• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Coronavirus

Cancer isn’t contagious.

Edit: For what it's worth, I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but only because it's too late to do anything. You're not coming back from 4000 cases per day at this point. But just because the UK completely failed to control this from day one doesn't mean lockdown isn't worth it. It absolutely is, but it's got to be part of a proper plan to control your borders, to trace and isolate, to penalise those who have tested positive and continue to go about in their community.

Unless you do it to an extreme level, it's not worth doing it at all. And in the UKs case, you're destroying your economy and you're seeing many deaths.

Some Cancer is however curable, which isnt happening because the NHS is shut down and endless delays.
 
You should have the right to isolate if you feel it's needed.

Just as the rest of us should have the right to our freedom.

And that is the crux of it.

My dad self isolates because he is high risk but his view is the world should move on and find a way forward.

Based on where I sit within the level of my company not only am I exposed to the daily fight at home myself to carry on with two kids who are getting more and more disillusioned with life and a wife clearly struggling in part with mental health but also staff of between 19 and 35 of which makes up 70% of our company who we have calls with daily, many in tears over the threats to their jobs, their housing, finances and thats before we get to their mental state. We have done what we can to set up local support bubbles and regular check in points like calls and gifts to raise spirits but we cant continue for another 6 months.

Im not using stats or reports here just human nature and common sense based on my experiences since March both personally and professionally, if we remain in this semi lockdown state for another 6 months you are going to see huge implications that will make todays look like a summer holiday.
 
And that is the crux of it.

My dad self isolates because he is high risk but his view is the world should move on and find a way forward.

Based on where I sit within the level of my company not only am I exposed to the daily fight at home myself to carry on with two kids who are getting more and more disillusioned with life and a wife clearly struggling in part with mental health but also staff of between 19 and 35 of which makes up 70% of our company who we have calls with daily, many in tears over the threats to their jobs, their housing, finances and thats before we get to their mental state. We have done what we can to set up local support bubbles and regular check in points like calls and gifts to raise spirits but we cant continue for another 6 months.

Im not using stats or reports here just human nature and common sense based on my experiences since March both personally and professionally, if we remain in this semi lockdown state for another 6 months you are going to see huge implications that will make todays look like a summer holiday.


Without down playing this - I sure you know I am not

This is happening to millions up and down the country

Government wants us to give more, some dont have anything left to give - when are they going to start looking after the mass majority of people?
 
its the long term effects that concern, I’m young, well, I’m not “old”, but I have a heart condition, myocarditis could really fudge me up

the effects can be debilitating for months after infection, this is bad brick that we need to get on top of

For people with conditions yes, thats why it is best to shield them from day one, but the vast VAST majority of people, the 100,000 per day in April are all living normal lives with no major reports than small and I mean small numbers having a struggle getting back fighting fit.

If the recovery for people was that big an issue it would be blanket reported and made alot bigger news than we currently hear, you barely hear about any issue. Thats not to say there are non and like I said for those with underlining conditions clearly. But you get the odd once a month report checking in on people to see how they are and the odd person complains of tiredness.

There is no one report of a footballer having to take more time off because they could not get back to full fitness, now I know they are fit but if CV was as bad a recovery as people stat surely it would affect a highly tuned athlete more? Surely set them back in training? Most get back quickly and to same levels. They have alot less room for maneuver and we do.

People have the data, the scaremongers like @scaramanga cant dispute the facts but what they tend to do now is tell you the Virus is somehow going to manipulate and start killing those healthy and under 45 or women, but the facts are more women are getting the virus because the lockdown and where we are now is bias towards men to stay home where women have more exposing jobs, they are not DYING though and the death rate is slowed and those dying are still within the age and vulnerability bracket they were in April. So telling people that the virus is somehow going to change path and start killing fit and healthy 20 to 45 year olds is a guess at best.
 
Not quite the 4 year skive and jolly now it always has been

Matt Hanrooster has refused to rule out banning students from returning home at Christmas, to limit the spread of coronavirus outbreaks.

The health secretary was responding to a question about concerns that students could be spreading Covid-19, amid numerous university-based outbreaks.

At Glasgow University 120 students have tested positive for Covid-19 and are among 600 self-isolating there.

Academics had warned against the mass movement of the UK's million students.

The University and College Union had called for students to be taught wholly online, from home until Christmas, ahead of the start of term, but ministers advised some face-to-face learning was key to students' mental health.

This has meant up to a million students have returned to their university premises or are commuting there regularly.

In a response to a question on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme about whether students would be asked to stay in their university towns at Christmas, Mr Hanrooster said he had "learned not to rule things out".

"I don't want to have a situation like that and I very much hope we can avoid it.

"We have said throughout that our goal is to suppress the virus, whilst protecting the economy and protecting education.

"And protecting people in education whether it's school or university is obviously critical as is protecting the economy."

He added: "In terms of universities, we are working very closely with them to try to make sure the students are safe, but that they can also get their education."

"I've learned not to rule things out and one of the challenges that we have is how to make sure people are as safe as possible."

But he added: "This is not our goal, I don't want to leave you with the expectation - but we have to work on all contingencies at the moment."

It comes after a growing number of outbreaks on university campuses, with students isolating in their residential groups at Glasgow, Dundee and Liverpool.

Boris Johnson has said universities have been given a "clear request not to send students home in the event of an outbreak, so as to avoid spreading the virus across the country".

University students are being urged not to hold parties in their halls of residence under the rule of six, and to avoid socialising in places that do not have Covid-19 protections in place.

Many universities are warning students they face fines or even having their courses terminated if they do not follow the regulations.

Universities have taken extensive measures in their buildings to minimise risks on campuses and many lectures are already being taught online, but there is less control over what takes place off university premises.

But minutes of a recent meeting of the government's scientific advisory group on emergencies, suggest ministers were aware of the risks of bringing students back to university and sending them home at the end of term.

The minutes of the 1 September meeting said: "Sage noted that risks of larger outbreaks spilling over from HE institutions are more likely to occur towards the end of the academic term, coinciding with Christmas and New Year period when students return home.

"This could pose risk to both local communities and families, and will require national oversight, monitoring and decision-making."

UCU general secretary Jo Grady has said the evidence was clear that online learning should be the default position and that government should be working to prevent outbreaks not creating conditions for them.

She said:" students and their parents will be rightly worried about being locked down in an unfamiliar area over Christmas.

"Locking students down at Christmas is based on a flawed boarding school vision of university that ignores the fact thousands of students and staff commute every day around the UK to and from university.

"Threatening to lock students up over the festive period is not the solution."

She also urged the government to act now, before thousands more students move onto campuses this weekend.

It was completely irresponsible to let students go back to university when outbreaks have already started, she added.

University leaders say they have working hard for months to ensure students can return to their campuses safely.

"Ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of students, staff and local communities in the new academic year is the number one priority for universities," said a Universities UK spokeswoman.

UUK said institutions were taking action to encourage responsible student behaviour, would continue to follow the latest government and public health advice, and were working in partnership with local authorities and public health bodies "to ensure that effective and rapid outbreak response plans are in place and clearly understood".
 
Without down playing this - I sure you know I am not

This is happening to millions up and down the country

Government wants us to give more, some dont have anything left to give - when are they going to start looking after the mass majority of people?

And I know you are not down playing it but you have done what I was trying to prove......my example is a small example, times it by the country and its 10 times worse than even I am explaining and thats not scaremongering thats absolute facts of life. If 30% of our company are calling in fear of the rent and mortgage as a result of potential job loss how much of the rest of the country are doing so? I gauge alot more.

For me the government support as someone who has seen it and how it works for a company has been beyond expectations, we expect it now because we have had it but I tell you now before furlough was announced no one had an idea it would exist of the government were going to be so supportive, now it is here its expected and people act like its the norm. Its saved our company in short and saved us making people redundant and we will need it to continue BUT I dont expect it and I also believe it is not the answer, you may as well make people redundant than keep a shell of a company going and pay everyone a guaranteed universal credit to cover their outgoings up to 2500. But the real alternative would be to work in a sensible way and give organisations a chance to work and take the burden off the government, regardless of what we want as a company people dont want to live like this, people are thankful of furlough but we have staff begging to do work on the scheme with us but they cant, they want to work. And I tell you the state of the company or my own welfare is not primary in this, the people that work for us and me are, the company could lay everyone off and have a right too next month, hibernate and come back next year worse case but thats not why we have a company, a business. Or company ethos is not just a token one we care about our staff and are nothing without them. I have a HUGE concern about the welfare of people and where this is going up and down the country.

For me the answer is not what we are doing for the next 6 months
 
I hear what you say about cancer not being contagious, i was choosing that example as those who are sufferers are vulnerable from an infection control point of view when on treatment in much the same way as people like your father would be vulnerable from an infection control point of view from contracting coronavirus. I could have chosen TB, seasonal flu as the ailment, which are contagious, but i hope you get my point.

More and more, when i look at both the UK and Australia, Sweden's more pragmatic approach seems the approach that the UK should have taken tbh. They haven't destroyed their Economy and their rates if deaths/infections seem now lower than the UK (though of course things can change now we're going into the winter).

I still maintain that extended lockdown and totally shutting down of all or large parts of society and the economy for a disease that has a very low mortality and morbidity rate (compared to many other diseases such as TB, seasonal flu or Malaria) seems way over the top

I've posted before about how comfortable I am with the extremely harsh measures taken here because we will be out of it in a month or so, having gone from 700+ a day 6 weeks ago to 12 today. I have no doubt our economy will bounce back quickly with everyone so eager to move around in the summer, Christmas and New Year.

But I totally understand why you and so many others in this thread are so against any more lockdowns when you're not seeing any results. I really feel for you all because I can't help but think a stronger response in March and April would have you in a much better place.
 
But I totally understand why you and so many others in this thread are so against any more lockdowns when you're not seeing any results. I really feel for you all because I can't help but think a stronger response in March and April would have you in a much better place.

The issue for me is lockdown itself, if you choose lockdown then the only way out is a clean bill of health or a vaccine. Reason being that going into lockdown or restrictive living like we are now means nothing but a countries clean bill of health will allow a total return to normality, thats not going to happen without a vaccine so having a lockdown regardless of severity means you are resigning yourself and your country to a holding pattern until the vaccine presents itself.

I know we are not in a lockdown but the rules are such that its very hard to do much more than the basics because the world does not work the same as restrictions so companies cant return to work and we dont have the business that works around the rules, neither do our clients.
 
The issue for me is lockdown itself, if you choose lockdown then the only way out is a clean bill of health or a vaccine. Reason being that going into lockdown or restrictive living like we are now means nothing but a countries clean bill of health will allow a total return to normality, thats not going to happen without a vaccine so having a lockdown regardless of severity means you are resigning yourself and your country to a holding pattern until the vaccine presents itself.

I know we are not in a lockdown but the rules are such that its very hard to do much more than the basics because the world does not work the same as restrictions so companies cant return to work and we dont have the business that works around the rules, neither do our clients.

The new scheme has been extended till March - it needs to go way beyond this - how long will it take to get the vaccine out.

We are in a lockdown by default - there is now an app which moving forward will be used to QR log in places - Gym/Shops/Pub etc - people are not going to risk going out on the off chance of not being able to work for 14 days because someone sat in the pub hours before has a cough.

This isnt a dig at testing and tracing btw.
 
The new scheme has been extended till March - it needs to go way beyond this - how long will it take to get the vaccine out.

We are in a lockdown by default - there is now an app which moving forward will be used to QR log in places - Gym/Shops/Pub etc - people are not going to risk going out on the off chance of not being able to work for 14 days because someone sat in the pub hours before has a cough.

This isnt a dig at testing and tracing btw.

I also think because of the variation of the virus, aka you dont show signs for certain amount of days and by that time it could have gone to others and the same and onwards means the reliance on a test and trace like its going to spark a return to the norm is fantasy, its just going to help run along with current restrictions to get people to self isolate quicker, it wont stop people getting the virus so the government are not going to announce a return to normality if test and trace works, they wont, it may help less people get it but as long as the virus exists the government wont relax to normality there is too much emphasis on certain elements of CV for that to happen.

I am not knocking the government support here but its just not the answer, companies need the opportunity to start a recovery plan to normality, this just holds us in a state of near death with no way of fighting our way out of it, it almost delays the inevitable. The real support would be to trust organisations to implement the covid safe environments we spent thousands on at the government advice and run our own effective track and trace systems and bubbles with staff who actively want to work for their own welbeing. To say you trust customers of JD Wetherspoons to go for a skinful and do it responsibly but you cant trust people begging to work to do so safely is a warped logic.
 
If the government open everything up, tell us to get back to it, that still won’t fix the economy, as cases rise people will shield/isolate accordingly, or if they can’t, travel anyway and suffer the stress and fear, productivity will be through the floor.

The govt need to deliver confidence, we need to kill this virus off, that’s the answer, the lockdown should have been harder and sooner, quarantining should be enforced for all travellers, more testing, more PPE, more thought, more solutions being applied directly to where they can help.

We are back where we were 5 months ago, and yes, it has a low mortality rate, but it’s high enough to scare people, we all know someone in the demographic it’s most dangerous for, you can’t lose that in the abstraction of numbers.
 
The issue for me is lockdown itself, if you choose lockdown then the only way out is a clean bill of health or a vaccine. Reason being that going into lockdown or restrictive living like we are now means nothing but a countries clean bill of health will allow a total return to normality, thats not going to happen without a vaccine so having a lockdown regardless of severity means you are resigning yourself and your country to a holding pattern until the vaccine presents itself.

I know we are not in a lockdown but the rules are such that its very hard to do much more than the basics because the world does not work the same as restrictions so companies cant return to work and we dont have the business that works around the rules, neither do our clients.

You're not wrong that a vaccine is the only true way out of this, but everywhere else in Australia is back to semi-normal. A photo from the rugby league tonight with 17,000 fans in the stadium.


Brisbane had a total of 1153 cases and 6 deaths, did a hard lockdown with the rest of us back in March and now look at them. The only thing to go in Australia (excluding Melbourne) is interstate travel, but Sydney -> Adelaide opened today. You absolutely can get some semblance of normal before a vaccine.

Many people point to Australia having a small population, being an island etc, which are all true and have no doubt helped us, but we banned travelers from entering way back in March. I personally returned from Japan on March 15 and had to isolate for 2 weeks. If I had come back home 10 days later, I would have been in a hotel in enforced isolation. We did this despite March being the beginning of the university calendar, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese students coming in to study.

Now we have the fortune of being able to pick and choose the restrictions to ease, which suits both public health and the economy.

The only real point I have to make is that I think you should all be extremely angry with how your Government has let you down.
 
I also think because of the variation of the virus, aka you dont show signs for certain amount of days and by that time it could have gone to others and the same and onwards means the reliance on a test and trace like its going to spark a return to the norm is fantasy, its just going to help run along with current restrictions to get people to self isolate quicker, it wont stop people getting the virus so the government are not going to announce a return to normality if test and trace works, they wont, it may help less people get it but as long as the virus exists the government wont relax to normality there is too much emphasis on certain elements of CV for that to happen.

I am not knocking the government support here but its just not the answer, companies need the opportunity to start a recovery plan to normality, this just holds us in a state of near death with no way of fighting our way out of it, it almost delays the inevitable. The real support would be to trust organisations to implement the covid safe environments we spent thousands on at the government advice and run our own effective track and trace systems and bubbles with staff who actively want to work for their own welbeing. To say you trust customers of JD Wetherspoons to go for a skinful and do it responsibly but you cant trust people begging to work to do so safely is a warped logic.

The Gov was pushing for companies to get everyone back and pay thousands to get places covid secure, I said all along companies are not going to do this at the risk of what has happened.

Plus this doesnt help cash flow, I am still expecting thousands more jobs to go at the end of next month

Spain/Begium are judging by people in hospital - seems the sensible way to go.
 
The Gov was pushing for companies to get everyone back and pay thousands to get places covid secure, I said all along companies are not going to do this at the risk of what has happened.

Plus this doesnt help cash flow, I am still expecting thousands more jobs to go at the end of next month

Spain/Begium are judging by people in hospital - seems the sensible way to go.

Absolutely on your last point - showing number of hospitalisations alongside deaths AND recoveries would give a much more rounded picture (and likely less hysteria)
 
Absolutely on your last point - showing number of hospitalisations alongside deaths AND recoveries would give a much more rounded picture (and likely less hysteria)

Especially if 100,000 people a day were getting it at its peak which means in 6 months time even with slow down half the working country would have had the virus anyway.
 
You're not wrong that a vaccine is the only true way out of this, but everywhere else in Australia is back to semi-normal. A photo from the rugby league tonight with 17,000 fans in the stadium.


Brisbane had a total of 1153 cases and 6 deaths, did a hard lockdown with the rest of us back in March and now look at them. The only thing to go in Australia (excluding Melbourne) is interstate travel, but Sydney -> Adelaide opened today. You absolutely can get some semblance of normal before a vaccine.

Many people point to Australia having a small population, being an island etc, which are all true and have no doubt helped us, but we banned travelers from entering way back in March. I personally returned from Japan on March 15 and had to isolate for 2 weeks. If I had come back home 10 days later, I would have been in a hotel in enforced isolation. We did this despite March being the beginning of the university calendar, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese students coming in to study.

Now we have the fortune of being able to pick and choose the restrictions to ease, which suits both public health and the economy.

The only real point I have to make is that I think you should all be extremely angry with how your Government has let you down.

The issue we have is if we did what you did in terms of returning to some semblance we would be in lockdown again within a week haha
 
The Gov was pushing for companies to get everyone back and pay thousands to get places covid secure, I said all along companies are not going to do this at the risk of what has happened.

We did it, we are only a 4 floor company on Southbank but we did it, cost a bit but we honestly at the time felt that especially with the end of Furlough being a tell that we would be back in some way in October.

We planned 50% in for two days, 50% in another and use one day as a clean down and spare day incase of issues. We were not going to force those in who felt awkward but as a company you are in alot better place supporting both sets of staff than locking down everyone.

With the new government scheme for support I think alot of people will have missed the boat, I know companies we deal with that have made redundancies that end tomorrow based on governments original support ending.
 
We did it, we are only a 4 floor company on Southbank but we did it, cost a bit but we honestly at the time felt that especially with the end of Furlough being a tell that we would be back in some way in October.

We planned 50% in for two days, 50% in another and use one day as a clean down and spare day incase of issues. We were not going to force those in who felt awkward but as a company you are in alot better place supporting both sets of staff than locking down everyone.

With the new government scheme for support I think alot of people will have missed the boat, I know companies we deal with that have made redundancies that end tomorrow based on governments original support ending.

This wont save as many jobs as the media thinks.

Companies will still have to find money to pay with less cash flow

Out company is still cracking on with getting rid of most the sales team because they cant pay for them/dont need them
 
Based on the Australian experience of the tracing app, don’t bother. Our government banged on about it every day for about a month. 5 or 6 million people downloaded out of a population of 25m. Many problems with it working, draining batteries etc. End result, it hasn’t been mentioned in months and we’ve pushed cases down to almost single digits through a 7/10 lockdown. It was hard but not horrific. I was lucky i kept my job but unlucky in terms of who i was separated from. I accepted that separation because i trusted in the science, which although agent orange over in USA disagrees, does know the answer.
 
Back