Anyone else find this slightly dystopian now ?

[Whitechocolatemarshmallow]

We may be 'allowed' to see families etc. Over Christmas but should be expected to 'pay' for this with subsequent lockdowns, and hugging will be banned.

Now, there's talk of a 'freedom pass' for people who test negative twice a week to allow them to live a more normal life, which they will be able to present should they be stopped and questioned.

What's coming next, having to show proof of vaccination status ?
I'm no conspiracy theorist and i'm fully aware that Covid is real.

Why are we willing to give up our old lives like this ?

Who said “if exercise was a pill we would all be taking it”?

We also have created a society where we have used schools to teach people to pass tests, so we have a large number of non-critical thinkers.

We are in dystopia because we, as a society, have allowed it to happen.

As someone wiser than me once said ‘we have the government we deserve’.

@Worldgonecrazy

Who said “if exercise was a pill we would all be taking it”?

We also have created a society where we have used schools to teach people to pass tests, so we have a large number of non-critical thinkers.

We are in dystopia because we, as a society, have allowed it to happen.

As someone wiser than me once said ‘we have the government we deserve’.

I never understood that statement

Use this government as an example

Did anyone vote conservative to get communist? Or some kind of green agenda?

I think someone on this thread said they hated libertarians. I was hoping Johnson would be one!

@Hardbackwriter

Quote

It's the adverts about coronavirus restrictions on the TV and radio that always make me feel most like I'm in a dystopian film. And, to begin with, shops full of people in masks, but I'm used to that now.

I'm not criticising either thing, by the way, or saying they're unnecessary/shouldn't happen. But if you'd shown me a clip of either this time last year and said 'disaster film or actual footage of 2020?' I'd have been very confident that it was a clip from a film.

We never watch the tv .haven’t since March apart from the occasional afternoon quiz.
Never watched the news at all, since sometime last year.

Can’t bear it. Can’t bear being spoken to like we are children.
I won’t have it.
Listen to these things at your peril and it’s like you’re almost asking to be brainwashed.
switch the darn things off and live your lives.
We do and did in the last lockdown.
I drove on the lovely peaceful roads every day.
Drove to the Lake District one day because we felt we wanted to see hills and lakes.
I’m not asking anyone’s permission from anyone on how to live my life.
Neither am I stopping anyone from living theirs.

We are the fat man of Europe?
I didn’t know that.

@AcornAutumn it’s about ‘we’ as a society. It’s not about which way we vote (though a two party system is one outcome) Its about the types of people who are voted in, the educational system we support, the way we allow our brains to be mushed by the lowest common denominator in media and news. The many complicated but ultimately connected reasons that mean somebody with the behaviours, attributes and morals of Alexander Boris Johnson, can become Prime Minister. That’s what the statement means.

I find the idea that the way out of this is negative-test ‘freedom passes’ that have to be renewed every week/month very problematic. It puts huge power at the government fingertips to place restrictions on someone’s movement, which could be abused.

Ah well just let the old people die ay
All these 70/80 year olds who up until covid were fine

I don't pretend to speak for others, but personally I'd have thought there's every reason to treat people who were "fine" since age in itself surely shouldn't be a disqualifier

However some of us were wondering about the correct approach where someone's gravely ill and already at the end of life

@BringItOnBabyrin

My understanding is our immune systems help us fight the virus.
Keeping the immune system robust should be our priority l

Obviously a lot of people think so because our usual zinc ascorbate drops that we’ve taken daily for the last 18 months when we decided to become even more proactive about our health, we’re out of stock.

@raysofhope

I so agree
They already have too much control now anyway

@Neron

Personally I’d say if you don’t get the vaccine on your own head be it. We will treat you if we have space but we will bump you from the icu bed (in the unlikely event you end up there) if it’s needed for something else

Doesn't this kind of statement, fit in with the topic of this thread? Deciding that one life is valued more than another, because of a vaccine? Let's go the whole way and have the NHS treat only the 'deserving'. All the drug addict, the alcoholics and whatnot, we could bump them...

1.3 million people still died of TB in 2019 and there is a vaccine for that. Hundreds of thousands die of the flu each year, and there is a vaccine for that. Not everyone has these vaccines, yet life continues without draconian measures?

Can I just remind you that out of around 60 strains of flu, top scientists/ doctors every year pick out the three or four strains MOST LIKELY to do the rounds.

Basically you could get the vaccine. And get a strain not represented in the vaccine and be ill, mildly ill or so severely ill you didn’t not survive depending on the state of your immune system and other co morbidities at the time.

In 2017 the scientists got it badly wrong. They picked the wrong strains and many people were ill and many people died.

People see the advent of a vaccine like a knight on a white charger.
They aren’t the be all and end all of everything.
They take years/ decades even to bring the population up to a level where we can say it’s been effective.
How long did it take to rid the world of smallpox?

It was almost two centuries.

We have got to learn to live with this virus, like we did everything else.
We cannot put young and old lives on hold waiting for a knight on a white charger to rescue us.

Alan Joyce - CEO Qantas has announced that Australia will be totally off limits for outgoing and incoming International passengers, without a vaccination certificate. Dystopian fiction has nothing on the Land Of Rules.

I am consigned to not going overseas for a long time. My family (including elderly parents and one of my children) all live in the UK. I still feel worried that vaccinations have been rushed and that true dystopia will emerge if that rush job goes wrong.

Needing a vaccination certificate for travel is nothing new. You need one for yellow fever to visit certain countries and have done for years.
Not dystopian, common sense.

Presumably you'd be able to get a medical exemption certificate if you're advised against being vaccinated, as you can for yellow fever?

@HotSince63

I'm pretty horrified reading about the potential 'freedom pass' for which you'd have to be tested twice a week.

What's next, you'll have to wear a badge to identify your vaccination status?

Or a tattoo...

Agree vaccination certificate for travel is sensible. I hope the U.K. implements the same as Australia.

I completely agree with you Dowser. I said on another thread that this vaccine isn't going to magically fix everything and restore life back to normal, yet I've been mocked for it.

We simply don't know about the long term effects of this virus or vaccination. We don't know if it will mutate like the flu etc, or that future vaccines will be enough as per the example you gave. There will be people who want it, and those that don't. People that want it, but can't like the pregnant and the breastfeeding as per a PP.
It isn't wrong to point this out, yet I'm classed as uneducated and killing granny.

@Dowser

We are the fat man of Europe? I didn’t know that.

We are. After Malta As an aside I’m reporting the posts which name the poor lad who died. His grieving family shouldn’t see speculation

"Once everyone over 65, works in the NHS or has conditions that make them at risk from covid has had the vaccination"

Many people (including me) who are at risk from Covid cannot have the vaccine and are relying on herd immunity when 60% of the population is vaccinated.

This includes anyone who has an organ transplant, certain cancer treatments, anything which leaves the person with no working immunity system.

I hope to get back to work after Christmas but I can only do that if the vaccination program goes ahead and everyone who is eligible to have it, does so.

If people refuse to have the vaccination, what do I do? Stay home for the next 40 years ?

I agree the name should not be posted about on here.

It is totally tragic that this young man has died. He is a victim of the endemic health problems in this country

What amazes me with so much dystopian fiction to learn from, why T F did we make the most obvious mistakes again and again like all the series of the walking dead after about series 4.

@hamstersarse

I agree the name should not be posted about on here.

It is totally tragic that this young man has died. He is a victim of the endemic health problems in this country

You don’t know that he was that either! We don’t know anything about what might have happened to him other than a positive test.

@raysofhope

I find the idea that the way out of this is negative-test ‘freedom passes’ that have to be renewed every week/month very problematic. It puts huge power at the government fingertips to place restrictions on someone’s movement, which could be abused.

It doesn't even have to be abused. Look how many problems three there've been with the track and trace app. It only needs a small degree of incompetence for computer to say no.

@neron
I’m glad it’s not just me who gives a more measured approach to the euphoria surrounding the discovery ofa vaccine

I wish I’d saved the quote from one of the inventors of one of our vaccines
Who said
I always hold my breath till the first 30 million have been vaccinated

Don’t blame him. I’m still concerned for the two women who contracted transverse myelitis while participating in the Astra Zeneca tests

Such an awful paralysing illness. Not stable either.
It can flare up and leave you with less bodily function each time.

Not wishing to scare anyone.
Thousands/ millions even will hopefully be fine but I would hate to be one of the people with such a severe reaction...if it is related of course

It could just be coincidence
Two friends have it.their lives now compared to before are unrecognisable

@acornautumn

We have an obesity crisis, that's what I meant. A total failure on lifestyle health.

[quote hamstersarse]@acornautumn

We have an obesity crisis, that's what I meant. A total failure on lifestyle health.[/quote]
But the lad might have had anything wrong with him, not to do with that.

We had a lovely man on a local five a side team, picture of health, single father to two, late 20s.

Collapsed and died.

Turns out he had a heart defect he didn’t even know about. These things happen.

Dowser interesting quote. At my age, I imagine I’d be quite far down the list for vaccines. Is it 80+, healthcare, vulnerable, then ,50+ and so on?

My mum will have to make a decision soon I expect.