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I was at QPR on Thursday, popping into both the club shop and box office. Mask wearing and distancing among staff was conspicuous by its absence.
Seeing as the off-field staff are likely to have more contact with players and those who come into contact with the players, you’d think these simple measures would be applied.
Utter joke!
[Post edited 12 Dec 2021 19:39]
'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
Occasional providers of half decent House music.
11
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 06:27 - Dec 14 with 3237 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 01:00 - Dec 14 by PunteR
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
Excellent post
0
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 07:22 - Dec 14 with 3187 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 01:00 - Dec 14 by PunteR
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
"They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that."
44.6% of those who turned out voted Tory and less than 30% of the population as a whole voted for them. And yet they got an 80 seat majority and unfettered control, which they have used/abused to full effect.
I'm with you 100% on the medical side of things though.
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 7:31]
Suffering since 1978.
4
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 08:33 - Dec 14 with 3046 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 01:00 - Dec 14 by PunteR
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
I completely agree.
This "do you own research" nonsense just does my my head in.
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 00:38 - Dec 14 by Northernr
A gentle, exasperated, sort of reminder that this is a football message board, with a QPR bent. We've deleted the political threads for a while, and my God am I seeing why. I'm not spending whatever bleak Christmas I have left sifting through this batshit mental stuff.
We had a thread about the Lib Dems yesterday. Oooooh maybe I'll let this run, see how it goes... oh, page one, horrendously fcking libellous comment. It's me that ends up in court with this sht btw, as happened to the Sheff Wed forum editors, being hauled over the coals with people trying and extract the contact details the posters registered with.
There are loads of other places for you to talk politics, covid, conspiracy.... Twitter, Facebook, Daily Mail, YouTube. They've built billion dollar businesses around it - go and play there. Go and play there. Please. Why does it need to be here?
There are even other QPR message boards that I'm sure would be glad to receive your vitally important hot takes. "I've tried with multiple accounts here but not met with the reception I cared for, so here I am trying with another account..." "I tried a mental thread late one night but it got deleted, now here I am with 4,000 words in which I'll only mention I don't like the moderation of the forum half a dozen times". It's so easy guys. It's a football forum. If you don't like how I run it, here are some others. Go elsewhere.
I'm not hosting this bullsht. I'm not. I'd rather close it. I'd rather close it.
There were hardly anybody wearing masks at the game I went to: That's going to have to change: From this week!
This virus is likely to continue having an impact. We are going to have to get used to taking sensible precautions, living with the outcomes and dealing with it
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
1
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 08:47 - Dec 14 with 3002 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 01:00 - Dec 14 by PunteR
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
I hope most of the country agree with you as it’s exactly how I feel.
6
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 09:26 - Dec 14 with 2954 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 22:30 - Dec 13 by ahoz
Reassuring to see that quite a few posters do not buy into the narrative that who and their minions, politicians and msm inflict us with. Rather than blindly accept what we're told, we need to research, dig deeper and then make up our own minds.
Yes, that's right. That's why I've set up my own pharmaceutical research facility in my back garden and I'd encourage everyone else to so the same.
That way we can call develop our own vaccines and will never have to take the ones that "they" make.
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 08:47 - Dec 14 by switchingcode
I hope most of the country agree with you as it’s exactly how I feel.
Same here, and given the way the NHS website has been repeatedly crashing over the past 48 hours as people try to pile on to book their boosters, I suspect most of the country do feel that way.
As always with the internet, its the vocal minority who shout the most (including some who are never, ever, ever seen on football threads but flood into these threads like there's no tomorrow...) which makes them seem a bigger problem than they actually are.
6
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 13:21 - Dec 14 with 2611 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 00:07 - Dec 14 by daveB
all fine but be careful what information you get when researching especially on the internet when any nutcase can publish anything they like as a fact without anyone checking if it's true or not. A quite dangerous time at the moment with so much lack of trust in news, politicians etc that people who would have been laughed at 15 years ago are taken seriously now.
One of my neighbours was telling last year that he was convinced that there were tracking microbeads in the vaccines. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry and I decided to neither and just ignore him from that point on.
He's no doubt sitting next door right now getting all wound up by something Alt Right on Facebook or Twitter.
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 08:33 - Dec 14 by londonscottish
I completely agree.
This "do you own research" nonsense just does my my head in.
Social media-driven drivel.
Agreed.
Does the do your own research approach extend to all medical matters? All science?
This lack of trust in vaccines seems to have coincided with the rise and rise of social media.
If a doctor told you you needed a jab on 1989, for your holidays or to avoid tetanus or whatever, you just had the jab.
Genuine question: Are those refusing to have COVID jabs unwilling to have any vaccination?
"Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1."
2
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 14:26 - Dec 14 with 2408 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 20:18 - Dec 13 by The_Beast1976
From the link I include below regarding Omicron in South Africa -
"In summary, the first impression on examination of the 166 patients admitted since the Omicron variant made an appearance, together with the snapshot of the clinical profile of 42 patients currently in the COVID wards at the SBAH/TDH complex, is that the majority of hospital admissions are for diagnoses unrelated to COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 positivity is an incidental finding in these patients and is largely driven by hospital policy requiring testing of all patients requiring admission to the hospital.
Using the proportion of patients on room air as a marker for incidental COVID admission as opposed to severe COVID (pneumonia), 66% of patients at the SBAH/TDH complex are incidental COVID admissions. This very unusual picture is also occurring at other hospitals in Gauteng"
And there, in two paragraphs, lie the critical facts. The number of 'hospitalizations' reported on the dashboard is completely irrelevant unless you then deduct the number of incidental cases (but they refuse to tell us the number of incidental cases in the UK - why is that.....???). 66% of 'hospitalizations' are incidental in South Africa, meaning only 34% of reported 'hospitalizations' are actually covid related at all. I would imagine that with the high vaccination rates in the UK compared to SA, the percentage of incidental cases would be far higher (I did read a report from the US which out it at 75% incidental hospitalizations!!!!!), thereby rendering the reported UK covid 'hospitalizations' a complete fallacy and a nonsense because the majority are incidental (i.e. they just happen to have covid but do not require any hospital treatment for it). If people wish to try to 'cancel' me and close your eyes to these facts then so be it, but it's the truth whether people like it or not. We are being manipulated beyond belief. Hopefully more people finally wake up to it in the coming weeks and take to the streets to stop this madness.
There was also one UK death reported today 'with' Omicron. I suspect the person's death had absolutely nothing at all to do with Omicron and was merely incidental, but nobody even asks the question and the governnent declines to tell us. Why is that? How anyone still believes this sh1t is beyond me. It's all there in front of everyone if they open their eyes and look for themselves for goodness sake. Unless and until everyone does open their eyes, we are absolutely fcuked.
We are continually being lied to by Western governments and scientists; or, at best, wholly misled by them using misleading numbers (as described above). Why are our main stream media not reporting these facts rather than constant needless mass hysteria? Are they really that useless/incompetent? It really boils my p1ss😡
Also, much like US governments have been in partnerships with oil companies, our government appears to now be in it up to its neck with the pharama companies. Omicron is mild. We should be celebrating and cracking on, but we're doing the opposite. Make of that what you will.....
The fifth paragraph of your report from SA is, in full:
"It is essential to recognize that the patient information presented here only represents the first two weeks of the Omicron wave in Tshwane. The clinical profile of admitted patients could change significantly over the next two weeks, by which time we can draw conclusions about the severity of disease with greater precision."
After exposure, the are a few days lag before symptoms occur, after the initial symptoms some get better some get worse, after a week or so some get so bad they need hospitalisation, again some get better some get worse and need ITU care, finally some of these get better some don't. All of this takes time post infection.
When it is reported that a new variant is "not as bad" as previous variants it doesn't necessarily mean that the variant is "no worse than a cold" which is something I have read on here, it is more likely to mean that fewer people will get the severest symptoms, the worry with the Omicron variant is it seems to be very transmittable. The problem then is say "not as bad" meant that only a fifth of people with Omicron, compared to other variants, get severe symptoms that require an ITU bed, but 10 times as many people get infected, then very simple maths will tell you there will be twice (10 x 1/5) as many people in ITU.
If it turns out the Omicron variant is bad news and the government had done nothing to protect the public, then in my mind they would have been criminally negligent. If on the other hand it does pan out that despite being more infectious (which we know is true) Omicron isn't anywhere as nasty as it could be, then so what, we've had to wear masks on trains and in shops, and before I can go to a match I have to take a free test, big deal.
3
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 14:43 - Dec 14 with 2363 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 14:20 - Dec 14 by R_from_afar
Agreed.
Does the do your own research approach extend to all medical matters? All science?
This lack of trust in vaccines seems to have coincided with the rise and rise of social media.
If a doctor told you you needed a jab on 1989, for your holidays or to avoid tetanus or whatever, you just had the jab.
Genuine question: Are those refusing to have COVID jabs unwilling to have any vaccination?
"Genuine question: Are those refusing to have COVID jabs unwilling to have any vaccination?"
A few people I know are very much pro-vaccinations but don't want to take the Covid ones just yet because they feel it's been rushed through too quickly. They are happy to wait another year. They all wear masks, socially distance etc and generally abide by the guidelines.
Of course, the consequences of not taking the vaccine now has been explained to them but it does come down to personal choice. You cannot force people however much it may be exasperating.
0
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:00 - Dec 14 with 2276 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 01:00 - Dec 14 by PunteR
My outlook on it all is to just go with what the government and the law is asking us to do. I trust the pharmaceutical companies to develop medicine that helps with all sorts of illness. Why would I now start to distrussed them when my son relies on their medicine to keep him alive? If I'm sick and get taken to hospital, why would I start questioning the doctors motives? In my experience the medical world does whatever it can in its power to help. The government have an extremely difficult job at keeping the economy going at the same time as fighting this virus. They not getting everything right, clearly but these crackpot conspiracy theories really don't help. I can understand the distrussed in Boris etc but they did get voted in by the majority of the population and that's kind of that. Not ideal I know but the shit stirring really isn't helpful at this time.
Makes me think of Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
I am certainly no fan of this self-serving, morally corrupt, and serially incompetent Government, but these conspiracy theories don't add up. If there was some masterplan to make us all subservient to a New World Order through COVID restrictions and vaccine passports and microchips, I'm sure this Government would find a way to balls it up and the details would have been leaked to a journo or the plans left in a cab by now.
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 15:01]
2
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:03 - Dec 14 with 2263 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 14:43 - Dec 14 by Juzzie
"Genuine question: Are those refusing to have COVID jabs unwilling to have any vaccination?"
A few people I know are very much pro-vaccinations but don't want to take the Covid ones just yet because they feel it's been rushed through too quickly. They are happy to wait another year. They all wear masks, socially distance etc and generally abide by the guidelines.
Of course, the consequences of not taking the vaccine now has been explained to them but it does come down to personal choice. You cannot force people however much it may be exasperating.
I don't personally accept the argument that is was overly "rushed through", but I can see why some people had those concerns at the start. But is that was why some people didn't take the vaccine when it first came out, why aren't they taking it now? - surely the 100's of millions of injections since the roll out are enough of a clinical trial?
1
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:21 - Dec 14 with 2218 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:03 - Dec 14 by Cliff
I don't personally accept the argument that is was overly "rushed through", but I can see why some people had those concerns at the start. But is that was why some people didn't take the vaccine when it first came out, why aren't they taking it now? - surely the 100's of millions of injections since the roll out are enough of a clinical trial?
I agree. We are pretty much a year on to the day when the first person (outside of trials) was officially jabbed. Enough time and people have shown it's not a mass poisoning. I've even pointed out to the same people that women are much more likely to get a blood clot from taking the contraceptive pill than the C19 vaccine yet are still happy to take the former but not the latter (obviously for men this doesn't apply).
I even spoke to an ex neighbour recently who works in the NHS and she explained that vaccine creation is like making a pizza. They already have the base (dough, tomato & cheese) and just add the toppings. By having the base already in place helps speed things up on top of prioritising it over other medicines being developed but it's so difficult for people to shake the notion that it was just 'rushed through' with the perception that involved cutting corners (which weren't).
0
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:42 - Dec 14 with 2158 views
Lots of demographic breakdowns but this is a real eye opener: Among adults, the foundation’s data show that 91 percent of Democrats have gotten at least one dose, compared to 59 percent of Republicans – a 32-point gap.
0
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:44 - Dec 14 with 2159 views
I would just like to add a few points on how the virus, vaccines, immunity and masks do and don't work, for those of you who had really bad science teachers, or for whom school was a very long time ago.
As has been said before, vaccines aren't pre-emptive cures sitting in your body for however long ready to come out of your mouth and nose and fight any virus before it can wander in. They are basically fake viruses that can only be defeated in the same way that the real one can, without doing any actual harm to the body beyond being unwelcome. The immune system gets as many goes as it needs to find the right kind of antibodies that will work on it, and then once it has, and the cleanup job is complete, it creates memory cells that live permanently and will recognise any more copies of the pathogen that turn up, just as it does after beating the real virus. So should the real virus subsequently turn up, the memory cells recognise it as if it were the vaccine again and the antibodies are immediately produced without any time spent finding the right ones.
Vaccines essentially allow you to safely get the same immunity you would get from surviving covid, and the only risk to you is your immune system overreacting to it, which for some people can be dangerous, but, and this is really important to bear in mind, if your immune system reacts dangerously to an imitation of the coronavirus, it will react in exactly the same way to the real one, while the real one is giving you covid at the same time.
So while there are some people whose doctors will have told them for good reason that their individual circumstances mean they should not have the vaccine, those people are especially at risk from the virus too and should really be shielding.
Now, it's true that after a time the immunity you acquire, whether from the vaccine, or covid itself, or ideally both in that order (the other order's all well and good too but you have to survive covid first, so I wouldn't recommend it, even though it's what happened in my case), will become less effective over time.
This isn't because of the immune system diminishing in some way. That's a misconception that is probably based on people's conflation of antibodies with memory cells. Remember antibodies are the actual weapons the body uses against a pathogen. They are temporary. They don't stick around for that long once you're infection-free. Memory cells are for life and will generate the same antibodies again and again on demand.
No, the reason your immunity becomes less effective over time is that viruses change. Their code (RNA, not DNA) mutates through replication just like other organisms and that changes how they behave and how well specific immune responses work against them. If they change enough they get their own Greek letter, or at least some special ID code to distinguish them from the rest of the viruses of their kind. So what I understand is going on with Omicron is it's changed enough to be less vulnerable to our existing immunity (no matter how we acquired it), because the versions of the viruses we caught in the past two years, and the vaccines that were designed to simulate them require antibodies that don't work as well on Omicron.
I suspect that the booster had Delta in mind and was aimed to help us become more resistant to that than we previously were, but as Omicron wasn't on anyone's radar when the booster was being developed, that will have to wait.
On the other hand, Omicron seems far less lethal than prior versions, which on the face of it is a good thing. Ok, great everyone likes the idea of fewer people dying. The problem is that if we give up on trying to get everyone immune to it, and give up on avoiding spreading it on account of it being mild, we give it many many more chances to copy itself, which means further mutations. And the more mutations there are, the more chances there are of a mutation that is just as vaccine resistant as omicron, and also much more deadly.
So our best chance is to treat omicron as if it's already deadly, and stop it spreading, and stop it copying itself.
Vaccines definitely help with that. The earlier you beat off a virus once it's entered you, the less time it has to copy itself and the fewer copies leave your body.
Vaccines aren't perfect though. Nothing is. We need to combine them with two other things. One is social distancing. That works really well but to do it fully you have to miss out on things like proper football crowds and seeing your family at Christmas. We don't want that, but we can do partial distancing to cover the rest of the time. And we can keep away from unvaccinated people, who really ought to be isolating for their own safety anyway.
The final piece of the puzzle is masks, and I'd just like to clear up some common misconceptions about them too. They are not very effective at keeping viruses out side. That's not what they're designed for. In fact if a virus lands on a mask on a person's face then every breath will be another chance for it to get sucked in. But they're not utterly useless either. The analogy to keeping fart inside your trousers is nonsense. The diameter of a virus ranges from 50-140 nm. The diameter of a methane molecule is only 380pm. 131 times smaller. To put that into perspective, the sun is only a out 109 times bigger than the earth, meaning that the virus:molecule ratio is 20% bigger than that.
But what masks are really good at is stopping viruses being passed on. The mask will catch most of them and slow the rest right down. Any virus that leaves your mouth or nose through a mask simply won't have the momentum or direction to enter another person's mouth or nose, unless they are right in front of you, and especially not if they are also wearing a mask.
So in summary if we can put these three components together: vaccines, social distancing and masks we can actually stop the viruses, all variants thereof pretty effectively. But it requires everyone to do their part. And that means if the vaccine isn't for you, or the mask isn't, then you need to social distance to the extreme. It's also worth repeating that if you have a breathing condition that makes masks dangerous, or an immune condition that makes your response to the vaccine dangerous, then the virus is especially dangerous for you, so you should want to avoid it altogether. If that's not the case, then talk to your doctor and he or she should (it is their job after all) be able to explain to you even better than I can why you have nothing to fear from the vaccine or from masks.
Let's get this done and then we can all debate about whether it was real or just a conspiracy for the next 30 years in packed pubs.
You Rs
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 16:57]
14
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:52 - Dec 14 with 2130 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:44 - Dec 14 by saxbend
I would just like to add a few points on how the virus, vaccines, immunity and masks do and don't work, for those of you who had really bad science teachers, or for whom school was a very long time ago.
As has been said before, vaccines aren't pre-emptive cures sitting in your body for however long ready to come out of your mouth and nose and fight any virus before it can wander in. They are basically fake viruses that can only be defeated in the same way that the real one can, without doing any actual harm to the body beyond being unwelcome. The immune system gets as many goes as it needs to find the right kind of antibodies that will work on it, and then once it has, and the cleanup job is complete, it creates memory cells that live permanently and will recognise any more copies of the pathogen that turn up, just as it does after beating the real virus. So should the real virus subsequently turn up, the memory cells recognise it as if it were the vaccine again and the antibodies are immediately produced without any time spent finding the right ones.
Vaccines essentially allow you to safely get the same immunity you would get from surviving covid, and the only risk to you is your immune system overreacting to it, which for some people can be dangerous, but, and this is really important to bear in mind, if your immune system reacts dangerously to an imitation of the coronavirus, it will react in exactly the same way to the real one, while the real one is giving you covid at the same time.
So while there are some people whose doctors will have told them for good reason that their individual circumstances mean they should not have the vaccine, those people are especially at risk from the virus too and should really be shielding.
Now, it's true that after a time the immunity you acquire, whether from the vaccine, or covid itself, or ideally both in that order (the other order's all well and good too but you have to survive covid first, so I wouldn't recommend it, even though it's what happened in my case), will become less effective over time.
This isn't because of the immune system diminishing in some way. That's a misconception that is probably based on people's conflation of antibodies with memory cells. Remember antibodies are the actual weapons the body uses against a pathogen. They are temporary. They don't stick around for that long once you're infection-free. Memory cells are for life and will generate the same antibodies again and again on demand.
No, the reason your immunity becomes less effective over time is that viruses change. Their code (RNA, not DNA) mutates through replication just like other organisms and that changes how they behave and how well specific immune responses work against them. If they change enough they get their own Greek letter, or at least some special ID code to distinguish them from the rest of the viruses of their kind. So what I understand is going on with Omicron is it's changed enough to be less vulnerable to our existing immunity (no matter how we acquired it), because the versions of the viruses we caught in the past two years, and the vaccines that were designed to simulate them require antibodies that don't work as well on Omicron.
I suspect that the booster had Delta in mind and was aimed to help us become more resistant to that than we previously were, but as Omicron wasn't on anyone's radar when the booster was being developed, that will have to wait.
On the other hand, Omicron seems far less lethal than prior versions, which on the face of it is a good thing. Ok, great everyone likes the idea of fewer people dying. The problem is that if we give up on trying to get everyone immune to it, and give up on avoiding spreading it on account of it being mild, we give it many many more chances to copy itself, which means further mutations. And the more mutations there are, the more chances there are of a mutation that is just as vaccine resistant as omicron, and also much more deadly.
So our best chance is to treat omicron as if it's already deadly, and stop it spreading, and stop it copying itself.
Vaccines definitely help with that. The earlier you beat off a virus once it's entered you, the less time it has to copy itself and the fewer copies leave your body.
Vaccines aren't perfect though. Nothing is. We need to combine them with two other things. One is social distancing. That works really well but to do it fully you have to miss out on things like proper football crowds and seeing your family at Christmas. We don't want that, but we can do partial distancing to cover the rest of the time. And we can keep away from unvaccinated people, who really ought to be isolating for their own safety anyway.
The final piece of the puzzle is masks, and I'd just like to clear up some common misconceptions about them too. They are not very effective at keeping viruses out side. That's not what they're designed for. In fact if a virus lands on a mask on a person's face then every breath will be another chance for it to get sucked in. But they're not utterly useless either. The analogy to keeping fart inside your trousers is nonsense. The diameter of a virus ranges from 50-140 nm. The diameter of a methane molecule is only 380pm. 131 times smaller. To put that into perspective, the sun is only a out 109 times bigger than the earth, meaning that the virus:molecule ratio is 20% bigger than that.
But what masks are really good at is stopping viruses being passed on. The mask will catch most of them and slow the rest right down. Any virus that leaves your mouth or nose through a mask simply won't have the momentum or direction to enter another person's mouth or nose, unless they are right in front of you, and especially not if they are also wearing a mask.
So in summary if we can put these three components together: vaccines, social distancing and masks we can actually stop the viruses, all variants thereof pretty effectively. But it requires everyone to do their part. And that means if the vaccine isn't for you, or the mask isn't, then you need to social distance to the extreme. It's also worth repeating that if you have a breathing condition that makes masks dangerous, or an immune condition that makes your response to the vaccine dangerous, then the virus is especially dangerous for you, so you should want to avoid it altogether. If that's not the case, then talk to your doctor and he or she should (it is their job after all) be able to explain to you even better than I can why you have nothing to fear from the vaccine or from masks.
Let's get this done and then we can all debate about whether it was real or just a conspiracy for the next 30 years in packed pubs.
You Rs
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 16:57]
I’m going to steal that and see what reaction I get from a certain antivaxer on my Facebook.
favourite cheese mature Cheddar. FFS there is no such thing as the EPL
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:00 - Dec 14 by RBlock
Makes me think of Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
I am certainly no fan of this self-serving, morally corrupt, and serially incompetent Government, but these conspiracy theories don't add up. If there was some masterplan to make us all subservient to a New World Order through COVID restrictions and vaccine passports and microchips, I'm sure this Government would find a way to balls it up and the details would have been leaked to a journo or the plans left in a cab by now.
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 15:01]
Definition of conspiracy theory does change. This Vice article from Feb 2020 calls a conspiracy theory that forced vaccination and vaccine passports would come.
But it's not about it being a conspiracy theory at all. But instead it's a state of mass formation a psychological illness induced by the conditions. Certainly for 95% of people going along with it.
Mass formation comes about
- People feeling socially isolated / lack of social bond - people feeling their life is meaningless (50% of adults it's been suggested feel their job is meaningless as one example) - free floating anxiety and psychological discontent. E.g. if your in a room with a lion you know what you're anxious about
If under these conditions a narrative /story is presented by the mass media that pushes an object of anxiety is presented by the mass media and at the same time providing a strategy to deal with this object of anxiety. People attach their anxiety to the threat and enthusiastically agree to follow the strategy presented. People suddenly then feel connected in a heroic struggle with the object of anxiety. And that's the reason why people are willing to buy into the strategy and follow the narrative even if it is utterly absurd... e.g. vacinting kids or policemen walking round a German market with distance measuring sticks so those people can then cram onto a bus or train together later...
So in conclusion their are psychologists out there saying that can explain what people like Warburton saying what he has about vaccines for young healthy people facing a weakening virus (even though there are footballers collapsing on a weekly basis) because he is suffering from a sort of psychosis
It's not about everyone going along with it because of some conspiracy theory. It's a human reaction from scared and anxious people
But it can lead for a short time to Totalitarianism and historically that has led to Witch burning, gulags etc. A danger we go that way for the unvaccinated
It's human nature. Perhaps it's being manipulated or was introduced for that reason perhaps it isn't. But hopefully more and more people see videos like this and realise things are getting sillier as fortunately the virus gets milder
But watch this in the context of mass formation and honestly say it's sensible:
If you can show me some evidence for someone in their 20’s with a low BMI and no existing illnesses should be coerced into having a vaccine in response to Omnicron which is a very mild illness for all but the most at risk
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 16:00]
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QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:57 - Dec 14 with 2083 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:44 - Dec 14 by saxbend
I would just like to add a few points on how the virus, vaccines, immunity and masks do and don't work, for those of you who had really bad science teachers, or for whom school was a very long time ago.
As has been said before, vaccines aren't pre-emptive cures sitting in your body for however long ready to come out of your mouth and nose and fight any virus before it can wander in. They are basically fake viruses that can only be defeated in the same way that the real one can, without doing any actual harm to the body beyond being unwelcome. The immune system gets as many goes as it needs to find the right kind of antibodies that will work on it, and then once it has, and the cleanup job is complete, it creates memory cells that live permanently and will recognise any more copies of the pathogen that turn up, just as it does after beating the real virus. So should the real virus subsequently turn up, the memory cells recognise it as if it were the vaccine again and the antibodies are immediately produced without any time spent finding the right ones.
Vaccines essentially allow you to safely get the same immunity you would get from surviving covid, and the only risk to you is your immune system overreacting to it, which for some people can be dangerous, but, and this is really important to bear in mind, if your immune system reacts dangerously to an imitation of the coronavirus, it will react in exactly the same way to the real one, while the real one is giving you covid at the same time.
So while there are some people whose doctors will have told them for good reason that their individual circumstances mean they should not have the vaccine, those people are especially at risk from the virus too and should really be shielding.
Now, it's true that after a time the immunity you acquire, whether from the vaccine, or covid itself, or ideally both in that order (the other order's all well and good too but you have to survive covid first, so I wouldn't recommend it, even though it's what happened in my case), will become less effective over time.
This isn't because of the immune system diminishing in some way. That's a misconception that is probably based on people's conflation of antibodies with memory cells. Remember antibodies are the actual weapons the body uses against a pathogen. They are temporary. They don't stick around for that long once you're infection-free. Memory cells are for life and will generate the same antibodies again and again on demand.
No, the reason your immunity becomes less effective over time is that viruses change. Their code (RNA, not DNA) mutates through replication just like other organisms and that changes how they behave and how well specific immune responses work against them. If they change enough they get their own Greek letter, or at least some special ID code to distinguish them from the rest of the viruses of their kind. So what I understand is going on with Omicron is it's changed enough to be less vulnerable to our existing immunity (no matter how we acquired it), because the versions of the viruses we caught in the past two years, and the vaccines that were designed to simulate them require antibodies that don't work as well on Omicron.
I suspect that the booster had Delta in mind and was aimed to help us become more resistant to that than we previously were, but as Omicron wasn't on anyone's radar when the booster was being developed, that will have to wait.
On the other hand, Omicron seems far less lethal than prior versions, which on the face of it is a good thing. Ok, great everyone likes the idea of fewer people dying. The problem is that if we give up on trying to get everyone immune to it, and give up on avoiding spreading it on account of it being mild, we give it many many more chances to copy itself, which means further mutations. And the more mutations there are, the more chances there are of a mutation that is just as vaccine resistant as omicron, and also much more deadly.
So our best chance is to treat omicron as if it's already deadly, and stop it spreading, and stop it copying itself.
Vaccines definitely help with that. The earlier you beat off a virus once it's entered you, the less time it has to copy itself and the fewer copies leave your body.
Vaccines aren't perfect though. Nothing is. We need to combine them with two other things. One is social distancing. That works really well but to do it fully you have to miss out on things like proper football crowds and seeing your family at Christmas. We don't want that, but we can do partial distancing to cover the rest of the time. And we can keep away from unvaccinated people, who really ought to be isolating for their own safety anyway.
The final piece of the puzzle is masks, and I'd just like to clear up some common misconceptions about them too. They are not very effective at keeping viruses out side. That's not what they're designed for. In fact if a virus lands on a mask on a person's face then every breath will be another chance for it to get sucked in. But they're not utterly useless either. The analogy to keeping fart inside your trousers is nonsense. The diameter of a virus ranges from 50-140 nm. The diameter of a methane molecule is only 380pm. 131 times smaller. To put that into perspective, the sun is only a out 109 times bigger than the earth, meaning that the virus:molecule ratio is 20% bigger than that.
But what masks are really good at is stopping viruses being passed on. The mask will catch most of them and slow the rest right down. Any virus that leaves your mouth or nose through a mask simply won't have the momentum or direction to enter another person's mouth or nose, unless they are right in front of you, and especially not if they are also wearing a mask.
So in summary if we can put these three components together: vaccines, social distancing and masks we can actually stop the viruses, all variants thereof pretty effectively. But it requires everyone to do their part. And that means if the vaccine isn't for you, or the mask isn't, then you need to social distance to the extreme. It's also worth repeating that if you have a breathing condition that makes masks dangerous, or an immune condition that makes your response to the vaccine dangerous, then the virus is especially dangerous for you, so you should want to avoid it altogether. If that's not the case, then talk to your doctor and he or she should (it is their job after all) be able to explain to you even better than I can why you have nothing to fear from the vaccine or from masks.
Let's get this done and then we can all debate about whether it was real or just a conspiracy for the next 30 years in packed pubs.
You Rs
[Post edited 14 Dec 2021 16:57]
Saying the unvaccinated need to social distance to the extreme is a very scary thing to hear said
Out of curiosity, would you agree that obesity is a key risk factor in Covid and many other illnesses?
So in this same spirit should we punish anyone with a high BMI with restrictions until they get down to a healthy weight.
Seems a gross reflection of society to have clinically obese people dictating to healthy in shape people who regularly exercise and eat a healthy and balanced diet demanding that others are locked away so they have the freedom to continue their own unhealthy lifestyle
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QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:58 - Dec 14 with 2096 views
Just had a Covid Passport delivered. They are unable to show that you have had a booster and you have no way of proving it. So at the moment it is only for your own peace of mind.
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QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 16:27 - Dec 14 with 2023 views
Saxbend has outlined how vaccines are developed. It's also worth noting that genomics has added considerable understanding to those involved in vaccine development. hence the ability to develop effective vaccines very quickly.
When AZ and Pfizer first came on the scene, scientists were looking at 90-95% effectiveness. NOTE - no vaccine is 100% effective and all medication can have side effects. Read the leaflet in a packet of Paracetemol, if you don't believe me. The effectiveness of the vaccines diminishes over time, as anticipated. The booster goes a long way to restoring the efficacy.
As far as scientists know, the current vaccines are probably effective against Omicron. But, for now;, there is limited data. We know, from SA, that Omicron spreads very quickly. It may not cause symptoms as severe as Delta, but there is a danger that the NHS could be overwhelmed by the numbers. At a time when they are already under pressure.
Plan B is a set of proactive measures.
The basic advice remains : Get vaccinated Wear a mask - to protect others Keep social distancing - for the same reason Don't moan if venues that could be super spreader sites, implement checks. That includes putting up with the inconvenience when entering football stadia, bars, restaurants, etc
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
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QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 17:02 - Dec 14 with 1907 views
QPR/Covid what a bloody surprise!! on 15:57 - Dec 14 by Russian__Bot
Saying the unvaccinated need to social distance to the extreme is a very scary thing to hear said
Out of curiosity, would you agree that obesity is a key risk factor in Covid and many other illnesses?
So in this same spirit should we punish anyone with a high BMI with restrictions until they get down to a healthy weight.
Seems a gross reflection of society to have clinically obese people dictating to healthy in shape people who regularly exercise and eat a healthy and balanced diet demanding that others are locked away so they have the freedom to continue their own unhealthy lifestyle
The vaccine pretty much levels those kinds of additional risk factors. Not so much for people with compromised immune systems or overactive immune systems and auto-immunity issues. But basic things like obesity that don't impact the immune system itself will allow a vaccine-trained immune system to do its job well enough to reduce those risks
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