COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Given some of the comments here. Zero.

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Reading between the lines, with little or no public transport on Christmas Day, the government have just said ‘good luck’ to everyone in tiers 1-3 who doesn’t live within walking/cycling distance of their family and doesn’t own a car.

Will things be back to normal? No. Absolutely not.

Will things be better than they are this year? Hopefully. But it’ll depend on how well vaccines work in real-life, and how well people are able to keep to following guidelines in the meantime. At the very least, I think mask wearing and social distancing will still be required.

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Mine did, too. But it’s wrong. First page of this
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1611/pdfs/uksi_20201611_en.pdf

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Can you cite your source for this?

Wikipedia says the death rate from traffic accidents is 2.9 per 100,000 population in the UK. (The 5.7 figure apparently relates to deaths per 100,000 vehicles). Source: List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia

Your quoted death rate from Covid sounds low to me. We’re up to 70,000 deaths already (source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths), and we have a population of about 70 million, and covid’s been here for less than a year, so we’re looking at a rate of at least 100 deaths per 100,000 population per year.

Which suggests that Covid is killing at least 30x more people than car accidents. Which feels right, cos my local hospital has dozens of people critically unwell with Covid, and virtually no critically unwell trauma patients.

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Also I’m not sure when deaths in car accidents/incidents or old people dying from seasonal influenza or whatever the stat of choice themselves became inalienable and so fine to compare to a pandemic as some sort of moderator

Car deaths are too high and banning driving by hooomans probably would cut that

We shouldn’t be inured to old people dying from the flu, which similar social distancing and hand washing probably would help with annually

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One of the government scientists made the point yesterday. The incidence of flu is expected to be lower this season because of the social distancing etc.

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I read a very interesting article earlier in the year during the first lockdown about the (positive in a good way) effect it might have on HIV infections owing to the short window where people are at their most infecting, PREP and lockdown

So maybe 2020 is not a total wash

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This gave me a little chuckle as I was reading it. Basically a time line of a few things he’s said about Corona up to what his actions are now :rofl:

One day the lot of them will realise that you shouldn’t be over promising things in a global pandemic and stop predicting what the future holds. Deal with the facts as they are and leave it at that.

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It surprises me that a party with such a professed high regard for British history wouldn’t recognise the danger of promising it would be all over by Christmas, actually.

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It’s what happens to be fair when you’re out of touch with everything and just full of :poop:

I’m not sure I’ve witnessed a moment yet this year where is hasn’t come back to bite him or other ministers. It’s always good to laugh at the excuses saying they didn’t mean this or that when you’ve got the actual clips of what’s been said.

Prior to the new Tier 4 thing, I had seen plenty of people plan to go back home “a day or two earlier” than the Travel Window would allow - some of them being sensible: “I will self Isolate at Mum + Dads for a week, have a 2 weeks Christmas, come home and self isolate again”.

Personally, I wouldn’t do it, but given the advice was “We’re in tier 3 but you can pretty much break all that on the 23rd for a week”, I can see the “what’s the harm in going a few days earlier logic”.

I think also everyone is getting Rule Fatigue at this point - Seems the rules change often enough to lose track of it. Obviously not an excuse, but I can at least see people thinking that “If X is OK, then surely Y should be fine too”. At least in some of the “minor” bending of the rules, not the more egregious rule breaking.

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Yes, as of 0001 this morning, my point being it wasn’t an offence for anyone who did it yesterday.

I am not saying I agree with what they did, just that it wasn’t an offence, as someone stated it was.

Well then all those people who rushed out of London last night, but who came back today won’t commit offences tonight, will they?

Who left yesterday and came back today
that doesn’t make much sense.

Whether or not they’ve committed an offence doesn’t matter in the slightest. The resources aren’t there to make sure there are consequences and people know that.

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Offence or not the bottom line is that it’s reckless and selfish.

All those that risk it for one day are actually risking not seeing their family members ever again or inflicting that on another innocent family.

I couldn’t live with either on my conscience so as upsetting as it may be, it’s an easy decision to sacrifice one day for many more in the future.

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Darwin Award winners, the lot of them.

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Not quite the same; Darwin is killing yourself through stupidity, but this is killing others :neutral_face:

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Actually ‘sacrifice’ is too strong of a word because there’s lots of technology available to connect with your family.

Have a zoom call, a few drinks and play some games. I’ve done this a few times now and it’s obviously not as good as being there in person but it was a good laugh - everyone had a great time. You can do the same with opening gifts too.

I even bought a ‘snugzy’ so I can be around in my parents home :laughing: