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So much for 'This too shall pass'....

176 replies

ssd · 02/02/2021 21:48

How many times have I read that on mn?

Except its not passing, is it

OP posts:
MacDuffsMuff · 03/02/2021 11:27

I too would have hope if I had a chance of getting the vaccine in the next few weeks.

Despite critical care units having plenty of people in their late 40s, the government has decided that only over-50s can be vaccinated in normal circumstances. I do have several risk factors, but none high enough (I only need to eat a few more cakes and my BMI would reach the required 40 - so that's a good public health motivation to lose weight -not).

So my DC will likely be back at school and there will be several new variants about, and I won't have been vaccinated.

It is very depressing, very worrying, and it doesn't make me feel better when I am told to wait my turn, when actually I might not ever have a turn.

I do understand that @StepOutOfToxicity, genuinely. DH is in exactly the same situation, we have two school age DC too, one of whom has health issues.

The reason I've been offered the vaccine is because I've just finished treatment for breast cancer. I'm a teacher and we lost a colleague at the beginning of January so it all feel pretty scary right now, as it does for many people. I hope I've read the tone of your post incorrectly, but it sounds a bit like you resent that I've been offered the vaccine.

Furries · 03/02/2021 11:28

@StepOutOfToxicity - they will be vaccinating everyone over the age of 16, you will definitely have a vaccine. Those 9 groups on the list are the PRIORITY, but they aren’t stopping there, they will continue at speed with everyone.

I’m late forties and, via the omni vaccine calculator (it’s not an exact science, but gives a rough idea) it’s showing around May for receiving my first shot. Which to be is a fantastic position to be in, compared to a few months ago when many people on MN were asserting that no way would we even have one type of vaccine available in the next couple of years.

Coyoacan · 03/02/2021 11:29

If the new strains are so terrible, why are South Africa's cases coming down?

And I see the Brazilian variant is being turned into a boggyman, yet Brazil has way fewer deaths per million than the UK.

corythatwas · 03/02/2021 11:29

Also saying we should do what South Korea does is a problem since there are many here who think even asking someone to socially distance is a traumatic and unforgivable removal of their human rights.

I suppose when you're dead you don't suffer much from trauma. But your families may well. The families of people who couldn't get into hospital because there was no room or no ambulances may well be traumatised. We already know that a lot of NHS staff are suffering from PTSD.

And then there are many thousands of people left with longterm damage to internal organs from LongCovid- do you suppose they and their families are not traumatised? I am in touch with several such people and they seem pretty traumatised to me.

MintyMabel · 03/02/2021 11:31

I’m just saying that as an average everyday Joe scared of what they see on the media

Which is why we should have proper restrictions on non scientific “journalists” reporting on science. It has been a problem for a long time and needs to be addressed.

It will pass. Things generally do.

Bluethrough · 03/02/2021 12:23

@Coyoacan

If the new strains are so terrible, why are South Africa's cases coming down?

And I see the Brazilian variant is being turned into a boggyman, yet Brazil has way fewer deaths per million than the UK.

All the current vaccines work against all the new strains, none of them are significantly more deadly.

But having a terrible new CV strain for everyone to be terrified of is handy as it diverts attention away from a shockingly high death toll, an NHS in crisis and the negative trade effects of Brexit.

Thewiseoneincognito · 03/02/2021 12:43

@Coyoacan

If the new strains are so terrible, why are South Africa's cases coming down?

And I see the Brazilian variant is being turned into a boggyman, yet Brazil has way fewer deaths per million than the UK.

And you trust the corrupt governments of Brazil and South Africa to be forthcoming and comprehensively tracking each and every case when all it will do is highlight how inept and inadequate their ruling governments are?

Look at how poorly our own government has handled the situation and the US, and Europe- lots of mess everywhere in the First world yet developing nations with dangerous mutations are succeeding in the battle?

Sure they are 🙄

Emilyontmoor · 03/02/2021 13:39

Furries It’s an issue of perspective isn’t it? 100000 deaths is so off the scale compared with other countries that differences in accounting don’t come into it. For sure there are countries like Iran, China and Russia that lie through their teeth but we were doing that in March and it was only legitimacy that forced the government to start to improve testing and the processes of accounting for cases and deaths. We may never know how many people died as a result of catching Covid, whether it was because of serious co morbidities or not. (And a lot of the so called contributing illnesses were chronic ailments that people would have spent years living with. 17% of Londoners turned out to have antibodies in June, that means there were 1.5 million cases, though a tenth of that officially. All the indications are that at first more people died as a result of getting Covid than the official figures, not less.

You may be sick of hearing Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, , Thailand, Vietnam, quoted, but you can’t justify stopping people highlighting deaths in 4 figures at most, and in some cases single figures. I’m pretty sick of it myself after three long lockdowns and 5 periods of household isolation, two of three weeks around long delayed surgeries, the rest including Christmas and New Year, being as a result of contact, and actually being left to catch Covid at the end of February (with antibodies to prove it) but no proof or requirement to isolate. My neice has had one lockdown in Melbourne and her hospital’s wards and the rest of her life are back to normal,

Perth will get on top of its cases, that is how zero Covid works. It is like a leaky sieve, the virus might get through one layer but there are many layers / ways of suppressing the virus, testing, tracking, Isolating, quarantining, managing borders, masks, social distance, hygiene. Restricting social contact should be a last resort not a first because our government hasn’t implemented the first seven.....

Emilyontmoor · 03/02/2021 13:48

Coyoacan Manaus in Brazil was held out as a beacon for herd immunity after Covid ran through the town in the first wave and 66% had immunity. Now the new variant is sweeping though the town again and their hospitals and graveyards are even fuller than the first wave. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/27/americas/manaus-brazil-covid-19-new-variant-intl/index.html

Brazil has been truly terrible at managing Covid and letting cases surge means you cook up new variants. However there are plenty of examples of third world countries that have done better. Vietnam had the 19 th worst public health resources in the world (we had the best but the government sidelined them in favour of private sector cronies who performed even worse) but it has been open about outbreaks and has managed them 1182 cases, 35 deaths.

Coyoacan · 03/02/2021 14:38

Emilyontmoor

Yes, I read that article but it still does explain why Brazil has a much lower death rate than the UK.

Of course I could always go with Thewiseoneincognito's logic and assume that any figures that don't fit in with my world view must be lies.

Beaniecats · 03/02/2021 14:48

The new variants fear propaganda is being used to manipulate compliance with lockdown

Coyoacan · 03/02/2021 15:06

Correction
Yes, I read that article but it still doesn't explain why Brazil has a much lower death rate than the UK.

sadpapercourtesan · 03/02/2021 15:09

@Coyoacan look up what is happening in Manaus. The situation is there is horrific. Particularly so as the population there was considered to have achieved herd immunity before the recent surge in the new variant. That is why the experts are worried.

WineInTheWillows · 03/02/2021 15:36

[quote sadpapercourtesan]www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/30/brazil-manaus-coronavirus-mass-graves[/quote]
That article is from April last year.

tobee · 03/02/2021 15:36

Why are you posting an article from last April?

sadpapercourtesan · 03/02/2021 15:39

Because I clicked on the wrong article Blush

I meant to post this one

www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210127-as-covid-death-rate-soars-race-to-dig-graves-in-brazil-s-manaus

Emilyontmoor · 03/02/2021 15:46

Coyocan assume that any figures that don't fit in with my world view must be lies. Well normally you shouldn't but when Bolsonaro, Putin, Xi, Rouhani, and Trump in his time, are in charge then then the supremacy of politics over truth, along with the cock up factor, can justifiably be taken into account...

Especially when Bolsonaro has actually outdone all these leaders in his irresponsible attitude

Bolsonaro "So what?” Bolsonaro asked after 5,000 deaths. “What are you afraid of? Face it!”, he commanded when we reached 91,000 deaths; after all “everybody dies”. At 100,000 deaths, he felt only that “we have to go on”. And days ago, with 162,000 Brazilians dead, he used a ceremony at the presidential palace to warn that “we can’t run away from it, run away from reality; we have to stop being a country of faggots”.

And their figures are far from reliable, blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2020/11/13/who-is-responsible-for-brazils-covid-19-catastrophe/

Emilyontmoor · 03/02/2021 15:47

Wine I had already posted an up to date article...

ParlezVousWronglais · 03/02/2021 22:37

testing, tracking, Isolating, quarantining, managing borders, masks, social distance, hygiene. Restricting social contact should be a last resort not a first because our government hasn’t implemented the first seven.....

Unfortunately social distancing is one of the most effective though. There’s no substitute for staying over 2m away from people.

TheGravelRoad · 03/02/2021 23:11

Counting cases is a different matter altogether because it obviously depends so much on test numbers. But it'd be very difficult for all but the most secretive countries to hide or alter their death toll. Brazil has fewer deaths per million than the UK. Deaths aren't being somehow mysteriously hidden from the statistics. You could argue that different countries are counting in different ways, massaging the figures in some way, but if that's actually a significant factor then there's no point comparing any country to any other really.

It's also very dismissive and kind of xenophobic to say "oh those countries are corrupt so we can't trust them". The UK government has proven quite corrupt itself in the last year or so, only the media there call it "cronyism" rather than corruption.

Emilyontmoor · 04/02/2021 09:40

TheGravel I agree that the U.K. government have behaved in a morally if not criminally (we shall see on that when finally there is a public enquiry if they don’t dodge that bullet as well) corrupt way but it is not xenophobic to say that certain other regimes massage the figures if you have evidence.

I provided a reference for the situation in Brazil and the other regime leaders I mentioned all have a track record of putting politics over truth. The one I known most about, Xi, was responsible for a system that didn’t bring a novel Corona virus to his attention until mid January. Taiwan were boarding planes from Wuhan to do health checks from mid December because they, like the rest of Asia, had been on alert for a potential epidemic since SARS and had picked up from arriving passengers and the Internet chatter that there was a mysterious new pneumonia there. However Xi was so busy with his trade war with Trump that he didn’t go looking and the Wuhan authorities did not dare admit this was a situation they couldn’t manage so they tried to wash it away by cleaning up the wet market (destroying important evidence of where Covid came from in the process). All this is already written into the academic record supported by sources . I can provide a link to a lecture on this, the link on Bolsonaro was also an academic source.

It would be xenophobic to assume no one in the rest of the world was capable of producing reliable statistics but I am saying the opposite of that. The U.K. governments statistics at the start of the epidemic were woeful, by June the ONS estimated 17% of Londoners had antibodies, that equates to 1.5m cases the vast majority never making it into official statistics because there was little testing and no attempt until June to understand what was going on / had gone on. In other words we were even less proactive than Xi.

TheGravelRoad · 04/02/2021 09:43

I provided a reference for the situation in Brazil

Well, one city in Brazil, which is a country the size of Europe. And I'm not disputing the situation is bad in Manaus. I'm saying that Brazil overall has a lower death rate than the UK, and to suggest that that can only be due to figures being completely fabricated (almost impossible) or "massaged" (wou ld need to be on a HUGE scale) is simplistic and usually based on a narrow-minded kind of "third-world country bad, third-world country lie" kind of view.

Emilyontmoor · 04/02/2021 09:50

Taiwan also alerted WHO to what they were finding from late December but they were ignored, but Hong Kong, South Korea and other Asian countries who had had a pandemic response in place since SARS were listening. All those countries swung into action at the start of January, they didn’t wait for WHO or share the west’s complacency and exceptionalism. So if there is a world league table of pandemic response, including trying to understand what was going on via accurate reporting those countries head the leader board and the U.K. is a long way down it.

Emilyontmoor · 04/02/2021 09:52

TheGravelRoad I posted this one as well blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2020/11/13/who-is-responsible-for-brazils-covid-19-catastrophe/