Coronavirus

[Deutsch Wolf]

I've got bipolar disorder. I've been hanging on by my fingertips for a year now. "Just a few more weeks" is something I've heard for all that time.

I've had enough to be honest, I can't live like this.

 

[Johnny75]

It is though if you want to prevent mutations or spread of new variants.

In which case we should all be locked down forever. Of course it shouldn’t be the case and we live with viruses every day and don’t have a lockdown.

At some point somebody has to say the detriment to the population by lockdown is more than people dying of Covid. That’s not a PHE argument but a political one.

I listened to the head of PHE this morning on Marr saying we’ll have to wear masks and socially distance for years without any justification. She couldn’t have been more wrong if she tried.

 

[lemonjelly]

R is irrelevant though if people aren't dying.

We don't close pubs because there's a tummy bug going around.

It isn't just the deaths, which thankfully have fallen significantly. It's also the severe illness, and impact on health services.
The vaccinations are unequivocally a major success, and combined with the current measures, have significantly reduced R, and deaths. But the impact on health services takes longer to improve. In addition, schools have reopened, and expect universities to following easter. This does risk R not falling as quickly as hoped.
The pressure on health services is significant, because we also need to work on the backlog of support, procedures and treatments that have been affected the past 12 months.
I'm hoping that we will start to see an easing of the burden on health services, combined with ongoing further vaccine rollout benefits, and also the (hopefully)better weather and longer daylight hours enable more contact than we have currently.

Got to be honest, my instinct is the current dates don't feel over cautious to me. I do agree that we've vaccinated the highest risk groups, and personally would feel more comfortable if we're reopening with that percentage is a little higher, or even a good proportion of those highest risk groups having received dose 2.

I continue to be baffled by the need to go on a foreign holiday mind.

 

[Wilf Wolf]

I've got bipolar disorder. I've been hanging on by my fingertips for a year now. "Just a few more weeks" is something I've heard for all that time.

I've had enough to be honest, I can't live like this.

We are probably paying the price for the previous gung ho approach based on optimism and little more. Everyone wants this to be the last lockdown, not least the Government who are desperate to try and rescue some good PR after 10 months of clueless decisions that were based on anything but science as they claimed. Though half the population has been vaccinated many are still within the two weeks required for it to start giving decent levels of protection. Hang in there and hopefully we are on a near constant upward trajectory now.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I have had to live with me for a year. I fucking hate me.

It's very easy to say "just a few more weeks" (which never happens) if you're in a decent environment. If it happens it happens, if not then whatever.

I live on my own with bipolar disorder. How great do you think that is?

It's fucking appalling. So please don't give me your "just in case" stuff. I should be able to go for a fucking coffee, for fuck's sake.

 

[Tredman]

I continue to be baffled by the need to go on a foreign holiday mind.

Not just holiday though is it? It’s officially illegal for my wife and kids to travel and see their family.

 

[AndyWolves]

I have had to live with me for a year. I fucking hate me.

It's very easy to say "just a few more weeks" (which never happens) if you're in a decent environment. If it happens it happens, if not then whatever.

I live on my own with bipolar disorder. How great do you think that is?

It's fucking appalling. So please don't give me your "just in case" stuff. I should be able to go for a fucking coffee, for fuck's sake.

I'd say do whatever you need to do to.

 

[Kenny]

I continue to be baffled by the need to go on a foreign holiday mind.

No one needs to go on holiday but it's something people like and want to do and over a year not doing so, people's desire will just grow.
Then of course families living overseas.

Then let's not forget the huge industry that would collapse if a ban was extended. Not just airlines and airports but all the related industries. It would be a catastrophic event in terms of jobs losses etc. At some point the attention has to turn to dealing with Covid and rebuilding economies.

 

[leedswolf]

I continue to be baffled by the need to go on a foreign holiday mind.

What's the point of going abroad, if your just going to be treated like a sheep?

Carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry.

Their blotched backs and their cardigans and their transistor radios, complaining about the tea or they don't make it properly, do they? And stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg. And sitting in their cotton sunfrocks, squirting Timothy White Suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh, 'cos they overdid it on the first day.

Being herded into countless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues, Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes...and swimming pools full of draft Red Barrel and fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children... and barging into the queues. And if you're not at your table...spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine.

Every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated local with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Bryll-creamed down and big arse presenting flamenco for foreigners.

And an adenoidal typist from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea...

 

[Tredman]

What's the point of going abroad, if your just going to be treated like a sheep?

Carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry.

Their blotched backs and their cardigans and their transistor radios, complaining about the tea or they don't make it properly, do they? And stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg. And sitting in their cotton sunfrocks, squirting Timothy White Suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh, 'cos they overdid it on the first day.

Being herded into countless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues, Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes...and swimming pools full of draft Red Barrel and fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children... and barging into the queues. And if you're not at your table...spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine.

Every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated local with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Bryll-creamed down and big arse presenting flamenco for foreigners.

And an adenoidal typist from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea...

I’m not sure you could come across as more patronising, arrogant or condescending if you tried. Sure you will though.

 

[Kenny]

That's Monty Python for you

 

[leedswolf]

Indeed.

 

[sycophantia]

What's the point of going abroad, if your just going to be treated like a sheep?

Carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry.

Their blotched backs and their cardigans and their transistor radios, complaining about the tea or they don't make it properly, do they? And stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg. And sitting in their cotton sunfrocks, squirting Timothy White Suncream all over their puffy, raw, swollen, purulent flesh, 'cos they overdid it on the first day.

Being herded into countless Hotel Miramars and Bellevues, Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes...and swimming pools full of draft Red Barrel and fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children... and barging into the queues. And if you're not at your table...spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine.

Every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated local with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Bryll-creamed down and big arse presenting flamenco for foreigners.

And an adenoidal typist from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea...

Never come across any of this while on hols abroad, tbf we tend not to go to the usual hotspots and stay in small independant hotels in the middle of nowhere if possible.
Ultimately holidays abroad will not just be our decision anyway. Lots of countries will still be in the shit by the Summer and won't want hoards of visitors.

 

[leedswolf]

Never come across any of this while on hols abroad, tbf we tend not to go to the usual hotspots and stay in small independant hotels in the middle of nowhere if possible.
Ultimately holidays abroad will not just be our decision anyway. Lots of countries will still be in the shit by the Summer and won't want hoards of visitors.

My post was a Monty Python sketch satirising package holidays... as a riposte to lj's baffling statement.

 

[AndyWolves]

Geez, surely "transistor radio" gave it away even if you didn't know the reference?

 

[Kenny]

won't want hoards of visitors.

They will but its down to how they can cope with them.

Certain places will be fine to visit, if the vaccine programmes are doing well. Obviously this puts the EU countries in the shit unless there is a sudden change in numbers (J&J to the rescue). The USA will probably be fine. Australia & New Zealand will just keep their borders closed until 2022.

In other covid news- The country to keep eyes on is still Israel. Vaccinated enough to reopen everything bar travel and their case numbers etc just keep falling.

 

[leedswolf]

They will but its down to how they can cope with them.

Certain places will be fine to visit, if the vaccine programmes are doing well. Obviously this puts the EU countries in the shit unless there is a sudden change in numbers (J&J to the rescue). The USA will probably be fine. Australia & New Zealand will just keep their borders closed until 2022.

In other covid news- The country to keep eyes on is still Israel. Vaccinated enough to reopen everything bar travel and their case numbers etc just keep falling.

I thought the latest was Australia keeping borders closed until June 21 and hotel quarantine possibly extended until start 22?

 

[sycophantia]

My post was a Monty Python sketch satirising package holidays... as a riposte to lj's baffling statement.

Sorry, brain fade on my part

 

[sycophantia]

They will but its down to how they can cope with them.

Certain places will be fine to visit, if the vaccine programmes are doing well. Obviously this puts the EU countries in the shit unless there is a sudden change in numbers (J&J to the rescue). The USA will probably be fine. Australia & New Zealand will just keep their borders closed until 2022.

In other covid news- The country to keep eyes on is still Israel. Vaccinated enough to reopen everything bar travel and their case numbers etc just keep falling.

Hopefully you're right, we'll see.....we made the decision that we'd holiday in the UK this year, months ago

 

[Kenny]

Hopefully you're right, we'll see.....we made the decision that we'd holiday in the UK this year, months ago

Just got a USA trip from last May to go on. Thats booked in for August 31st this year now. Outside of that, its UK but the first one in Scotland at the end of May is still doubtful I reckon.