When will this shit end?

[Copperface]

1 minute ago, Paul ™ said:

Cheers for the explanation. Makes sense.

There is also the issue now with Scotland going all out with borders and England not, so anyone realistically can fly into Manchester/Newcastle etc and then just travel north over the border.

Yep, but Border Force and all forces, including Police Scotland all have access to the Border Targeting Centre info so the UK internal border is not really an issue. What they do need is some mechanism to transfer information from the point of arrival to the relevant agency responsible for enforcing any quarantine/isolation restrictions in Scotland, for example,  if there are varying rules in different parts of the UK.

[Paul ™]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

It’s to do with the cultural links between the two countries. Lot of Brazilians cruising around the world on fake Portuguese passports. 

They wouldn't get into the UK either though so still doesn't make sense as it's only UK nationals

[PM87]

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

they have travel restrictions as well as other restrictions...this is from 31st Jan

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55863069

Yeah. I'm still surprised they've managed to evade the UK variant, especially as they closed the border to non-EU countries at the end of January by which time we were drowning in it. I know they wear masks in schools, which will help, but schools still provide so many connections between families whether you're masked or not. I guess it's only the 9th Feb, so perhaps the infection rates will increase. There seems to be a lot of debate in the French government in recent days about whether they should impose a third lockdown to avoid this. 

I just keep hearing many of my friends bemoaning the situation we're in and how France and Germany and other European countries are doing so much better right now. But France have 80k deaths and Germany had a definite blip with their second wave and days of circa 900 deaths. So it's not all roses there either.

I don't think it's necessarily helpful to make country comparisons, especially when we're in the midst of the pandemic. Distance is necessary to truly analyse what's happened. But I am intrigued how different countries count their covid deaths, and what their testing capability is compared to us. 

And as always, well aware our government have made too many mistakes to count and lives have been lost that could have been avoided, I'm just thinking out loud.

[Paul ™]

8 minutes ago, Copperface said:

Yep, but Border Force and all forces, including Police Scotland all have access to the Border Targeting Centre info so the UK internal border is not really an issue. What they do need is some mechanism to transfer information from the point of arrival to the relevant agency responsible for enforcing any quarantine/isolation restrictions in Scotland, for example,  if there are varying rules in different parts of the UK.

They would have to then man the non existent border though and stop everyone going over to check where they have been surely.

[Toilet Duck]

15 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

Do we? Even though the stage 3 testing isn't yet complete and we have no long term data to go on? My response was to a post painting anti-vaxxers as stupid people who read something on Facebook and decide not to get jabbed. The fact is there are plenty of scientists who have questions about this new technology and are concerned about the possible unknown effects.

The more you read about this subject the harder it is to make sense of it, this post and responses discusses ADE - antibody-dependant enhancement.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/18/antibody-dependent-enhancement

There are fears that long-term the new vaccines may actually make peoples response to the disease worse due to this effect.

I don't pretend to know if this is likely to be a problem but it's something the experts are discussing (and disagreeing on - see the responses to the post). I'd be interested in Toilet Duck's thoughts.

I think the ADE argument was pretty much put to bed by the trial data, no indication of it at all (though it was certainly worth watching out for as a hypothetical issue). It's not actually that common (it's a well known mechanism in dengue fever, but outside of that, it's pretty rare anyway). There's nothing wrong with being careful when using any new medicinal product, that's what ongoing pharmacovigilance is for, but if I just take Ireland as an example as I have the data, from almost a quarter of a million doses, there have been 740 AEs reported, all mild to moderate and none requiring medical intervention. I don't see anything in the trial data for any of the vaccines so far that would cause me alarm and in the case of the Oxford/J&J/Russian vaccines, the vectors have been in humans for a few years now and we haven't seen long term side effects. I'm not staying that when billions of people have been vaccinated that there isn't the possibility for rarer AEs to occur, but balanced with the damage of the virus itself, they are minimal. Prudent to keep an eye on things, but I don't think anything is being hidden. 

[steviewevie]

13 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Lot of Brazilians cruising around the world on fake Portuguese passports. 

is this made up?

[steviewevie]

16 minutes ago, Paul ™ said:

Portugal have the UK variant ripping through here,  but no mention of the Brazil variant here that I can find, yet Portugual is included in the red list!

Flights from Brazil are suspended to here too, so am really struggling to find why they have included Portugal.

maybe customs officers would get confused because they speak same language.

[steviewevie]

17 minutes ago, PM87 said:

Yeah. I'm still surprised they've managed to evade the UK variant, especially as they closed the border to non-EU countries at the end of January by which time we were drowning in it.

didn't they ban travel from UK at end of last year, and even included hauliers which upset things somewhat.

[Copperface]

7 minutes ago, Paul ™ said:

They would have to then man the non existent border though and stop everyone going over to check where they have been surely.

They'd have to make sure anyone with a Scotland address on their PLF has that arrival information transferred to whoever in Scotland is responsible for the quarantine arrangements. But is definitely a weakness. Only thing is, there are currently hardly any flight......

[xxialac]

27 minutes ago, Paul ™ said:

Portugal have the UK variant ripping through here,  but no mention of the Brazil variant here that I can find, yet Portugual is included in the red list!

Flights from Brazil are suspended to here too, so am really struggling to find why they have included Portugal.

I don't think they are fully 'following the science' on this.

e.g. Spain has very high case numbers (second highest last week) but isn't yet redlisted. Presumably as the UK doesn't feel it's able to manage much higher numbers of people to hotel quarantine.

[PM87]

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

didn't they ban travel from UK at end of last year, and even included hauliers which upset things somewhat.

Ah yes, I forgot about the Folkstone debacle. Google says that was from 20th December. So perhaps that was early enough to keep the UK variant out, or at least stop it getting out of control like here.

[MEGABOWL]

5 hours ago, JoeyT said:

My 1 year old has been in some sort of lockdown for almost her entire life.

No swimming lessons, no kids classes, no staying at her grandparents, barely been held or seen in person by any of our friends.

She's not showing signs of it affecting her but bugger me it's affected me and my wife knowing how much she has missed out on.

I feel so much for those people with kids having to deal with both the affects this period has had on themselves but also their children.

Yeah it’s horrible for the little ones. Insane to think yours will only be really used to seeing you. We’re the same with some things-the youngest had just got into Soft Plays for example. It’s hard not to feel sad for the things you know you’ve missed. At the other end of it someone I know has seen their 15-year-old go right off the rails. The only kids he’s been able to hang it with regularly are the stereotypical bad crowd. Throw in his own existing fragility and they’re really struggling. I fear for the future, I really do.

[gizmoman]

7 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

I think the ADE argument was pretty much put to bed by the trial data, no indication of it at all (though it was certainly worth watching out for as a hypothetical issue). It's not actually that common (it's a well known mechanism in dengue fever, but outside of that, it's pretty rare anyway). There's nothing wrong with being careful when using any new medicinal product, that's what ongoing pharmacovigilance is for, but if I just take Ireland as an example as I have the data, from almost a quarter of a million doses, there have been 740 AEs reported, all mild to moderate and none requiring medical intervention. I don't see anything in the trial data for any of the vaccines so far that would cause me alarm and in the case of the Oxford/J&J/Russian vaccines, the vectors have been in humans for a few years now and we haven't seen long term side effects. I'm not staying that when billions of people have been vaccinated that there isn't the possibility for rarer AEs to occur, but balanced with the damage of the virus itself, they are minimal. Prudent to keep an eye on things, but I don't think anything is being hidden. 

Thanks for that, but some of the comments suggest it could be a longer term issue that could be a factor if the virus mutates enough, the short-term trial data wouldn't be any use in checking for that would it? There is some suggestion the non-mRNA "traditional" vaccines would be less of a risk in this regard, any thoughts on that?  Sorry to put you on the spot with technical questions but trying to make sense of these scientific discussions is so difficult for the layman.

[xxialac]

One thing that hasn't been said I think is that surely anyone wanting to legally fly from a red list country to the UK should (if they have the time) be looking to spend 10 days in a non-redlisted country first. Hence no £1750 quarantine and no staring at the four walls of a Premier Inn in Staines.

Victory? Well not quite.

As it also means that the 'Covid Variant Risk' is simply passed onto a country other than the UK...

 

[whitehorses]

14 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

is this made up?

I think it’s an exaggeration. Lots of Brazilians have duel passports; Brazil and their ‘mother’ country. Lots of Italian and Portuguese, for example. There are some well known immigration quirks played by people with those duel passports, which might be what is meant by ‘fake’ here.

[zahidf]

6 minutes ago, xxialac said:

One thing that hasn't been said I think is that surely anyone wanting to legally fly from a red list country to the UK should (if they have the time) be looking to spend 10 days in a non-redlisted country first. Hence no £1750 quarantine and no staring at the four walls of a Premier Inn in Staines.

Victory? Well not quite.

As it also means that the 'Covid Variant Risk' is simply passed onto a country other than the UK...

 

I do feel you're trying to pick holes in it for the sakes of it tbh... there are issues with it but you can't allow for every minor potential issue. Which wouldn't happen in reality.

[zahidf]

Lockdown Bristol

 

[Ozanne]

11 minutes ago, xxialac said:

One thing that hasn't been said I think is that surely anyone wanting to legally fly from a red list country to the UK should (if they have the time) be looking to spend 10 days in a non-redlisted country first. Hence no £1750 quarantine and no staring at the four walls of a Premier Inn in Staines.

Victory? Well not quite.

As it also means that the 'Covid Variant Risk' is simply passed onto a country other than the UK...

 

Come on mate you’re supposed to let the government off for any potential issues 😉

[xxialac]

 

7 minutes ago, zahidf said:

I do feel you're trying to pick holes in it for the sakes of it tbh... there are issues with it but you can't allow for every minor potential issue. Which wouldn't happen in reality.

Wasn't a criticism at all, just an observation.

And it absolute will happen in reality.

I for one would do almost anything to avoid huge cost and even greater unpleasantness of hotel quarantine in a room likely with no openable windows if I had to travel.

Would definitely spend 10 days somewhere else first.

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by xxialac

[zahidf]

2 minutes ago, xxialac said:

 

Wasn't a criticism at all, just an observation.

And it absolute will happen in reality.

I for one would do almost anything to avoid huge cost and even greater unpleasantness of hotel quarantine in a room likely with no openable windows if I had to travel.

Would definitely spend 10 days somewhere else first.

 

You'd still need a negative test to travel from the new country though. So risks would, in theory, be small. 

[xxialac]

13 minutes ago, whitehorses said:

I think it’s an exaggeration. Lots of Brazilians have duel passports; Brazil and their ‘mother’ country. Lots of Italian and Portuguese, for example. There are some well known immigration quirks played by people with those duel passports, which might be what is meant by ‘fake’ here.

Exactly right!

Though surely the UK border force can simply scan their passport, look at their boarding pass and see where they've travelled from. The Covid PCR taken in Brazil would be another big old clue.

[Paul ™]

31 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

because they speak same language.

I think that's probably why it was added to be honest.

19 minutes ago, xxialac said:

I don't think they are fully 'following the science' on this.

e.g. Spain has very high case numbers (second highest last week) but isn't yet redlisted. Presumably as the UK doesn't feel it's able to manage much higher numbers of people to hotel quarantine.

Portugal coming down rapidly too.

15 minutes ago, xxialac said:

One thing that hasn't been said I think is that surely anyone wanting to legally fly from a red list country to the UK should (if they have the time) be looking to spend 10 days in a non-redlisted country first. Hence no £1750 quarantine and no staring at the four walls of a Premier Inn in Staines.

Pretty much what we are doing but overland.

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

You'd still need a negative test to travel from the new country though. So risks would, in theory, be small. 

If you travel from e.g. Portugal to the UK via Greece, the risk you pose to Greece would be identical to the risk you would have posed to the UK had you been able to fly directly.

That was more my point. The Variant risk isn't going away, it's just being transferred to a different country.  

[Paul ™]

3 minutes ago, xxialac said:

Though surely the UK border force can simply scan their passport, look at their boarding pass and see where they've travelled from. The Covid PCR taken in Brazil would be another big old clue.

They wouldn't be allowed in anyway!

[xxialac]

This is what I've been barking on about, albeit better articulated (and yes, I appreciate it's confirmation bias to post this and is just one org's view).

The Institute for Government thinktank has published an eight-page briefing paper (pdf) on the government’s plans for hotel quarantine (based on what we know so far; on some issues, details remain scant). Overall, it is not impressed. Here is the conclusion.

The government says it is taking a tough line on borders. But what it is poised to deliver is characteristic of much of its pandemic response: an uneasy compromise between ministers prioritising health outcomes and others concerned about the impact on the economy, but which risks achieving the objectives of neither. Ultimately, the government must decide whether it actually wants to keep variants of concern out of the UK or just give the impression it is trying to do so.

Edited February 9, 2021 by xxialac