The Covid-19 Thread

[Raid]

But a No 10 source said it was unreasonable to suggest that what happened on Monday "was Boris's fault and not the mob's fault".

It doesn't remotely surprise me that Johnson feels no responsibility for the things he says. It's his entire MO. He's not interested in the responsibilities of being the Prime Minister, only what he can do for himself and his friends.

[Sly Boots]

Lots of artists, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, are removing their music from Spotify, in protest at the platform's hosting of Joe Rogan and his misinformation regarding Covid:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... obal-en-GB

[Rossell]

There's free speech and there's talking shit. Spotify need to figure out which is which imo.

[eny]

I haven't boycotted Spotify because I've never subscribed to it, and I'm not particularly a fan of Rogan—I find him odious at best—but this whole "cancel culture" is bullshit. No one is cancelling, they are just choosing not to add energy to a culture of misinformation and alpha-cucking tbh.

On another note, it looks like the pandemic has reached its deadliest stage a month early—the "ah fuck it, just stop bothering" position. It is diabolical, and positively murderous, to just stop requiring isolation or restrictions at this stage. Covid is a circulatory disease, and the accumulative effects of constant endemic reinfection are going to prove to be disastrous on public health, all for the sake of red meat for the jackals.

[Pew-Pew]

What is the other option? There is no chance of eradicating it now, the only time that was going to happen was 2 years ago.

[Mantis]

Trying to minimise the spread as much as possible with basic restrictions for a bit longer in hopes that eventually it mutates into something significantly less harmful I guess?

I do think that this announcement to end things early is probably more to do with Johnson trying to earn back some support from his own skeptic MPs more so than the scientific data giving us the all clear. Though realistically it kind of feels like the restrictions ended a long time ago anyway even before the pre-Christmas WFH order came in. Even something simple like mask usage dropped dramatically after it first became non-mandatory and I didn't see it being enforced at all over Christmas despite many people still ignoring the re-introduced recommendations.

Having to isolate for a few days when you have a confirmed case of a virus known to cause long term damage and is also very dangerous for the clinically vulnerable seems like the absolute bare minimum we could maintain with very little cost really. Particularly since those boosters won't stay effective forever.

[Pew-Pew]

The thing is that it has the chance to mutate forever now (for better or worse) as it won't be eradicated. Every winter we'll probably have a wave after immunity wanes or it has significantly mutated again. We're possibly back on a very steep decline of this wave now, with basically no restrictions. It doesn't make much sense to me to keep restrictions when the death rate has come down so much due to effective treatments and vaccines and the infection rate is declining. You can start to see other parts of the world realise this now as they lose control of infection rates with Omicron - more countries are starting to open up again.

I agree that ending mandatory isolation is silly whilst levels are still so high though - they're talking about doing it in 2 weeks? Wait a month at least.

[Wrathbone]

Perhaps rather than making it a legal requirement to isolate with covid, they should make it illegal for employers to discriminate against someone with covid or attempt to force them back to work within a couple of weeks. My sister's house was recently hit with omicron (all booster-jabbed, but it still hit her hard) and as a primary school teacher her academy was trying to drop work off at her house while she was still bed-ridden. They made it clear that every day she wasn't productive would not be viewed well. As an aside which I've touched on before, fuck academies.

This is a cultural problem where the onus should be siding with the sick rather than the employer, because otherwise presenteeism and employer pressure will result in future variants developing and spreading faster than we can handle them without lockdowns.

[Animalmother]

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-daily ... k-90440396

This is really grim. We may have fucked ourselves by infecting animals with Covid. Mink farms are a breeding ground for it and it's now been detected in wild deer, mink and stoats. It gives the virus a chance to keep mutating and create new variants. This is going to be with us a very long, long time.

[Mantis]

This was always going to be the case though. It is similar to regular flu in that regard, once there is a reservoir within animal populations it is largely impossible to eradicate and going to recur with various mutations. With the scale it spread across the world I don't think this was avoidable. We just have to hope that the future mutations see it drop in lethality as more people develop natural immunity.

It's been confirmed today that all testing and tracking is being wound down with free tests and isolation periods ending. The government said over the weekend that they're advocating that now we need to take "personal responsibility" around dealing with Covid. I don't really understand what personal responsibility I'm supposed to exercise when I'm being forced back to work and will have absolutely no way of knowing whether I'm asymptomatic and spreading the virus around or not now that I can't easily get lateral flows to routinely take. This feels like a pretty big mistake to me when hundreds of people a day are still dying despite so many being immunised. It's like our way of living with Covid is to pretend it doesn't exist and go back to life as it was pre pandemic rather than actually maintain any kind of public health infrastructure or protections to at the very least monitor it.

I suppose it means that if you're too poor to pay for a test and your employment isn't secure enough to give you full sick pay for isolating when you think you may have covid that more poor people will die from it. Which is on point for the Tories at least.

[Wrathbone]

What concerns me is the total lack of acknowledgement from the government regarding the long-term effects of covid. Lowered death rates due to vaccination do not tell the full story, as millions of people have exhaustion, brain fog and other symptoms months after being positive. Evidence shows it can cause lung damage that is probably permanent. Yet again, the argument of "it's just another flu now" doesn't stand up to basic inspection.

I don't know what the solution is, but throwing all caution to the wind is a fucking stupid strategy. Simple precautions that don't impact the economy in any substantial way (compared to having no rules) should remain in place until researchers properly understand long covid, its implications and what can be done about it. As things stand, the best case scenario is that a huge proportion of the global population will suffer long-term symptoms. The worst case scenario is that long covid puts you at a much higher risk of serious health conditions and reduces life expectancy by a terrifying level. I guess that'll solve the pensions crisis, right?

[Raid]

So there we have it. Self isolation after a positive covid test is no longer a legal requirement in England come thursday. Mr Johnson and his cabinet have made a stunning deal with the virus to ensure it will no longer be infectious following the 23rd February in this country. It's really quite impressive when you think about it.

There are two big reasons why the government has decided to act now in getting rid of the remaining coronavirus laws in England.

The first is the current picture: Omicron has proved to be very mild in terms of the number of people it is killing.

To use the technical term, there haven't been any excess deaths as a result of it, or, as Prof Chris Whitty has just put it, "the total number of deaths is slightly lower than the seasonal average at this time of year".

The second is cost: the prime minister has said the test, trace and isolation budget in the 2020/21 financial year exceeded the entire budget of the Home Office.

It has cost a further £15.7bn in this financial year - from last April until now - and a another £2bn in January of this year alone.

I'm not sure it can be put any more black and white; being at work and productive is more important than the lives of your families and co-workers. Don't worry, it's not killing many people.

All of those people whose jobs don't include adequate sick pay, they're going to be working alongside colleagues, they're going to be out among the public, they're going to be infecting other people because they can't afford not to.

I've long accused the Tories of killing the most vulnerable through their welfare state reforms this last decade - make no mistake, universal credit sanctions are accompanied by a body count. At least they could attempt to defend that indefensible policy through some ill-conceived notion of improving peoples' lives by getting them earning. It would be complete and utter bullshit, but they could spin it that way. Now though? This is so few steps from actual murder. And they have the fucking gall to blame costs when they're the ones that gave the money to their mates.

[Animalmother]

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-60690251
Fuck

[Pew-Pew]

Will massively vary by country. The UK death toll is not far off the excess deaths, whereas in countries like Russia and India the numbers are waaay less reliable and probably add a large amount to the estimate.

[eny]

China is locking down again: Mayors of Jilin and Changchun have been sacked and replaced, Changchun, 9 million people, now the latest city closed. Shenzhen, 13m people too. Shanghai schools earlier in the week, no-one allowed to leave Beijing. Hong Kong has seen its number of deaths reach those of NYC in Spring 2020 and still hasn't peaked. BA2 is the culprit. The supply chain will be severely compromised again. We have a bleak year ahead of us peeps, stock up.