Oh look, another variant to be scared of..

[HopelessBlue192]

How predictable.

Enter stage left, New York variant. Couldn't be more obvious if they'd tried. Just couldn't have the numbers going down positively could we?

Viruses mutate, we all bloody know! Now give over.

@Fridacaninelo

People who think Boris and Co are "keeping us compliant", out of interest do you also think that if every single other government the world over, given all countries have had or currently have restrictions?

Yes?

The government are liars. Politicians lie about everything all the time, always have. Why would they suddenly be honest?

I completely agree with you. But Boris is not a scientist. It is the scientists I am listening to, not Boris. Are they liars?

Posters asking why would the government do this and why would they want to keep us locked up. I have two theories;

1. SAGE are all powerful. This group of scientists who would have mainly operated in obscurity are now at the top table of government. For them, this is the absolute pinnacle of their careers and not something they will easily want to let go. The money to be earned, the funding they will be receiving and the general importance of their roles will be absolutely glittering. They also don’t appear to get how life works in wider society, with comments such as ‘we can live with masks and SD forever’.

1. Boris wants to go down in history as another Churchill. He got it so wrong in the beginning by just pretending it wasn’t happening, that he doesn’t want to be remembered by history as that prime minister. His ego won’t allow it. Therefore he is continuing to turn the screw on us, so that when he turns around and reinstates our freedoms, we are all eternally grateful to him and revere him forever more. I also think he does feel huge guilt for the deaths causes by his poor decisions, and is now so terrified of loosening restrictions and being blamed further. Which is then compounded by the advice he is getting from SAGE. I also think that a lot of the main ministers are absolutely salivating over how much power they have and how much control they actually have with the population being so compliant.

@Fridacaninelo

The government are liars. Politicians lie about everything all the time, always have. Why would they suddenly be honest?

I completely agree with you. But Boris is not a scientist. It is the scientists I am listening to, not Boris. Are they liars?

The government picks which scientists and which scientific advice they listen to.

But the news being full of them and doom laden stories has only been bigged up at times when it looks like people might be pissed off and stop following rules

Maybe people should just follow the rules then or penalties harsher for not following them.
I don’t buy it’s only bugged up at certain times, there has been awful news all the way through this and it doesnt seem to stop rule breakers anyway.

Scientists who are the top experts in virus are a lot more use than a random internet scientist

Scientists who most other scientists trust are much more likely to be correct

Yeah so some scientists say climate change is a joke and smoking is safe

Can we please give Twitter a break?

Fuck off.

[quote oldegg123]@RedcurrantPuff

Nope.

We’re just not as naive as you

The government are liars. Politicians lie about everything all the time, always have. Why would they suddenly be honest?

What does the government have to gain by keeping lockdown restrictions in place longer than they need to be?[/quote]
Power and money of course. Same as always.

Our local authority identified a case of the SA variant about 6 weeks ago. Cue setting up a local testing centre, delivering (rather sporadically) home testing kits, asking everyone with a specific postcode to get tested. This resulted in long cues around local roads about 2 hours before the testing centre opened the next day - people 'terrified'. 24 hours later, the LA said they were only asking people to get tested so they could research 'community spread' not because everyone was about to drop dead. Three days of testing completed and things calmed down.

Then nothing. For 4 weeks. Results published this week. Over 4000 people tested. No cases of the SA variant found!

That was a useful exercise then

And interestingly , the SA variant has had no real impact in SA. Their cases are right down, most things have opened up again (albeit with strict rules in masks/ sanitised hands/ temp monitoring)

@99victoria

Our local authority identified a case of the SA variant about 6 weeks ago. Cue setting up a local testing centre, delivering (rather sporadically) home testing kits, asking everyone with a specific postcode to get tested. This resulted in long cues around local roads about 2 hours before the testing centre opened the next day - people 'terrified'. 24 hours later, the LA said they were only asking people to get tested so they could research 'community spread' not because everyone was about to drop dead. Three days of testing completed and things calmed down.

Then nothing. For 4 weeks. Results published this week. Over 4000 people tested. No cases of the SA variant found!

That was a useful exercise then

Well it pretty comprehensively answers whether the SA variant is growing undetected in the local area, answer clearly no.

@99victoria

Our local authority identified a case of the SA variant about 6 weeks ago. Cue setting up a local testing centre, delivering (rather sporadically) home testing kits, asking everyone with a specific postcode to get tested. This resulted in long cues around local roads about 2 hours before the testing centre opened the next day - people 'terrified'. 24 hours later, the LA said they were only asking people to get tested so they could research 'community spread' not because everyone was about to drop dead. Three days of testing completed and things calmed down.

Then nothing. For 4 weeks. Results published this week. Over 4000 people tested. No cases of the SA variant found!

That was a useful exercise then

But that was a useful exercise?

They've identified that the SA didn't spread rapidly in your community. Negative results are still useful - if no one bothered publishing them we'd know a lot less in general.

@BonnieDundee

Boris is doing his best.

He IS doing his best!! It's just that his best is shit.

This thread is absolutely insane.

What does the government have to gain by keeping lockdown restrictions in place longer than they need to be?

Power and money of course. Same as always.

@lightand that seems like a very simplistic way of looking at things. The government aren't making money by trashing the economy, which is why it's something governments generally try to avoid doing.

And they don't get 'power' by making a series of hugely unpopular decisions that will ultimately get them voted out at the next general election.

We need to get back to as near normal a we can - or a new improved normal. There will a constant battle against the virus as there is against other illnesses, meanwhile children, teenagers and the young have their lives totally disrupted . Of course it is worrying but we cannot live in a permanent state of fear - if we did this we would never cross the road. If some people want to continue to Iive like that then that is their own choice but the rest of us need to just get on with it

The constant obsession with new variants is not helpful. I don't want the information to be suppressed. But there is MSM lack of context here.

In the end it doesn't do anybody any good as it becomes the boy who cried wolf.

@twelly

We need to get back to as near normal a we can - or a new improved normal. There will a constant battle against the virus as there is against other illnesses, meanwhile children, teenagers and the young have their lives totally disrupted . Of course it is worrying but we cannot live in a permanent state of fear - if we did this we would never cross the road. If some people want to continue to Iive like that then that is their own choice but the rest of us need to just get on with it

😂 it’s only year 1.

Those looking for a return to normality need to call Dr Who to borrow his Tardis to go back to 2019.

It's like aversion therapy, isn't it? You know when people who are scared of snakes get surrounded by snakes until they are so exhausted by being afraid of them they stop caring about them. (I'm sure there's a more academic way to phrase all that 😁)

Anyway, I think that's where we are with the mutations. We've had our fill of it all now. It's not that I'm too scared to hear about it or that I don't think it might pose a problem in the future. We are just too past it all to muster enough adrenaline to care.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

What does the government have to gain by keeping lockdown restrictions in place longer than they need to be?

Power and money of course. Same as always.

@lightand that seems like a very simplistic way of looking at things. The government aren't making money by trashing the economy, which is why it's something governments generally try to avoid doing.

And they don't get 'power' by making a series of hugely unpopular decisions that will ultimately get them voted out at the next general election.

Someone better than me can explain this much better than I can.

They get more power over people for a start. See how much power even our government has now, compared to beginning of last year. Any they seem to want more and more all the time. You have read about the protest Bill as just 1 tiny example?

Money - government contracts, preknowledge of what is coming or likely to come, increases their personal wealth. Anyone else can chip in and explain this better.

@Thewiseoneincognito

Drip, drip. So we have more variants, a third wave in Europe and our numbers have started to move upwards slightly. Lockdown roadmap is looking more like a doodle every day.

And right on cue...

@Thewiseoneincognito numbers moving upwards are fairly irrelevant as long as hospitalisations (and deaths) keep moving downwards. Those catching it now are not likely to be in the groups who would need hospital care. And Europe's third wave is being caused by the Kent variant - a wave we've already had in the UK.

Don't let facts get in the way of your chief hobby of doom mongering, however.

and our numbers have started to move upwards slightly

Week on Week numbers
Cases down 4.7%
Hospitalisations down 21.5%
Deaths down 41.5%

The only numbers going upwards are testing figures, almost 1.9million on Sunday.

There's another one just discovered too.....