And so it begins - with pubs?

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/pubs-should-decide-whether-to-demand-vaccine-passports-pm-says

Some rather good points raised in the article to be fair

At the moment ‘long covid’ describes anyone with symptoms lasting 4+ weeks but those symptoms can be mild and the majority resolve within 12 weeks. There are people who have much more serious, long lasting symptoms though that can last well beyond 12 weeks. This is a much lower percentage though. I don’t think it’s helpful to lump everyone in together under the term ‘long COVID’ tbh.

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng188

Facial recognition eh? Can't read the article as it's behind a paywall, but the cynic in me is thinking how much more information do they want recorded and stored about us? Is this a precursor to such things becoming commonplace on each corner. Way to go if you want to encourage paranoia in people that they're being tracked and monitored all the time. They've got that to a degree with mobile phones, obviously, which we can barely function without.

And indeed, the equipment - do pubs / businesses have to pay for that? Is this another cronyist slide in as a government associated private company, exclusively producing the tech, has the monopoly on providing it?

Oh the potentials for abuse are endless. Deep fakes are a real thing, would I trust TPTB to be immune from tinkering with images or CCTV these days to "take a dangerous person off the streets" in the best interests of society of course.

Fortunately the shambles of T&T and other alleged public health and safety measures is somewhat assuaging my fears, but indeed how long before lots of little things take us down the social credit route?

NHS is prepping for up to 1 million affected by long covid - to the extent they need additional medical care. This is not just normal recovery from illness. This is not 'having a cough for four weeks'.

Long covid is being minimised but is a real issue in terms of costs to the state and loss of earnings etc. as well as the serious health risks.

Women are much more at risk than men and working age women seem to be worst affected.

Up to a million may be the headline but if you read the story there is no evidence that the nhs is prepping to deal with that number of long covid cases. That is a back of the envelope calculation from a doctor who didn't give his name. I do think there are people who will be left with long term damage but nowhere near that figure. Once people get some semblance of normal life back you will probably find for many people their symptoms, that are not related to internal damage, improve.

1 million is too high... cumulative known cases in UK is 4.3 million & even if you double that (due to too few tests available in early 2020), the likely % with LC at 6months post active infection is ~5%.

Could make a case for saying 500k people have LC at 6 months, and even most of them will be back to relative 'normal' by 1 year post infection. People with LC need help, but their numbers are not approaching 1 million. 100k at 12 months might be plausible. Some of them lived with other chronic health problems before covid, it's hard to know if their net state is worse may be similar but different mix. LC is a diverse set of health issues, not one distinctive syndrome at all.

I guess time will tell. As with all aspects of covid, long covid has been very much downplayed.

You think covid has been downplayed?

I don't agree that long covid has been downplayed. It's been in all of the media outlets at one point or another, government have commented on it, and it's been widely discussed elsewhere, but realistically the actual long term implications aren't yet known. No doubt when data starts rolling in more will be published.

@bumbleymummy

You think covid has been downplayed?

I don't think covid has been downplayed overall, but at the outset it was all 'oh it will never get to the UK' 'it is just like flu' etc etc

Long covid is the same now, it is a fringe issue and people say it won't be too bad.

I could easily be wrong but I think it will follow the same narrative arc.

Some of my underlying health things have been worsened by having the virus as well as some delightful other diagnosis. But then the same happened years ago when I had bad cold another time flu, never mind some other things over the years.

This is why Long CV in particular makes no sense to me. I don't go around saying yea I have Long CV even though "technically" I do. I just see it as well sometimes I recover quickly, other times I haven't been as lucky. Some times I start with one thing and come away with something else. I don't go around saying well I have long hysterectomy because as a result I now have a fucked kidney, colon and more!! (Yes I realise people have had it much worse)

Completely forgot about we don't know what it is so we will lump it into CFS and fingers crossed we will find the underlining cause Carrot.

We are being tracked though. Cctv, phones, Alexa , the internet track us all the time.
Facial recognition is probably just another tool to catch out the criminals ( now we have to wear masks this won't be as easy to do maybe ?)
I've always had the ' if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear' mentality, but it is still chipping away at our freedoms. Covid has been a wonderful excuse to do a lot of this. Once things are taken away it's never easy to get them back either.
I did read that wearing masks will be for years and years, not something I'm looking forwards to at all.
The vaccine will become mandatory because doing anything will be hard unless you've had it.
They have us all ways to be honest :(

I think that in the same of consistency they should add all vaccines to the passport. Why only covid? What about measles and TB? This makes absolutely no sense.

It is a dystopian nightmare. I worry about our future and what kind of a life we, and our children will have going forward. Once this passport has been approved the temptation to add other information will definitely be there - a previous poster mentioned missed childcare payments, council tax and parking tickets, and why not a full Chinese system with social points to determine what we can or cannot do.

Why would people that haven't got a appropriate mobile phone have to do tests if they want to go out

I didn’t say they would. It’s apparently being considered as an alternative to phone-based proof of immunity. It would be a way to not disadvantage people who haven’t got smartphones or who can’t or don’t want to be vaccinated.

A way to get back to mixing without unleashing further waves of Covid but respecting people’s choices and including the digitally poor.

One report I read suggested that landlords could choose whether to require an immunity passport. This who did could dispense with social distancing inside the venue, but for those who didn’t it would be table service and 2m distancing.

Or, people could learn to accept risk again. The risk of contracting a virus that, most likely, will only make them very mildly ill but could, potentially, make them very sick. Those who are more at risk/concerned about the virus can be vaccinated to reduce their risk of serious illness/hospitalisation. If people are still worried/can’t be vaccinated then they decide whether or not they feel comfortable taking the risk to go out and be near people who may not be immune - vaccinated or not.

If any of this ever comes to fruition and i happen to develop any life threatening illness i shall refuse all treatment except painkillers. I do not want to live if its like this or goes on like it is now.

Dystopian series broadcast in the late 70s , set in a then futuristic 1990

See episode 8 series 1 Non Citizen.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_(TV_series)

I watched the whole series on youtube two years ago. Seems even more chilling now.

@bumbleymummy

Or, people could learn to accept risk again. The risk of contracting a virus that, most likely, will only make them very mildly ill but could, potentially, make them very sick. Those who are more at risk/concerned about the virus can be vaccinated to reduce their risk of serious illness/hospitalisation. If people are still worried/can’t be vaccinated then they decide whether or not they feel comfortable taking the risk to go out and be near people who may not be immune - vaccinated or not.

it is a new risk, people are not going to just pretend it isn't there, they are going to be aware of it

Synopsises of each episode here.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0075469/

[quote MercyBooth]Synopsises of each episode here.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0075469/[/quote]
That looks well worth watching @MercyBooth, will definitely give it a whirl!

@Doyoumindfisithere people choose to take 'new risks' throughout their lives.

Surely everyone is acutely aware that if you drive a car there is a chance you could be involved in a crash with either fatal or life changing consequences (in fact wasn't there a statistic saying under 45s are more likely to die on the roads than of COVID?). But people still learn to drive and take that risk because the benefit of being to drive outweighs the risk of an accident.

A large number of people will happily accept the small risk of COVID for the benefit that living a normal life brings. In fact if life carries on like this for much longer, what indeed is the point of being alive?

I'm what I would call appropriately concerned about the virus itself, plus the long term effects of all the measures taken to minimise it, and consider my personal risk minimal. Despite having lived a life where it seems if something can go wrong or come out of left field it bloody well will .

However, I have a little less faith in humanity and community that I did, sadly, and can only hope that as people face each other in person, the online attack instinct replicated in the physical world diminishes.

In other words I'm at a point where I feel more wary of people than the virus. Which is a sad realisation to come to, as I like people as a rule.

@bumbleymummy

Or, people could learn to accept risk again. The risk of contracting a virus that, most likely, will only make them very mildly ill but could, potentially, make them very sick. Those who are more at risk/concerned about the virus can be vaccinated to reduce their risk of serious illness/hospitalisation. If people are still worried/can’t be vaccinated then they decide whether or not they feel comfortable taking the risk to go out and be near people who may not be immune - vaccinated or not.

Totally agree. We can not live like this much longer. Its a miserable existence. We have to weigh up our own risk factor as we do with everything else I life and make decisions accordingly.

I have had the first vaccine but I will still mix with friends who haven't. In fact I wouldn't ask anyone if they've had it done, its their business not mine

[quote StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind]@Doyoumindfisithere people choose to take 'new risks' throughout their lives.

Surely everyone is acutely aware that if you drive a car there is a chance you could be involved in a crash with either fatal or life changing consequences (in fact wasn't there a statistic saying under 45s are more likely to die on the roads than of COVID?). But people still learn to drive and take that risk because the benefit of being to drive outweighs the risk of an accident.

A large number of people will happily accept the small risk of COVID for the benefit that living a normal life brings. In fact if life carries on like this for much longer, what indeed is the point of being alive? [/quote]
Driving is not a new risk cars have been around for 100 years so collectively we have a lot of experience. Those who are new to driving have been passengers etc.

Covid is new, it has been around for 18 months.

So you think that because it's a risk that others have dealt with, it doesn't feel like a new risk to someone @Doyoumindfisithere? Because it very much did for me. Doesn't matter that I've been a passenger in a car- I'd only ever been driven around by my parents who were good, experienced drivers. Being a new driver and knowing the risk to myself and others weighed heavily on my mind.

COVID is new but we know a lot about it compared to a year ago. Why is the average 20, 30, 35 year old going to be worried of that risk? They know they have more chance of dying in their car.

I don’t even understand why they’re pushing for this?
Surely if the vulnerable categories (health or age) have been vaccinated and they’re no longer draining the nhs which is what it was all about with flatten the curve so the nhs can cope - and they have been protected now either with natural immunity or vaccine (we are estimated to reach herd immunity very soon)
Death rates now are the lowest average in 5 years for this time of year. So why do we need passports to prove who has been vaccinated? The young and healthy were never at mad risk that it even warrants all the
And we have protected our elderly so hooray for that. But why is this being extended and goal posts constantly moving?
You can’t coerce people into taking a vaccine they don’t want to take. And by making it a society where you either have the papers or you’re excluded is exactly that.