DeanoL

There's new variants all the time - my point is if the government decide to pick one of them and use it as an excuse for bringing in new restrictions, people will go along with it. People haven't suddenly got smarter about measuring risk or even decided "enough is enough". They're just doing what they've always done: followed the government's lead to a level none of us really expected. When that's "stay at home" people really did. Now it's "back to normal" people are doing that. Nah, the science is really good - the current vaccines are just the first batch, made as quickly as possible - we'll get better and better as we go along.

It's a blind eye, isn't it? I don't think we could walk back people's attitudes towards things so quickly (you said yourself that in your opinion, people had lost all ability to assess risk) - I think the media aren't covering it as much, no press conferences and all that, so people are just going back to normal. I think if Boris turned up on TV tomorrow and said there's a new variant that's creating a problem and we need to go straight back into lockdown blah blah blah there'd be no issues with compliance.

Well if it encourages more people to get vaccinated, it'll make everything safer for everyone, including going to gigs. And reduces the chance of another lockdown which would impact venues even more. Now it's certainly unfair that it's being imposed on music venues and not say pubs or restaurants but that doesn't mean it won't work.

Yeah I've definitely seen tours where there are gaps for extra shows but those gaps get filled in places where the first show sells out but then not in other cities.

Stuff I saw wasn't in a city (was in Leamington) so that could be a difference too.

How are people finding gigs? We've started going to stuff again and while it's nice to feel back to normal, we're clearly a long way off. Saw one comic at a rescheduled "sold out" gig where about 15% of the audience were missing - "I guess all the empty seats are either people who have forgotten they booked this or died". Saw another comic in a room he'd previously sold out pre-pandemic that was only 1/4 full. It's a concern, to be honest. I'm not sure if it's reluctance by people to go out, or just that there's so much stuff on now (with theatres trying to fit a year's worth of shows into 4 months) that people are having to be more picky. It's not sustainable though.

Not clutching at straws, all the acts I listed bore the hell out of me. But I think it's a question worth asking: where do you put acts that previously headlined the festival that just aren't relevant enough to headline any more? That's literally why they started making a fuss of the "legend" slot - because there were acts they wanted to book, could afford to book, but who felt they were big enough to headline and didn't want a lower slot. Hence this "fourth headliner" nonsense. If you wanted the Arctic Monkeys to play the festival, where would you put them? Because they're not relevant enough to headline the Pyramid any more. Or Jay-Z for that matter.

Raises an interesting point, to be honest. They definitely seem to be pushing to have most of the acts headlining the Pyramid to be modern, relevant, high profile acts. Maybe the festival could do a with a space for your Muses, your Arctic Monkeys, your Kasabians... can it be made appealing for them to headline the Other after they've headlined the Pyramid? Or would acts opt to never go back like that? Could the festival try and do something similar to the Legend slot but for 90s/00s rock acts?

Do you think maybe there's an element of the masks and more strongly enforced structure improved behaviour in some schools, and some teachers are just reluctant to lose that?

Yeah, we noticed the same thing. We did comment that if this wasn't Glastonbury and they've clearly built up a lot of trust but some other festival we would probably have dropped out. Especially as they're bracing us for a significant increase - the email mentions inflation plus the impact of the two cancelled festivals. I think it might actually hit £300 total (so £250 balance payments).

Any source for this?

GPs and doctors are paid well, eventually - one of the slights of hand of recent Tory governments has been to push the idea of "Junior Doctors" out there, linking low wages to that, while not pointing out that a junior doctor isn't just a 1st/2nd year trainee, but in fact make up half of the doctoral workforce and can often have upwards of ten years' experience.

My parents have both got face to face GP appointments with no problems in the past few months - more rural area. Have no doubt it’s fucked in some places (in some it was before the pandemic) but certainly not everywhere. Again, lots of GPS were moving towards this before the pandemic. Indeed for my private health insurance they have their own app for video appointments. Phone and video appointments are actually more convenient for most people needing a GP appointment too. Indeed I’d wager part of the current problem is more people using the service as it’s finally entered the 20th century - for people that can’t afford to take the time off work it’s a godsend. The vast majority of GP appointments are just a conversation with your GP, and a visual inspection. If you need an examination you can be asked to come in. (and I say all this as someone who hates phone calls and detests this new system on a personal level)

What demonstrates that the anti-vaxxers are at best being dumb or at worse disingenuous, is that when they catch COVID, they go to hospital and quite happy to be treated. Even with techniques that are also just as experimental as the vaccine is (ie. not that experimental, but new). I'm sure there are some true believers out there that reject some treatments, but it does feel like their strongly held beliefs rarely survive an actual encounter with COVID.

Then what is the "driver for the pandemic?" It doesn't seem to be any one thing- at least, not that those same experts have identified. Schools are no worse than anything else but no better either. Workplaces are not a driver either but many companies are still encouraging staff to work from home and I'd worry if every single office in the country decided to get everyone back at pre-pandemic levels on the same day too.

Schools are no worse than anything else for transmission but that doesn't mean no transmission happens. Everything *only* reflects community transmission. Reflects and magnifies it. Every gathering of people does that. Takes a few cases and spreads it to a few others. The initial fears that schools would be worse because of how kids socialise proved unfounded, but spread still happens, and the issue is that there are loads of schools with loads of kids in each of them. If we had "super-pubs" that everyone was required to attend for 7 hours, 5 days a week, they wouldn't spread COVID any more than a regular pub either - but the fact that people were attending them so often, and so many people were going to them, would certainly see increases. Not that, at this point, it's worth sacrificing kids' education to avoid it, but the handwaving of "just community transmission" ignores the fact that there's loads of schools and loads of people in them.

It's not censorship as there's no human right to have a stall at the festival and get free tickets for it. They can say what they want to but it's up to the festival if they choose to facilitate that or not. There are 100s of other charities that would appreciate that platform to actually do good rather than bad. The festival don't censor people by choosing to not invite them, and just because you've been there for the past 5, 10 years doesn't automatically given you the right to be invited back. If it did I'd still be moaning about how the festival "censored" Pieminister!

So went to our first gigs in forever at the weekend - Frank Turner's Lost Evenings festival in Camden. It's a weird fucking world of half measures and mixed messages right now. The event itself was fun, we had seats on the balcony as we're not quite ready for sweaty standing gigs quite yet but it just all seemed so bizarre with the whole half-measures thing. The strategy at the moment seems to be to let it spread and trust the vaccine, which is a strategy - regardless of what I think of it or what I might have done differently, it's what we're doing, I can't change it, may as well enjoy ourselves on the way. But then you still have to self-isolate if you test positive. But testing isn't compulsory for events and such. But then the venue says, "we'd appreciate it if you'd do an LFT before and not attend if positive" - "sure, will you give me my £120 quid back if I have to isolate?" - "not a chance". So people just don't test. Why give yourself the ethical dilemma? The staff were all wearing masks. Okay, cool, appreciate that, don't know if it's necessary but it's nice. We wore masks until we got to our seats as it felt right to reciprocate that action. But then one of the security guys doing searches on the way in had no mask and a badge that says "I'm exempt from wearing a mask" and well... what's the point in that? I'm sure he had legit reasons for not wearing one but if your venue policy is going to be "staff should wear masks" then maybe front of house isn't the place for that staff member? Unless you know it's all theatre anyway... Guy at the front in the mosh pit wearing a mask through the entire gig. I mean, sure, if you want to but yeah, that person has lost all ability to assess risk. Hell, even Frank was happily encouraging circle pits and crowd surfing but it was the first time I've not seen him go crowd surfing himself in years... presumably because he's testing every day (along with the band and crew) and he doesn't want to pull the gigs if he catches it. Was a fun few days, certainly helped get us over some mental hurdles on the path back to normality but the half-measures that remain in place seem utterly pointless. Especially as cases haven't exploded like we thought they would. Like we *all* thought they would, to one degree or another. I know this thread is now mostly people bitching about fake SAGE and bragging that they were right all along, but I'd point out we haven't actually hit the peak yet, and the driving argument that was being made in Spring for dropping restrictions is that we were going to have a peak, and we wanted to have it in Summer, not Winter. Winter is around the corner, and unless numbers do keep continuously dropping the next few weeks, we're not at that peak yet - so the problem folks were so desperate to avoid is still a potential problem.

Tired staff leads to ill staff leads to off-work staff leads to healthcare collapse. You're right, it's not enough in isolation but it's an early warning sign. A positive LFT I'd imagine?

It's entirely over the top for the current situation, but it's interesting thinking - if it were possible it could have been a way to keep certain events going during the worst parts of all this rather than having a lockdown. I suspect people are right, that people just wouldn't have gone along with it, and that's probably why we didn't try. Or indeed, won't try in any sort of future pandemic. If at any point in the past 18 months you have felt like the government didn't act strongly enough or quickly enough, you were probably in agreement with Independent Sage. With the "nutters". Plenty of us agreed with them on some things and not on others, and in some cases we were right and in other cases we were wrong. When Christina Pagel was shouting about how the government's plans for Christmas mixing were dangerous you were shouting out in agreement (and I was disagreeing, 'cause I'm an idiot - but I guess at least I wasn't siding with the nutters then?)

Well I'm going to keep washing my hands and you can't stop me!

I think the moderates in Labour are genuinely happy because this result gets Unite out of their hair in all the internal squabbles within Labour. It makes getting their way in those internal arguments much easier. And that's what they care about. They're ignoring the fact that it now positions Unite as potentially opposed to them or at odds with them in an actual election, because they don't care about that bit. At least not at the moment. Which is extremely short-sighted but pretty much indicative of Labour at the moment.

If [your favourite band] end up headlining the Pyramid next year it's Michael Eavis got long COVID and temporarily lost all sense of taste.

Heya - genuine question as I'm interested and you seem to be the most informed on long COVID on here - how have medical staff been able to tell people they'll have it for life? My understanding was we don't entirely understand what it is right now, and new treatments are cropping up regularly? Unless it's trigged some underlying condition? Just struck me as odd. It's a difficult situation at the moment - just saw the Get Cape Wear Cape Fly tour due next month has been postponed as they can't get insurance for it. And shows that would normally sell fast don't seem to be selling as fast - though there could be multiple reasons for that (not least for us, it seems like every show we had booked in 2020 has been moved to September this year!) The weird thing is, I spent most of the first half of the year arguing with the "if not now, when?" crowd by saying "once all adults are double vaxxed." It seemed obvious to me - we make ourselves as safe as possible then open up. It made absolute sense to wait until that point. And that's roundabout the point we are at right now. And my view hasn't changed, which means I am now one of the "if not now, when?" crowd myself! We've done all we can, long COVID may just be something we have to deal with as a society. I don't see any other route out of it other than indefinite lockdown. We can talk all we want about distanced events and continued mask wearing, but in the period of time where we were doing that *cases were still going up*. At a slower rate, for sure, but if that's your "new normal" then they're going to continue going up (because exponential growth) and they're going to peak at the same point - it's just that peak will be at a later point in time. Which is useful if your concern is hospitals being overrun, but not if your concern is overall infection (and therefore long COVID) numbers. They'll be the same.

On the subject of imposing values on other people: OnlyFans to ban sexually explicit content: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58273914 This is one of those things that just seems outright wrong to me, yet no-one will kick up a fuss because no-one cares about sex workers. I mean, the site has problems, it certainly needs to do more in some places, and if the government passed some law to stop them trading that would be one thing... but it's not what's happening here. What's happening is payment processors are threatening to stop working with them. PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, etc - all those companies basically have a stranglehold on online transactions, but never seem to use it, other than for shutting down pornography. It does seem to be entirely driven by a weird sense of puritan values. (And of course, all the actually illegal buying and selling still happens on the dark web via cryptocurrencies - but people selling legal content shouldn't be forced down that route)