment purposes. There are steps available between testing at the current level and not testing at all.

That kind of thing is a good common sense approach. I'd like scientists and doctors to be at the forefront of decision making, not the right wing of the Tory party.[/quote]
Did you listen to Whitty and Vallance?

Even Chris Whitty says it was a mistake to think of this as sudden rather than gradual.

Have a listen - he talks about it being a steady approach

@MrsSkylerWhite

Yesterday 17:36 Poetrypatty

I appreciate that a lot of masochists are desperate for restrictions to go on forever but most people just want life to go back to normal.

Going back to normal isn't pretending the virus has gone away or not monitoring it any more though. This is to save Boris Johnson's job.

I want normality as much as everyone else.“

Was reported on PM yesterday that the ONS survey will continue, which is the best monitoring tool we have.

I agree. The line pretending it’s over isn’t what applies here.

Surveillance will continue