Blah Blah

It isn't clear on the Weatherpoons thing. Tier 3 seems to include ALL pubs and bars, but not restaurants. Weatherspoons is not a restaurant chain.

Yes to all of that Spartacus.

Pretty grim assessment from the government briefing that just took place, including the evidence that you can not protect older ages groups when spread occurs in other age groups. Something needs to change. Government seems to still be resisting a localised track and trace system. Also evidence emerging that lockdown measures were lifted too early in the North, although I personally doubt that would have made much of a difference over time. If people genuinely want to avoid restrictions and lockdowns, everyone has to do their part to minimise the risk of spread, but government also needs to follow the most effective methods of tracking spread. Unless both of those things happen, I suspect we'll be in a far worse place than we were back in March and April before the Winter is out. Sky just reported that hospital admissions in Liverpool are the third highest in Europe now. That should concern everyone.

.

Outside has been safer during the summer, but that changes when people start getting seasonal colds and coughs. If you are in proximity to someone who sneezes or coughs infection (of any kind) indoors or outside, then there is a risk of catching the infection. This is why there have been real concerns about the Winter and a potential second wave.

All of that is true and it is also where I think government messaging has gone wrong. There has never been any emphasis placed on the percentage of healthy people that need ICU care to recover (a far higher number than those who die) and nor has there been enough conversation about the irregular conditions that this virus seems to also induce, like a higher incidence of strokes. All of those things need much longer term monitoring to fully understand the scale and implications of. Also true to say is that you can not achieve herd immunity with a virus that induces weak immune responses that drop off after six months. Rhinoviruses are a good example of that. And even with viruses that induce long lasting immune responses, herd immunity is rarely achieved without the help of a working vaccine. Then we get into mutations, which is why we have to develop a new vaccine for flu every year. So what is the rational response moving forward? To be honest about the pernicious nature of this virus and all its complications. To enforce the rules around masks, washing hands and social distancing, because those things combined DO work to slow spread and reduce infection. Business will adapt, and indeed, many businesses (including pubs) are operating effective ways of operating safely. We are not going back to crowded environments until this virus is dealt with one way or another. Even entertaining a notion of a world where the young can move freely while everyone over fifty has to live under restrictions and isolation will be political suicide for a party, and anyway, will fail to stop spread into those more vulnerable groups. There are other views of course, but they need to come with an honesty about what level of illness and death is acceptable to them. Then we can have a discussion about that benchmark. Just ignoring that factor isn't helpful.

They do and they are usually far bigger than that. The other thing that occurred to me, looking at the grooves, is as some part of a pulley system, with the rope gripping in those side grooves. The beam going through it then in turn, turns something else.

It is too small for a millstone. My guess would be a grinding stone to sharpen tools.

Indeed, we have discussed the role of class in privilege elsewhere, and how that cuts across ethnic groups. Those with the geniune privilege love to resort to divide and rule when the heat is on anyway.

Especially when they pull stunts like this. https://news.sky.com/story/coronvairus-dr-johnny-bananas-and-dr-person-fakename-among-medical-signatories-on-herd-immunity-open-letter-12099947?fbclid=IwAR3WRzrrsJqgkhz4GTr_xnJ0chw0lGZuzUPnW_WkSDYfu8ahPGZSY4GToCw There is an inevitability to all of this, and the reason I keep asking TE44 that question on deaths is because I think that he/she would be the first to complain if we saw the full force of this virus, and be demanding government did something. This is not flu or a common cold. The public for the most part have taken that seriously but sadly, some will never understand that unless we unleash it to do its worst. KK, I hope your relatives both make full recoveries. Not an easy time for you I know.

Back at ya. I can do pompous too. Would you like some links to peer reviewed neuroscience research around unconscious bias instead?

TheCat once again ignores the crux of my post and tries to find an issue when there isn't one. If someone finds it difficult to understand a person's accent and says so, fine. If they then throw in some comment about their origin, then that may be an indicator of something else, unconscious or otherwise. And no, not all Brits do sound the same. I have been to some parts of Scotland and struggled to understand the slang spoken.

Unconscious bias often is defined by race and there is lots of psychological research into this, that we have unconscious aversions to those who do not look like us. Disability is included in that along with ethnicity. For example, we are more likely to define a different culture that also belongs predominantly to people of a different ethnic group by that ethnicity, than we are to one from our own ethnic group. So this is how some people end up tarring all Muslims as the same (when there are fifty different national cultures depending on the Islamic country, and even more depending on the non Islamic countries) but don't apply the same blanket view to the wide range of different Christian denominations in the World. Struggling to understand a persons speech for example is another good example. There are many dialects/ accents, with all their slang that other Brits would struggle to understand. But a person would never say 'I don't mind scousers, but I do struggle to communicate well with the new village shopkeeper'. It is the need to make a point of someone being 'not of this country' that is the issue, when what the woman could say instead, is that she struggles to understand his accent, and leave the immigrant comment out of it altogether. Language matters.

And like a broken record, TE44 still won't answer the core question. How many people have to die to define a pandemic? Infection rates are rising again. So too are hospital admissions and deaths. Only a fool can not see the correlation between that and lifting lockdown. So I ask you again TE44, how many people have to be dying each day before you recognise a pandemic. Clearly a 900 a day back in April was not enough for you. Nor is in excess of 1 million globally either. When you answer that question with a figure, then we can talk about the outliers you keep citing vs the core consensus of 99 percent of everyone else. And fyi, I am going to keep asking you that question until you answer it. So you may as well.

Still not answering that question are you though? Yet you feel free to throw around hypothesized figures on other things. Hypocritical to the core.

Yes you run away now. Anything to avoid answering that question right?

And there you go again, avoiding answering the core question and resorting to insult. So c'mon, let's have an answer. How many people are you prepared to see die (or impacted for life with lung damage) before you think restrictions are needed. What is your benchmark?

Facebook and other platforms hiding behind the US constitution should have done something a long time ago. There is still plenty of material referencing Q Anon and other conspiracy theories all over them. In short, until they change their business models, from ones that encourage clickbait, they haven't really addressed the core problem. TE44, you keep presenting these ad hoc incidents as some kind of argument for doing away with the restrictions, so I ask you again, how many people are you prepared to see die (or impacted for life with lung damage) before you think restrictions are needed. What is your benchmark? It is a simple question, but you never seem to want to answer it.

But you do Clutterqueen. You wrote an incorrect statement as though it were fact when there was no basis for doing do. Worse than that, you did it with no consideration for any of the valid points being made. It is almost akin to trolling.

Where people can not do their own readings PP, the GP has a duty to arrange or advise of an alternative. Receptionists should be trained in the advice to offer. This is how local healthcare is supposed to operate. I would go back to the surgery and ask for an alternate arrangement explaining no pharmacy can be found to do it. If they do not provide one. I would make a complaint.

Why won't your GP surgery do one? If you need a repeat prescription then your GP has a duty to provide what you need for that. General healthcare has not stopped. So I would question that.

Have already gone through this with TE44, who seems to think viruses stand still at any given moment and fails to understand the difference between seasonal viruses and one that is active all the time. The usual winter flu intake will happen, and we'll see how effective this years flu vaccine is when it does. Meanwhile, we have daily exponential growth of covid as the public become more complacent. Easy enough for anyone to understand I should think.

Yes, that is what happens when someone won't accept the evidence presented to them. You know full well that influenza is one of the most monitored viruses on the planet, but your cognitive dissonance is so pronounced you think you know better than decades of highly qualified people doing that research and collecting that data. You keep repeating the same nonsense as a result.

It is arguable that opening windows on buses and trains will not really do anything to mitigate spread, given how confined the space is on those vehicles and how close people generally sit or stand to each other.

Here we go again. The world reports flu figures annually. The average deaths from flu each year form ALL of those reports going back decades is 500,000. I have linked you to those annual reports before. Stop playing games. It is getting very tedious now.