Lockdown’s Last Lingerings - (Covid since L2 ended)

[Hobby]

19 minutes ago, hayfield said:

I am surprised the Germans are so quiet

 

I always get the impression that they tend to "manipulate" things behind the scenes rather than in full view of everyone, especially where the EU is concerned...

[Pete the Elaner]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I notice that the EU is now going to get 9M doses from AZ UK plants, so I wonder if the generally smoothing-down of ruffled feathers over the weekend has involved HMG giving the nod to AZ to let some go. At the astounding rate things are going here, it amounts to about two days worth, and I wonder whether production is beginning to inch ahead of the rate at which people can be jabbed anyway, so that it imposes no delay here in practice.

 

Also, noticed an HMG representative (Liz Truss) talking very positively about sharing vaccine with developing countries once UK elderly and vulnerable are covered - she was on a R4 lengthy discussion, most of which was about vaccine diplomacy, at about c2215 last night. Main thing I learned from it was that India is already giving lots of doses to neighbouring countries.

 

According to the interview with AZ's CEO (a link of which was posted a few pages ago), AZ's UK contract states that they should prioritise the UK with doses produced here.

If they are producing at a rate greater than what can be administered in the UK then also being able to supply other countries is great news.

[hayfield]

37 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

I always get the impression that they tend to "manipulate" things behind the scenes rather than in full view of everyone, especially where the EU is concerned...

 

I am still surprised that their mighty industrial power is not at the forefront of the EU's quest for vaccines

 

I agree they are the paymasters now and I assume they still exercise a lot of control of what happens, however France's authority/influence is seemingly on the wane if Macron's tantrums are anything to go on, certainly they and us backed a looser in the Pasteur Institute's vaccine, I guess our order gets transferred over to the one they are now making under licence  

[Nearholmer]

Pfizer have promised a lot more, but Mrs Merkel is not best pleased and has called a "national conference" over this whole question. Some regional leaders are proposing that Russian and other vaccines should be imported ....... national self-esteem at stake here, methinks!

[lapford34102]

Had this rather Monty Pythonesque thought. Very early last year did the sages and politicians get together and agree a vaccine was going to be essential. Did they hand then job over to some experienced bod(s) somewhere and told them to get on with it. Remembering the global shortage of Athletes Foot Powder of 1983 did they get straight on their laptops and find Vaccines'R'Us, click Covid-19;expected Dec 20, quantity required 60 million, use theTreasury's Paypal account to pay for it and signed up for the weekly newsletter, then on to JabsDirect and did the same and so on.

From the Beeb see there's another new plant in Scotland for the Valneva jab, given this one, the AZ plant plus another in Stockton, can't recall whose that is, we'll have 3 at least. Has someone been really thinking ahead here?

Stu

[Hobby]

Deleted

Edited February 1, 2021 by Hobby

[John M Upton]

That silly little man at Ryan Air has started loudly campaigning for everyone to be allowed free reign to go on overseas holidays as soon as the first groups of vaccinations are done.  Hopefully the general public will use common sense and not seek any sort of overseas holiday until at least 2022 and certainly not by way of lining his pockets either....

[Hobby]

Love your optimism about the UK general public, John... Entirely misplaced, though...

[chris p bacon]

Having seen adverts for holidays in Saudi Arabia* on the tv recently I think some will already be trying to book something.

 

* A friend worked in SA fairly recently and the joke was whether his seat was in 'Spitting' or 'No Spitting' class.......I also couldn't think of a worse destination for anyone on the Western world to go to for a holiday.

[Nearholmer]

30 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

That silly little man at Ryan Air has started loudly campaigning

Maybe we need a crime along the lines of “incitement to breach Covid precautions”.

 

I bet the Chinese have one, not that I’m advocating that we should become a one-party state (that would constitute “politics” and might cause an argument).

[rocor]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Ohhhh....now I don’t think that would be a very good idea at all.......

 

If it was restricted to merits only, that would make it easily manageable, size wise at least.

[boxbrownie]

39 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

That silly little man at Ryan Air has started loudly campaigning for everyone to be allowed free reign to go on overseas holidays as soon as the first groups of vaccinations are done.  Hopefully the general public will use common sense and not seek any sort of overseas holiday until at least 2022 and certainly not by way of lining his pockets either....

Oh no, he’s not started that “Jab and Go” advert again has he?

[AY Mod]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

if Macron's tantrums are anything to go on,

 

I've asked that the heat be wound back a bit; are you prepared to do so?

[TheQ]

21 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

Having seen adverts for holidays in Saudi Arabia* on the tv recently I think some will already be trying to book something.

 

* A friend worked in SA fairly recently and the joke was whether his seat was in 'Spitting' or 'No Spitting' class.......I also couldn't think of a worse destination for anyone on the Western world to go to for a holiday.

Having work out there for 6 years I 100% agree, the slightest step out of line with their religious police and you'd be locked up.

There is the odd thing worth seeing.. Such as there an area built by the Nabateans who built Petra in Jordan, some remains of the railway line Lawrence of Arabia blew up.. There are also Historic abandoned synagogues  but I doubt whether they let you near them, they're fenced off.. Most Saudis won't admit to them or don't know about them...

[rocor]

6 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Oh no, he’s not started that “Jab and Go” advert again has he?

 

I took that to be your satirical take on a old Ryan Air advert. Unbelievable that it was an actual initiative.

 

In this age of international air travel, how quickly can a new virus spread across the world?. This question seems to have been answered. The next question is what are we going to do to prevent this happening again?.

 

 

[teaky]

Just to balance out the good news on the vaccinations front: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55889391

 

[boxbrownie]

34 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

Having seen adverts for holidays in Saudi Arabia* on the tv recently I think some will already be trying to book something.

 

* A friend worked in SA fairly recently and the joke was whether his seat was in 'Spitting' or 'No Spitting' class.......I also couldn't think of a worse destination for anyone on the Western world to go to for a holiday.

A mate of mine was based in Oman back in the 70’s installing and commissioning a radar system for the RAFO, he and his wife used to take a lot of local flights to various UAE places, his wife was absolutely disgusted with the “quality” of the flights and after one time she refused ever to fly anything but an external carrier.......the occasion was when a woman got a primes type stove/burner out of her luggage and started cooking lunch for her family onboard.......the stewards just ignored it.........she said she was well used to the spitting onboard (well everywhere actually) but that was the last straw.......oh yes as an aside he was working through the night once at the radar station and got a message from the military to turn off all systems for 24 hours, this of course peeked his interest so on it went and he watched intently as he saw several “blips” travelling from the gulf over Iran, they stopped in the desert, jiggling around a bit then a few turned back and returned to the gulf......it’s was 24 hours later that the news of the botched US rescue of the American embassy in Iran became known.....

[boxbrownie]

4 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

I took that to be your satirical take on a old Ryan Air advert. Unbelievable that it was an actual initiative.

 

In this age of international air travel, how quickly can a new virus spread across the world?. This question seems to have been answered. The next question is what are we going to do to prevent this happening again?.

 

 

Indeed, I was hoping mad when it first aired late last year, what an absolute plonker he is.

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Hobby said:

 

With respect, monkeysarefun, there are only two things that are the same between the UK and Australia/NZ, 1. They are both islands and 2. we speak the same language. But when you look at things like population density, ethnic elements, closeness to other large centres of population, etc., etc., you will realise that trying to compare the UK to Australia/NZ is like comparing Apples to Pears.

 

There are lots of things we should learn from this pandemic, and whilst we will be learning from other countries it seems that there are positive things that we've done as well. Whether the people (both in Gov and the general populace) will take any notice of the learning points is open to question. Personally I feel that many of our issues are caused by a certain percentage of the population who will use any excuse/reason to do what they want to do and not what they are told to. The vast majority will behave, but unfortunately those people won't. Comparing us with countries in the far east shows a massive difference in Culture, in something like a pandemic that difference in culture can make all the difference between life and death. Though, and I may be wrong here, it also explains why Western Europe became the economic power it did whilst the older civilisations in the far east didn't...

 

 

Thanks to @AY Mod for getting involved.

And with equal respect, if you read the report you'll see that the success here was down to building trust in the government and its covid response, collecting and using data effectively and collaboration between both sides of government, private and public sectors, business and the labour movement, nothing to do with densities or whos island is where. 

Edited February 1, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Nearholmer]

But, Monkeys, the geography here does make an enormous difference.

 

I keep saying we should have had zonal/regional physical firebreaks, but make no mistake, implementing that here would have been exceedingly difficult - just read-up on the Irish border if you want to understand the practicalities (leave out the politics, that’s not the point I’m driving at) of implementing a new land border here.

 

Aus is already a series of neatly-defined and well-separated zones, England hasn’t been since the Romans were here ..... its integrated, and densely populated in large areas.

[john new]

One hopes if this is true https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55888856 they also get a further quarantine period on arrival back in the UK.

[john new]

9 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

But, Monkeys, the geography here does make an enormous difference.

 

I keep saying we should have had zonal/regional physical firebreaks, but make no mistake, implementing that here would have been exceedingly difficult - just read-up on the Irish border if you want to understand the practicalities (leave out the politics, that’s not the point I’m driving at) of implementing a new land border here.

 

Aus is already a series of neatly-defined and well-separated zones, England hasn’t been since the Romans were here ..... its integrated, and densely populated in large areas.

And where they have been tried within the UK, for example by the Welsh administration, a segment of society blatantly ignored the rules. 

 

When out walking yesterday it was obvious from the ages and gender mix of some intermingled groups they were not from a single household, they might, of course, have all been from one support bubble but had I been a copper I would have been stopping and questioning them. No coppers in sight! I don't blame Dorset Police, there aren't enough PCs available for them to be everywhere.

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by john new
Extra bit added for clarity.

[monkeysarefun]

15 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

But, Monkeys, the geography here does make an enormous difference.

 

I keep saying we should have had zonal/regional physical firebreaks, but make no mistake, implementing that here would have been exceedingly difficult - just read-up on the Irish border if you want to understand the practicalities (leave out the politics, that’s not the point I’m driving at) of implementing a new land border here.

 

Aus is already a series of neatly-defined and well-separated zones, England hasn’t been since the Romans were here ..... its integrated, and densely populated in large areas.

 You make implementing restrictions there sound like yourre herding cats!

 

Here 40 percent of the population live in just two cities, both of which had serious outbreaks which had they not been beaten would have risked 10 million people, in comparison the rest of the country has been largely spared.

[Fenman]

29 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

...

Aus is already a series of neatly-defined and well-separated zones, England hasn’t been since the Romans were here ..... its integrated, and densely populated in large areas.

Huh. You’re obviously not from Norfolk. Or Cornwall. Or Yorkshire... (etc, etc, ad nauseam).  
 

Paul

Edited February 1, 2021 by Fenman
Damn spellchecker...

[rocor]

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 You make implementing restrictions there sound like yourre herding cats!

 

Here 40 percent of the population live in just two cities, both of which had serious outbreaks which had they not been beaten would have risked 10 million people, in comparison the rest of the country has been largely spared.

 

An unexpected statistic, Australia has 5 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants. The UK has 1.