When will this shit end?

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, Hannibal Schmitt said:

Things can change quite rapidly. Last time in German Television it was said (after the pausing of the AZ) acceptance now is quite good. A scientist on TV also mentioned a main problem is that AZ was quite cheap and therefore a good deal for the EU and governments. And people not only have lost faith in the EU and their governments, they also want to have the more expensive ones as its the association expensive=brilliant/cheap=rubbish, but maybe the third wave will have a good effect that people will get more confidence in all the vaccines. 

if I had a choice I would have had the pfizer one...

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Hannibal Schmitt said:

Things can change quite rapidly. Last time in German Television it was said (after the pausing of the AZ) acceptance now is quite good. A scientist on TV also mentioned a main problem is that AZ was quite cheap and therefore a good deal for the EU and governments. And people not only have lost faith in the EU and their governments, they also want to have the more expensive ones as its the association expensive=brilliant/cheap=rubbish, but maybe the third wave will have a good effect that people will get more confidence in all the vaccines. 

How has your government handled it?

[zahidf]

Cineworld reopening in May

 

https://www.nme.com/news/film/cineworld-confirms-may-reopening-plans-uk-2906219?amp&__twitter_impression=true

[Hannibal Schmitt]

13 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

How has your government handled it?

At the beginning very good. But now very bad. At the beginning people stood with more than 80% behind the actions of the government, now its gone far under 50%.

 

They now have the pressure from economy and the 9 counties to open up as much as possible.

 

But cases with the UK variant which now makes nearly 80% of all cases are on the rise. They have been around 3500 today and experts warn that they could reach 5000 soon. So government now doesn`t go with experts advise.

 

The chancelor (right wing conservative) wants to open up as much as possible, the health minister (green) wants to close down as much as possible. Cases are on the rise, specially in vienna and east, rather low in Innsbruck and west (which is weird because during winter the west has been on the brink with hospitalization). Yesterday they had talks about measures but no result, all stays they same, shops, museums and hairdressers open, the rest closed. And this mixed with a slow vaccine roll out and PR for the government which costs more that the actual vaccines don`t make the situation that much better.

 

But at least summer should be normal our government says, only thing people don`t believe them.

[eFestivals]

23 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

It’s an interesting thought. 

I've had a bad cough while in hospital.i lost count of how many times said it's not covid.

[st dan]

 

[Hannibal Schmitt]

27 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

if I had a choice I would have had the pfizer one...

funnily we have a beer with a quite similar pronunciation here which I would prefer

[JoeyT]

7 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

I've had a bad cough while in hospital.i lost count of how many times said it's not covid.

I had a non-covid cough back in October / November (before actually getting covid in Jan) I was in the queue in Costa and could feel a coughing fit about to attack.

I tried concealing it which led to my eyes literally watering & body shaking.

Eventually I submitted, pretended to take a phone call and ran outside coughing like a mad man 😂

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Hannibal Schmitt said:

At the beginning very good. But now very bad. At the beginning people stood with more than 80% behind the actions of the government, now its gone far under 50%.

 

They now have the pressure from economy and the 9 counties to open up as much as possible.

 

But cases with the UK variant which now makes nearly 80% of all cases are on the rise. They have been around 3500 today and experts warn that they could reach 5000 soon. So government now doesn`t go with experts advise.

 

The chancelor (right wing conservative) wants to open up as much as possible, the health minister (green) wants to close down as much as possible. Cases are on the rise, specially in vienna and east, rather low in Innsbruck and west (which is weird because during winter the west has been on the brink with hospitalization). Yesterday they had talks about measures but no result, all stays they same, shops, museums and hairdressers open, the rest closed. And this mixed with a slow vaccine roll out and PR for the government which costs more that the actual vaccines don`t make the situation that much better.

 

But at least summer should be normal our government says, only thing people don`t believe them.

That’s really interesting, thanks for the update! How has the Chancellor’s opinion ratings fared?

[zahidf]

22 minutes ago, Hannibal Schmitt said:

At the beginning very good. But now very bad. At the beginning people stood with more than 80% behind the actions of the government, now its gone far under 50%.

 

They now have the pressure from economy and the 9 counties to open up as much as possible.

 

But cases with the UK variant which now makes nearly 80% of all cases are on the rise. They have been around 3500 today and experts warn that they could reach 5000 soon. So government now doesn`t go with experts advise.

 

The chancelor (right wing conservative) wants to open up as much as possible, the health minister (green) wants to close down as much as possible. Cases are on the rise, specially in vienna and east, rather low in Innsbruck and west (which is weird because during winter the west has been on the brink with hospitalization). Yesterday they had talks about measures but no result, all stays they same, shops, museums and hairdressers open, the rest closed. And this mixed with a slow vaccine roll out and PR for the government which costs more that the actual vaccines don`t make the situation that much better.

 

But at least summer should be normal our government says, only thing people don`t believe them.

 

Austrian Chancellor seems to be blaming the EU system

 

[steviewevie]

7 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

I had a non-covid cough back in October / November (before actually getting covid in Jan) I was in the queue in Costa and could feel a coughing fit about to attack.

I tried concealing it which led to my eyes literally watering & body shaking.

Eventually I submitted, pretended to take a phone call and ran outside coughing like a mad man 😂

I had a similar experience in boots queueing to pick up a prescription, trying to hold a cough in and then couldn't stop...and I had a mask on. Pleasant.

[zahidf]

UK will put in a export ban for ingredients if EU use an export ban to try and steal our vaccines according to the sun

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/14416930/uk-no-choice-but-to-block-vaccine-ingredients-eu-war/

 

 

 

[steviewevie]

ahhh...besties.

UK and EU may share Netherlands Covid vaccine supplies to ease tensions

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/23/uk-moves-to-ease-tensions-with-eu-over-covid-vaccine-exports

[stuartbert two hats]

5 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I had a similar experience in boots queueing to pick up a prescription, trying to hold a cough in and then couldn't stop...and I had a mask on. Pleasant.

Superspreader

[Hannibal Schmitt]

28 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

That’s really interesting, thanks for the update! How has the Chancellor’s opinion ratings fared?

Not that good either. He is good at PR and great on stage, but not that good for crisis. He uses standard words like „Light at the End of the Tunnel“, „The last few meters of the crisis“ and „Summer will be normal as every adult will be vaccinated“ (at least once). If you watch press conferences you always get the impression to have seen it all before. But he only does these conferences (with afterwards some questions, but only he accepts to be asked), so when situations are uncomfortable he has other men like the health minister who have to be there, then he is quasi invisible for weeks or travelling to Israel to his friend Netanyahu.

Austria is in the EU, but he is not very Pro-EU. The big topic has been that he wanted to have a fair distribution of vaccines in the EU (his term of fairness includes more for Austria - but EU also has made it now rather clear there won`t be any fairness), but probably it`s also been more to get fog over innerpolitical problems – for many people the vaccine roll out is to slow and in reality it`s been more an attack on his own vaccination coordinator who made the deal with AZ at the EU and also had the chance to order more Biotech vaccine for Austra, but didnt use this chance.

The chancelor made the suggestion to drop him which our health minister did at the end. I mean, if it happens as the chancelor said and summer will be rather normal ratings will go high again, but for now he has the lowest survey-polls during his now second period. His only luck is that opposition is rather weak and he can hope for a faster vaccine rollout just in time before summer.

[MEGABOWL]

1 hour ago, Gregfc15 said:

I don't disagree which is why direct country to country comparisons can be problematic. Again though, closing borders was never about freight but limiting non essential travel. Freight will always need to continue. The causeway between Johor and Singapore is tremendously busy, Malaysia has had 330k cases, but mitigation has been put in place to ensure road freight can continue, Singapore can continue to import food and goods it needs, but cases aren't imported unchecked.

I agree there is no one size fits all approach, but it also doesn't excuse the strategy they went with which was essentially saying 'its all too hard" and failing to learn from others. 

The difference is other Countries have leveraged their natural advantages. The U.K. didn’t have many after years of Tory rule, and then compounded its inherent weaknesses with terrible timing and downright bad decisions at Government level. 
 

I'm just frustrated that I still see people Online (not meaning you, to be clear) putting up videos from NZ or Australia and wistfully going ‘oh this could have been us’ when that’s nonsense.

[zahidf]

Nerds trying to move the goalposts again

 

[steviewevie]

20 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Nerds trying to move the goalposts again

 

outrage from the daily mail.

[JoeyT]

 

[DeanoL]

 

16 hours ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

I think we are kind of seeing it now on this thread. A few months back this thread was an echo chamber of posters who had a raging hard on for authoritarianism. A few of the usual suspects are still posting, but it's much more of a 50-50 split between the lockdown fetishists and those who would like to see society reopened. I suspect that there will be slightly more civil disobedience if 21 June is not met, but overwhelmingly the response will be that people will just stop following the rules to a degree and start meeting up with friends and family again. Many of us already have.

The thing is - you act like you're the only person who has realised this. That the government and their armies of behavioral scientists aren't aware of it. That all their modelling on case numbers just ignores the level of compliance. That they've never read social media or an internet forum.

They know.

They know you break the rules already. They know people are tired and are giving up.

This is why the roadmap is so slow. Because they have to account for the fact that loads of "off the books" mixing is happening already, and there's no viable way to control that. So they can only really control when things open.

They also know that the more things open up, the more people will decide to just ignore the rules about mixing anyway, as they start to feel safer. Hence the need to carefully monitor numbers after each stage. It's not enough to say "there won't be any impact on numbers from when we open up outdoor mixing as the virus doesn't spread much outdoors" because opening up outdoor mixing isn't just that, it's also moving more people into the "I might as well go around my mates' house" category.

I don't have any problem with what you're doing, I can understand why those like you feel the need to do what you need to do to get by, and you have my support. But I'm genuinely baffled at how people think their rule-breaking behaviour is an argument for speeding up the roadmap, when it's actually the reason it's so slow in the first place.

Edited March 23, 2021 by DeanoL

[incident]

3 hours ago, steviewevie said:

 

I actually think this almost buries an important part of the story -

When you break down the figures by age group, they tell an even more impressive (vaccines work) tale:

Unfortunately the more detailed breakdown for 12th March hasn't been published yet, but when it is, I'm happy to take a bet that it'll continue to indicate faster improvements amongst groups that have received their first vaccine doses.

[eFestivals]

Hospital isn't going too let me ojt to get my jab later this week. 

[DeanoL]

I have some sympathy for the EU with the AstraZenaca situation. Because something has gone seriously wrong there and I'm not sure they're entirely to blame.

The EU may have been a bit slow authorising it, but it wasn't submitted for authorisation by AZ until after it was already being used in the UK. During which time it seems both factories producing it in the EU were sending it straight to the UK.

Then we have the same issue again with the Halix factory - the paperwork for approval was not submitted to the EEA until recently, so again, up until then the vaccines produced were being sent to the UK.

In both cases, it's happened slowly because AZ didn't apply for approval. Not because the EU were slow to approve it. 

Now, my day job is project management, and you can bet for sure that if I were in the EU's position I'd be on to AZ every day asking why the hell they hadn't submitted for approval yet, and how the hell they expected to reach their contractual obligations while mucking about not asking for approval. So it's not like the EU is innocent on this.

But it sure as hell looks like AZ were dragging their heels on submitting for approval, as that would mean they could continue to use the EU factories to supplement the UK supply as long as possible (one pissed off customer is better than two). 

And once we are at the point where the second factory is approved (this week) I can certainly understand the EU saying "no more excuses" and insisting that both factories are used to supply them exclusively.

(Having said that, there's still a "deal" to be made as the UK will be done with vaccinating their adult population pretty soon, after which they will have excess vaccine - the EU may have to think more medium term - if they block our access to those vaccines now, it's likely they'll never be give access to the vaccines coming from the UK factories - and we will reach a position where the EU needs them and the UK don't)

[Crazyfool01]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Hospital isn't going too let me ojt to get my jab later this week. 

how much longer are you going to be in for ? or is that like asking how long a piece of string is ? hope the recovery is on track 

[philipsteak]

Things are going badly on Anglesey (where my mum lives). Well, it's primarily Holyhead. Case numbers have shot up. Buses have been cancelled and people are being asked not to travel in (not an issue, no one really wants to go to Holyhead at the best of times) or out. Schools might be closed again