When will this shit end?

[DeanoL]

 

1 hour ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Well it's pretty much certain death (I think one person ever has survived full-blown rabies; got really interested in it and read up on it at the time!). So I reasoned it was worth it despite the low risk and insane cost.

I'm actually rounding up but from a quick search, it's £174 for the first dose and £50 for the subsequent one. So it was £225, not £300. All in all, with other jabs and anti-malarials, I just remember feeling pretty cleaned out! 

Obviously it would be bonkers to charge anything like £500 for the Covid vaccine, though. Demand so much higher for one thing.

Demand being high usually drives prices up though! 

At some point, we will have vaccinated the vulnerable groups, and at that point we have to decide who gets it next. There's a few options really:

• Lottery - the fairest way, but also a right faff as your infrastructure won't necessarily be set up in the right areas
• Free-for-all online booking system - obviously the favoured system of this forum as we're well good at that
• Prioritize based on economic benefit

And honestly, most of the people here in this forum seem of the mind that, once the vulnerable are vaccinated, we should start to open things back up and re-start the economy, as that is then more important than necessarily preventing infections in young people. So if we go with that thinking, that after getting the death rate down by vaccinating the vulnerable, we need to focus on the economy, then we have two groups that need it:

• Suppliers: so supermarket workers, waiters, chefs, bar staff, anyone running businesses that work with people face-to-face. In this case, the government could offer packages to companies at discounted rates
• Consumers: anyone that spends money in these places, the more they spend, the better. Here you can sort of filter for these people by charging a significant sum for the vaccine

It's not like we don't already have a two-tier health care system in this country anyway, so it's not quite the huge step some think it would be. Again, I don't support it but I'd struggle to argue against it. If I've lost my job I can't afford to go out anyway and the economy restarting and new jobs being made available probably matters more to me than personally getting the vaccine for something that won't effect me much.

3 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

It seems to be household transmission that they don’t like so the allowance of meeting 1 person from another household could give off the impression to people things aren’t as bad either. Maybe they need to get rid of that and possibly certain support bubbles?

They could go down the route of trying to formalise support bubbles - asking people to record who they are bubbled with. They're important, but it's far too easy a loophole to exploit at the moment. Any single person visiting another household can claim to be bubbled with them, unless they're stopped twice there's no way to prove that they weren't bubbled with someone else the week before.

[balti-pie]

i'm happy to follow pretty much all the rules and guidelines, its really not too much of an imposition in the grand scheme of things. Mask? yes. Only shopping for essentials? ok. No pubs or cafes etc? alright. 

But if you ban outdoor exercise though, i will be one of those people who will go absolutely bloody spare without at least a couple of hours wander a day - i live in a flat, i work on a hospital ward, i have no garden, i will be going out. Its not up for debate. The exercise, the fresh air, the feeling of escape, the effect on appetite mood and sleep patterns - its how i manage my own mental health. Joe Wicks workouts can piss off. 

If the police end up chasing me Rambo-style through the woods then that would add an extra frisson of excitement to my exercise though 😆 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

The thing is, if we want to go down that route then fine. But it’s not reasonable to ban outdoor exercise but allow coffee shops to stay open for takeaway. Realistically the government are asking for people to be out and about- things like garden centres and the range etc are still open and even the clothes sale in m&s is as busy as ever. There’s loads of people going into work who could be wfh so there’s lots of things which could be tightened up first if you’re going to ban exercise. Banning exercise alone won’t do anything if all those other things are facilitated. 

If the government want us to “stay local” then we need to be given a legal radius distance of which we are allowed to leave our house. No good saying stay local but no one actually even knows what it means. This lockdown is another shambles.

All good points and something I didn’t think about. You would need to shut those places that do take away pick ups for the reasons you say. I’m sure the risk is minimal but it’s about the perception of things being not as bad. 

 

2 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

They could go down the route of trying to formalise support bubbles - asking people to record who they are bubbled with. They're important, but it's far too easy a loophole to exploit at the moment. Any single person visiting another household can claim to be bubbled with them, unless they're stopped twice there's no way to prove that they weren't bubbled with someone else the week before.

Good points too. I’m not saying they should do this it’s just another avenue where the risk is potentially higher. 

[xxialac]

Sorry, to clarify I wasn't advocating indoor workouts, was only pointing out that it is possible to exercise indoors (and some people even enjoy it and not having the faffe of going out). 

It's a moot point of course as they will never insist upon it.

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2021 by xxialac

[DeanoL]

4 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

This basically sums it up. I have no idea why so many people in this thread seem to be unfazed by ideas like this when there is so many more positive steps they could take to reduce transmission. 

I think it's a ridiculous idea to ban outdoor exercise. But the logical argument is that it doesn't have any economic impact. It would have a tiny effect on the figures, but there's no immediate cost. You could close coffee shops and takeaways, but that would also have a tiny effect on the figures, while having a major effect on the economy. You could close construction, but again minor effect on figures, major effect on economy.

That's the difficulty here, all the things left will have a pretty small impact on infection figures but a huge impact on the economy. So they sort of don't seem worth it. But the flip side is we probably only need some small impacts on the figures to nudge us just below crisis point for the NHS.

[FestivalJamie]

Do we think the two girls will be forced to pay the fine out of interest or now it’s in the media do we reckon they might not have to?

[FestivalJamie]

I’m also surprised as the police should only be fining people for breaking the LAW. What the girls did wasn’t breaking any laws- and a lot of people who are breaking the law suffer no consequences. There is a debate about whether the two girls walking broke the “guidance” but they should not have been giving a £200 fine when they didn’t actually break any laws.

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

23 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

God these two women getting fined for driving 5 miles to take a walk!! There’s nothing saying you aren’t allowed to do that- it only says you need to stay in your local area. I would hardly say 5 miles is out of your local area. Also they aren’t breaking any rules- you are allowed to meet up 1 on 1 for a walk and takeaways are allowed!!

This is a joke I hope they challenge the fine. The police are really losing any sense of anything here- they let people get away with house parties etc and don’t enforce masks in shops but they are picking on people for going for a walk. Really not happy when I just read that.

They crossed between Leicestershire and Derbyshire - so you can argue they left their local area. 

 

[xxialac]

3 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

Do we think the two girls will be forced to pay the fine out of interest or now it’s in the media do we reckon they might not have to?

Just curious, how did this photo come to be?

 

[FestivalJamie]

3 minutes ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

They crossed between Leicestershire and Derbyshire - so you can argue they left their local area. 

 

The thing is, as far as i am aware, one “should” stay local- which is guidance. However one “must not” meet more than one other person outside to exercise with. Also one “should” only exercise once a day- once again guidance and not law.

If we want to have a debate about whether they left their “local area”, we will never come to a conclusion. Unless there is a legal limit as to which you can travel away from your household, they didn’t break any laws. In germany, it is illegal to travel 15km away from your household. If we introduced say a 3 mile limit, then yes the two girls broke the law. At the moment they only didn’t follow the guidance and that is still subjective as to whether they didn’t stay local or not. Arguably their walk had less covid risk as well than if they had done it in the city.

5 minutes ago, xxialac said:

Just curious, how did this photo come to be?

 

I was wondering this too. I imagine they rang the media straight after they had been fined and someone probably came and took a photo and got details for an article etc. Wonder if the media paid them.

[Crazyfool01]

Just got my test kit ... and it says lookup a priority postbox ... mine are in the town centre ...and I should be isolating  any postbox is presumably ok ? I presume it will just get processed slightly later ? 

[Zoo Music Girl]

18 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

 

Demand being high usually drives prices up though! 

At some point, we will have vaccinated the vulnerable groups, and at that point we have to decide who gets it next. There's a few options really:

• Lottery - the fairest way, but also a right faff as your infrastructure won't necessarily be set up in the right areas
• Free-for-all online booking system - obviously the favoured system of this forum as we're well good at that
• Prioritize based on economic benefit

And honestly, most of the people here in this forum seem of the mind that, once the vulnerable are vaccinated, we should start to open things back up and re-start the economy, as that is then more important than necessarily preventing infections in young people. So if we go with that thinking, that after getting the death rate down by vaccinating the vulnerable, we need to focus on the economy, then we have two groups that need it:

• Suppliers: so supermarket workers, waiters, chefs, bar staff, anyone running businesses that work with people face-to-face. In this case, the government could offer packages to companies at discounted rates
• Consumers: anyone that spends money in these places, the more they spend, the better. Here you can sort of filter for these people by charging a significant sum for the vaccine

It's not like we don't already have a two-tier health care system in this country anyway, so it's not quite the huge step some think it would be. Again, I don't support it but I'd struggle to argue against it. If I've lost my job I can't afford to go out anyway and the economy restarting and new jobs being made available probably matters more to me than personally getting the vaccine for something that won't effect me much.

You're right, I didn't really mean demand - I mean that if they are producing a lot of something then there are usually lower costs, but with something like rabies which has quite a small customer base generally in this country it makes sense it would be more expensive (also I think the immunoglobulin is hard to source, but could be wrong).

I actually don't mind paying for a vaccine as I can afford it, but I worry about the precedence that sets. Perhaps it could be means tested? If you pay for your prescriptions then you pay for the vaccine or something like that. Then people who can't afford to pay for their medicines would get it for free anyway.

I'd hope everyone can get it for free, really, just saying I don't mind paying personally.

 

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

2 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

The thing is, as far as i am aware, one “should” stay local- which is guidance. However one “must not” meet more than one other person outside to exercise with. Also one “should” only exercise once a day- once again guidance and not law.

If we want to have a debate about whether they left their “local area”, we will never come to a conclusion. Unless there is a legal limit as to which you can travel away from your household, they didn’t break any laws. In germany, it is illegal to travel 15km away from your household. If we introduced say a 3 mile limit, then yes the two girls broke the law. At the moment they only didn’t follow the guidance and that is still subjective as to whether they didn’t stay local or not. Arguably their walk had less covid risk as well than if they had done it in the city.

I was wondering this too. I imagine they rang the media straight after they had been fined and someone probably came and took a photo and got details for an article etc. Wonder if the media paid them.

You can't just provide a radius as 'local' because not everyone has essential services within that distance - that's why it needs to be fluffy. 

If you have driven somewhere for a walk I don't think it's unreasonable to say that's not local.

 

 

[Zoo Music Girl]

4 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

Just got my test kit ... and it says lookup a priority postbox ... mine are in the town centre ...and I should be isolating  any postbox is presumably ok ? I presume it will just get processed slightly later ? 

As far as I understand it you either have to use a priority postbox or book a courier. That's what I understood when I read it yesterday - I think they only pick up the tests from priority postboxes. So maybe try the courier?

I have one at the end of my road so that bit was easy! 

[xxialac]

4 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

 

I was wondering this too. I imagine they rang the media straight after they had been fined and someone probably came and took a photo and got details for an article etc. Wonder if the media paid them.

Was a freelance journalist and assume he would have sold his picture to the rags. 

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

You're right, I didn't really mean demand - I mean that if they are producing a lot of something then there are usually lower costs, but with something like rabies which has quite a small customer base generally in this country it makes sense it would be more expensive (also I think the immunoglobulin is hard to source, but could be wrong).

I actually don't mind paying for a vaccine as I can afford it, but I worry about the precedence that sets. Perhaps it could be means tested? If you pay for your prescriptions then you pay for the vaccine or something like that. Then people who can't afford to pay for their medicines would get it for free anyway.

I'd hope everyone can get it for free, really, just saying I don't mind paying personally.

 

Yeah, to be clear, I'm not suggesting it be kept exclusively to people that can afford £500. Just that after the vulnerable are done, it's open to those willing to pay £500 (as they're more likely to put money into the economy) and then after that it's free for anyway. Just you have to choose who goes first somehow, and this is one of those very, very, very rare occasions where letting those with money go first can actually be beneficial.

(Taking the idea to it's logical conclusion, it'd be far too complicated, but you'd do a reverse auction, so the price starts at £5000 for whoever will pay it, then keeps going down until it gets to £0)

[Mr.Tease]

2 hours ago, Simsy said:

Yeah, I think private vaccines for things like yellow fever and rabies are about £50 each, and that's for diseases you're not going to catch in the UK.

£500 for a covid vaccine isn't going to happen, but you might need to pay for yearly boosters like with the flu jab.

I think they sometimes also sting you by charging another £20 or £30 for a 'certificate of vaccination' (just some hand writing in a box saying when you got vaccinated) if you need proof for travel. 

I think Rabies vaccine was something over £100 

[Zoo Music Girl]

On the outdoor exercise thing, I have to agree that it's a big sacrifice for little gain given outdoor transmission isn't supposed to account for that much.

Me personally, I exercise at home most of the time (online classes), but I still like to go out for the odd walk. Yes it's exercise but for me it has a different purpose to just burning calories or getting your body moving, it's more about getting some air and a change of scene.

Also my other half would never get any exercise at all if they banned going for a walk! No way he would do it indoor and loads would be the same.

I know they've done it in another countries but I'm sceptical it would really have an effect on numbers.

Do we know for sure that tier 4 and lockdown aren't working? As I said in an earlier post the horrific hospital numbers we are seeing in London are from a while back now, case wise, so I don't know that extra restrictions will even have any effect. If numbers are plateauing here, as I think they are, that suggests the restrictions might be enough.

[Zoo Music Girl]

1 minute ago, Mr.Tease said:

I think they sometimes also sting you by charging another £20 or £30 for a 'certificate of vaccination' (just some hand writing in a box saying when you got vaccinated) if you need proof for travel. 

I think Rabies vaccine was something over £100 

I didn't need one for rabies, but my yellow fever certificate came for free.

[FestivalJamie]

8 minutes ago, RobertProsineckisLighter said:

You can't just provide a radius as 'local' because not everyone has essential services within that distance - that's why it needs to be fluffy. 

If you have driven somewhere for a walk I don't think it's unreasonable to say that's not local.

 

 

Sorry I STRONGLY disagree here. The government has actively chosen to allow heritage sites to stay open. We have national trust membership and all of the sites in the “local” vicinity to me are NOT accessible by foot- only by car. If you think that driving to exercise at a ticketed heritage site, which is legally allowed, is not ok- then you need to question why the government have allowed these properties to stay open with ticketed entry. The only example I can think of which is easily accessible by foot is Kew Gardens- But all of the national trust properties in the local vicinity to me must be accessed by car to the car park- on foot is not reasonable or practical.

I also disagree that it needs to be “fluffy”. Everything the government does causes confusion in their rules. This one isn’t helping. And quite frankly what these girls did was not an illegal action, so they do not deserve a fine.

Edited January 8, 2021 by FestivalJamie

[Mr.Tease]

2 hours ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

I spent best part of £300 on my rabies vaccine! That's for two doses. Yellow fever was probably quite a bit cheaper but can't remember now.

Yikes! I remember rabies vaccine was so much I decided I wasn't having it! Definitely over £100 but don't think it was £300 here. Yes, such is the price I put on my life! 😂

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

Just got my test kit ... and it says lookup a priority postbox ... mine are in the town centre ...and I should be isolating  any postbox is presumably ok ? I presume it will just get processed slightly later ? 

Does this help?

https://www.royalmail.com/priority-postboxes

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

1 minute ago, FestivalJamie said:

Sorry I STRONGLY disagree here. The government has actively chosen to allow heritage sites to stay open. We have national trust membership and all of the sites in the “local” vicinity to me are NOT accessible by foot- only by car. If you think that driving to exercise at a ticketed heritage site, which is legally allowed, is not ok- then you need to question why the government have allowed these properties to stay open with ticketed entry. The only example I can think of which is easily accessible by foot is Kew Gardens- But all of the national trust properties in the local vicinity to me must be accessed by car to the car park- on foot is not reasonable or practical.

You can't have your cake and eat it though - do you want harsher rules in place or don't you? 

 

[Ryan1984]

Banning outdoor exercise - even in the depths of winter - would affect people’s mental health so much. Better to go with a stronger ‘avoid crowded spaces/keep away from others’ message?

[Zoo Music Girl]

1 minute ago, Mr.Tease said:

Yikes! I remember rabies vaccine was so much I decided I wasn't having it! Definitely over £100 but don't think it was £300 here. Yes, such is the price I put on my life! 😂

I checked and I was exaggerating - it was actually £225 for two jabs. Thing is you're really unlikely to get it, so it is a major cost for a small risk! But I just thought fuck it.