Guilt Free Railing 9

[WouldBeGood]

Nine!!!

@WouldBeGood

Unfortunately *@latissimusdorsi* some of them are the faithful and wouldn’t break Queen Nic’s rules, or even guidance

Well there is what they say and what they do...

I've probably broken less rules than most, virtually none I think, but my views and opinions on the SG are less than approving.

I've not broken the "roolz" mainly because the lock downs/masks have affected my mental health to the point that I really don't want to do very much anymore.

We cannot go back with the same restrictions in place. Absolutely not different to rest of U.K. children, that’s not acceptable.

I’d be pretty pissed off if we did, and God only knows how staff in schools who have to do the actual planning would feel about it!

I suppose it hasn’t technically been decided even if that group has agreed on it, though, because government could still say “no, not doing that” and do something else instead. 🤷‍♀️

I REALLY hope they don't keep the bubbles/isolation policy going as it is so disruptive - an absolute nightmare quite honestly. I don't know how they can justify it when England and Wales are prioritising education, but then again they were the only ones shutting nurseries back in January despite the lack of evidence of spread and ample evidence of harm. Education hasn't exactly been a priority for the SG.

Perhaps they'll leak this 'idea', assess the public reaction, and if it's too unfavourable do something else a week before schools go back while claiming that it was only ever an idea and never the plan at all. That's how these things work isn't it?

What a suprise it's hidden in some notes rather than a proper announcement about schools! Continous here we go again on issues! A bit like when they tried to say new mothers were always allowed people into their houses for support which was complete bollocks as MSP letters said the opposite!

It’s here: www.gov.scot/publications/covid-19-education-recovery-group-minutes-10-june-2021/

Due to current levels of uncertainty, especially linked to the delta variant, the proposed approach is to maintain the current mitigations to the end of term, and to carry them forward to the start of the next term. The situation will be monitored over the summer and the start of term. Requests were made for an alternative approach to contact tracing to be put in place for the start of the summer break as was done at Christmas. A decision to either ease or maintain mitigations would then be made once the new term had started and we had greater levels of clarity regarding the state of the virus. This decision would be based on the assessment of the public health position in the wider society. Pupils will be required to do Lateral Flow Tests the week prior to returning.

The paper received positive feedback. It was agreed that this was the optimal approach under the circumstances and one that will give the maximum level of certainty possible at this juncture to aid planning within schools and local authorities.

That group must have met several times between then and now though so who even knows what they’re planning at the moment.

Thanks @GoldenOmber , well good luck to them trying to force all DCs to do lateral flow testing. Plus a week before so hardly even useful.

It was me @riverrunning who got my Greece holiday cancelled by TUI the bastards.

Would cost more money to go from an English airport and the dates didn't suit either with our annual leave.

Definitely something to do with SG rules, either current rules or something behind the scenes?

Yeah, so annoying yedancer - I'm giving it a few days and will see then, I figure it might be worth rebooking as late as possible...20 percent off isn't a gear incentive when all the other options are a lot more for somewhere you weren't that keen to go.

The thing about tier 0 and tier -1 etc is the newspeak aspect of it - we must demonstrate progress therefore we'll make a nonsense of language to that end.

@riverrunning I definitely think if you want to get abroad it's worth waiting until the latest possible moment to see what's happening where.

Yes that seems to be the best strategy - although I've got a friend who says the opposite as the more times tui cancels the better the discounts get!

I'd like to rail about the fact that industry leaders warned the PM that food shortages would result as many EU haulage firms have pulled out of the UK due to the horrendous paperwork. The PM responded by increasing the hours drivers can do ( despite drivers warning this will cause an increase in crashes).
We also now have Lord Frost and the PM stating the NI protocol isn't working ( the one that they actually proposed and said it was flawless). My friend in NI has been having a nightmare getting goods delivered. Absolutely ridiculous.

@StarryEyeSurprise

I'd like to rail about the fact that industry leaders warned the PM that food shortages would result as many EU haulage firms have pulled out of the UK due to the horrendous paperwork. The PM responded by increasing the hours drivers can do ( despite drivers warning this will cause an increase in crashes). We also now have Lord Frost and the PM stating the NI protocol isn't working ( the one that they actually proposed and said it was flawless). My friend in NI has been having a nightmare getting goods delivered. Absolutely ridiculous.

Bit of a insight into the issues scexit would cause IMO!

There was a great labour MP on loose women of all places who said politicians in elections promise people the moon on a stick its never going to live up to that. She was on about a different topic but it rang very true to me with brexit and independence statements....... The moon on a stick!

@StarryEyeSurprise yes, the whole thing is a total shambles.

And the Covid thing a handy excuse, rather than it all being eminently foreseeable.

I think I’ve gotten very cynical as I wondered whether the decision to put France on the amber plus level was so there was less issues at the ports caused by everyone going on holiday and the paperwork involved in that added to the paperwork caused by Brexit.

Like the “Kent variant” at a very handy time @Icannever

I no longer think it’s possible to be too cynical

I believe there is also a huge issue with a lack of HGV drivers that isn't all brexit related. Because of covid restriction loads haven't been able to take tests. Then there is the whole way they were treated during lock down when they were struggling to get places to get food and toilets and showers. It's never simple. I enjoyed Alyn Smith getting his arse handed to him about eu trade. He's such an odious shite.

He’s a creepy fucker, that one @ElephantOfRisk

I don't know what I'm missing but surely it can't be that hard to train HGV drivers.

It's not@Lockdownbear but there is a huge backlog of everyone needing to take driving tests as they haven't been allowed to do tests or indeed get lessons/training.

I think it's quite expensive to train as HGV driver but it's well paid once qualified
Apparently gov told haulage industry over 2 yrs ago to start training more British drivers in preparation for Brexit but they didn't due to cost
Then Covid hit!

Morning all.

I'm very sorry to hear about holidays from Scotland being cancelled. It must be bitterly disappointing.

Resilience I hope your lightheadedness is improving.

Re NS and the JCVI decision, I THINK the JCVI wasn't asked to consider all the implications. Their remit was a narrower health risk/benefit of covid/vaccination risk to teenagers rather than a wider consideration of the harms to teenagers and the rest of society from the effect of teenagers getting Covid, eg close contacts having to self isolate, disruption to education etc. So that is presumably what NS is referring to. However, if she had spelt that out her coms would have come across much better.

genealagist You'd think there could be an exception for family gatherings. People who do stick to the numbers rules won't avoid spreading covid among their family if they stick to the letter of the law by spending time together with the same number of people but in different households. Not that any of these laws are workable anyway.

Blanket self isolation rules are ridiculous now. Nobody seems to mention how ridiculous it is that people who have recently had covid are still required to self isolate if they're a close contact of a positive case. I'd love to hear someone trying to justify that one. I suppose they could say that an exemption for recently Covid positive people could be claimed by anyone as an excuse to break the rules and would be difficult to prove. Oh wait.....

Thanks mibbe! Yes, I'm back to normal now, and I can smell and taste again - yay!

On the JCVI, yes possibly, though frankly, only looking at the risk vs benefit (medically) for children sounds like it should be exactly the JCVI remit! It's not their job to decide education policy based on that, or how important it is that education for many isn't disrupted vs a small number of children being hospitalised with heart issues vs some children getting long covid. That is purely on the SG to reach a decision as to how they are going to act on the advice that the medical risk to children of covid (in terms of hospitalisations and deaths - which is the only thing the vaccine programme aims to prevent... anything else is a bonus) is outweighed by the risk of the vaccine. England isn't carrying on with class isolation due to contacts at the moment, with the same advice on vaccines, so it's not a foregone conclusion that no vaccination = need to keep bubbles.

Admittedly, the media reports did suggest that the JCVI were straying into that a bit, but looking at their actual press release, they said... "Until more safety data is available and has been evaluated, a precautionary approach is preferred.... Based on the fact that previously well children, if they do get COVID-19, are likely to have a very mild form of the disease, the health benefits of vaccinating them are small. The benefits of reducing transmission to the wider population from children are also highly uncertain, especially as vaccine uptake is very high in older people who are at highest risk from serious COVID-19 infection. We will keep this advice under review as more safety and effectiveness information becomes available." (my emphasis, given NSs and SJs later requests that they keep it under review!)

If NS is saying they should have considered eg long covid too, that seems to be misunderstanding their purpose and the purpose of the vaccine programme, and passes the buck a bit. And I'm not sure we even know if the vaccine does prevent long covid reliably, given it doesn't prevent transmission nearly as well as it prevents hospitalisation and death?

And I agree on the contact SI for people with recent infection! At the moment, I think once you leave your 10 day SI you're fair game for being a close contact again (even if someone in your house comes down with symptoms on day 11 having been locked in with you for the previous 10 days)! I think the argument is that you can still pass it onto others even if your antibodies mean you don't get ill again. But if double jagged people are going to be let off contact isolation, recently positive people should be too, as the same risk applies. Except recently positive people may not be able to prove they are negative with a pcr test for 90 days... so if that is a condition they impose in Scotland for avoiding SI (as suggested by NS) that could be a problem.

@ResilienceWanker they are examining the link between long covid and those vaccinated who get it. It is possible to have long covid if asystomatic but this is rare (going by long covid support groups that I'm in). The studies so far also indicate that the more symptoms a person has in the first week of covid infection the more likely they are to develop long covid. So if vaccination brings it down to a mild case there maybe a link of reduced long covid but it's still very early for this. There are a few double vaccinated who have got the infection but it's still too early to say.
Long covid also disproportionately effects women compared to men which will be another factor.

The zoe app has a webiner on long covid next Wednesday if anyone is interested. The panorama programme scientist was still predicting 10-20% of cases ending up as long covid but there is limited data so far on what the vaccination does

@latissimusdorsi

I think it's quite expensive to train as HGV driver but it's well paid once qualified Apparently gov told haulage industry over 2 yrs ago to start training more British drivers in preparation for Brexit but they didn't due to cost Then Covid hit!

Yes. EU drivers don't want to come to the UK as they're often paid per KM so nothing if waiting for hours at a port due to ridiculous paperwork the UK Government introduced post Brexit. Those that had moved here don't earn enough under Pitel's immigration to qualify as 'skilled' immigrants. I just can't get my head around the Government's solution being to increase driving time ( put in place to prevent deaths as let's face it - if a lorry driver loses concentration or falls asleep it's mot the 30 tonne 8 wheeler which will come off worst). And the fact the press are reporting the issues being to a 'pingdemic. ' Funny we didn't have these issues in Dec / Jan when still part of the EU.

On Long COVID in children, the JCVI did consider this as part of their deliberations as described here.

To quote: "Concerns have been raised regarding post-acute COVID-19 syndrome (long COVID) in children. Emerging large-scale epidemiological studies indicate that this risk is very low in children, especially in comparison with adults, and similar to the sequelae of other respiratory viral infections in children."

I think part of the issue is that there have been a lot of very poor studies on long COVID, some don't even have control groups, so it's prevalence in the population generally has been overestimated. That's not to say there's no such thing of course and obviously some are badly affected, but prevalence of 1-5% seems more reasonable. In children it seems even less likely, perhaps because they are generally less affected by COVID generally, and properly conducted studies show very little incidence at all.

They also did consider educational impacts and note the government's plan to change the use of NPIs in this regard: "Children and young people who have SARS-CoV2 infection generally do not become so unwell that they need to take much, or any, time off sick from education. Moreover, recent changes to national policy on NPIs in schools, in the context of a successful adult vaccination programme, should substantially reduce the impact of COVID-19 on children and young people’s education."

There really isn't any area that NS is suggesting they look at that they haven't already considered. It is purely that she doesn't like the outcome and wants to get that on record.