Guilt Free Railing 11

[WouldBeGood]

The end was not nigh,and still looking far far away, so here’s the latest thread.

Usual railing rules apply: all rails or good news welcome, no nauseating positivity or resilience wankery. 😃

Alcohol specific deaths up 17% in Scotland in 2020. Worst rates since 2008. Most deprived are the most affected.

Yet another shameful statistic. And shows the minimum pricing and Puritanical approach doesn’t work.

And they want to give themselves more unfettered powers, in cahoots with the misogynistic, stupid potato.

I’m fed up today.

But in satisfying news, the zero Covid utopia of NZ has fallen: lockdown for one case! Delta has arrived 😱And they’ve suspended doing vaccines during it, although their vaccination rates are already low.

The SNP showing authoritarian tendencies? Well blow me over.
That and Ahern pleading with the taliban over women's rights - that's going well.

The situation in NZ (and Australia for that matter) is very unfortunate, but does bring home how unrealistic the zero COVID strategy is in delta variant times. Even if they do manage to get high vaccination rates (and NZ in particular has very low rates astonishingly, given that that is their only route out), it won't be enough to stop delta spreading, and they are going to have to have an exit wave at some point. Either that or keep tight border controls forever, with intermittent lockdowns forever as the inevitable cases get through (especially if they are unwilling to tolerate any cases at all). Ahern's approach starting to look a bit short sighted and naive as much of the world nears the end of the pandemic and comes out the other side.

Fingers crossed onceupon! You've gone one step further than me, and I go for the anyway - that's always an option! And thanks for the website ideas sassanach. I've never really gone through the proper job application approach - my first job I got by buying a bus day ticket and taking my CV round to all the consultancies in Edinburgh listed in some directory (old skool), and subsequent ones have been through agencies approaching me for particular jobs just when I was pissed off with what I was doing. But my luck in that area has dried up, sadly!

Agreed, the SG isn't looking too good at the moment on lots of fronts. It is rather gloomy.

Not convinced the NZ news is "satisfying" - but I agree they do seem to have squandered their early advantage of being miles from anywhere by being really slow on the vaccines. The only way I could see their isolation approach working is by going "hard and fast" on the vaccines (having bet their farm on vaccines being an option before any had been invented) and then when covid did inevitably get into the country, letting it do its thing among a really well vaccinated population, so keeping the hospitals reasonably free to treat anyone who did need it. But it seems they have dithered on the vaccines (possibly because the population doesn't really see covid as a threat as "we don't have it here, and we're not going anywhere else") and are still in the same situation of being really vulnerable to the virus, so still can't allow anyone in or out and have to close everything at the drop of a hat (albeit at the moment only for a few days). I'm still not convinced that's sustainable or enviable, regardless of how "normal" the rest of their life is - though I do have sympathy of course.

We have kiwi friends who are pulling their hair out with parents and friends over the vaccination.
As things have been so "normal" for them many don't see the point in getting it and the antivax propaganda is high!
I actually ended up on a video call with one of my friends parents explaining the pot luck nature of it and long covid (they have met me before) as my friend was so worried about them.

The difficulty is that they have 23 places to trace as well as where the original transmission came from. NZ do have effective track and trace which does go to root source unlike most of Europe which is limited.

Satisfying for me as it enables me to be an “I told you so” smunt

I dunno, I'm pretty sure they're satisfied with less than 30 deaths compared to our, what, 8000 or so?!

@WouldBeGood

Hurray for a good sleep *@ssd*! And to a better day because of it.

Thank you

And @ResilienceWanker and anyone who wishes me a good sleep, i feel a million times better today

Did my first lateral flow yesterday as i felt so shit but glad it was negative

Im still shit scared of getting it, mind you im shit scared of everything these days, dont know whats happened to me, i was a brave wee bugger as a youngster

I think a lot of us are suffering from anxiety @ssd, either generalised or about something specific (which might be displaced - I have non-COVID health anxiety). I spoke to a mental health nurse a few months ago and she confirmed it's happening to people from all walks of life, even people who previously felt they were more able to cope. It's the relentless pressure of 18 months of pandemic messaging and 'hypervigilance' that's to blame in my case - my brain is now hard wired to be super aware of everything and I've absorbed this idea that if I'm not careful and relax even a bit I (or someone I love) will be in mortal danger. It's nonsense of course, and this feeling is completely disproportionate to the risk at this point (and maybe always was). I'm forcing myself to do 'normal' things as much as I can to try and reset my brain, and am throwing off all the COVID behaviours I'm allowed to. I don't wear a mask unless I'm forced to, don't worry about distancing, and go to a wide range of places. I think it's working for me.

@ssd

Im still shit scared of getting it, mind you im shit scared of everything these days, dont know whats happened to me, i was a brave wee bugger as a youngster

Weren't we all! When you're a teenager you think you'll last forever. Cut to your forties and it's - oh fuck half of my life, if I'm lucky is behind me and I still didn't lose two stone/stop smoking/go for that run.

Exactly include, so many years of broken promises to reform myself!

I'm nearly 55 and am going to force myself to go for a walk soon
I have health anxiety too @Y0uCann0tBeSer10us. Its hellish.

@riverrunning

Exactly include, so many years of broken promises to reform myself!

might as well rename yourself snp in honour of the kings and queens of broken promises!

Glad a better sleep was had @ssd.

I hate how restless but unmotivated the anxiety makes me. I can't settle to much but also not motivated to do anything, like go out or housework or even watching tv. I just flit about doing half jobs or pacing around feeling guilty about the stuff i'm not doing.

Hahaha - just waiting to see how rising alcohol deaths are all the fault of the UK.

Anxiety is awful and still so poorly understood by people.

@TheGenealogist

Wtf have I just seen. Walked past the local primary school at playtime. Supervising staff in high vis coats, masks and gloves. One has an apron. OUTSIDE.

🤔 wtf???

I feel frustrated that we are now 18months in and still we haven’t figured out to what extent covid is transmitted by touch. I’m suspicious that it’s mainly airborne but I’d like to see hard evidence.
It feels futile for the kids to be sanitising at the door to school, when they are then rammed in a class with 29 other kids.

@riverrunning

Hahaha - just waiting to see how rising alcohol deaths are all the fault of the UK.

Anxiety is awful and still so poorly understood by people.

I don't think it's about fault, but I read somewhere this morning that this year (oh, maybe last year? can't remember) England and Wales had a 20% rise. So recognition that we're all in the same shit, I guess.

@tiredoftiers I think nobody really wants to say that it's exclusively (or as good as) airborne, because fixing that is a hugely difficult and expensive issue.

Getting people to clean their hands is cheap and easy, so let's do that and we can all feel good about ourselves.

[quote IncludeWomenInThePrequel]@tiredoftiers I think nobody really wants to say that it's exclusively (or as good as) airborne, because fixing that is a hugely difficult and expensive issue.

Getting people to clean their hands is cheap and easy, so let's do that and we can all feel good about ourselves.[/quote]
Ha yep nail on head!

I know there was webinars with public health scientists, environmental health and public health bodies (as DH attended them) which highlighted that ventilation was a much bigger contributor. Held around the same time/shortly after they started going on about ventilation! But I don't know if these are publicly available.

Majority of info and studies have shown that due to environmental conditions etc it actually doesn't survive in enough viral load. But as you say govt doesn't want to admit this as its expensive to correct so they get us to do cheap things instead which actually make little difference at the level which everyone applies it at!

Providing adequate ventilation in schools, for example, is an almost impossible task given the age and layout of much of the building stock.

It would be excellent if governments (and I mean any government in the world really) took this on board, even before the next pandemic, but they'll claim there's no money and kick the cab down the road to the next lot.

You can get stand alone filtration units which are also being researched to how effective they are for covid.
But obviously these cost money for each classroom to sort! There was a report also which highlighted the issue within schools for ventilation.

The big issue is air build up without ventilation. No amount of wearing a cloth or surgical mask will reduce that risk govts know full well about it but keep quiet about it (probably to prevent a backlash!)
Instead we get lectures about the importance of things when actually the difference it makes isn't big with alpha and delta when compared to ventilation. But still you will get people who believe full hearted that only if you break the rules do you catch it or its somehow peoples fault for not following govt advice!