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>> No. 27266 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 5:21 pm
27266 Corona thread #3 Locked
Right, now that the last corona thread is over 1,700 posts long, maybe it's time for a new one.

How long do you think it will be until we're fully back to normal?
Expand all images.
>> No. 27268 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 5:24 pm
27268 spacer
Normal wasn't sane. I can't see the world going fully back to the same state.
>> No. 27269 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 5:28 pm
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Considering the government wants us to sarcrifice ourselves for the economy again now, and people are still for some reason desperate for holidays abroad, probably at least another year.
>> No. 27270 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 5:48 pm
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>>27266
Until an effective vaccine is developed, we're all at risk. So until then, it's about risk mitigation. It's not even been a year and the process usually takes about 3 years, even with stuff fast tracked for human trails we're talking roughly 18 months if we're lucky and people aren't rational about lock down.
>> No. 27272 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:10 pm
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>>27270

I'm not wasting three years of my life on 'risk mitigation', if you want to stay indoors thats your prerogative.

>>27269
Going abroad doesn't give you coronavirus.
>> No. 27273 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:14 pm
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>>27272
>Going abroad doesn't give you coronavirus.

Obviously, it encourages the spread and you know this.
>> No. 27274 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:17 pm
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>>27272
These morons right here is why it'll go on longer than needed.
>> No. 27275 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:26 pm
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>>27273
No it doesn't, no more than going about your daily life.
>> No. 27276 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:27 pm
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>>27274
Not all of us have the privilege of being able to sit at home wanking for three years.
>> No. 27277 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:28 pm
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From where we are standing now, I think we should have just taken the deaths on the nose, honestly. Unpopular opinion and I know that, but if it turns out a vaccine can't be developed to give reliable immunity, that's about the only choice we will have. What can we do, socially distance forever?

It's not misanthropy that drives my viewpoint here, but rather the fact that we've gone above and beyond what should have been necessary, in a sensible world, to contain the spread and people still can't even follow the rules properly. If people are wilfully ignorant or too dense to put a mask on properly, or stay two metres away from me in the queue at Morrisons, then clearly they bloody well want to die. Who am I to stop them.

We're all still going to drown in fifty year's time and we're doing absolutely bugger all about it, but we're all sick with worry in case the nasty ickle cough bumps us off before then. I reckon we would have been absolutely fine if we just let it burn itself out like a wildfire.

The response to this virus offered us a choice to look at the way we operate society, and change it for the better, in the modern age. But we didn't take it. We're now heading for a worst of both worlds nightmare future, and on balance I'd have stuck with it before, as awful as things were.
>> No. 27278 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:29 pm
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>>27275
Go on then.
>> No. 27279 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:33 pm
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>>27276
Neither do I and it wouldn't have to be for three years, obviously.
>> No. 27280 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 6:38 pm
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>>27273

>Obviously, it encourages the spread

How can somebody not realise this.


Just read an article on Spain's tourism industry at the moment. Most countries that the bulk of tourists normally come from during the summer season have now issued either travel bans or warnings. It has taken away over 70 percent of their usual earnings during the summer months. And with few regional exceptions, they earn nearly all their annual revenue between May and September, so it's a double blow and they will be unable to make up their losses this year even if all travel restrictions are lifted again by October or November. And the beginning of the next summer holiday season, if there is going to be one, is still well over six months away.
>> No. 27282 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 7:03 pm
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>>27279
Yes you would. Coronavirus isn't just going to disappear.
>> No. 27285 Anonymous
28th August 2020
Friday 7:13 pm
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>>27277
I'm inclined to agree with you, this whole thing's made me lose some more faith in humanity.

>>27280
It's not as if there's an example out there of a country that did everything right in setting and following restrictions, and now has just over 100 cases. Oh wait. There is. Just like cases lowering in all the other countries doing the same. Seriously how is this a debate anymore?

>>27275
Don't be stupid lad.

>>27282
No, mate...Restrictions are for a timebeing so that the spread of the virus is greatly reduced, and then more easily controlled and any infections more easily managed, like you know, the entire reason we put restrictions in place to begin with. Then as time goes on, restrictions can be lessened gradually. It's how New Zealand was so on it, and how they got down to 0 cases. They restricted air travel too. But much like the Spanish Flu we apparently learned nothing from, opening up too early has/will make it much worse.
>> No. 27302 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 1:03 am
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>>27276
No one is suggesting that you have to, but maybe keep your distance from strangers in shops until we have a vaccine, yeah?
>> No. 27304 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 7:05 am
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>>27285

>Then as time goes on, restrictions can be lessened gradually.

Nope. Covid won't become less infectious just through the passage of time. China, South Korea and New Zealand were able to end their lockdowns and return to some sort of normality because they developed very efficient test-trace-isolate systems. It's all about speed at every stage - the quicker you find and isolate people who might be infected, the fewer people they can infect. That's what keeps the R value low enough to allow things to reopen.

Our system is getting worse, not better. The number of contacts being traced is below 80% and falling and the government doesn't even have stats on how quickly contacts are being traced. In many parts of the country it's taking a week to get results back from a COVID test. We don't have any real plan for how to improve those numbers.
>> No. 27308 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 2:27 pm
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>>27304
>Covid won't become less infectious just through the passage of time.
Not less infectious, but perhaps less dangerous. I think that's why we are just able to live with other seasonal coronaviruses like colds and flu, I think I read something that they would have started as a high-death toll pandemic and then mutated into something that isn't as deadly in order for itself to survive.
>> No. 27309 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 2:28 pm
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>>27308
There is next to zero evolutuonary pressure on coronavirus
>> No. 27310 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 2:41 pm
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>>27309
Evolution happens with or without pressure, professor.
>> No. 27311 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 2:49 pm
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>>27308

Herd immunity is a thing, we'll eventually reach it to some degree, with the help of a vaccine or not. One of the reasons it has spread so effectively is that it's already one of those not-very-deadly pathogens, the death toll is just adding up because of the sheer number of cases. It's still only around 5% mortality.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Best case scenario it's full protection, but that's unlikely. Realistically it's more likely to end up being something like seasonal flu- The reason it's torn a path right across the world is because it was new and we've not been exposed to it before. Worst case scenario is it's like we're starting from scratch every time it comes round, and that's really the point at which we just have to accept it's one of those things out there in nature that might kill you, and deal with it come what may.

Either way, the impact will lessen over time, if not the actual potency of the disease. There are varying reports out there about re-infection and it's kind of hard to tell what's credible and what isn't right now.
>> No. 27312 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 2:50 pm
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>>27304
But why are we so shit at these things?
>> No. 27313 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:13 pm
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>>27312
We have a government that can't lead and wants to sacrifice people for the economy, and apparently there's a good percentage of the country who are outright thickos.
>> No. 27314 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:19 pm
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>>27311
>Herd immunity is a thing, we'll eventually reach it to some degree

That was the theory when this first started, but it would have to spread massively for this to even begin to happen, seeing as how you can easily become re-infected. It's been bullshit for a while, unless it's left to spread uncontrolled and millions get sick and many more die, it won't happen.
>> No. 27315 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:23 pm
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>>27314
Also people seem to have completely forgotten how badly having covid can fuck you up in the long term. For some reason the "It's just like a seasonal flu" crowd are still about.
>> No. 27316 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:37 pm
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>>27314

You misunderstand what herd immunity means. It's not just a term thrown around to mean "everyone is safe".

If we develop a vaccine and deploy it en masse, herd immunity is exactly what we will have. As in, the people who cannot safely take the vaccine will be protected by virtue of high enough general population immunisation that they're unlikely to come into contact with an active case.

Now, if we don't develop an effective vaccine, yes, that's when massive numbers of people need to have had it, and the same level of protection probably wouldn't be reached. But it would still reduce the overall rate of transmission.

The trouble we're going to have is anti-vax dickheads. We've had comprehensive herd immunity to things like measles and polio for the last fifty odd years and only recently has that started to erode because of tossers who think vaccines give you autism.
>> No. 27317 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:43 pm
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>>27316
If you can become reinfected within a year, as recent cases are suggesting, you can't have herd immunity, at least not one that is logistically possible. We'd have to be getting vaccinations constantly, or the virus could come in different strains that would make the vaccine ineffective, like we see with the seasonal flu.
>> No. 27318 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 3:51 pm
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>>27317
Assuming money and logistics were no object, we could eradicate the flu by vaccinating everyone on the planet. If it's not in transmission, it's not going to mutate.
>> No. 27319 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 4:00 pm
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>>27318

Why don't they just rmdir ./virii/covid19 ?
>> No. 27320 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 4:03 pm
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>>27311

Without a vaccine, we'd need at least 60% of the population to get COVID to develop herd immunity. At a conservative 0.7% CFR, that means at least 260,000 deaths. Getting to that level of infection without totally overwhelming the NHS would take the best part of a decade.

Unless the economic impacts of social distancing get really, really bad, I think the only politically tenable option is to ride it out until a vaccine arrives. The long-term health impacts of mass unemployment might end up being worse than the impact of uncontrolled COVID, but young people will bear the brunt of that and they don't vote.
>> No. 27321 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 4:39 pm
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>>27319

Because rm -rf is better.
>> No. 27322 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 5:25 pm
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>>27320

>but young people will bear the brunt of that

Not wanting to turn all middle aged tutting DM reading cunt, but serves them right for thinking they were invulnerable just because they were under 30 and couldn't get sick.
>> No. 27323 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 5:45 pm
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>>27322
>> No. 27324 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 6:59 pm
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>>27322
Or thinking that being a barista or doing media studies is a good career choice.

It's gonna hurt.
>> No. 27325 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 7:14 pm
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>>27324

Still less dodgy than wanting to be a youtuber for a living.
>> No. 27326 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 7:41 pm
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>>27324
Yes, literally every person now between the ages of 23-40 did media studies and then wanted to be a barista.

Are you fucking reading the posts you're making?
>> No. 27327 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 8:24 pm
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>>27325
I bet kids these days must be having a right old laugh. Imagine getting months off school in the era of high-speed internet and then for the rest of your life the media pats you on the back for 'surviving' it.

Little shits will probably get to live forever as well.
>> No. 27328 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 9:10 pm
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>>27327

What many younguns get wrong is that almost all youtube channels are and always have been shit. There is a lot of survivor bias because everybody knows a handful of youtubers in their main areas of interest who have millions of subscribers and are actually able to make a living that way. But nobody sees or hears much about all the wannabe youtubers who dabble and upload two or three poorly boshed together videos but then realise nobody watches them, because they are shit, and then give up.

You're not going to be able to earn a living from being a youtuber just because you suddenly decide that spending a few minutes a day talking into a camera suits your layabout lifestyle more than sitting at a desk in an office. Those who do succeed as youtubers often put long gruelling hours into scripting and preparing their clips and then spending several days filming and editing them.

It's not going to be your daytime job unless you treat it as one.
>> No. 27329 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 9:35 pm
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>>27322

Young people are basically invulnerable to COVID, but we're trashing their future to save the codgers. It doesn't seem particularly fair to me. If the roles were reversed, would the current generation of over-65s sacrifice their pension to save young people?
>> No. 27330 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 9:36 pm
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>>27317

Herd immunity is what makes the flu jab effective m8. Not everyone gets it but not everyone has to, just enough people to stop it spreading.
>> No. 27331 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 9:41 pm
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>>27329
>Young people are basically invulnerable to COVID

They really aren't though.
>> No. 27332 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 10:03 pm
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>>27331

Less than 0.001% of under-18s who catch COVID-19 will die. For people aged 18-49, the infection fatality rate is less than 0.01%. About 15% of over-65s who catch COVID will end up in hospital and about 5% will die.

It might be politically convenient to pretend that we're all at risk, but it's just not true. COVID is a disease that only poses a real threat to people who are close to death already - the elderly and the seriously ill. A tiny handful of young and healthy people will die of COVID, but they're practically a rounding error.
>> No. 27333 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 10:33 pm
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patients-hospital.png
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>>27329

>Young people are basically invulnerable to COVID

The statistical data is skewed because at the beginning of the pandemic, young people were tested less. Which in turn means it's highly likely that mild cases were overlooked more than in older adults. Whereas now, there is much more testing among younger people, which reveals that they are much more likely to contract the virus than previously thought.

There is very generally more testing now than in March or April, while the hospitalisation rate, which should serve as a mark of how serious the pandemic actually is, continues to taper off. It should mean that we are already much closer to herd immunisation than has been assumed, and that the virus as such is both less serious and that we're long past the worst bit. If we're really at the beginning of a second wave, then it certainly doesn't manifest itself in an increase in hospital admissions yet.


https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases
>> No. 27334 Anonymous
29th August 2020
Saturday 10:36 pm
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>>27332

>COVID is a disease that only poses a real threat to people who are close to death already

Oh younglad.

Middle age is going to be living hell for you.
>> No. 27335 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 12:01 am
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>>27328
Funnily enough, my neighbour is one of those who has "made" it on youtube. She doesn't seem to be rolling in money for all the work that's involved. At least back when it was rappers they would rack up huge debts on mansions and non-disclosure agreements.

Plus she proper shit herself when I made a joke about selling her address online. It was poor taste in hindsight but who wants to live like that?

>>27329
I think if it was a straight choice like that they would. They're certainly invested in making sure they pass on their wealth at any rate.

The thing is I doubt any of this matters in the long run. In a worst case scenario it's the oil crisis where we'll feel a pinch for a decade but a recession was overdue and it's not like we don't have anything to be excited about for the future. How many people seem to remember the Great Recession at this point?
>> No. 27336 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 12:28 am
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When people talk about young people surviving Covid or whatever they never mention post-Covid syndrome. It strikes anyone at any age. That's why I'm terrified of catching this thing. I can go through hell for a couple of weeks if that was all it was, that's temporary. The fatigue? That's for life (presumably). Fuck that, I don't want to be out of breath climbing stairs until the grave.
>> No. 27337 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 1:05 am
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>>27336
This is what I've been struggling to explain to people - a lot of people seem to think you either get it and die, or you're perfectly fine.

There's a mounting body of evidence that in some people, there's permanent long-term damage.
>> No. 27338 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 1:24 am
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>>27332
>the elderly and the seriously ill

Or people who are overweight or have any kind of lung condition, it would seem.

Your rounding error is still hundreds of thousands of people - that's a city or two - I think that's worth saving.
>> No. 27339 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 1:43 am
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>>27337
I get that you don't want to go to work but it's not the time for throwing around speculation and worrying people. We know that severe flu can have long-term impacts but there's no hard evidence it's especially dangerous or should concern young people.

If you'd bothered to do a quick google before your post the British Heart Foundation has a nice article:
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/behind-the-headlines/coronavirus/can-coronavirus-cause-long-term-damage-to-the-heart
>> No. 27340 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 2:01 am
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>>27339
I get that you want to go to back to work as your only way to socialise but it's not the time for throwing around speculation and endangering people. We know that severe flu can have long-term impacts but there's no hard evidence the coronavirus is not more dangerous or shouldn't concern young people.

If you'd bothered to do a quick think before your post you'd realise there are no long-term studies into the coronavirus because it hasn't been around that long yet.
>> No. 27341 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 3:06 am
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>>27336
Post-viral fatigue can happen with any infection, Respiratory or otherwise, and usually gets diagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome if it persists beyond a year. Know a lass with CFS, she has ME too and constantly gets chest infections.

I have CFS, but don't have shortness of breath. It's a horrible fugue state that descends like fog and I need to sleep or I'll get a migraine. What caused it is also post-viral fatigue, but it was a severe case of impetigo that triggered it for me.
>> No. 27342 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 3:59 am
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>>27338

>Your rounding error is still hundreds of thousands of people - that's a city or two - I think that's worth saving.

You're off by orders of magnitude. If literally everyone under 65 caught COVID-19, we'd expect less than 10,000 of them to die. 92% of people who died of COVID were aged over 65, 69% were over 80 and 27% were over 90. This is a disease that overwhelmingly harms the elderly, presents almost no risk to the young and presents only a very small risk to middle-aged people in poor health. If it weren't for the elderly, we wouldn't have ever considered a lockdown.
>> No. 27343 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 5:56 am
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>>27342

You've equated death with all harm. I have friends in their 30s who have what appears to be permanent lung damage from covid. That is a factor that unknown in how it will affect people long term and how many are affected.
>> No. 27344 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 8:16 am
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Rishi is looking at raising a number of taxes, including making capital gains tax on second properties the same rate as income tax so it'll go up for most from 28% to 40/45%.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/29/treasury-officials-push-bombshell-tax-hikes-pay-virus/
>> No. 27345 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 8:32 am
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>>27344

Tories raising rates on second properties is not something I thought even a pandemic could bring about. What's next, increasing the seven year rule for inheritance?

Also unrelated but does anyone want to buy a flat in Leeds? It's very nice.
>> No. 27346 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 8:52 am
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>>27345

Ah Leeds, the Windy City.
>> No. 27347 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 9:08 am
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>>27345

Alright, if it is going for mates rates. How much you want for it?
>> No. 27348 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 9:10 am
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>>27345
>Senior Conservatives say Sunak is now resigned to unveiling a number of “soak-the-rich” measures to try to get control of the public finances. “The political reality is that the only place you can get the money is from the better-off. The polling shows this would be popular,” a Tory ally said.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-rishi-sunak-plans-triple-tax-raid-on-the-wealthy-2wlqpq9v6

Other targets look like pension tax relief, the State Pension triple lock, corporation tax, foreign aid and the self-employed paying themselves in dividends.
>> No. 27349 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 9:24 am
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>>27343
We (globally) seem to be getting a bit better at treating it. Dunno if that's a plus, or minus, for long term effects?
>> No. 27350 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 9:35 am
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>>27345

>Also unrelated but does anyone want to buy a flat in Leeds? It's very nice.

Does it have a view of a playground?
>> No. 27351 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 9:50 am
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>>27350

Sadly not, though I'd have bought are Jim's flat for sure.

It's right by the canal though, if The Pusher is still active on here.
>> No. 27352 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 10:34 am
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>>27349
Partly that, but partly that what we saw in April-May-June was infections running amok in care homes, their staff, nurses and doctors etc. To an extent there's now plausibly a certain level of herd immunity within that small subset of the population, as well as within those settings the access to PPE is much better than it was. So now the most vulnerable people, and the people most likely to pass it on to more vulnerable people are a bit safer.

The spikes in infections we're seeing now within the UK and the rest of Europe are to a larger extent in young people who aren't getting seriously ill, which is reflected in hospital admissions not rising in step with increasing infections. The biggest threat right now is that the young people getting infected will be passing it onto older family members.
>> No. 27353 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 11:37 am
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>>27352

I think that generally, the bulk of elderly or otherwise frail and vulnerable people already caught it and died from the virus earlier this year. As highly contagious as the virus is, it is probably more widespread now by many orders of magnitude than we have any way of knowing.

What's really making statistics unreliable is that testing capacities have been expanded. According to data.gov.uk, testing capacity is now ten times what it was in early April. Test processing has also increased at least about five-fold.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing

You can probably liken it to the phaenomenon of overpolicing in crime hotspots. The more police you have watching people, the higher statistical crime rates tend to become in an area. Likewise, reported covid cases are on the increase now because there are simply more of them becoming known, both due to more testing and perhaps more public awareness. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the spread of the virus is getting worse as such.
>> No. 27354 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 1:07 pm
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>>27353
I agree with you general point - that far more testing, means we have far more known cases; and from there we are identifying far more of the "less lethal" cases. But my view is that we don't then extrapolate from there and go to "this is nothing to worry about" - it just shows how wrong we probably got the testing earlier in the year.

It has been interesting to see the (old, white, right-wing) media shift tack this weekend to the "everyone go back to work" lines. Almost as if there has been some concerted spinning..
>> No. 27355 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 2:14 pm
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>>27354
> It has been interesting to see the (old, white, right-wing) media shift tack this weekend to the "everyone go back to work" lines. Almost as if there has been some concerted spinning..
The mainstream media have just been a government mouthpiece for the whole covid period. Note the almost complete lack of dissenting views early on in lockdown, loss of civil liberties, destruction of economy etc.
>> No. 27356 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 2:39 pm
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>>27355

>Note the almost complete lack of dissenting views early on in lockdown, loss of civil liberties, destruction of economy etc

There was no shortage of all that in all the edgelad Breitbartian media that people like you probably prefer in general.

And even if everybody erred on the side of caution, including mainstream media, there can be no doubt in anybody's mind that the death toll would have been far greater if we had just stuck our heads in the sand and continued with Bojo's initial herd immunity approach.

Oh, I forgot, everybody over 65 is just a waste of oxygen anyway, right?

Have a word, lad.
>> No. 27357 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 3:37 pm
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Anyone else looking forward to the flu and covid team up in the winter and second lockdown?
>> No. 27358 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 3:44 pm
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>>27357
ITZ COMING
>> No. 27359 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 3:55 pm
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>>27357
I'm going to bake so many cookies and cakes and stock up on more drugs.
>> No. 27360 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 4:02 pm
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>>27356
U wot m8. I just want a media that raises questions that I myself would have.
>> No. 27361 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 5:11 pm
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>>27360

Who knows. Media peer pressure, or maybe just the fear that even with the best intentions, you will be put in the same corner as Breitbart if you doubt received wisdom about how this pandemic has to be handled.

But the onus isn't on the mainstream media, it's on all the idiots who believe the coronavirus is spread by 5G, who think that ordering people to wear masks is totalitarianism, and who retweet podcasts of conspiracy nuts on Twitter. They are the ones who have muddied the waters so that even if you present a well thought out point that calls general wisdom into question, people will think you are one of them.
>> No. 27362 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 5:21 pm
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Corona's never going away. It'll keep on mutating and we'll get a new deadly strain each year just like the flu.

r8
>> No. 27370 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 8:33 pm
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>>27356

>Oh, I forgot, everybody over 65 is just a waste of oxygen anyway, right?

Well. It's not quite that they're a waste of oxygen, it's just that out of any age group, they appear to be the one least appreciative of the sacrifices everyone has had to make- For their benefit, no less.

See: >>27300

Also, not everyone you disagree with on the internet is some befedora'd alt right autist. Jumping to that conclusion says a lot more about how you see the world than that poster.
>> No. 27372 Anonymous
30th August 2020
Sunday 10:20 pm
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>>27370

>Also, not everyone you disagree with on the internet is some befedora'd alt right autist

No, you're right, that assumption isn't universally warranted. But there are plenty of alt right people out there right now who spout a lot of the same things as otherlad. And who on the surface will appear quite reasonable at first. It can be difficult to tell otherlad apart from them.
>> No. 27384 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 1:13 am
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>>27362
It's more likely to mutate into strains that don't end up killing the host. I'm sure any singleton at the moment could tell you how social isolation impacts reproductive success.

Or it will mutate and give us all superpowers like in X-Men. This time next year we could all be wearing spandex.
>> No. 27399 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 4:48 pm
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>>27384
>It's more likely to mutate into strains that don't end up killing the host.

Why? How does that help it reproduce?
>> No. 27400 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 4:59 pm
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>>27399

Mutation as such is aimless, it just "happens". It's just as likely that strains will evolve that kill their host rapidly as it is that more benign strains come into being. But the more benign strains then have a higher chance of reproducing and jumping from host to host and spreading. Because if somebody gets rapidly and violently sick from a bad strain, it's much more likely that that individual will be spotted and isolated before the virus can infect a greater number of people.

It's one, but not the only reason why ebola has never led to a global pandemic. Incubation time is short, less than 48 hours in most cases, and patients deteriorate so rapidly and become very gravely ill that they're easy to spot. Also though, ebola tends to break out in small rural communities that have little contact to the outside world, and you can't normally give it to somebody just by breathing on them from a metre away. Whereas scientists now think that Covid-19 can even cling to exhaled smoke particles from a cigarette. I think Spain has now banned smoking in public areas for that reason.
>> No. 27402 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 5:06 pm
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>>27399
A virus needs living cells to reproduce and a host healthy enough to infect everyone else. It serves no purpose to kill people which is why pandemics emerge when viruses cross-species and why the various strains of the common cold are so successful.

I'm pretty sure this is common sense.
>> No. 27403 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 5:10 pm
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>>27400

But the lethality of covid is only about 1% and symptoms for most people are mild. Since it's a new virus there must be many ways it could evolve to spread better and many of these could have a higher lethality. The chances of it getting more lethal are 50-50.
>> No. 27404 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 5:19 pm
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>>27266
Define normal.

Town high streets are pretty much finished for volume sales, city high streets inly slightly less glum. Yes the virus has hastened the inevitable but its time for government to start looking at incentives for alternative uses

I'd imagine the airline industry is going to look very different before long
>> No. 27406 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 5:51 pm
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>>27404
The airline industry will recover before "high streets" do - I don't think the government realises, at all, because it doesn't want to try and solve the problem, how successful working from home has been for so many companies.
>> No. 27407 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 6:05 pm
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>>27403

>But the lethality of covid is only about 1% and symptoms for most people are mild

That's the key reason why it has spread so successfully. The aim of all life, forgetting for a moment the controversy if a virus counts as life to begin with, is to reproduce. The more a life form reproduces, the more successful it is, because it's proof that it's fit for life in its environment. There is no point in a virus killing its host "just because".

SARS-Cov-2 has spread so vastly because it's a mild infection for over 90 percent of people, enough so that many people pass it on without even ever knowing they were infected by it, and the rest of them probably have trouble telling their own symptoms from those of a common cold.
>> No. 27408 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 6:17 pm
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>>27406

>Outsourcing firm Capita is to close over a third of its offices in the UK permanently, the BBC understands.

>The firm, which is a major government contractor, is to end its leases on almost 100 workplaces.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53968213

>Home Office staff in England could be working from home for the next year as departments limit the number of people working in their buildings to comply with coronavirus social-distancing measures, a departmental email has revealed.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/a-year-of-working-from-home-home-offices-postcoronavirus-lockdown-plan-revealed

>Matt Hancock has said he cares more about how well his civil servants “perform” in their jobs than whether or not they return to the office, amid pressure on Whitehall to set an example after months of lockdown.

>The health secretary said he had “absolutely no idea” what percentage of staff in his department had returned to the office amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/matt-hancock-says-how-well-civil-servants-do-their-jobs-is-more-important-than-whether-theyre-back-in-the-office

They know that town and city centre footfall is fucked for the foreseeable, but they just don't want to admit it. Everyone has seen the benefits of work-from-home and nobody is going to go back to the office just to save Pret and WH Smith from oblivion. If they pretend that things will be back to normal soon, they delay the political reckoning. Same with the furlough scheme - they know that a heck of a lot of those workers won't be going back to their jobs, they know that we're going to see record levels of unemployment, but they don't have a plan so they're just pretending that everything will be alright.
>> No. 27411 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 8:44 pm
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Top emoji in the OP looks dirty.
>> No. 27412 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 8:50 pm
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>>27408

If companies like Capita are doing it, the government really doesn't have much choice but to follow suit. They practically are the government in a lot of areas.
>> No. 27413 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 9:25 pm
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>>27412

Equally, if the government can't persuade Capita not to do it then they sure as hell can't persuade anyone else.
>> No. 27414 Anonymous
31st August 2020
Monday 10:01 pm
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>>27412>>27413
Yes - it also seems a bit rich to say to people "you're all going to get outsourced if you don't return to the office" when companies such as Capita and Serco have so much government outsourcing business.
>> No. 27417 Anonymous
2nd September 2020
Wednesday 4:23 am
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When the economy is destroyed and the globo homo digital serfitude system is up and running. The slave of the future shall be willing
>> No. 27446 Anonymous
3rd September 2020
Thursday 2:00 am
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>>27266
Is there something wrong with me? I've only just now noticed that coughing emoji isn't actually coughing.
>> No. 27451 Anonymous
3rd September 2020
Thursday 9:47 am
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>>27446

It's subtle, but once you see it...
>> No. 27454 Anonymous
3rd September 2020
Thursday 11:30 am
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>Skip kissing and consider wearing a mask when having sex to protect yourself from catching the coronavirus, Canada’s chief medical officer said on Wednesday, adding that going solo remains the lowest risk sexual option in a pandemic.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada-sex/wear-a-mask-while-having-sex-canadas-top-doctor-suggests-idUSKBN25T2Y9

I hope you have all been doing your part to defeat coronavirus.

If she's your aunty, make it a mask party.
Don't be a lout, rub one out.
Mask your affection, take a back and forth direction.
>> No. 27456 Anonymous
3rd September 2020
Thursday 1:02 pm
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71sLDGDDUDL._AC_SS350_.jpg
274562745627456
>>27454

>and consider wearing a mask when having sex

The fetish scene must be raving.
>> No. 27474 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 2:05 pm
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>>27456
>consider wearing a mask when having sex

Just what the plastic surgery consultant told me while sadly shaking her head.
>> No. 27476 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 6:37 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcLTRFJ1p3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Fmf4q_MTM
>> No. 27478 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 6:56 pm
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>>27476
Fucking scousers.
>> No. 27479 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 9:26 pm
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>>27476
He's got a point, to be fair - being Scouse is a medical condition.
>> No. 27481 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 10:30 pm
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>>27479
From the very first frame you can see he is up for a fight. His body language gives him away. As for "panic attacks" FFS.
>> No. 27482 Anonymous
4th September 2020
Friday 11:57 pm
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>>27476
Laddo has been coughing at people and spitting on the floor beforehand. The Nutters are trying to pin this as MUZZLE REFUSER GETS ATTACKED! Ignoring the first bit.
>> No. 27483 Anonymous
5th September 2020
Saturday 12:04 am
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>>27476
"Medical condition". These are the same people who are "souverign citizens", believing magical incantations will save them.
>> No. 27484 Anonymous
5th September 2020
Saturday 2:53 am
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>>27483
They're just lunatics - there is a brilliant legal judgement somewhere on the interwebs, by a Canadian judge, which dissects and destroys all the "legal" basis for those sovereign citizens - is a good read.
>> No. 27486 Anonymous
5th September 2020
Saturday 10:40 am
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>>27479
Nuke Liverpool as well as West Yorkshire and Manchester. Job's a good'n.
>> No. 27487 Anonymous
5th September 2020
Saturday 10:58 am
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>>27481>>27482

Train Bobbies don't just turn up from a report of someone not wearing a mask - there needs to at least be a credible threat to other passengers.

Two Fridays ago at Hamilton Square, there was a squiffy Lad getting in everybody's face trying to scav a train ticket off them. Spent about a minute staring at my Walrus Card before offering to buy it for £20. BTP were already on the train ready to drag him away at James Street.

Also, the comments on those videos are distressingly loopy.
>> No. 27489 Anonymous
5th September 2020
Saturday 12:28 pm
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>>27476
His mistake was not shouting black lives matter.
>> No. 27513 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 1:27 am
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>>27489
I love it when right-wingers make cracks like this because they think they're satirising something but actually they just expose how clueless they are.
>> No. 27517 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 5:08 am
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>>27513
It was just a joke you crybaby.
>> No. 27518 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 9:31 am
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Wealthy individuals are selling off investment portfolios and second homes in fear of massive tax increases rumoured to be in the Chancellor’s autumn Budget. Others are piling as much money as possible into their pension pots as their advisers are telling them to take advantage of tax breaks and the relatively low rates on offer now, before they go up dramatically.

It is all in anticipation of Rishi Sunak’s next Budget, to be announced before the end of the year. HM Treasury officials are understood to be contemplating sweeping tax reforms to pay for coronavirus and plug what is predicted to be a £322bn deficit, with total Government debt now outweighing the entire economy.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/capital-gains/sunaks-20bn-tax-rise-plan-sparks-asset-sell-off-among-wealthy/

Tory donors have reacted with fury to reports of a 'soak the rich' plan by Rishi Sunak to help pay for the cost of Covid. They have privately warned the party that they will 'turn off the funding taps' if the Chancellor decides to go ahead with the controversial plan.

The plans were branded as Mr Sunak's fightback against the soaring cost of the pandemic, which has seen the national debt top £2trillion for the first time. But last night, party benefactors with close links to the City of London were particularly incensed at a proposal to hike corporation tax from 19 per cent to 24 per cent – a move that would raise £12billion next year alone.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8701547/Tory-donors-threaten-pull-funding-Rishi-Sunak-proceeds-Covid-tax-raid.html
>> No. 27519 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 9:55 am
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>>27518

And this is why we should have closed the borders back in February and kept them closed. Let's see them rich cockroach bastards try and flee when Are Rishi, People's Chancellor, brings us back to a socialist utopia not seen since Tony Benn by seizing all their assets directly. .
>> No. 27521 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 6:27 pm
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>>27518
Meanwhile...

Planned rise in minimum wage ‘unaffordable’ after pandemic

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/05/planned-rise-minimum-wage-unaffordable-pandemic/

I guess all those key workers on minimum wage who were the ones keeping the country going a few months back will have to make do with being paid in claps.
>> No. 27522 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 6:53 pm
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>>27518
>Wealthy individuals are selling off investment portfolios and second homes

Does it say what and where they're planning on selling off? As someone looking to buy a home in the near future I'm licking my lips over a housing collapse and some undervalued investments sounds like a cherry on the top.

Saying that it's probably just be bollocks to scare him. Try to sell a home before Christmas, with everyone knowing what you're doing, and you're just pulling your own pants down.
>> No. 27523 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 6:59 pm
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>>27522
If you're on about second homes then it mentions passing them on to children rather than selling them.

Property prices are at about record highs now and a lot of lenders have withdrawn mortgage products with relatively high LTV rates. If prices do fall then don't be surprised if first time buyers are largely shit out of the market.
>> No. 27525 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 7:52 pm
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>>27523

>If prices do fall then don't be surprised if first time buyers are largely shit out of the market.

Exactly. Loads of first time buyers the last few years took advantage of low interest rates that enabled them to buy £300K family homes with next to no money of their own. If house prices ever go down again in a kind of way like they did after the 2007/08 Financial Crisis, then loads of young buyers just a few years into their mortgage will slip into negative equity, at which point many banks will pull a loan and force you to sell.

It'll depend on your living circumstances though. If the bank thinks your job is at risk during a concomitant economic downturn, they'll pull the rug from under you sooner than later. But banks also know that if they start pulling mortgages willy-nilly, it will only drive the property market down further and put even more people into negative equity.
>> No. 27526 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 7:54 pm
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>>27525
>young buyers just a few years into their mortgage will slip into negative equity, at which point many banks will pull a loan and force you to sell.

What?
>> No. 27527 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 8:00 pm
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>>27526

Negative equity is when the market value of your house goes below what you still owe the bank.

In the 2008 property market crash, a number of mortgages were terminated when people had negative equity and no collateral to bridge the gap.
>> No. 27528 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 8:04 pm
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>>27525

This is why the property market just needs burning to the ground and starting again, fuck. Prices are dropping making it more affordable for people to step onto the ladder? SHUT IT DOWN, DON'T GIVE THEM LOANS. Prices start rising so the people who did get loans are going to get a better return on their investment? SHUT IT DOWN, DON'T LET THE BASTARDS HAVE THE MONEY WE WERE MEANT TO MAKE.
>> No. 27529 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 8:59 pm
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>>27528
Like most economic phenomena, it going up or down isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it changing drastically is.
>> No. 27530 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 9:28 pm
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>>27527
Forgive my ignorance, but why does the current value of the property matter as long as you're still capable of meeting the monthly mortgage payments and thus the loan is still getting repaid? Why would the bank care?
>> No. 27531 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 9:40 pm
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>>27530

Because a mortgage is essentially a big loan secured against the house you bought with it. If you can still make the repayments right now that's all well and good, but if you lose your job you might default, and in that case the bank's security is selling the house. So it's not as much of a problem if it goes up, but if it goes down, you're fucked, because they won't get the full amount they lent you back.

In a sane world that would be the bank's risk but it's not, it's your problem.
>> No. 27532 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 9:47 pm
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Why not just have them go into negative equity, sell the house, have the prices crash through the floor, then have them take out a new mortgage on the same house?
The only major issue I can imagine is credit ratings, and frankly if your credit rating can be holed by the bank forcing you off a mortgage you were paying just fine then the whole credit rating system is fucked.
>>27529
I would say that house prices consistently rising above wage increases is essentially always necessarily a bad thing. It's not like the price of tulips where you can just buy another flower.
>> No. 27533 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 10:04 pm
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Negative equity doesn't mean that you lose your mortgage instantly over night. But the bank will be keeping an eye on how you are doing financially, and if there's a probability that you could lose your job as an economic downturn worsens. That economic downturn will be a key reason why house prices will have gone down in the first place, so it's all connected.

What's really going to bite people in the arse though is when the BoE someday starts raising interest rates to levels anywhere near what we had right before the Financial Crisis, i.e. 5 percent and more. We're at .1 percent now, and it means that a lot of people with very little money of their own can afford to mortgage proper mansions (or two-bedroom homes in Greater London). They can only hope that rising interest rates are so far off that they will have repaid a big chunk of their mortgage by then.
>> No. 27534 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 10:10 pm
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>>27532

It's good for landlords, and the numbers we use to determine the strength of our economy or productivity etc don't particularly care if people own their homes or just rent them for more than the price of a mortgage on the same property.

Since it's all credit the price of the overall property is near enough immaterial to anyone above the baseline income or buying as a couple (which I realise plenty of people aren't, but still), what's really harmful is the obstacle of raising a deposit. You used to be able to get full value mortgages. Nowadays people are wasting valuable years they could be paying towards their mortgage paying some cretin landlord's interest only mortgage instead while they scrape together for the deposit on their own.

Whole system is bent inside out honestly and if there's one thing I could change overnight about this country, the property investment market would be it. Don't care about imgrunts, don't care about jobs, don't care bout the bennies. Just let people have a fucking house for fuck's sake.
>> No. 27536 Anonymous
6th September 2020
Sunday 10:33 pm
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Honestly it seems bonkers to me that we don't regulate the creation of credit more strongly than we do. My understanding is that we did until about the early 1970s, but the whole thing was a bit of a faff so we moved over to increasingly letting the banks do whatever they think will make them money and regulating that with interest rates. But in a situation like the late 1980s it seems utterly ridiculous to penalize productive industry with punitive lending rates just because there's a housing bubble, rather than just forcing banks to overcharge for mortgages and undercharge to industry. (To say nothing of forcing banks to underprice the risk of building a new house even if it means overpricing the risk of an old one.)

I know proper economists loathe these sort of games with the money supply, but until one draws up a nice scheme of tax credits that would have the same effect they can shut up.
>> No. 27541 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 1:06 pm
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>>27536

> But in a situation like the late 1980s it seems utterly ridiculous to penalize productive industry with punitive lending rates just because there's a housing bubble, rather than just forcing banks to overcharge for mortgages and undercharge to industry

Business loans for a company looking to expand its production capacity are usually cheaper than the interest you pay on a private mortgage. But this is largely due to bank policy, which attributes a lower risk to business loans for a well respected company than it does to private mortgages. There is also less overhead cost for a bank in managing big commercial loans than there is in managing mortgages. So there is already a divide between commercial and private loans.

A key reason for fluctuating interest rates on the whole over time is that it's a way of steering and controlling private investment during different phases of the economic cycle. At least traditionally. Making loans more expensive during boom phases means you are dissuading commercial companies from expanding their production capacities even further, which would then soon be unused once the economy cools off again. Likewise, it has usually slowed down housing bubbles during boom phases where more and more people were able to afford a mortgage, but then maybe put off their decision to buy a house until interest rates went down again a bit.

What we've seen the last couple of years since the 2008/09 housing market crash, at leat until earlier this year, is that we have had low interest rates despite a persistent increase in economic activity and prosperity. Interest rates no longer curbed economic expansion and prevented it from overheating. Which has led to a housing bubble unlike anything we've seen before.

The bigger problem with low interest rates is that it means dirt cheap money for investment banks and other speculators who can gamble the stock market at almost no risk. If you only have to pay 0.1% interest on money you borrow for financial market transactions, then even a return of 0.11 percent is enough to make a profit. It makes high risk transactions on the order of tens of millions per trade attractive, but it also causes extreme volatility of financial markets, which in turn affects many retail investors, but also things like life insurance policies, because insurance companies are finding it increasingly difficult to generate profit for their clients due to the unpredictability of markets. Which then hurts the average person who is hoping to put away retirement money. About the same is true for many pension funds. That's why I always say that there should be split interest rates depending on whether you invest money, either in a company or a mortgage, or if you just go and gamble with it. Money that is borrowed by investment banks to gamble the stock market should always have an interest rate about two percent above the general BoE lending rate. It will curb the most risky kinds of speculation and make big investors shift back to long-term investments, and the ensuing calming of financial markets will be beneficial to all of us.
>> No. 27542 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 8:58 pm
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>>27541
>lower risk to business loans for a well respected company than it does to private mortgages

But it's obvious why this is - the financial "habits" of a business are much better known than an individual, the directors (multiple people) have a legal duty not to spunk all the money on beer/hookers/gambling, there are usually better sources of collateral should the loan go badly wrong and all their accounts, history and performance is publicly available to everyone - none of those things happen with individuals.

>Money that is borrowed by investment banks to gamble the stock market should always have an interest rate about two percent above the general BoE lending rate.

Most investment banks aren't "gambling on the stock market". Even within a bank, the number of people who are allowed to proprietary trade like that are tiny, even in the biggest banks, single figures of people. You're thinking of hedge funds perhaps.

Banks are some of the most regulated institutions around - your level of understanding on what they do and how they operate is juvenile at best.
>> No. 27551 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 11:15 pm
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2nd lockdown coming, yesssssssssssssssssss!
>> No. 27552 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 11:19 pm
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Screenshot_2020-09-07 United Kingdom coronavirus i.png
275522755227552
>>27551

It's going up!
>> No. 27553 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 11:30 pm
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>>27552
Absolute shocker, who could have possibly predicted this.
>> No. 27554 Anonymous
7th September 2020
Monday 11:53 pm
27554 spacer
>>27552
BUY BUY BUY
>> No. 27555 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 12:05 am
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>>27552
Deaths seem pretty flat.
>> No. 27556 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 12:08 am
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>>27542

>But it's obvious why this is - the financial "habits" of a business are much better known than an individual

You, or somebody was complaining further up in this thread that raising BoE interest rates to slow down the housing bubble would be unfair to businesses applying for a loan. My point was simply that large commercial companies tend to get better loans than a person applying for a mortgage no matter how high or low rates are. For all the reasons you and I have now stated.


>Even within a bank, the number of people who are allowed to proprietary trade like that are tiny, even in the biggest banks, single figures of people.

A lot of that money is no longer being moved back and forth by actual people, as I am sure you know, but by high frequency and algorithmic trading computers. They're the ones moving the markets. On some low-volume trading days, they already make up nearly 70 to 80 percent of all trading transactions. But they wouldn't be able to do much of that without all the cheap and almost free cash that can be borrowed for around 0.1% interest.
>> No. 27557 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 12:30 am
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>>27555
The yute are the primary infected at the moment, plus we are getting better at treating it.
>> No. 27558 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 12:52 am
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>>27556
Your clarification is much better and I apologise for being snippy.
>> No. 27559 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 1:27 am
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>>27557
>The yute are the primary infected at the moment

The only rational thing to do is lock up everyone under 30 and conscript pensioners into work teams to handle things like customer service (don't worry, they're experts at waiting tables). Everyone else can do whatever we want.
>> No. 27560 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 1:40 am
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>>27559

The virus is only spiking because reckless young people are doing what the government told them to do, but not in a COVID-secure way, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean.

Don't kill your nan GO BACK TO WORK stay alert GO TO THE PUB control the virus GO TO SCHOOL save lives SAVE PRET A MANGER.


>> No. 27561 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 3:35 pm
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>>27556
>My point was simply that large commercial companies tend to get better loans than a person applying for a mortgage no matter how high or low rates are
I'm not sure that's helpful though. Say that house prices are going up by 15% per year, consumer prices are going up by 2% a year, industrial output is stagnant, wages are stagnant, and unemployment is slowly eeking upwards.
In those circumstances if you raise rates to temper the housing bubble you'll put businesses off from borrowing. Say you increase interest rates from 5% to 10%, which leads banks to charge industry 11% and mortgagees 15%. If the best return on investment industry can find is 9% then it's no longer profitable for them to borrow to invest, even if they are getting a lower rate than people looking for a mortgage.

We're dealing with the opposite side of the coin at the moment: Trying to keep the moribund real economy going even if it royally screws up the housing and share markets. Raising rates in response to a house-price-house-fire seems to have been more of a thing when RPI was the standard measure of inflation and interest rates weren't always preceded by a 0 and a period.
>> No. 27562 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 4:12 pm
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I've seen quite a few people announce on Facebook that they're homeschooling their kids until at least January because of coronavirus. Not entirely sure why they felt the need to declare it.
>> No. 27564 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 4:37 pm
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>>27562
>Not entirely sure why they felt the need to declare it.
Would that not apply to 400% of everything posted on Facebook?
>> No. 27567 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 10:43 pm
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Fucks sake, next lockdown incoming.
>> No. 27568 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 11:45 pm
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>>27567
I for one, do not even have 6 friends.

I'll be mildly annoyed if we can't travel again though as I've saved up a years worth of holiday that might turn into sitting in my house all December. I say mildly as that also sounds pretty tits.
>> No. 27569 Anonymous
8th September 2020
Tuesday 11:56 pm
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>>27568
I have far too much holiday to take, for the same reason. I'm supposed to take two weeks in a whole block too, but I just can't be fucked.
>> No. 27570 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 12:27 am
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A couple of friends of mine I think of as being quite sensible are strangely being taken in by some "Great Reset" narrative (whatever that is) surrounding CV-19. Occam's Razor has left the building.
>> No. 27571 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 12:37 am
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>>27570
It's been going on for long enough that they're all coming out of the woodwork now - have noticed this myself the past couple of weeks.

I would like to think people are just a combination of bored/scared - but as you say, Occam says they're probably just thick as mince.
>> No. 27572 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 12:39 am
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>>27569
I'm wondering if the carry-over rule will still apply as we technically had a few weeks where you could take holiday. Not heard a peep since March though.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rules-on-carrying-over-annual-leave-to-be-relaxed-to-support-key-industries-during-covid-19

In a fair society unspent holiday would be converted into pay. I wouldn't say no to that considering all the money I've been putting away already.
>> No. 27573 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 1:04 am
27573 spacer
So Lockdown 2.0 sounds like it is about to be delivered - although it is curious they're giving us until next Monday.

And the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine has had a hiccup in testing and one of the test subjects has had some kind of serious side-effect.

Not a great day for COVID19-recovery. Still in lockdown by Xmas do you think?
>> No. 27574 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 2:09 am
27574 spacer
>>27573

>Not a great day for COVID19-recovery. Still in lockdown by Xmas do you think?

If we plan on keeping the schools open, expect to see stricter measures for most of the winter. I think it's more likely than not that we'll have to close pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops again before the end of October.

If we can't get test, trace and isolate working properly in a serious hurry, the second wave could well be worse than the first.
>> No. 27575 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 4:38 am
27575 spacer
How close are we to herd immunity now?
>> No. 27576 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 5:27 am
27576 spacer
>>27575

Still miles off, and besides we don't know how much/how long antibodies give immunity yet. Anybody's guess.
>> No. 27577 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 7:36 am
27577 spacer
>>27575

About 200,000 deaths.
>> No. 27578 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 8:21 am
27578 spacer
>>27573
>So Lockdown 2.0 sounds like it is about to be delivered - although it is curious they're giving us until next Monday.

It'll be one of those "if you don't start behaving we'll have no choice but to start imposing lockdown measures. Look what you're making us do."
>> No. 27579 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:34 am
27579 spacer
I wonder how many white van men who regularly complain about "benefits cheats" were ineligible for the SEISS grants due to incomplete bookwork and tax irregularities.
>> No. 27580 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:52 am
27580 spacer
>>27579
Those people you've made up in your head just to have a go at won't know what's hit them.

HMRC have estimated that around £3.5billion has been paid out in fraudulent or incorrectly awarded furlough claims.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54066815
>> No. 27581 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:56 am
27581 spacer
>>27580
My neighbour's one of them. An amusing, if misguided, fellow.
>> No. 27582 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:56 am
27582 spacer
>>27579

Nobody has really moaned about benefits cheats for about ten years now lad, that was pre-Cameron stuff. Besides I suspect it goes a lot higher up the self employed ladder than just white van men.

There was a couple of weeks of complaining by middle class people who had to sign on for the first time, though, and suddenly found out how pitiably little they'd get. That was pretty cathartic for a while. They were doing things like phoning in to Radio 4's afternoon show saying they deserve more than that because after all, they've paid into the system their whole lives.

Imagine that eh.
>> No. 27584 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 10:15 am
27584 spacer
>>27582
From what I could tell they weren't too shocked by how little the average person would get in benefits; it was more resentment that they'd worked hard all their lives and were only eligible for a pittance whereas people squeezing out loads of kids and choosing benefits as a lifestyle choice knew how to milk the system for loads.
>> No. 27587 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 10:30 am
27587 spacer
>>27584

There's nothing stopping them squeezing out a few kids of their own, but unsurprisingly, they're just not willing to put in that kind of effort are they? They want it all handing to them on a plate without putting in the graft, typical.

Point is, it goes to show the disconnect between the reality of benefits, and the tabloid bullshit people had hungrily lapped up without a second thought beforehand. It was indignance because they thought it was their turn to live the life of all expenses paid benefit luxury that turned out not to exist. It suddenly mattered when it concerned them.
>> No. 27588 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 10:39 am
27588 spacer
>>27587
About five years ago there was an incident on Question Time where a Tory voter started crying about tax credit cuts, with the inference that the cuts were only supposed to affect scroungers rather than people like her. I'm pretty sure the Mail did a couple of hit pieces on her business and her private life to make it come across that she's actually part of the underseving poor so she had got what was coming to her. She's now a Labour councillor.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-voting-mum-who-attacked-14992785
>> No. 27601 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 4:32 pm
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FUCKING YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE GOT CHRISTMAS CANCELLED.
>> No. 27605 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 5:57 pm
27605 spacer
>>27601

Got nothing to do with the fact they're the ones being forced to go out and risk their fucking lives stacking the shelves in Tesco and pull people's pints in fucking Wetherspoons has it.

I honestly have no words.
>> No. 27606 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 6:03 pm
27606 spacer
>>27601
>Go back to school and uni and your shit low wage jobs!
>NO! NOT LIKE THAT!

Let's just Jokerfy the Mail offices already.
>> No. 27609 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:04 pm
27609 spacer
>>27605
>forced to

If they're too thick or ugly to get on OnlyFans, that's their problem.
>> No. 27611 Anonymous
9th September 2020
Wednesday 9:26 pm
27611 spacer

2000.jpg
276112761127611
At this point they would be better off just telling the truth. We're all fucked until a vaccine arrives.

Calling it "moon-shot" is ridiculous.
>> No. 27617 Anonymous
10th September 2020
Thursday 12:36 pm
27617 spacer
I really, really don't understand. The PM, a man I'm told goes by the absurd nom de plume "Boris Johnson", is saying everyone needs to get tested and he's going to spend one-hundred-billion-pounds to make it happen, a figure he surely announced while holding his pinky against his face like Dr Evil. However, there's this weird, pervy looking bloke who's supposedly the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and he's saying no fucker needs a test and thinking about giving nurses sticks to beat back anyone who asks. This second chap goes by "Matt Hancock", something of a carpet-bagger de plume, if you ask me.
>> No. 27618 Anonymous
10th September 2020
Thursday 1:10 pm
27618 spacer
>>27617
A rare case of the worldfilter fucking up a decent joke there, my condolences.
>> No. 27620 Anonymous
10th September 2020
Thursday 4:26 pm
27620 spacer

https___d6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net_prod_85d865f0.png
276202762027620
When you see people talking about property prices rising and reaching record highs what they actually mean is that the lower end of the market is drying up and first time buyers are being squeezed out whilst the wealthy buy more expensive properties.
>> No. 27633 Anonymous
11th September 2020
Friday 8:37 pm
27633 spacer

Screenshot_2019-09-29 Peaky Blinders fans fill Bir.png
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We've lost so much...
>> No. 27635 Anonymous
11th September 2020
Friday 9:53 pm
27635 spacer
>>27620
Isn't that more or less the same thing in a market where house prices grow faster than wages? (which in Britain, is to say: "Grow")
>> No. 27643 Anonymous
12th September 2020
Saturday 2:09 am
27643 spacer
>>27620
The current housing 'boom' is driven by homes with gardens as preferences change due to lockdown and we're looking at a release of pent-up demand. Those cost more money.

>the lower end of the market is drying up and first time buyers are being squeezed out

No, it's a pretty good time to be looking for a home if you're interested in a small flat in an urban area. Even better times are ahead if you can wait a few months.
>> No. 27644 Anonymous
12th September 2020
Saturday 6:54 am
27644 spacer
>>27643

>it's a pretty good time to be looking for a home if you're interested in a small flat in an urban area

It's a really terrible time to get a mortgage as a first-time buyer.
>> No. 27646 Anonymous
12th September 2020
Saturday 7:28 am
27646 spacer

https___d6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net_prod_5f6af310.png
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>>27643
No. The boom is being driven by those with a lot of equity in their properties who don't need a relatively high mortgage to trade up, particularly due to the stamp duty holiday that's in place until next March. The number of sales agreed for £1million+ properties in August 2020 was 228% higher than in August 2019, primarily people moving from London to the Home Counties but there's people moving from cities to commuter towns across the board.

Lenders are pulling riskier mortgages and raising rates for ones still left. It's not a brilliant time to be a first time buyer unless you have a large deposit or a wealthy family.
>> No. 27651 Anonymous
12th September 2020
Saturday 11:06 pm
27651 spacer
>>27646
Not taking the piss lad, but I do have a large deposit. Well, like £50k (absolute max about £70k) and I'm looking for a £120k house up north.

Prices are higher than ever though, I feel like holding off until next year?
>> No. 27652 Anonymous
12th September 2020
Saturday 11:27 pm
27652 spacer
>>27651

The north is supposed to be some kind of haven of affordable houses, according to southerners, but it's still overpriced as fuck for anywhere within sensible reach of the main cities (Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, etc). People just have their perspective skewed by the That London market.

You can still find a bargain in Castleford or what have you, but you're still paying the sort of money that, in a sensible world, should allow you to live somewhere less reminiscent of the film Threads.
>> No. 27654 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 12:52 am
27654 spacer
>>27652

I AM JOE TOTALE
THE NORTH WILL RISE AGAIN


>> No. 27655 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 6:36 am
27655 spacer
>>27652

I'm in Newcastle which is even cheaper still, but like you say, that still doesn't mean you're getting a good deal right now, you'd only be overpaying no matter where you bought at the minute.

Saying that, I have a flat in Leeds if you want to buy that. I'll give you .gs discount, I don't even care. Being a landlord is fucking soul crushing. To further illustrate the point, however, here is an identical unit on the market right now - look at the fucking price of the cunt.

https://www.parklaneproperties.com/sales/2-bed-apartment-candle-house/8680-3105
>> No. 27656 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 9:16 am
27656 spacer

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>>27652
>it's still overpriced as fuck for anywhere within sensible reach of the main cities (Leeds...
>> No. 27657 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 9:39 am
27657 spacer
>>27655
I'll give you £800, a CD/DVD drive and a I'll let you choose two of my shiny Pokemon cards and eight non-shinies for the flat.
>> No. 27662 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 11:47 am
27662 spacer
>>27655

I take it Playgroundlad lost interest?
>> No. 27664 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 2:42 pm
27664 spacer
>>27656

Yes, even Little Beeston is overpriced. Wakefield and Calder in general is a slowly gentrifying commuter hub for Leeds these days. Full o' blood offcome'duns who don't even remember buying Es from a scally in Players on a Friday night.

Of course, nobody has told the existing residents this.
>> No. 27665 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 9:30 pm
27665 spacer
Is it true that the new coronavirus rules mean that the rozzers can force their way into your property without a warrant if they 'suspect' there's more than six non-residents there?
>> No. 27666 Anonymous
13th September 2020
Sunday 11:26 pm
27666 spacer
>>27665
> force their way into your property without a warrant

I wouldn't be surprised and totally fair enough.

Also, they need a warrant far less often than you think for a lot of crimes.
>> No. 27667 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 4:51 am
27667 spacer
I met 12 people today for a BBQ. There were kids and old people there too (extended relatives). I hope it was alright.


Will find out in a couple of weeks... I guess... Would be nice to have that app now...
>> No. 27668 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 4:34 pm
27668 spacer

Terry-Thomas-1958.jpg
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>>27667
You old rascal!

What's your name and where do you live? I'd like to, err grass you up pop round for a burger.
>> No. 27671 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 5:16 pm
27671 https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X19xByXZglR
this kills the china.png
276712767127671
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
>> No. 27673 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 5:30 pm
27673 spacer
>>27671
I thought she said it would be easy to understand.
>> No. 27675 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 6:23 pm
27675 spacer
>>27671


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lq3_rsBJ9w
>> No. 27684 Anonymous
14th September 2020
Monday 8:42 pm
27684 spacer
>>27667
It was nice knowing you m7.
>> No. 27694 Anonymous
15th September 2020
Tuesday 11:59 am
27694 spacer
>>27671

>The natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory that the virus may have come from a research laboratory is, however, strictly censored on peer-reviewed scientific journals


Sounds like typical alt-right nonsense. Just because an "alternative" opinion is ruled as unlikely by the rest of the scientific community, doesn't mean there is a conspiracy to suppress it.

The HIV virus, when it was first discovered and described outside sub-Saharan Africa, was also rumoured by some to be the result of genetic bioengineering, because it had some quite unusual characteristics, which also made it very difficult to cure or at least effectively suppress until fairly recently. Does that mean the virus was engineered? No, probably not. And that's not even addressing the fact that the technology just didn't exist in the 1970s. It's just testament to evolution being able to come up with quite astonishing designs, and that is probably also true for SARS-CoV-2, even if some tinfoil hats think it was created in a lab.
>> No. 27695 Anonymous
15th September 2020
Tuesday 12:09 pm
27695 spacer
>>27694

Fact is, if you COULD bi-engineer a virus like this, you'd have a Nobel prize and be richer than Elon Musk, with every government and research company on the planet fighting to get their hands on you. Biological warfare is highly illegal by international law, so it's not even that- Some shady contractor might want to debble in it but they're not going to be able to pay what a medical company can to get you looking in to bacteriophages to combat anti-microbial resistance or what have you.
>> No. 27696 Anonymous
15th September 2020
Tuesday 12:40 pm
27696 spacer
>>27695

Also, in the case of AIDS, the first accounts of it as a mysterious wasting disease long before it even got its name was from white explorers in the 1930s who ventured into the African jungles. It was noted as a peculiar terminal illness that was known to occasionally affect people who were hunting apes and monkeys for food. They probably got it from cutting themselves while handling the raw meat. At that time, the understanding of DNA and its biochemistry was rudimentary at best, and there was quite definitely no technology in existence to engineer the virus artificially.

There's a lot you can do nowadays in that area. Genetic engineering and the modification of naturally occurrnig DNA has come a long way. But again, there is no need for a government to secretly develop a nasty virus, because evolution has shown many times that it is capable of doing it all on its own. If you also look at organisms like yersinia pestis or clostridium botulinum, two of the most deadly bacteria known to man, they just randomly came into being, and centuries ago. So it's entirely probable that SARS-CoV-2 just one day suddenly evolved, most likely in a population of wild bats that were then sold for food at a Chinese wet market.
>> No. 27697 Anonymous
15th September 2020
Tuesday 12:40 pm
27697 spacer
>>27695
Yes but the important thing is to focus on who is to blame, rather than doing anything about it.
>> No. 27700 Anonymous
15th September 2020
Tuesday 10:39 pm
27700 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY0oaauGpIA

I don't recommend Jim Davidson's YouTube channel.
>> No. 27717 Anonymous
16th September 2020
Wednesday 10:01 pm
27717 spacer
Lockdown 2.0 starting in the "North East" from midnight Thursday.

ITZ HERE LADS. ACQUIRE BOG ROLLS. AGAIN.
>> No. 27718 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:24 am
27718 spacer
>>27700
Ade Edmondson is guilt free in all of this shit.

What a load of utter bollocks though. Generation Game? I wonder what generation he's gaming.
>> No. 27720 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 7:28 am
27720 spacer
>Young people are bearing the brunt of rising unemployment, with 16-24 year olds losing more jobs than any other age group. Radio 1 Newsbeat has been speaking to some of them about how it feels when you're made redundant in a pandemic.

I don't know how to even react to this quote:

>"It's quite degrading, knowing I have to find a job for money, which I feel might bring me down a little bit but I'm going to try and keep positive," she says.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-54149191

>>27718
The full video is worse. If the new head of the BBC wants more right-wing comedians expect Davidson to get an entire series.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd1_gJKxUfA
>> No. 27721 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 10:38 am
27721 spacer
>>27720
>I don't know how to even react to this quote

It's almost like that quote was cherrypicked in order to distract from the legitimate point that younger people are facing a hard situation.
>> No. 27722 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 10:45 am
27722 spacer
>>27721

They always do this, they pick the most spoiled middle class twits to misrepresent the whole age group as clueless entitled tossers.
>> No. 27723 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 10:46 am
27723 spacer
>>27720
He knows the dog whistle he is blowing.

What blows my mind is he almost was out of fashion/business/a dinosaur - the Brexit discourse has made him seem relevant.

I loathe cancel culture, partly because it usually gets the wrong people - he deserves every bit of it. How the fuck is he still able to publish that bullshit on YouTube?
>> No. 27724 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 10:51 am
27724 spacer
I work for an NHS lab. We were already understaffed and underfunded, keeping the show running by some kind of miracle, and now we're being asked to somehow divide our staff by mitosis and cover a night shift so we can shoulder some of the work the private labs, in a turn of events that has surprised literally fucking nobody, can't keep on top of. Of course we're not getting more resources or equipment.

How much money has the government wasted on pisstake private contractors when they could have just expanded NHS lab capacity, with the benefit that we've been doing this shit for decades and know what the fuck we're doing.

Livid honestly lads.
>> No. 27725 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:02 am
27725 spacer
>>27724
Even in a pandemic the Tories still don't give a shit about the NHS, even when it saved the prime ministers life. That should tell us all we need.
>> No. 27726 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:02 am
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NINTCHDBPICT000588710527.jpg
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>>27724
I don't know how or why this idiot got the job.
>> No. 27727 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:02 am
27727 spacer
>>27723
>How the fuck is he still able to publish that bullshit on YouTube?

Because people watch it? His last few videos have all had 100k views and he's only been doing it for a month or so; there's clearly a market for it.
>> No. 27728 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:16 am
27728 spacer
>>27720
I can sympathise. Fuck work and struggling to find even a call centre job during the Great Recession was double shit.

>Rather than look for a new job, he's going to take the redundancy cash and use it to go travelling around South East Asia.

Not entirely sure he's thought this one through.
>> No. 27729 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:18 am
27729 spacer
>>27723
>I loathe cancel culture, partly because it usually gets the wrong people - he deserves every bit of it. How the fuck is he still able to publish that bullshit on YouTube?

Because some massive fanny has yet to report him for no-no thoughts.
>> No. 27730 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:31 am
27730 spacer
>>27729
Various right-wing groups organise mass-reporting of left wing accounts on social media.
>> No. 27731 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:48 am
27731 spacer
>>27730
I'm not a leftie in the slightest, but happy to join any mass reporting of him. I thought the lefties were usually more organised with this sort of thing? He fucking deserves it.
>> No. 27732 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 11:53 am
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JIM-DAVIDSON-2020-Web-1024x739.jpg
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>>27731
IT'S ONLY A GAME SO PUT UP A REAL GOOD FIGHT
I'M GONNA BE SNOOKERING YOU TONIGHT
>> No. 27733 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:16 pm
27733 spacer
>>27731
>I thought the lefties were usually more organised
Ha, you really aren't a left-winger.
>> No. 27734 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:33 pm
27734 spacer
>>27700

Based video

Keep taking the knee and crying about dead Yank criminals you lefty melts, the overwhelming majority of the British public couldn't give a shit.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 27735 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:36 pm
27735 spacer
>>27734
>Based

Oh dear oh dear.
>> No. 27736 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:37 pm
27736 spacer
>>27734
>Yank
>Based

Irony is dead. Stop getting your politics from US chans.
>> No. 27737 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:40 pm
27737 spacer
>>27736

Stop idolizing violent meth-head Yank scumbag criminals and bringing US grievances over here to demonize our police who don't even carry guns. Thank god the Birmingham stabby cunt wasn't shot by armed police, or you lot would have burned the whole city down by now.
>> No. 27738 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:48 pm
27738 spacer
>>27737
>demonize
That's rich.
>> No. 27739 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:50 pm
27739 spacer
>>27734
>>27737
Clearly this is the same lad who keeps posting /pol/ talking points from the other place.
>> No. 27740 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:52 pm
27740 spacer
>>27739
I find it really weird. I mean, who would read those chans and think YEAH I CAN USE THIS IN THE UK AND NOBODY WILL NOTICE. >>27737 is scared of something.
>> No. 27741 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:54 pm
27741 spacer
>>27740
He must actually be a seppo, surely nobody from this country would spell 'idolising' with a z?
>> No. 27742 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:55 pm
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>>27739
THEY'VE REPLACED SUE BARKER WITH A BLACK WOMAN. I WILL NEVER WATCH A QUESTION OF SPORT EVER AGAIN. DEFUND THE BBC.
>> No. 27743 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 12:55 pm
27743 spacer
>>27741
Someone who has spent too much time on that bit of the internet would.
>> No. 27744 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:04 pm
27744 spacer
Stop taking the bait on identity politics bullshit, you absolutely myopic bellends.
>> No. 27745 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:07 pm
27745 spacer
>>27744
We weren't talking about identity politics.
>> No. 27746 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:16 pm
27746 spacer
>>27745

Am I hallucinating the last dozen posts flipping out about some low grade /pol/ troll then?

You lot should know better.
>> No. 27748 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:21 pm
27748 spacer
>>27741
Nobody in this country follows the Concise Oxford English Dictionary? That's quite the claim.
>> No. 27749 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:35 pm
27749 spacer
>>27746
>look how triggered I made you all

Ok lad.
>> No. 27750 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 1:35 pm
27750 spacer
>>27748
The Concize Oxford Englizh Dictionary?
>> No. 27751 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 2:08 pm
27751 spacer
>>27746
We weren't talking about identity politics or any of the lunacy that lad was going on about at all. Someone made an incredibly stupid post and were treated aptly.
>> No. 27752 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 2:47 pm
27752 spacer
>>27749

This post had better be some sort of reverse psychology meta-troll. Otherwise have a word with yourself.
>> No. 27753 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 3:12 pm
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>>27671
>>27675

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
>> No. 27754 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 4:39 pm
27754 spacer
A clever scientist on the radio has just said that although covid hasn't died out in the summer like other similar viruses, there's evidence that there's a 10-15% difference in mortality in seasonal conditions.

I missed the bit about if that's higher in summer or winter, but I'm guessing the latter. Pack your rice lads.
>> No. 27755 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 4:41 pm
27755 spacer
>>27754
It feels like everyone is a bit too preoccupied with mortality rates. There should be more attention on how, even if you only have mild symptoms, it can damage your respiratory system.
>> No. 27756 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 5:40 pm
27756 spacer
>>27755
There really needs to be more of a focus on this and I think the lack thereof is why there's a decent percentage of those in their teens/early 20's walking around thinking they're untouchable, and if they do get sick, think they'll just recover and be fine. This thing can fuck you for years, regardless of your age.
>> No. 27757 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 5:44 pm
27757 spacer
>>27755>>27756
We're going to find out when it's too late - and I agree, this is going to be the big story of 2021.
>> No. 27758 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 5:45 pm
27758 spacer
>>27757

The big story of 2021 will be the outbreak of WWIII, but I get your point.
>> No. 27759 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 6:32 pm
27759 spacer
>>27755
>>27756
>>27757
Didn't we already go through this, alarmist-lads? A bad illness can damage your body but the odds are fairly insignificant. Hence why we don't care about the long-term effects of flu. We currently have no long-term data on Covid but it's not magic.
>> No. 27760 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 6:59 pm
27760 spacer
>>27759
> Hence why we don't care about the long-term effects of flu

Once again, this is not the flu and it's not alarmist, this has been downplayed enough and currently there is a huge undertaking to try and understand and mitigate these ongoing symptoms and lasting damage people are getting from covid.

They've already been tracking people for a few months now who had it and recovered, and the data coming out isn't resassuring. The best guess at the moment is the probability of developing ongoing symptoms/issues and taking longer to recover in general is 10% or a bit under, but given that there's at least 29 million cases right now, that's potentially a good 2900000 people, and the outcome for those people will be varied. On top of this we have evidence from previous corona strain outbreaks, such as SARS, that show the damage done can last for years. I really shouldn't have to point out the knock on effect this can have on health services too.

At any rate it is a valid concern that is being researched because you're right, it isn't magic, it's science.
>> No. 27761 Anonymous
17th September 2020
Thursday 7:11 pm
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>>27759

>A bad illness can damage your body but the odds are fairly insignificant. Hence why we don't care about the long-term effects of flu. We currently have no long-term data on Covid but it's not magic.

Young people who experience mild symptoms probably aren't going to experience significant long-term effects, but there are serious concerns about middle-aged people who suffer serious but non-life-threatening illness.

After the SARS outbreak, we saw serious long-term respiratory scarring in the majority of patients, with some people still suffering with substantially reduced lung function after a decade.

The big unknown with Covid-19 is the neurological effects. We're not sure whether it's due to hypoxia, inflammation or some combination, but a significant proportion of patients experience major neurological problems. Loss of smell and taste is common enough to be listed as a sign that you need a test, but we're also seeing patients suffer sight loss, neuralgia, muscle weakness and seizures.

We're also seeing a lot of patients with muscle damage (again, possibly hypoxia or inflammation) which can do massive damage to your kidneys via rhabdomyolysis.

We shouldn't be alarmist, nobody who feels fine now is suddenly going to keel over with Covid after-effects, but the fact that someone survived doesn't mean that they survived unscathed. Spending a couple of days in hospital with a bad bout of the 'rona might well come back to haunt you in old age if you ended up with a scarred heart and lungs.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2764549
>> No. 27763 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 12:12 am
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>>27761
>>27760
Stop scaring me lads. I think I might have a flu/cold. I have the sniffles, blocked nose, minor cough from smoking a lot, and just aches and pains... It feels like a cold/flu.

Every now and again, I keep taking my temperature, and spraying different deodorants on myself to see if I can smell it. I bought shit loads of sweets, to see if I can taste it as I go through it slowly.

So far, I can smell, taste, breathe normally, and have no fever. It's only day four. I hope it doesn't get worse.

In other news - it is close to impossible to book a Covid test. I kept trying yesterday and today, every hour. Nothing. Just a shitty message telling me there is nothing available.

Britain is being run like a useless local government council.
>> No. 27764 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 12:16 am
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>>27763
It's totally normal for this time of year though - my kids went back to school a couple of weeks ago, and I've spent two days this week having the same kind of cold - happens most years. 100% sure I haven't got the 'rona but I can see why many people have been panicked into getting a test.

I actually had a sore throat, heightened sense of smell, many symptoms back at the start of August - got the test from gov.uk (delivered via Amazon), sent it in the post, results back next day - it was extremely efficient. It blows my mind in the space of a month they have fucked it all up completely, it was utterly predictable and typical of us as a nation.

I'm sure you're fine lad.
>> No. 27765 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 1:20 am
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>>27759
I developed Fibromyalgia and live with chronic post-viral fatigue because of pneumonia. I was told this is fairly common with viral pneumonia.

Covid just so happens to cause pneumonia at a far higher rate than the the flu does.
>> No. 27766 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:04 am
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Retail spending is now above pre-lockdown levels.
>> No. 27767 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:08 am
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>>27766
But what about Pret a Manger? That's what the UK economy is held up by, or so the media tells us.
>> No. 27768 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:55 am
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>>27763
>In other news - it is close to impossible to book a Covid test. I kept trying yesterday and today, every hour. Nothing. Just a shitty message telling me there is nothing available.
Look, I insist that our testing system is the best in the world, despite any evidence otherwise. Will you povvos just stop carping on about it?
>> No. 27770 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 12:05 pm
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>>27763
I think the current advice on comparing the flu/a cold to covid is that you rarely sneeze and have a runny nose with covid, you're more likely to develop a harsher continous cough or keep having coughing fits and I think the loss of taste/smell is rather sudden too. As the other lad says, you're probably fine, sounds more like a cold.
>> No. 27771 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 12:33 pm
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>>27770
Someone I work with had it and the only side effect is that they feel a bit funny if they go down the chilled aisles in a supermarket.
>> No. 27773 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 1:29 pm
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>>27772
ITZ COMING

Eerily predictable full-lockdown coming.

Should I go and buy some more pasta?
>> No. 27774 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 2:22 pm
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>>27768
God. He is so annoying. Why do people vote for him? I don't understand any more.

>>27764
I don't feel too bad. I haven't self isolated because I think it is a cold. Although, when I woke up this morning, my ability to smell has somewhat been dulled.

Fingers crossed.
>> No. 27775 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 5:45 pm
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>>27772
M8 at the very least tell us which rag you got that from.
>> No. 27776 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 6:10 pm
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>>27775

The Telegraph - the letter K in their house typeface (Austin New) is very distinctive.
>> No. 27777 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 6:28 pm
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>>27773
>Eerily predictable full-lockdown coming.

If the government followed its own guidelines we'd have been in lockdown some time ago.
>> No. 27778 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 6:33 pm
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>>27777
>NHS is overwhelmed and hospitals are full

We've been in lockdown since 1948?
>> No. 27779 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 6:50 pm
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>>27777

That was before the discovery mid-May or so, that we actually need the economy more than we had previously thought in order to avoid running out of money, and thereby becoming poor (a fate worse than death.)

We are also governed by a farcical set of Spitting Image caricatures so delusional, they thought we'd be treated fairly by the fucking USA of all places, post-Brexit.
>> No. 27780 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 7:40 pm
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>>27773
One step ahead lad.
Bog Roll
Pasta
Liquid Soap
UHT Milk
>> No. 27781 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:02 pm
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>>27780
Rice? Where is your rice?
>> No. 27782 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:16 pm
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>>27781

It's better than my pre-lockdown panic shopping, which currently consists of 10kg of Haribo and 50 bottles of electric fag liquid. I am scum.
>> No. 27783 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 9:34 pm
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>>27782
>10kg of Haribo and 50 bottles of electric fag liquid

It's not the worst survivial kit I've heard off - can I isolate with you if I run out of liquid?
>> No. 27784 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 10:17 pm
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>>27781
My local Asda has Tilda basmati rice 75p for 1kg and quite a few supermarkets have recently heavily reduced things like beans and chopped tomatoes after stocking too much once the panic buying died down. It's actually the perfect time to stockpile.
>> No. 27785 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 10:31 pm
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>>27784
Bags of rice are still £13/5kg in Tesco near me. I live in London, so I assume demand did not let up but to be fair there has only been a shortage of luxury goods and basics never ran out.
>> No. 27787 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 11:27 pm
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>>27785

You live in London m8, what on earth are you doing buying rice from Tesco? You can't be more than five minutes walk from an Asian food store with huge bags of rice and spices, a vaguely upsetting freezer full of mystery animal parts and big buckets of KTC PURE BUTTER GHEE.
>> No. 27788 Anonymous
18th September 2020
Friday 11:30 pm
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>>27785
>I live in London, so I assume demand did not let up but to be fair there has only been a shortage of luxury goods and basics never ran out.

Don't know what area you were shopping in but I had to spend two weeks eating whatever was left on the shelves. This meant combining artisan bread with cheap frozen burger patties and learning to appreciate shellfish. Were I a softer man I would've been visibly upset that after a hard day at work I was struggling to find complete meals because of absolute shithouses.

I'm sure it'll be complete pandemonium when a vaccine is ready. Do you reckon I should register with my local GP now or will they distribute it in other ways?
>> No. 27792 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 12:18 am
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>>27788

You should definitely register with a GP regardless. A lot of areas are suffering from severe shortages of GPs, so it's worth getting registered at a decent surgery now rather than waiting until you're ill. You can search for local surgeries and see patient satisfaction data at the link below.

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/other-services
>> No. 27797 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 9:25 am
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Am I misremembering or have food prices gone up already?
>> No. 27799 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:24 am
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>>27797
Prices at restaurants have practically doubled since last month.
>> No. 27800 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:35 am
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>>27799
A standard piece of salmon at Tesco is now almost a fiver, I'm sure they were about three quid before.
>> No. 27801 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 3:28 pm
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>>27797
Of course they have - everyone is preparing for the lockdown and the clearing of shelves, so raising prices is a pretty reasonable way of deterring that.
>> No. 27802 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 5:31 pm
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The press are trying to fuel panic buying.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8750427/Ocado-warns-running-delivery-slots-second-lockdown-looms-Britain.html
>> No. 27804 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 8:06 pm
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Not to be a braggart lads but I did say in the ITZ thread that keeping the R number below 1 is a completely futile aim, even in semi-lockdown.
>> No. 27805 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 9:03 pm
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Never occurred to me that people are still protesting a virus. I thought they stopped.

>Coronavirus conspiracy theorists clash with police at anti-lockdown protest

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-conspiracy-theorists-clash-with-police-at-anti-lockdown-protest-12076069
>> No. 27806 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 10:38 pm
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>>27805
I mean how did people who look like that end up on that kind of march. I actually feel sorry for Bill Gates.

In other news, it turns out that "Q" is actually the dude who now owns 8chan. I am not in the least bit surprised but how did a troll like that end up with people like that clashing with the police in London. It genuinely does my head in.
>> No. 27807 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 10:43 pm
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>>27806
Could it be that they are eastern European pornstars paid to protest? That's what they look like.

The QAnon stuff will go down in history as the greatest troll effort.
>> No. 27808 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 10:59 pm
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>>27806
Apparently he's handing it over to the guy who did the whole Cicada thing soon.
>how did a troll like that end up with people like that clashing with the police in London
It got into the facebook mum's groups, a lot of the "deep state" shit was played down and the Satanic panic child-molester stuff played up. Facebook, as usual, failed to do anything about it until far too little too late. A significant amount of the earlier Qanon are a bit put off by it as they don't feel it represents them properly, or that it's getting out of their control.
>> No. 27809 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:05 pm
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>>27808
For cult behavior they've hit upon the ideal gimmick really, who will dare say that SAVING THE KIDS isn't a valid thing?
>> No. 27810 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:08 pm
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>>27806
Couldn't make it up. A whole movement based around DEM CELEB BABY EATERS, masterminded by a dude who runs a carpet-bagger haven.
>> No. 27811 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:43 pm
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>>27809
>who will dare say that SAVING THE KIDS isn't a valid thing?
Some of the actual, effective Save-the-children charities have put out statements disavowing it, but others seem to be intimitated and afraid of speaking out.
>> No. 27812 Anonymous
19th September 2020
Saturday 11:45 pm
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>>27807

They aren't attractive enough to be eastern European pornstars.

Donald Trump may never have won the Republican primaries without the efforts of 4chan and /r/The_Donald. Could he be the only head of state whose election was a punchline to someone else's joke?
>> No. 27813 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 12:12 am
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>>27812
>Could he be the only head of state whose election was a punchline to someone else's joke?

The thing is that part of the story will likely never be told - but it was obvious at the time. I recall a few years before the joke/con was on with all the RAND PAUL stuff.
>> No. 27814 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 12:52 am
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>>27797
I keep a detailed record of my spending and can reveal that costs have remained static for at least this year. I've ended up with some egg on my face for this as I budgeted for price rises.
>> No. 27815 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 1:04 am
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>>27812
>They aren't attractive enough to be eastern European pornstars.

Mate, you have not been on the same sites.

Anyhow "are human rights" is a bit of a giveaway.
>> No. 27816 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 9:22 am
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Not trying to bring environmental stuff into this thread but this article about how oil companies pushed misinformation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53640382
Has some parallels with what's going on here.
>The ICE campaign identified two groups which would be most susceptible to its messaging. The first was "older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers".
>The second group was "younger, low-income women," who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.
>> No. 27817 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:00 am
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I know this is barely COVID related, but it's great to see the mass adoption of conspiracy-theory-soup in this country. I've had too many late night kitchen chats with people who thought Pearl Harbour was an inside job or the Moon landings didn't happen; let's get this shite in the open. More seriously though the conspiracy theories around the events I mentioned are actually on a different level. You've got all this evidence and stuff you can point to with regards to what actually happened, whereas the COVID theories there are approximately four-hundred different ones and they seem to rely on much more superstitious modes of thought. You might be talking to a white nationalist who's using it as a veil to "sissify" people, it could be a young mum who thinks the carpet-baggers are after her kiddies or just someone who's gone full Tweet-brain.

I would really love a redo for the past twenty years, both personally and in a wider sense. God, imagine if the Yanks had simply cut diplomatic ties with Saudi and imposed sanctions after 9/11 instead of all this shite. Oh, well, now who's indulging in magical thinking?
>> No. 27818 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:58 am
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>>27817
>God, imagine if the Yanks had simply cut diplomatic ties with Saudi and imposed sanctions after 9/11 instead of all this shite. Oh, well, now who's indulging in magical thinking?

Sometimes you lads really do hit where it hurts. It's not that hard to imagine things beingngg very different. Perhaps that's the nature of history; at all points there's a scope of possibilities, and where you land within that scope determines how sane the next set of possibilities are, ad infinitum.

This is comforting, as it gives me the sense that even small sane actions now might be positively influencing the future.
>> No. 27823 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 4:24 pm
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>>27820
It's just madness that we're back at almost 4000 cases a day. About a month ago we were all celebrating almost zero cases a day; a few weeks ago, the government was telling us we all had to go back to work as it was safe, else we would lose our jobs - was it ten days ago they were promising the moonshot, spending £100bn on a testing plan to see all of us tested, and now we're back here about 48 hours from another national lockdown and as many cases per day as in April.

How long until we start seriously considering the herd immunity plan again? There doesn't seem to be any other credible option.
>> No. 27824 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 4:51 pm
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>>27823
>There doesn't seem to be any other credible option

You wot. There is, but this government and Boris in particular cannot lead and also don't give a shit about any of us. On top of that there's a decent enough percentage of the British public who are absolute thickos. If it gets to the point of herd immunity then we're fucked as a country anyway, and all because the government couldn't take a firm stance on lockdown and failed across the board to listen to all advice, or even just follow the lead of other countries, and people couldn't be fucked to stay inside a little bit longer.
>> No. 27825 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 4:58 pm
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>>27823

Herd immunity isn't a plan. It's what happens when like 60% of the population have been infected or immunised. Without a vaccine, it just means that hundreds of thousands of people have to die whilst the country carries on as normal.
>> No. 27826 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:05 pm
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>>27824
>On top of that there's a decent enough percentage of the British public who are absolute thickos.

But that is the country we live in - the countries who are getting on top of this have much more obedient citizens who are prepared to follow rules for a common good; we're a feral land of people who don't like being told what to do, and as you say, the government are frightened to lead us because of how it might play out in the press.

>>27825
I want to believe a vaccine is coming, but I can't see it this year and it will be middle of next before it is available in quantity. I don't see how to resolve that. I agree that herd immunity isn't a plan, a poor choice of word - but it's hobsons choice at the moment.
>> No. 27827 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:27 pm
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>>27820
Hurrah, we're flattening the curve!
>> No. 27828 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:27 pm
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>>27823
>How long until we start seriously considering the herd immunity plan again? There doesn't seem to be any other credible option.
There are and were many credible options, Torylad. This incompetent government isn't capable of delivering them. How long ago was the track and trace app promised? Testing? How are schools and universities meant to be open without anything in place regarding testing and tracing, etc?

I am not too sure about the fatality rates of under 40s, but I am sure a lot more old people will be dead before we get any sort of herd immunity, even if that is something possible - considering there have been reports of reinfections, etc. Maybe 70% of the population infected, and half a million dead? Does that sound alright, lad?
>> No. 27829 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:30 pm
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>>27826
>we're a feral land of people who don't like being told what to do, and as you say, the government are frightened to lead us because of how it might play out in the press.

This would be true if you take it in good faith that the government is making the best possible decisions.
Had to believe when they put Baroness Dido Harding in charge of track and trace. The same person who left TalkTalk essentially in disgrace after the huge hack where she demonstrated complete ignorance of what was going on in the company she was in charge of.
As head of track and trace she's handed out cushy jobs to a load of people from places like JLR and the banking industry, the whole top management at test and trace includes only one person with experience in the medical sector. She's handed out vastly expensive contracts to Borises Matesprivate providers who've sold more testing capacity while they actually have while ignoring offers from Universities to contribute their lab capacity. She's handed out contracts to Borises Matesprivate providers to fill call centres with untrained people while ignoring offers of help from local health authorities.
To reward her for leading this world beating service she's now been offered a job at the new national institute for health protection. (Which is being formed due to the need to scapegoat PHE for the government failing to do anything meaningful enough early in the crisis.)
>> No. 27830 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:32 pm
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>>27828
The government were offered access to top-notch tracing tech for free and turned it down.

I don't want to speculate as to their motives for not building an app based on that but instead trying to build one with centralised data, but I will mention that in the US police have been using contact tracing data to crack down on protestors.
>> No. 27831 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:35 pm
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>>27830
>using contact tracing data to crack down on protestors.
Either that, or they want to hand over a multimillion pound contract to a company "friendly" to them.
>> No. 27832 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 5:42 pm
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>>27825
> it just means that hundreds of thousands of people have to die whilst the country carries on as normal.

It'll be worse than that though, for things to get that bad means there will be a massive strain on health services, which will have its own knock on effect. I doubt the country would be carrying on as normal.
>> No. 27833 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 6:18 pm
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Incidentally, the government's idea of making sure arrivals from Europe are self-isolating is to give them a phone call two days after they've arrived, to ask.
>> No. 27834 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 6:19 pm
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>>27833
How do they think that this is okay? This is a joke. Seems like everything is shite, on purpose.
>> No. 27835 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 6:49 pm
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>>27833
They make you give them a landline number, they wont accept mobiles. And just being in the shower when they call lands you with a fine in the post.
>> No. 27836 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 7:10 pm
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>>27835

I know most people these days won't remember back in the ancient days of the late 90s when people actually bothered to do it; but I'm sure it's still quite easy to divert a landline to your mobile.
>> No. 27837 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 7:11 pm
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>>27835
Who the fuck has a landline anymore.
>> No. 27838 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 7:41 pm
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>>27835
>They make you give them a landline number, they wont accept mobiles.
Wrong on both counts.
Speaking to my friend who arrived from Belgium five days ago, they rang her yesterday on the mobile number she gave them when she crossed the border and so far that's all they've done.
>> No. 27839 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 7:43 pm
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>>27837
My VOIP line (from sipgate) looks like a landline, costs zero to run and diverts to my mobile if not answered. Highly recommended if you feel the need. I ported my old number to it when I moved house, just be aware that you need to do things in the right order or you can lose your number.
>> No. 27841 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:02 pm
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The UK’s biggest Covid-19 testing laboratory is prioritising Premiership Rugby players and travellers to Dubai while failing to meet government targets for the public, according to company insiders.

Randox Laboratories, based in Co Antrim, Northern Ireland, won a £133m testing contract unopposed in March. It is responsible for a quarter of community tests in the UK.

However, leaked documents marked “sensitive” reveal that it regularly fails to provide test results within the official 24-hour target. On September 9, Randox completed fewer than one in 10 tests on time. It has also “voided” more tests than any laboratory — meaning the number it throws away because of errors.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rugby-stars-dodge-testing-chaos-thanks-to-randox-lab-that-misses-targets-for-public-5gj760gns
>> No. 27842 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:08 pm
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>>27841
Can't really blame them. It is a private company, and unless the terms of the contract specify things like prioritising work, etc, then there is nobody to blame but the central government.

Would be lovely to see what their tender/bidder response was, and what the terms of the contract are.

This is what privatisation gets you lads.
>> No. 27843 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:21 pm
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>>27842
>Can't really blame them. It is a private company, and unless the terms of the contract specify things like prioritising work, etc, then there is nobody to blame but the central government.
Both they and (this) central government are motivated by the same greed.
>> No. 27844 Anonymous
20th September 2020
Sunday 10:25 pm
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>>27842

>This is what privatisation gets you lads.

If they're too dim to draw up a sensible contract, I'm not optimistic about their ability to commission services in-house.
>> No. 27850 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 3:53 am
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>>27844
No one is looking to commission ANYTHING in-house anymore. Even Labour councils in bum-fucking nowhere don't do it. In fact, a few councils started "downsizing" and started a major privatisation work. Not sure if it was directed by central government because councils were begging for money because of Covid, but that's how it turned out.

The juice is all about contracts to the private sector. I work in commissioning, procurement and finance, and I let out, since March, contracts worth £600 million for both central government and local government. I am not even a senior officer. It's all direct awards, variations, such nonsense.

The best part is "Emergency - Covid", because you can bypass EU procurement regulations too.

Sorry lads, I'm too drunk. I hope Boris doesn't get me.
>> No. 27851 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 4:08 am
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>>27850
>The best part is "Emergency - Covid", because you can bypass EU procurement regulations too.

This is it. Next year when the "public inquiries" start, it won't be the number of people who died that is the scandal, it will be the millions that we've pissed away on fake furlough, the millions (!) of fake meals we pissed away on eat-out-to-help-out and other schemes, and how many of the contracts being hurriedly signed right now bypassed all the normal procurement rules.

This will be the scandal of the past six months that will haunt taxpayers for years to come and will cause a change of government.
>> No. 27852 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 7:25 am
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>>27850
My girlfriend's mum works in adult day care services for a Labour run council. A lot of the services have been outsourced in recent years to private companies, who charge the council more than it cost to run them in-house, but they've cherry picked all of the 'cheap' disabilities and left the council to still look after the most expensive users. Then again, when it was all in-house it was also a massive shitshow.
>> No. 27853 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 8:12 am
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>>27851

>the millions (!) of fake meals we pissed away on eat-out-to-help-out and other schemes

I have one foot still in the restaurant game and it really is that bad, because it's so fucking easy to do - there is quite literally no way to prove or disprove how many meals you've sold in a day. I'm sure some tiny hole in the walls will get done for selling four thousand burgers a day, but otherwise everyone will quietly double or triple their sales and get away with it. And why not, it's not like the scheme was that useful anyway - it just caused backlogs.
>> No. 27854 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 8:32 am
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>>27853
The main reasons for Eat Out to Help Out were:

- To allow the restaurant trade to boost their coffers before we go into second lockdown.

- To normalise going out so that people can be pushed towards going back to work.

- To spread the virus around. They want the second wave before the weather gets too bad.
>> No. 27855 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 9:19 am
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>>27853
>will get done for selling four thousand burgers a day

I don't really blame anyone for rinsing the system when their business is in a desperate situation - and it will have genuinely boosted some peoples business for the better, but it was obvious that the numbers were being gamed.
>> No. 27859 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 11:34 am
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>>27854

It's impossible to view EOTHO as anything other than a deliberate attempt to kill the public. It made no economic sense at all.
>> No. 27860 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 11:40 am
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>>27859
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America said that dining out is one of the riskiest things to do in terms of catching the virus.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/states-lift-restaurant-restrictions-cdc-report-links-dining-out-increased-n1239771
>> No. 27861 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 11:50 am
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>>27859

It's impossible to view EOTHO as anything other than a deliberate attempt to kill the poor. Of course those that wouldn't normally be able to afford to treat themselves are going to jump at the chance to do it for half off. The upper crust fucking about at some independent pseudo-pub in the exclusive villages of rural Hampshire aren't going to be as much at risk as Sharon and Jason Bloggs going down the local inner-city curry house of an evening.
>> No. 27870 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 4:57 pm
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Almost 4400 cases today - looks to me like we'll have surpassed the original peak by the end of this week.
>> No. 27871 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 5:26 pm
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>>27870
Depends who's counting really
>> No. 27872 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 5:54 pm
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The Joint Biosecurity Centre has recommended that the Covid-19 alert level should move from level 3 (a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation) to level 4 (a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially).

The CMOs for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have reviewed the evidence and recommend all four nations of the UK should move to Level 4.


Well, there it is. We're back to officially working from home and everything shuts. Tomorrow will be interesting.

brb going down Costco for a FITE.
>> No. 27873 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 6:16 pm
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'Fucked up arse gravy' is a beautiful turn of phrase.
>> No. 27874 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 6:49 pm
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>>27873
I wonder if Jezza is embarassed by his brother.

(also, University of Woo & Windchimes is excellent).
>> No. 27878 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 9:01 pm
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Reservoir Knobs Whitty seems to have a holster belt for his readers
>> No. 27879 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 9:37 pm
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>>27878
Look at them with their ties and ironed shirts. It makes me sick.

Has the prof been wearing eye-liner? I get a Pirates of the Caribbean vibe at times.
>> No. 27880 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 9:44 pm
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>>27879

FUCK OFF, CLEAN SHIRT!
>> No. 27881 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 9:50 pm
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>>27878
>>27879
It's impressive that even a properly tailored suit doesn't disguise that man's body shape.
>> No. 27883 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 10:14 pm
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>>27881

They're both wearing badly cut off-the-rack suits and haven't even bothered to get the length altered. It's not their job to look dapper, but a decent tailor could do miracles for either of them.
>> No. 27885 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 10:34 pm
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>>27883

Okay but he still looks like one of those potbellied aliens.
>> No. 27886 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 10:36 pm
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>>27883
>off-the-rack suits

THIS

I mean they're not even wearing good shirts, which is even more of a crime and much cheaper to solve.

Come ON Mr Vallance, I trust your science but I DO NOT trust your button-down shirt one bit. Chris Witty is a secret fat lad and bought his suit from Next.
>> No. 27888 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 11:03 pm
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All this talk of suits reminds me that I don't actually own one. The last time I had to wear one was several years ago when my sister got married, but as part of the core party I was given the suit. Before that, I've typically just rented one, because I literally have no need for one otherwise.
>> No. 27890 Anonymous
21st September 2020
Monday 11:41 pm
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>>27888
I own 3 suits for work bought off the rack that haven't been tailored, help cover up that I never iron my work shirts and probably stink of fags - nobody gives a fuck. I bought 2 of them together about 8 years ago so I've gotten my moneys worth and its more convenient than coming in with normal clothes until the day I can wear joggers. Even wore them for successful job interviews (not all at once, that would be absurd).

If I had to address the country as part of my job I'd wear one then as well. People would probably whinge if I came on looking like a car salesman, you want your experts to be scruffy gits.
>> No. 27893 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 1:22 am
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>>27890

>nobody gives a fuck

That's almost certainly true, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't look loads better if you'd spent about forty quid on a seamstress to have them fitted.

I'm certainly no suit ponce, I wear a polo shirt and cargo pants to work, but I do think it's worth the money to get fitted suits (and shirts).
>> No. 27894 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 3:30 am
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>>27893

This came up before as a chat in /poof/.

Made to measure is rather pointless unless you are a odd shape the bigger problem is people wearing suits that don't really fit them. Either because they wouldn't know a well fitting suit if it bit them on the arse, or because they are fooling themselves as to what size and shape they are.

You should only get a suit customised if you are willing to go full bespoke with a note of flamboyance. If these things are worth doing they are worth doing properly and you are wasting your money if you are getting a suit that looks like what every other bastard is wearing.
>> No. 27896 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 3:42 am
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>>27894

I don't think anyone here is suggesting a bespoke made to measure suit for basically anything.

A marks and sparks hundred quid suit will still look great if it's altered to fit; I would say it's worth the effort, it takes years off you.
>> No. 27897 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 7:27 am
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>>27896
You can pick up a Debenhams suit straight from the factory for £40 to £50.

https://www.tompercy.co.uk/product-category/suits/new-arrivals/
>> No. 27898 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 9:24 am
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Some of my friends are concerned this 22:00 pub closing time will turn into a curfew. It's easy to imagine "Well they must want everyone off the streets", but in practise the government appears to have relied on peoples sensibility more than harsh rule - wear masks unless exempt; leave your house only once per day except essential shops, excersise and everything else.

There's the whole slippery slope thing but the last i heard that's a logical fallacy.

I'm wondering some kind of hypernormalisation thing is going on where the government supports both sides in an effort to keep people malleably confused - But i'm inclined toward the conspiracy kind of ideas so perhaps not.

Thoughts?
>> No. 27899 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 9:49 am
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>>27898
>I'm wondering some kind of hypernormalisation thing is going on where the government supports both sides in an effort to keep people malleably confused - But i'm inclined toward the conspiracy kind of ideas so perhaps not.

The government response for several months has been to float an idea, wait for the press to pick up on it and then proceed depending on whether it seems popular or not.

The overall message has been unclear, but I can't decide whether it's because they're just plain incompetent or to give themselves enough room to shift blame to the general public or elsewhere. It's probably both.
>> No. 27900 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 10:20 am
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>>27899
A friendly local nutjob reckons it's being done ever so softly so that when things fall apart over winter they can blame the general public.
>> No. 27901 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 11:13 am
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>>27900
The government intentionally issuing confusing instructions in order to blame the public when it goes wrong isn't really a nutjob opinion, it's mainstream.
>> No. 27902 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 11:44 am
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>>27898
The government can't actually tell the truth about it without upsetting someone; we don't have a cure (yet), a bunch of people are going to get ill, a load will die and that's about it.

I don't see a conspiracy at all - there are a bunch of cockups that they can't admit, but I'm not sure they would make any material difference to the outcome. There are sure to be some corruption in the awarding of contracts and people taking the piss with the various schemes, but again, not going to make any big difference to how many people get sick. They're genuinely damned if they do and damned if they don't.
>> No. 27904 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 12:23 pm
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>>27902
Yes, it's a shame that we don't have the resources to manage this in the same way that richer, more developed countries like Vietnam do.
>> No. 27905 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 1:47 pm
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HERD IMMUNITY
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>> No. 27906 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 2:10 pm
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Are the other Ossett lads alright? There's been an outbreak linked to the Little Bull pub due the landlady having it and not telling staff or punters about it.
>> No. 27907 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 4:24 pm
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>>27906
Now that is a cunt move.
>> No. 27908 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 4:30 pm
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>>27902

Things would definitely have been better if we had simply acted faster. We could have shut down air travel in February and given NHS labs a bit more money for the supplies they needed to increase the capacity for PCR testing on the cases we did have, plus allowed the existing contact tracing organisations to do their job under a less apocalyptic workload.

Of course it's all very well to say this in hindsight, yes; but the fact is we didn't need hindsight. The evidence was right there to begin with and our government was basically clamping its hands over its ears, selectively listening to the kind of advice they wanted to hear. We could have played it safe and taken the precaution to see how things turned out; but instead we waited until it was already a clear and obvious disaster in Spain and Italy to even think about any kind of serious response.
>> No. 27909 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 4:39 pm
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>> No. 27910 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 5:03 pm
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>>27909
What sort of cunt takes that and puts a fucking emoji in the corner?
>> No. 27911 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 7:20 pm
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>>27910
Cunts on facebook probably
>> No. 27912 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:11 pm
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>>27908
>We could have shut down air travel in February and given NHS labs a bit more money for the supplies they needed

We'll all probably argue forever that things could have been handled differently at the start of the pandemic. But six months in, what do we do now?
>> No. 27913 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:28 pm
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>>27912
The same things that would have worked then will also work now.
>> No. 27914 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:40 pm
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Part of me thinks that most people just don't know infectious this disease is. It's spread by inhaling another's exhale if they have the virus. That's it. You could be 2m away from someone but if the room you're in is small with no ventilation, you're going to catch it.

The impression I get from the general public is they still seem to think it only spreads through coughing or sneezing like a cold or the flu. Sadly, this just isn't the case.
>> No. 27915 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:50 pm
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>>27912

The main shortcoming in our response is the "trace" part of test and trace. We have a shitload of testing capacity, but most of that capacity is being wasted because it's not being used as part of a strategic approach to controlling the virus.

Testing is just a tool that allows us to reduce the transmission of the virus. That tool is only useful if the information changes how we behave. If you're living in a household with someone who has COVID symptoms, you don't need a test - you need to isolate for 14 days regardless of whether you've got the virus now, because you're likely to catch the virus anyway. If one of your colleagues has gone into self-isolation with COVID symptoms you do need a test, as does everyone you work with; you need the results pronto to prevent one case from turning into a cluster.

It's all about speed - you need to jump on cases quickly and act to trace and isolate people to prevent the spread of the disease. You need test results within hours and contacts traced within hours, otherwise you might as well not bother; the whole point of test-and-trace is to identify asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers before they have a chance to infect their friends and colleagues.


>> No. 27916 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:50 pm
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MARTIAL LAW
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>> No. 27917 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 8:58 pm
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>>27915
Also, if people have symptoms and they get tested to find out that it's just a common cold, we should be telling people that they should still self-isolate, in order to not put other people in a position where they're going to use up even more testing capacity.

Don't be the guy at work who comes in looking like death warmed up going "nah it's ok, I dont have a temperature so can't be the rona".
>> No. 27919 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 10:20 pm
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>>27915

>You need test results within hours and contacts traced within hours, otherwise you might as well not bother

Thing is even on cutting edge machinery it takes a good four hours to run the type of test that identifies covid, not including the preparation work, in a lab that's handling hundreds of these things per hour. Then you have to take the time out of your day to run controls and quality assurance. Testing in microbiology is often misunderstood, even by medics, who will often ring up asking if there's anything you can do to "speed it up". At the end of the day it all relies on actual biological processes.

The official target was thirteen hours or something but in reality, most of that is wasted transporting the swab to where it needs to end up. The fact is, relying on testing in the way we (by which I mean the government) have been, as some kind of silver bullet that will allow us vital intelligence in the war against this disease, is just impractical. All the actions you should be taking need to be taken at first suspicion of an infection, and all the test does is provide an all clear if the suspicion turns out to be false. Which of course is of great import, because then those individuals can all get back to work.

In reality, I suspect testing has only been pushed so heavily so they they knew when they could get away with opening the shops again.
>> No. 27923 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 11:01 pm
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>>27915
>The main shortcoming in our response is the "trace" part of test and trace.

I don't really get how the trace part, as proposed so far would work - for instance, I don't even answer the phone to unknown numbers, so if one of these tracing staff was calling me I probably wouldn't answer. If someone I knew or was in contact with had the virus, it would be dependent on them remembering I had seen them and telling me.

There are obviously better possible technological things we could do, despite being a privacy zealot, I can see how something around mobile phone/proximity could give you more of that information, but it would be a fairly blunt tool given the granularity of the data around (say) mobile phone towers; I don't see how anything around the proposals using Bluetooth could work (leave it switched off most of the time). But again, privacy, so I'm not sure I would/could opt-in. I believe the only country that made this work was South Korea, and I recall reading that they didn't give the slightest fuck about the privacy aspects, so there is that.

So you use technical solutions and bust everyones privacy, giving very granular data to the authorities on movements. Or you rely on each case remembering all the people they had seen in the last N days, and all those people answering the phone.

Neither is great. How else could you do it?
>> No. 27924 Anonymous
22nd September 2020
Tuesday 11:46 pm
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>>27923

In South Korea or Singapore, someone would come and knock on your door if necessary. Technology helps a bit, but good contact tracing is mostly just old-fashioned detective work - a lot of hours and a lot of shoe leather. Our government has the legal authority to use mobile phone location data or card transactions for contact tracing under RIPA, but it's convenient for them to pretend that the law is a barrier to effective tracing.



>>27919

You can do a rapid antigen test, get a preliminary result within a few minutes, use that to get the ball rolling but confirm via PCR. No prizes for guessing what South Korea, Singapore and China have been doing. You're right that most of the time delay is logistics rather than lab processing, but you can do a heck of a lot to improve that time. The government set targets, but they didn't build any logistics infrastructure.
>> No. 27925 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 5:30 am
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>>27923

I don't at all subscribe to the conspiracies that the rona is a way to control or track us more, but at the same time I don't think implementing a granular/accurate tracing system is a bell that could be unrung - once the government/serco/whoever the fuck could track you and all your interactions, that's never going away.

And particularly now that you can be fined 10 grand for breaching quarantine rules, running parallel to very fuzzy guidance on anything covid related from the government, it just simply does not make sense for me to give my real details for any sort of pen and paper track and trace system, let alone submit to being tracked via my mobile.
>> No. 27927 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 8:32 am
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>>27923
>I don't really get how the trace part, as proposed so far would work - for instance, I don't even answer the phone to unknown numbers, so if one of these tracing staff was calling me I probably wouldn't answer. If someone I knew or was in contact with had the virus, it would be dependent on them remembering I had seen them and telling me.

I know a few tinfoil types who keep giving false details for test and trace when asked.
>> No. 27928 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 9:19 am
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>>27927
>I know a few tinfoil types who keep giving false details for test and trace when asked.

Particularly if people think they're going to have to stay in / miss work or get some huge fine for leaving the house.
>> No. 27929 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 9:36 am
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>>27910
ITZ
>> No. 27930 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 9:47 am
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From day 1, the message was that restrictions would come and go as infection rates changed. Pandemic 101.
While our handling of this has been a shitshow (and can I just say Dido Fucking Harding), whining about U-turns is the mark of a cretin.
>> No. 27931 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 10:05 am
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>>27930
I don't follow how that makes someone a "cretin". It seems entirely reasonable to want the government to produce clear messages on what to do while the threat of pandemic looms large. Given it was only two or three weeks ago folk were being told they "must" return to the office, and make sure to stop for a sandwich and a coffee on the way, this is a rather rapid turn around even by the standards of a Tory government so enthralled to the right-wing print media an especially rough Mail on Sunday write-up can change policy overnight.
>> No. 27934 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 11:38 am
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>>27931 The government could (but is too inept to) produce clear messages. What it can't do is produce unchanging messages, and whining that the message changes, is to be cretinous.

The situation changes, so should (y)our actions. (Unless you're either 'shut down everything forever' or 'let it run its course unchecked' - both of which I think are unhelpful)

The government being in thrall to the fucking Mail isn't what's stopping them producing one clear unchanging message.
>> No. 27935 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 11:59 am
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>>27930
You ought to know better than to inject common sense into this thread. For shame.
>> No. 27936 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 1:31 pm
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>>27935
Why the red circle?
>> No. 27937 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 1:34 pm
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>>27936
Grorious Nippon 🇯🇵
>> No. 27938 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 1:55 pm
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It's all your own fault, says the paper who've spent the past week trying to stoke panic buying.
>> No. 27939 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 2:30 pm
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>>27938
Wow, that's... really unsubtle.
>> No. 27946 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 6:49 pm
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>>27938

What's the angle with this? Asking because it's probably a horrid right wing paper I don't want to justify with clicks.
>> No. 27950 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 7:33 pm
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Younger women 'bearing brunt' of second wave of Covid in UK

Younger women are “bearing the brunt” of the UK’s second wave of coronavirus infections, according to a fresh analysis of hospital admissions prepared by government science advisers.

Hospital records reveal a substantial rise in the number of women aged 20 to 40 admitted for serious coronavirus infections since the beginning of August, a country-wide trend that suggests younger women are now more exposed to the virus.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/22/younger-women-bearing-brunt-of-second-wave-of-covid-in-uk

Women most likely to have children of school age are catching the virus in greater numbers when schools reopen shocker.
>> No. 27951 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 7:42 pm
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>>27950

I think something like 70% of all waitstaff are female too. Funny that.
>> No. 27952 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 8:10 pm
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>>27950

I blame eyebrow threading. Jabbing a needle reapeatedly into some bird's face is going to carry a risk of coming into contact with some blood.
>> No. 27953 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 8:33 pm
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>>27951

Also nurses, care workers, hairdressers etc etc ad nauseum.
>> No. 27954 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 9:35 pm
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>>27950

Well fuck 'em, it's not like you hear women offering much sympathy for all them men who die in the dangerous jobs men almost exclusively do (because we're great big sexists who won't let women do those jobs.)

Only being slightly facetious, this is a genuine double standard that any good fisherperson should be interested in calling out too.
>> No. 27955 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 10:05 pm
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>>27954

Ironically, being a fisherperson is a) the most dangerous job in Britain and b) almost exclusively male.
>> No. 27956 Anonymous
23rd September 2020
Wednesday 10:28 pm
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>>27953
Hairdressing is an interesting one as men and women have a preference for their own gender, at least to the degree that a woman is unlikely to use a barber. Similarly outside of 'old Italian place' and maybe 'laddish Turkish place' people will use their own race just because of how hair and facial structure differs.

Would be interesting to see how the covid rate differs.

>>27955
Don't be daft, it's obviously farming that is the most dangerous.
>> No. 27957 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 4:59 am
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>>27956
Ah but what about fish farming?
>> No. 27958 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 7:24 am
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>>27955
I thought it was being a linesman. I saw that film with John Travolta.
>> No. 27960 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 10:28 am
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The app is out now. I expect this will be a bloody nightmare with my bluetooth headphones.
>> No. 27961 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 12:27 pm
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I don't get it.
>> No. 27962 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 12:44 pm
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>>27961
I mean if your company has some work/business, this shares the hours around a little; not sure I get it really either.
>> No. 27963 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 1:10 pm
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>>27961

They really would have just saved themselves hassle if they implemented a temporary UBI. It's only ideological stubbornness preventing them, because hurr scroungers- By any reckoning it would be better for the economy.

This looks like it will be a disastrous cock up.
>> No. 27965 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 1:33 pm
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>>27961

Wat?

You work 1/3 of your hours. For the other 2/3 the government and employer pay 1/3 normal rate.

Total pay = 1/3 + (2/3)/3 = 1/3 + 2/9 = 5/9 = 55.555555555555%

Where does the 77% come from?
>> No. 27966 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 1:34 pm
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>>27963

The scheme isn't a substitute for benefits and isn't primarily intended to prevent redundancies. It's a macroeconomic intervention, not welfare. It's targeted at the subset of workers whose jobs are marginally viable now, but will be fully viable when things get back to normal.

Furlough was only ever intended as a temporary measure, based on the assumption that we could get back to some semblance of normality after a period of lockdown. It has already been extended once which was punishingly expensive; there's simply no way we can keep it going for another six or twelve months. We don't want mass unemployment, but a long-term furlough is just a very expensive way of delaying the inevitable and it's deeply unfair to those who fall outside of the furlough scheme.

If furloughed workers facing redundancy are wondering how they could possibly feed their family on Universal Credit, then maybe they should have thought about that before.
>> No. 27967 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 1:40 pm
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>>27965
0.66 x 0.66 = 0.44, paid 0.22 by employer and 0.22 by the government.

0.44 plus the 0.33 actually worked = 0.77.
>> No. 27968 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 1:42 pm
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>>27965

The government and employer pay a third of the unearned wages each, not a third in total.

1/3 + (1/3 * 2/3) + (1/3 * 2/3) = 1/3 + 2/9 + 2/9 = 7/9 ≈ 77%
>> No. 27970 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 2:07 pm
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>>27963
>if they implemented a temporary UBI

There is no such thing as temporary in this context. It wouldn't be good for the economy and would just cause inflation.

>>27966
>It's targeted at the subset of workers whose jobs are marginally viable now, but will be fully viable when things get back to normal.

That's actually a really good way to describe it.
>> No. 27972 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 3:04 pm
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>>27967
>>27968

I see. It should be

1/3 + 2*(2/3)/3 = 7/9
>> No. 27973 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 3:56 pm
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Will many employers actually pay 55% of someone's salary for 33% of their contracted hours?

If you have the option of paying someone contracted for 35 hours per week for 19.25 hours of work when they've actually only done 11.67 hours of work why wouldn't you just sack them and hire someone on a part-time contract for those hours?
>> No. 27974 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 4:35 pm
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>>27973
There are presumably labour laws in effect that prevent this sort of thing.

I bet employers would LOVE to do it though.
>> No. 27975 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 4:41 pm
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You take on 3 jobs, work each one 1/3 of the time and earn 233% normal wage.
>> No. 27976 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 4:57 pm
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>>27974
>I bet employers would LOVE to do it though.

Of course they would. No employer is going to want to pay someone for more than they've worked. What would you do in this scenario:-

- Have three employees working the equivalent of one full-time employee costing you 1.65 times the salary of one full-time employee.

- Sack two of them and have one full-time employee being paid the salary of a full-time employee.
>> No. 27979 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 5:44 pm
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>>27975
Good in theory but these are salaried positions (I think, I don't know, is minimum wage covered by this?) which I presume would require more from the individual than just turning up, clocking in then clocking out.

>>27976
Well of course the latter option but what if those employees have been working for the company for 20 years? Loyalty and ethics and that.
>> No. 27985 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 6:02 pm
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>>27973
1. You need excess capacity for a sudden lifting of lockdown - at the macro-level this is all about maintaining economic capacity.
2. Staff that are trained, tested and not pains in the arse are worth retaining where possible.

Best of luck finding a decent employee looking for a third of the hours (without two-timing you) and whose lifestyle paradoxically allows them to move to full-time in the near future. I don't think I've yet seen which industries are being picked for this but we're not looking at your local paperboy. The paperboy is making enough shoving multiple copies of commuter papers in my fucking letterbox at the moment.
>> No. 27986 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 6:05 pm
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>>27979
>Loyalty and ethics and that.

That's not my experience of employers.
>> No. 27988 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 6:23 pm
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>>27979
>Loyalty and ethics and that.

I'm not sure there was much of that to go around before the pandemic if I'm honest - right now? Nothing, zero, almost every company is in survival mode.
>> No. 27989 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 6:25 pm
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6634 cases today - it's official, more people than recorded on any day at the peak in Spring.

I can't help but feel a bit more despondent about the situation than earlier in the year. I have never seen a quick end to the pandemic, but it does feel like everywhere is going backwards. And we're just starting Autumn.
>> No. 27996 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 7:19 pm
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>>27989
The thing is, when coronavirus first emerged, a lot of the science behind it wasn't known. It could have been an apocalyptic scenario as the first lockdown speech made by BoJo felt like at times because we just didn't know what it was capable of.
>> No. 28001 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 7:32 pm
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>>27996

We had a fairly good idea of the science by the time we decided to lock down. China had completely flattened the curve several weeks earlier and we had a reasonable idea of the R and CFR. The big unknown then and now is the trade-off between lives and livelihoods - we knew that we could suppress the virus, but we didn't fully understand what that would mean for the economy and we still don't know what the long-term repercussions will look like.
>> No. 28002 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 7:36 pm
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Going to be a massive rise in unemployment from this. Expect closer union between the jobcentre and skivvy-work recruitment agencies.
>> No. 28007 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 8:22 pm
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This is going to be a properly grim, bleak winter isn't it.

I normally get a bit of moderate SAD when the days start getting shorter and the weather starts to feel that bit more hostile; except that this year I haven't even had much of an uplift from the summer. I haven't socialised with any of my friends face to face since February.

The January blues are going to be especially severe, looking down the barrel of another write-off of a year. People of my generation were only just starting to get on our feet after a decade of post-08 austerity, now we're looking at at least another to pay off the bill for all this. There's not much to live for right now is there.
>> No. 28008 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 9:08 pm
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>>28002
>>28007
If you want to be depressed then I'm sure you would find a reason anyway. We're at least half-way in now, the current furlough measures match what has worked on the continent and winter is the perfect time to be stuck inside.

We're all used to a much worse lockdown and I'm sure you can find a lonely lass in time for Christmas. If not we can make a D&D thread here and have a cunt-off about elves.
>> No. 28009 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 9:20 pm
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>>28008

I've already got a perfectly serviceable girlfriend m8, but there's only so many sexual positions and new toys you can order off Love Honey before you just start getting sick of the sight of each other. I've already had a couple of mates go through the whole lockdown divorce ordeal (in fairness at least one of them was fairly obviously ill suited to the bird he unwisely wed) so I know my relationship is actually pretty stable and well matched by comparison, but the cracks are starting to show, at least from my perspective.

She's the type of bird who wholeheartedly endorses ideas like poisonous manliness, so of course she thinks I should talk more freely about my feelings and all that; but the reality of the matter is she's lucky I'm capable of such astonishing stoicism, because she's horrible at emotional support and it would have ended in tears a long time ago if not. Her brain being infested with woke worms is the sort of thing one simply knows better than to waste time arguing about.
>> No. 28014 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 10:11 pm
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>there's only so many sexual positions and new toys you can order off Love Honey before you just start getting sick of the sight of each other

I don't know what's worse, the prospects for the pandemic, or the bleak relationships some of you seem to be in.
>> No. 28017 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 10:24 pm
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>>28014

I'm willing to bet you haven't had to spend the last six months shut in with one person.

No matter how perfectly a couple are matched, cabin fever is bound to set in.
>> No. 28021 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 11:43 pm
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From the pub trade side of things, it's going to get worse. Had to bark at people as they come in "Where's your mask mate?" or "Mask?!?" at regulars, flouting the new rules. Mask on one second, mask off the next.
One set of cunts of a young age group across the country is going to see some pubs penalised massively and some pubs simply shut down for good.
>> No. 28022 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 11:53 pm
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>>28021
The worst of it, they hadn't taken in what I said the night before about new laws and the potential massive fine for me. I explained it and they said they would comply.
I slapped down as much bleach as would stay on flat surfaces, even as it dried they continued to be cunts, wiped my hand sideways, saw powders.
Play by the rules or get the fuck out.
>> No. 28023 Anonymous
24th September 2020
Thursday 11:58 pm
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>>28009
>>28017
Married life is going to be hard on you.
>> No. 28024 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 12:00 am
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>>28022
People are such wankers; I don't know how you do it.

You just have to be a "cunt" back about it and fuck them - that's what the new laws are designed to do.
>> No. 28025 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 12:31 am
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>>28023

I'm not thick enough to get married.
>> No. 28026 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 1:41 am
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>>28025
Good. Don't.
>> No. 28027 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 3:08 am
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>>28026
Haha. I wish we had a like button.
>> No. 28030 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 7:50 am
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>Online shoppers are being urged to buy early for Christmas this year over fears gifts may not arrive in time. With three months to go before the big day, the online retail industry is gearing up for a huge surge in demand. It's warning that firms may struggle to cope if we leave all our festive shopping until the last minute.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54287282

Looks like gift cards for everyone or Christmas might be ruined.
>> No. 28034 Anonymous
25th September 2020
Friday 9:45 pm
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>>28026

Glad to see that I am not the only person on .gs who likes Family Guy.
>> No. 28035 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 12:53 am
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>>28030
I'm not entirely sure we're going to have to see people this year so it might not matter. A quiet Christmas doesn't sound too bad if you can catch up with old friends on zoom.

>>28034
I think all blokes like Family Guy thanks to the content being tailor made for us. It's our 'Live, Laugh, Love'.
>> No. 28036 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 1:53 am
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Wait..

Lads...

Is...

Is this all being done to protect old people?...
>> No. 28037 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 2:16 am
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>>28036

Yes, absolutely.
>> No. 28038 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 2:22 am
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>>28037
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Why the hell do I care? We should be virus bombing these people.
>> No. 28039 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 2:35 am
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>>28037
Jesus Christ.

Thank you... I guess... Wtf was the point of voting LibDems.
>> No. 28040 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 7:14 am
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>>28039

Same as it always has been. Spoiling your ballot without going to the trouble of drawing a dick on it.
>> No. 28041 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 7:22 am
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>>28038
You'd have to bomb everyone over the age of 39 because they're more likely than not to be a Tory voter.

It's also worth pointing our that more people aged 18 to 29 voted Tory than people aged 60 to 69 voted Labour.
>> No. 28042 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 10:25 am
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I do wonder when I'll make the transition to old tory voter. By all rights I should be already, I have money, property, a business, a job in an environmentally irresponsible industry, and I own two gilets. But as far as I can tell, I'm still somewhere on the left.
>> No. 28043 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 10:59 am
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>>28042
>as far as I can tell, I'm still somewhere on the left.

What is seen as the left now may not be viewed as a left position in 20/30 years. You could see yourself ostracised and seen as backwards like the TERFs are these days.

Also, I reckon the reason the proportion of pensioners voting Tory is so high is because the ones voting Labour will be more likely to die off earlier and have a lower life expectancy.
>> No. 28044 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:01 am
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>>28043
>You could see yourself ostracised and seen as backwards like the TERFs are these days.
What, like Judith Butler is?
>> No. 28045 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:26 am
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>>28043

What's your position on human-robot marriage?
>> No. 28046 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:45 am
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>>28043

I really can't imagine being anything but an old, annoying socialist, but I accept that it happens. And you're right, maybe saying corporations are bad will one day be seen as offensive job-shaming.
>> No. 28047 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:47 am
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>>28045

I personally won't be marrying my robot fuckpig but back when I was a lad, some german woman married a rollercoaster so whatever.
>> No. 28048 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 12:43 pm
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https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases

Fucking hell, we're apparently one of the better ones at the moment. I thought that at least the Dutch would have us.

>>28036
>>28037
Why is .gs so eager to make this biting social commentary? We get it, Labour preys on children and voting boils down to tribalism rather than informed decision making.

I don't see a Labour minority government doing any better at the moment. It would be party implosions over EU-Scottish referendums, funky grandpa's manifesto being binned and the scandal of Labour fucking up local lockdowns because its beholden to local interest groups in urban areas. We'd still have a shambolic covid response.

>>28039
Because the Labour and Conservative parties are shit and tend to steal their most sensible ideas from the Lib Dems. If you want to be a demographics lad then you will notice that Lib Dem voters tend to be better educated and middle class - exactly the kind of people who should be in charge rather than reimposing aristocracy or a glorified mafia.
>> No. 28049 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 1:02 pm
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>>28048
>Because the Labour and Conservative parties are shit and tend to steal their most sensible ideas from the Lib Dems
If this was actually true we'd be living in the SDP-Liberal alliance miracle world of Keynesianism buttressed by incomes policy and proportional representation instead of the thatcherite tumorworld we're actually living in.
Wait, wait, no for the love of god don't print that, it's boring, I've got a pithier one:
You mean like a REAL referendum on Europe?
>> No. 28050 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 1:06 pm
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>>28048

>We'd still have a shambolic covid response

Based on what? I'm not sure I would have predicted the current government's inaction and careless responses to the crisis, despite not particularly having much faith in them, I assumed they'd have done better than they have.

To say Labour would have done just as poorly based on nothing is just disingenuous.
>> No. 28051 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 3:15 pm
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>>28048
>Because the Labour and Conservative parties are shit and tend to steal their most sensible ideas from the Lib Dems.

And maybe one day they'll actually implement those top class ideas when given the chance, instead of shitting the bed and doing the exact opposite of what they pledged, pissing off everyone but the most dull-witted centrist blowhards who fetishise compromise as an end in itself.
>> No. 28052 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 3:46 pm
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>>28049
>If this was actually true we'd be living in the SDP-Liberal alliance miracle world of Keynesianism buttressed by incomes policy and proportional representation instead of the thatcherite tumorworld we're actually living in.

People vote shit parties. I'm not sure anyone would argue against that.

>>28050
There would still be inadequate testing capacity, a bloom in covid cases owing to the way our society is structured on-top of a Labour administration not known for its competence and trying to force through radical changes. That's just reality, we'd have been in difficult economic circumstances before Covid even hit.
>> No. 28053 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 4:17 pm
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>>28052
People may vote for shit parties, but that wouldn't be an issue if they stole sensible policies from the lib-dems.
It seems much more plausible that once or twice they've implemented a policy broadly similar to something the Lib-Dems had also adopted within the prior 4 years, and then that's generalised out to the idea that this happens routinely or that it's totally implausible that two parties might just come up with very similar ideas from different angles.
On the really important things the Lib Dems tend to be about as shit as the major parties. They'd much rather be "moderate" and "sensible" than be right, which gives them the option of fudging the issue (How about a tiny tax increase?) or adopting clear policies safe in the knowledge they won't have to implement them (Tuition fees).
>> No. 28054 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 4:27 pm
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>>28052

Do you believe labour would have delayed their action as long as the tories did? Do you believe our airports would have remained open and with no screening for about two months after the italians were in crisis? Do you believe a labour government would have botched the track and trace app quite as severely?

In the interest of balance I'm not entirely sure a labour government would have been quite so decisive with a furlough scheme, so there's that.
>> No. 28055 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 4:39 pm
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Are middle-aged people particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories and anti-mask bollocks?
>> No. 28056 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 4:47 pm
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>>28055

Considering the numbers of people attending 'illegal raves' (tm daily mail) I suspect not
>> No. 28057 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 4:56 pm
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>>28055
It's weird the places a Palestinian flag will pop up.
>> No. 28058 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 5:13 pm
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>>28057
It's the sign in the bottom right that got me. I misread 'muggers' many times in my head.
>> No. 28059 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 5:48 pm
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>>28055

Oh dear oh dear. That's a bit more than six people isn't it.
>> No. 28060 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 5:58 pm
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>>28055
>middle-aged people particularly susceptible

Yes they are I believe - perhaps you get to the point in your life where you're looking/desperate for answers on why your life and the world has turned out so shit, and some of these conspiracy ideas are a handy cop-out/structure to blame it on. They are often a handy way to absolve you of any of your own responsibility for it.
>> No. 28061 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 6:11 pm
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>>28060

I always put it down to them not being very internet-literate. They just don't have the mental filters that go "Ah yes this looks rather timecube" and take any old meme as a source of truth.
>> No. 28062 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 7:30 pm
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>>28061

They don't even understand what trolling is.

>>28057

It's like those flags people have at Glastonbury so that they can find their mates, but for left-wing loons.
>> No. 28063 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 7:49 pm
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>>28062

You really think that crowd has many left-wing people in it?
>> No. 28064 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 8:38 pm
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>>28063

For some value of "left wing", yes. The only real common factors in the anti-lockdown movement are suggestibility, a paranoid mistrust of institutions and spending too much time on the internet.

You've got the middle-aged women in floaty skirts who spend too much time on CiF and natural health groups on Facebook, the chavvy anti-vaxxer mums getting a constant trickle of third-hand bullshit on WhatsApp, the alt-right lads who spend too much time watching YouTube rants by yanks, black and brown people who watch religious nutters on foreign satellite channels and the old guard of Ickean conspiracy loons. It's a glorious melting pot of subclinical mental illness.

These protests may well be the most diverse in the history of British politics, precisely because they're apolitical in motivation - they're advancing no agenda other than paranoia.
>> No. 28065 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 10:40 pm
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>>28064
Apparently Icke Himself got arrested.

Surely they can't lock up the Son of God?
>> No. 28066 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:14 pm
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>>28065
He's been a very naughty boy.
>> No. 28067 Anonymous
26th September 2020
Saturday 11:25 pm
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>>28065
As far as I can tell it's only an unsubstantiated rumour that Icke got arrested, but all the people who were supporting the anti-lockdown, anti-social distancing protests are up in arms about the double standards of the policing being unfair as less than five of them were arrested compared to 600 people from XR being arrested and a BLM crowd being charged by police horses, so they're being picked on for their protest where they were intentionally not social distancing despite that being the law they were intentionally breaking. Maybe that sentence is unclear but it's hard to keep up with the clowns doing gymnastics.
>> No. 28068 Anonymous
27th September 2020
Sunday 12:04 am
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>>28067
Possibly a decision to just let the daft twats spread it amongst themselves. Perhaps no the Great Awakening they had in mind.
>> No. 28069 Anonymous
27th September 2020
Sunday 12:30 am
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I'm almost looking forward to seeing how Covid will be represented on bonfire night. Or rather, the inevitable BBC picture article on the topic that I will read on a slow afternoon.

Will they opt for those virus teddy-bears or have a go at burning a box of tissues? Is Batman close enough?

>>28064
>It's a glorious melting pot of subclinical mental illness

It's almost laudable how they've also brought the rest of society together in this difficult time.
>> No. 28070 Anonymous
27th September 2020
Sunday 12:31 am
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>>28065
Perfomative protesting. It'll do his brand/relevance the world of good, and think of the videos he'll be able to make as a result. See also: Piers Corbyn.
>> No. 28077 Anonymous
27th September 2020
Sunday 4:12 pm
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Almost up to a million
>> No. 28078 Anonymous
27th September 2020
Sunday 4:23 pm
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>>28077


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM
>> No. 28097 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 9:14 am
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>> No. 28099 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 1:54 pm
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>Bars in parliament will not be permitted to sell alcohol after 10pm in a swift change of policy after The Times discovered they were exempt from the pub curfew.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/parliament-s-bars-exempt-from-10pm-coronavirus-curfew-wb6g6bbgp

Funny how this only came into effect after a backlash.
>> No. 28100 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 4:30 pm
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>>28097
Just been announced - all of you lot in the North East have to stay indoors (forever) now, or Boris will come round and arrest you.
>> No. 28101 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 4:39 pm
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>>28099>>28100

GAN YEM
>> No. 28102 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 4:41 pm
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>>28100

>>28100

I am on a hilarious/tragic conference call right now listening to everyone trying to work out what the statement meant and whether we're closing again. It's very much a sense of rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

My back up is my own business but that's in hospitality so I'm double fucked.
>> No. 28103 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 5:42 pm
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>>28100
My parents live in area under local lockdown (not North East), but still expect me to come up to visit in a month as that's what we had planned before the second wave. They said they don't give a shit about the restrictions, but I feel very uncomfortable flouting rules.
>> No. 28104 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 5:44 pm
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>>28103
From what I can tell it's pretty much business as usual in Leeds.
>> No. 28105 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 6:13 pm
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>>28104

It's the same up here. People are quite clearly sick of following rules that change constantly and are flouted by others anyway. Rightly or wrongly, stuff like the Barnard Castle escapade has eroded what little sense of compliance to authority the neglected mining towns of the north had.
>> No. 28106 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 8:08 pm
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>>28105
>stuff like the Barnard Castle escapade

This is just bollocks. I don't believe a single (young) person who is flouting the lockdown is citing Dom's trip. If you're going out and fucking around the rules, you're just selfish.

It's like driving at 100 miles per hour; sure, there will be a few selfish pricks who follow suit when that guy zooms past, but most/the rest of us aren't going to follow, just because you saw that guy get away with something stupid.
>> No. 28107 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 8:28 pm
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>>28106

Nah, more than likely the (young) people flouting the rules are doing it because of all the maungy (old) cunts who refuse to follow the rules, even thought it's for their protection above anyone else.

There are exceptions in every group, but by and large young people have been the most calm, stoic, reasonable and responsible throughout the course of this entire affair. Even when they've been the ones still going out to work in shops and bars and what have you, bearing the full brunt of everyone else's stupidity, they haven't been the ones kicking up a fuss. They've been getting on with it.

This pandemic has entirely put paid to the old stereotype about the entitled millennials. It's been quite clearly the older generation chucking their sippy mugs on the floor because they don't like being told they've got to finish their mains before they're allowed any pudding.
>> No. 28108 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 8:44 pm
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>>28107
To hell with the young folk and your mealy-mouthed excuses for licking windows in the North East. If you act like a cunt because other people act like cunts then you're still a cunt - I think Gandhi said that.

>bearing the full brunt of everyone else's stupidity

I think you will find that is the elderly and other vulnerable groups.
>> No. 28109 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 8:44 pm
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>>28107

We're talking about a few thousand twats going out on the piss, versus millions who won't wear masks and don't know what two metres looks like.
>> No. 28110 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 9:23 pm
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>>28108

Who's acting like a cunt, though? It's probably no coincidence that areas that rely more heavily on service or manual jobs are doing worse than areas where WFH is a more realistic option.
>> No. 28112 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 9:54 pm
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I find it wild that university halls were even allowed top open, an obvious disaster in the making.
>> No. 28113 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 10:07 pm
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>>28112

Thousands of young people travelling across the country to live in cramped shared housing, file into packed lecture halls and go out on the piss? What could possibly go wrong.

Seriously, this incident has really highlighted how the post-Blair marketised Higher Education sector has become utterly exploitative of young people. Everyone knew that a second wave was coming, everyone knew that most of this academic year would be based around online learning, but students were mis-sold a "university experience" that was never going to happen. Universities have knowingly lured teenagers into what are effectively £150/wk prison cells with utter disregard for their mental wellbeing. It's the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a shady package tour operator, not a supposedly august institution of learning.
>> No. 28114 Anonymous
28th September 2020
Monday 10:29 pm
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>>28108

Well, whatever grandad. I'm not going to try persuade you that you're wrong because ultimately, you're going to die sooner than I am either way.
>> No. 28121 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 11:43 am
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>>28114
Not if I destroy the Earth first. Now post your OnlyFans so I can make you dance for my perverse amusement.
>> No. 28123 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 12:24 pm
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>>28121

>Not if I destroy the Earth first.

That's enough out of you, Ming.
>> No. 28125 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 12:27 pm
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>>28105

Some people really want to make the Barnard Castle trip into a bigger deal than it was.

Half my friends/family never bothered following guidance/restrictions in the first place and the rest of us gave up end of April, none of which was to do with Dom.

Same with everyone else who started having BBQs and what not, they gave up because they realised they'd been conned, not because Dom went for a drive.

The amount of fear this whole debacle has put into people and the willingness they have to bend over and get fucked by the government is astonishing.

Just get on with your life before it comes crashing down and we have real problems to deal with.
>> No. 28128 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 12:55 pm
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>>28125

>they'd been conned
>get fucked by the government

What sort of con do you believe is being perpetrated? Who stands to gain from this con?
>> No. 28129 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 12:59 pm
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>>28125
Hang on, does no one give a shit or are we all jumping at shadows, which is it?
>> No. 28130 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 1:02 pm
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>>28125
You are utterly deluded. I hope you and your family/friends get the virus as it's the only way you're going to learn.
>> No. 28132 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 1:17 pm
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>>28128
It's the controlavirus! It's a plandemic!
>> No. 28134 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 1:37 pm
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>>28125
Has to be the /pol/ lad again.
>> No. 28136 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 3:12 pm
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>>28132
He's going to come back with the classic phrase do your own research isn't he?
>> No. 28137 Anonymous
29th September 2020
Tuesday 3:37 pm
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>>28136
All you have to do is wake up and open your eyes.
>> No. 28167 Anonymous
30th September 2020
Wednesday 12:27 pm
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It seems to have gone very Brexity with the whole 'project fear' and 'ignore the experts' messages.
>> No. 28174 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 7:03 am
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Results from swab tests carried out by more than 80,000 people out of a total of 150,000, taken between 18th and 26th September, show that infections have increased substantially across all age groups and areas of the country.

The research, led by Imperial College London, estimated that over 1 in 200 people across England have the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or 0.55% of the population, compared to 0.13% in the previous round of testing.


https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/205473/latest-react-findings-show-high-number/

This is the sort of mass/random/blind testing I trust the most.
>> No. 28175 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 7:55 am
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>>28174
Had them turn up on my doorstep yesterday. They were going down the road handing out testing kits then coming back to pick them up.
I leave my house once a week to go shopping and even that is around 7am to avoid people. I wonder if they're going to tell me I have it.
>> No. 28176 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 10:32 am
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Households (S.14)_ Households' saving ratio (.png
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Looks like we'll see a lot of splurging when this is all over.
>> No. 28177 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 11:09 am
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>>28176
>per cent

Could easily have been posted in 101.
>> No. 28178 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 11:18 am
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>>28177
Please stop avatarfagging with the Simpsons.
>> No. 28179 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 12:06 pm
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>>28178
I have two Simpsons-related images in my image folder and just posted one of them. Repeat images are flagged on .gs.
>> No. 28180 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 12:33 pm
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>>28179
Folk around here get pissy about posting Simpsons pictures for some reason. You can even get a ban for it.
>> No. 28181 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 12:34 pm
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>>28178
>>28179
I, for one, do not even own a Simpsons.
>> No. 28182 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 12:57 pm
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>>28180
It's not limited to Simpsons either. We just hate shitty reaction images - about 99% of them are fucking awful.
>> No. 28183 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 1:08 pm
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>>28182
I don't even know where this snobbery came from. If you look in the archive it isn't uncommon to see reaction images in threads from c. 10 years ago. It's as if at some point we decided to be super serious to prove that we're more mature than 4chan and a lot of the fun and fooling around has been stamped out along the way.
>> No. 28184 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 1:10 pm
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>>28180

There was that time when we had that "I used to be with it!" grandpa meme posted about four times in the space of a couple of months.

It was relevant each time, and it's always relatable, but it got a bit daft considering this place moves slow enough that it's hard to miss a post if you catch up on /*/ once or twice a day.
>> No. 28185 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 1:11 pm
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>>28183
Everyone was more fun ten years ago. But you're right, maybe we should all lighten up.
>> No. 28186 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 1:16 pm
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>>28184
I post it precisely because I know it winds one of you up.
>> No. 28187 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 2:41 pm
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>>28186
'Actually, I'm trolling' was more common ten years ago too.
>> No. 28188 Anonymous
1st October 2020
Thursday 11:31 pm
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>>28183
I found a 4chan folder form about 15 years ago earlier.
A time machine of sorts.
>> No. 28189 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:51 am
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This one needs the fucking book thrown at her.

Kick her out of parliament.
>> No. 28190 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 7:45 am
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TRUMP HAS IT!
>> No. 28191 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 7:53 am
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>>28190
Unless he dies then it's a load of bollocks to avoid having the debates.
>> No. 28192 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 9:45 am
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>>28191
It has been pointed out that he has plenty of ways to avoid debates, ones that don't make him look as 'weak' as this.
>> No. 28193 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:58 am
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>>28190
>> No. 28194 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:22 pm
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>>28192
I think Trump's caring less and less about how he looks. Anyway he'll be getting the best medical attention as president, just hoping, if it's true, that the fact he's mordbidly obese, in the elderly age bracket and has a drug addiction helps him shuffle the fuck off.
>> No. 28195 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:26 pm
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>>28194
I'm guessing he'll be asymptomatic, it's just the way everything else has gone this year.
>> No. 28196 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:27 pm
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>>28194
Are you ready for President Pence to usher in the rapture?
>> No. 28197 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:29 pm
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>>28196
Think anyone would vote for Pence in November?
>> No. 28198 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 12:34 pm
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>>28196
That would literally be the last twist in the tale/tail of 2020.
>> No. 28199 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 1:10 pm
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>>28197
Presumably Trump's name would still be on the ballot and you might want to factor that in. I wouldn't put it past the Americans to elect a dead president - it might even help the polling numbers.

>>28198
At least we'll start 2021 with a clean slate. That smug coronavirus will certainly be in for a shock when humanity sets itself on fire - almost as big a shock as the LGBT community will experience in November.
>> No. 28200 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 1:14 pm
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>>28194

What drug?
>> No. 28201 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 1:25 pm
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Would be funnier if he is asymptomatic and plays down the seriousness of the CHINA virus.
>> No. 28202 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 1:55 pm
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>>28190
His supporters heads must be spinning. The virus isn't real, but Trump has it.
>> No. 28203 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:13 pm
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>>28202
Eh.
>> No. 28204 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:47 pm
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>>28202

>The virus isn't real, but Trump has it

They'll still have their cake and eat it. If Trump doesn't get seriously ill, they will see it as proof that the virus is harmless.

I'm kind of half tempted to see it as a big PR stunt by Trump in a desperate bid to get votes. In any case, if he comes out of it fine, he will keep telling everybody that he is proof that the virus isn't as serious as it's cracked up to be.

Never underestimate Tump's determination to lure in the idiot vote. That's how he won four years ago.
>> No. 28205 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:50 pm
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>>28204
>In any case, if he comes out of it fine, he will keep telling everybody that he is proof that the virus isn't as serious as it's cracked up to be.

Of course he'll spin it this way, whatever happens. But as an obese 74 year old with a poor diet...
>> No. 28206 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:51 pm
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>>28204
>> No. 28207 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:57 pm
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I'm determined not to immediately jump to the conclusion it's some kind of hoax publicity stunt with an agenda behind it, because that would make a complete hypocrite of me for criticising and mocking Trump supporters for their conspiracy theorising about the origins and severity of the virus itself.

But self awareness does not seem to be a strong point for most of the internet, who are completely willing to make themselves look like freshly registered r/conspiracy shitposters just because it's Bad Orange Man in question this time.

I truly despair.
>> No. 28208 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 2:59 pm
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>>28205
The President of the United States will have the best healthcare available to anyone in the country. The BBC says even with someone as old as him, the death rate is about 3%, and that probably isn't accounting for variability of healthcare. I'm pretty sure he'll pull through.
>> No. 28209 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 3:10 pm
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>>28207

The number of people openly gloating and hoping he dies are a bit concerning. If nothing else, it's bad optics.
>> No. 28210 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 3:14 pm
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>>28203
That lot are beyond help.
>> No. 28211 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 3:18 pm
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>>28209

Funnily enough that's one of the things I don't expect to be repeated in paralell to the time Are Bozza got it. Even sworn enemies of the Tories on my social media etc were falling over themselves to forecast the shipping of how they hope he's alright and only mean nasty people wanted him to die.

I think the Yanks are more honest about their feelings. I hope he dies, don't you? I certainly hoped Bozza was going to die. Not because they're evil right wingers, just because they're bellend and I've never met them nor will I ever meet them, so they're not real. They're characters to me. It'd be funny if they died and frankly they're cunts anyway.
>> No. 28212 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 3:34 pm
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>>28211
>I think the Yanks are more honest about their feelings.
Isn't wishing death on the President a crime or something?
>> No. 28213 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 3:35 pm
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>>28211
I think Trump's death would probably be a net good in terms of making people understand that it's real and that their actions could save lives. Your reasoning seems fairly sociopathic.
>> No. 28214 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 4:27 pm
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>>2821
>I think the Yanks are more honest about their feelings. I hope he dies, don't you?

Agreed, I think the thing a lot of people are missing is the negative impact the Trump administration has had on a lot of peoples lives. The damage this prick has done so far is just tragic, and it hasn't been solely to the US. The world would be better off without him in it.
>> No. 28215 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 4:38 pm
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>>28212
I thought saying you will harm the president was a crime, not wishing him dead.
>> No. 28216 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 4:51 pm
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>>28215
Yes, for example it's very illegal to say "The best place to fire a mortar launcher at the White House would be from the roof of Rockefeller-Hewitt building because of minimal security and you have a clear line of sight to the president's bedroom".
>> No. 28217 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 5:07 pm
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>>28213>>28214
I actually think he is going to die from this. He is in a far worse health position than Boris was. We won't know for days after it has happened, and America will meltdown as a result, but it's literally the ending to 2020 we all deserve.
>> No. 28218 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 5:17 pm
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>>28214

Nah, you don't even have to be that much of a melt. He's just fairly obviously not a good person, so his death would scarcely be a tragedy.

Regardless of what he has and hasn't done as a politician (because if you ask me most of it would have happened anyway, it's America) his presence and impact on the worldwide state of political discourse is just... Ugh. I really wouldn't mind just having rid of him.
>> No. 28219 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 5:36 pm
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Wow. You lot are out for blood. What has he done to you? I understand wishing Pol Pot had died, but Trump? Come on lads.
>> No. 28220 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 6:11 pm
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>>28219
>I think Trump's death would probably be a net good in terms of making people understand that it's real and that their actions could save lives
>the negative impact the Trump administration has had on a lot of peoples lives. The damage this prick has done so far is just tragic, and it hasn't been solely to the US.
>his presence and impact on the worldwide state of political discourse
>> No. 28221 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 8:52 pm
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What if Both Trump and Biden cop it?
>> No. 28222 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 8:56 pm
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>>28219
Now you're just getting lazy.
>> No. 28223 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 10:59 pm
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>>28221

Then perhaps the timeline can be salvaged after all.
>> No. 28224 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:06 pm
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>>28216

You may be pleased to know that WKUK have had a lockdown reunion and are doing Twitch.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNwbDMbDV7gu6-rO70lCQJg

https://www.twitch.tv/officialwkuk

Also Trump is in hospital.
>> No. 28225 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:07 pm
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I love how leftists love to drone on about how "Tories have no empathee or compasshun" , yet the moment a politician you don't like gets ill you're cumming in your pants with glee at the prospect of his death.
>> No. 28226 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:07 pm
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>>28225

I'm not a lefty, I just enjoy it when old people die.
>> No. 28227 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:21 pm
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>>28224
I'd seen a couple, didn't realise there was so much more now, cheers.
>> No. 28228 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:25 pm
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>>28225
2/10 come on lad.
>> No. 28229 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:31 pm
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>>28225

We only have compassion for people who aren't trying to ruin the world
>> No. 28230 Anonymous
2nd October 2020
Friday 11:39 pm
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>>28225
>leftists
Define this nebulous boogeyman you've constructed or fuck off, teenlad. I'm on the Z axis of the political compass, you couldn't even begin to pigeon hole me. I hope Trump's last thought is of wind turbines and he curses Alex Salmond in his dying breath, simply because it would amuse me.

Trump was a cunt worth pissing money up the wall on a death pool long before he became the US President. The hubris of assuming everyone hates him because they're left wing or because he beat Hilary and it was "her turn" is pure narcissistic yank wank.

So yeah, bore off.
>> No. 28231 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:30 am
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>>28230
>I hope Trump's last thought is of wind turbines and he curses Alex Salmond in his dying breath

Why, did he feel him up?
>> No. 28232 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 4:33 am
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>>28231
One of the few good things that Alex Salmond did was clipping his wings and stop him acquiring most of Ayrshire.
>> No. 28233 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 8:38 am
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>>28230

I want to see the faces of all you sad cunts who wished death on him when he wins in November and sets the Army on Antifa and Black Thugs Matter and has them all dragged off to Gitmo. Keep crying about how he's a "white soopremasist fashist" who deserves to die, ban me from your shitty little far-left hugbox echo chamber I couldn't give a fuck. PS. Hail JK. Rowling, Black Lives Don't Matter, Trans Women Are Men.
>> No. 28234 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 8:41 am
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>>28233
Have a cup of tea lad.
>> No. 28235 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 8:48 am
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>>28233
Why ban you when we can enjoy your frothing with rage. We're not the ones being trolled here.
>> No. 28236 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 9:11 am
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>>28233
Clean your desk, Nick.
>> No. 28237 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:08 pm
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>>28233

In case you haven't noticed lad most of this site is incredibly weary of the American culture war bollocks. If you're imagining we're all a bunch of tranny-lovers who get our opinions directly from arsehole youtubers like Hbomberguy, you are sorely mistaken. Being here more than a week would have shown you that.

We want Trump dead so we can go back to sensible, adult politics in a sensible, adult world; not this godawful hellscape alternate dimension we seem to have slipped into where edgy teenagers making memes wield the power to shape history.
>> No. 28238 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:14 pm
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>>28233
Blimey, the alt-right really are a bunch of soft cunts aren't they?
>> No. 28239 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:27 pm
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>>28238
Time was I would have seen a post like that and thought of it as completely obvious trolling. Nowadays I wish it was.
>> No. 28240 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:41 pm
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Imagine being such a limp wristed righty that even the Tories on .gs are making fun of you.

You know what lads, lets make a deal. If I ever defund the Govt's pandemic response unit, mislead the public that the virus isn't a threat (while privately admiting it is) and discourage people from following the guidelines to stop transmission, feel free to wish me death by explosive diarrhoea if I catch Covid.
>> No. 28241 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 12:45 pm
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>>28233

As we can see, it's the left that get upset about everything.
>> No. 28242 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 2:59 pm
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>>28237
I will happily claim the tranny-lover and Hbomb fan labels, thanks, but I mostly leave those who aren't to their own devices in that thread with the picture of the drag queens.
>> No. 28243 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 3:57 pm
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>>28239
>as completely obvious trolling. Nowadays I wish it was.

I wish it was too - that's what is so disappointing with the new alt-right - they don't have an original thought in their bodies and just copy each others talking points because it looks clever. Come up with something new ffs!
>> No. 28244 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 4:46 pm
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>>28243
>they don't have an original thought in their bodies

It's because the majority of them were kids back in 2016 who discovered image boards, which has left them with nothing beyond racism and memes. Keep that in mind when talking to them and you'll see how simple they are. I've even ended up feeling bad because their comebacks and discourse are just so weak, it's like picking on children.
>> No. 28245 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 5:23 pm
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Hypothesis: When the Hadron Collider was turned on in 2008, the rate at which our universe collided and getting consumed by a parallel universe in the multiverse has started to increase greatly. This started with the invention of the cathode ray tube back in the late 1800s, but the shift to the other universe was happening at a very, very small rate. It didn't become apparent until we built bigger and more powerful particle accelerators looking for even smaller particles.

This is a chaotic mix of our timeline and the parallel universe's timeline.
>> No. 28246 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 5:37 pm
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>>28245
Personally I think the collective release of anxiety over the 2012 doomsday prediction shifted the psychic balance of humanity off kilter. It's all academic now though, we're doomed regardless.
>> No. 28247 Anonymous
3rd October 2020
Saturday 6:14 pm
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>>28243
>Come up with something new ffs!

I've had this gripe for almost as long as I've had the internet, escaping tedious groupthink is really impossible no matter where you look. The internet removed the aspect of physical distance but communities have still been able to isolate themselves by forum and there's precious few willing to provide novel perspectives in that environment.

Such is life though. You certainly want to filter on quality which removes most people from the picture unless you want to live in a shit-tip.
>> No. 28248 Anonymous
4th October 2020
Sunday 6:26 pm
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So, according to EXIF data the pictures from yesterday, and the new one today of Trump working in Hospital were actually taken 10 minutes apart yesterday.
>> No. 28249 Anonymous
4th October 2020
Sunday 7:02 pm
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>>28244

I paid a visit to 4chan's brit/pol/ thread the other morning, oy that was amusing and depressing in equal measure.

Really it is in a great part attributable to them being young and utterly misinformed, with no real understanding of history, much less political history. They have an utterly juvenile comprehension of what different political ideologies stand for, and what they have been responsible for over the years; and that manifests itself in radical support for the type of far right ideology that would hurt people exactly like them them most of all.

This can of course all be said of the radical Twitter lib-left types too- The difference is, ironically, that their little cult is far more naturally exclusive. The alt-right will happily take any disenfranchised stray and turn them into a radical- The neo-left only wants people who are capable of keeping up with the connstant routine of self-flagellation and purity-testing.
>> No. 28250 Anonymous
4th October 2020
Sunday 10:51 pm
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>>28245

Were you just randomly jumbling together half-sentences off the top of your head?

You sound like one of those AI engines that can now randomly compose full-length scientific papers without a human reader noticing.
>> No. 28251 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 12:21 am
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>>28250
I think I am human, but I was massively drunk at the time.
>> No. 28252 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 12:43 am
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>>28249
>This can of course all be said of the radical Twitter lib-left types too...
>> No. 28253 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:08 am
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>>28252

Do you think you're being some sort of smart arse by pointing out that a speculative shitpost on an underground shed enthusiast BBS hasn't provided a full bibliography of its research notes?
>> No. 28254 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 3:12 am
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>>28253

You's a bumder¹.

¹Giggler, M., purple, S., Thribb, E.J. (2020). "Mate, just fucking trust me alright? Swear to God you're doing my fucking nut in". Imageboard Correspondence Physical Review Letters 101, no. 14 (2020): 141801
>> No. 28255 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 11:02 am
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As an IT professional, I fucking hate the phrase "computer glitch" when what they should be saying is, technical incompetence on the part of at least one individual involved.

There is just no excuse for this.
>> No. 28257 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 11:27 am
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>>28255
"PEBCAK" doesn't sound quite as fancy and is a bit too honest in describing the ineptitude of end users.
>> No. 28258 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 11:32 am
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>>28257
At work some of us call it a Layer 8 issue, which at least sounds better.
>> No. 28259 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 12:48 pm
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>>28255
One day Excel is going to shit the bed and its going to put us all back to year zero. Imagine the anarchy if all our bank accounts got set to zero.
>> No. 28260 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 1:11 pm
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>>28255
World-beating indeed.
Fuck's sake.

Dido 'I've heard about Excel' Harding to the rescue.
>> No. 28261 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 1:25 pm
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>>28255

Well that happened faster than even I expected it to. Fucking shambles.

The only surprising thing about this is that they haven't tried to pass the blame to the laboratories themselves, like every student doctor since the dawn of the profession.
>> No. 28262 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 1:50 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l482T0yNkeo
>> No. 28263 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:04 pm
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282632826328263
Should I punt £100 into Cineworld shares? They've fallen from £2.20 per share to about 22p each now so I'd expect it to bounce back to some extent when this is over.
>> No. 28264 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:08 pm
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>>28263
That's the actual definition of a punt. What makes you think they'll be back in business this side of May/June next year? And will their creditors let them survive that long?

If it gets to 15p I might; but everything is a bit of a punt in the market out there, and tech stocks are probably an easier way to make money right now.
>> No. 28265 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:11 pm
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>>28264
Nothing whatsoever. Taking a punt on something for the hell of it.
>> No. 28266 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:17 pm
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>>28265
When you're done with that I can sell you some shares in Monarch Airlines.
>> No. 28267 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:23 pm
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>>28266
I've decided to go for Stobart Group instead. You'd have thought I'd have learned after Sirius Minerals.
>> No. 28268 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:28 pm
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It turns out Eddie Stobart Logistics is completely different company. I have literally no idea what I am doing.
>> No. 28269 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 2:58 pm
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>>28259>>28260


Worse than that, its probably a Power App - which is the modern, shitty development environment that Microsoft push nowadays, using Excel as a database back-end.
>> No. 28271 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 4:03 pm
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The solution is even better.
>> No. 28272 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 4:19 pm
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>>28264

>That's the actual definition of a punt. What makes you think they'll be back in business this side of May/June next year? And will their creditors let them survive that long?


The company will probably survive in some shape or form, because at least its physical assets haven't become worthless just because there is a pandemic and nobody goes to the cinema anymore.

Even after going into receivership, your shares aren't worthless as such. If a company then recovers, it will be reasonable to expect rising share prices again. The only way your shares literally become worthless is if the company is dismantled entirely.

It's a risk-reward thing, at the end of the day. If it's money you can afford to write off, i.e. it will have no consequences for you if that money you put in that stock actually dissolves into thin air, then it's worth the risk. If a company then rebounds and keeps getting more healthy again, the price for your shares can often increase dramatically. But to be fair, it's not unheard of that companies are actually dismantled and shut down for good, so losing all of the money you have invested in an ailing company is still a real possibility at all times.
>> No. 28273 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 4:25 pm
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>>28272
>The company will probably survive in some shape or form, because at least its physical assets haven't become worthless just because there is a pandemic and nobody goes to the cinema anymore.

How many cinemas do they actually physically own? I'd have assumed they rented them from pension and other investment funds. They're also in a shitload of debt.

I decided not to go ahead with the punt, but the share price has slightly risen from around 22.1p to about 25.8p. Presently 5.45% down with Stobart Group instead.
>> No. 28277 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 6:26 pm
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>>28269

It's even worse than that. The problem stems from hitting the 65,000 row limit in legacy .xls files; it wouldn't have occurred if they had used .xlsx or even .csv format for their janky-arsed system.

I feel somewhat obliged to defend Excel - I'm a Julia snob, but Excel is a really capable numerical computing environment if you RTFM. Nearly all of the problems people experience with Excel are really just basic mathematics or computer science errors.
>> No. 28278 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 6:51 pm
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Is it just me or does our entire business and management infrastructure, or whatever you'd call it- The whole framework of people who work in offices and pushing reports around, is what I'm referring to, as the many heads of the hydra like beast that we call society- Exist as a kind of Microsoft Excel cargo-cult?

I think it's a very real problem. I can't think of any company I've worked for in the past ten years that doesn't seem to entirely operate by crowbarring whatever work it needs doing through a very Excel shaped hole, whether it's planning, staff management, databasing, or what have you. We seem to have an entire generation (or several) of what someone here once called "terminally unimaginative cunts" running everything. People who can only conceptualise anything in the format of a spreadsheet.

I've been thinking about it since I read that article earlier and I can't quite express it properly, but I hope one of you lads grasps the threads of what I'm on about. I had visions of people running around the office screaming while a circle of junior management staff carried out a ritual sacrifice of one of the secretaries, to try and appease the wrathful Excel gods.

It can't be just me.
>> No. 28280 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 7:15 pm
28280 spacer
>>28278
The last company I worked for was obsessed with management information. The main problem with this was that they didn't know what they were looking for, how it should be measured or what to do with the information once they had it, which led to the goalposts being moved almost every other month.
>> No. 28281 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 7:17 pm
28281 spacer
>>28278
>a kind of Microsoft Excel cargo-cult?

You're mostly exactly right. I'm a geek, but I also manage a team of people, and I regularly use the joke at work that I VLOOKUP LIKE A BOSS, as that's often about as technical as I have to be when doing 99% of things we do with it. Excel is just like Photoshop, it has thousands of features, but you only need to learn about ten of them to be effective in it, and if you can VLOOKUP or do database work, most people would consider you fairly expert.

In this case, even worse, it is likely some high-powered consultancy sold the government their "COVID modelling system" without mentioning that it was Excel in disguise.
>> No. 28282 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 7:30 pm
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>>28278
Excel works really well for a lot of things. The only thing it's no good for is big/centralised databases and circumstances where you need more than one person accessing it at once.
A lot of places end up using excel for that type of thing, mainly just because of lacking the expertise or willingness to invest in a proper purpose-built system.
>> No. 28285 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 8:08 pm
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>>28282

Which is partly why it's such a criminal travesty in this case- The established authorities who routinely deal with tracking and tracing will have known the importance of effective databasing and LIMS integration, etc. But instead the government was happier to hand it off to a call centre company with no former expertise, who were just going to bodge it using MS Office.

I mean the NHS isn't perfect as the creeping privatisation of it's IT infrastructure has left it with a cobbled together hodge-podge of systems like ICE, Spine, SystemOne, and so on. But they're at least fir for purpose- I doubt anybody who develops Excel imagined a government agency using it to handle tracking data for a global pandemic*.

*other than to make pie charts about said pandemic.
>> No. 28286 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 9:19 pm
28286 spacer
>>28281

I worked for a consultant firm for a while, and one guy there had started out as a humble back office worker composing PowerPoint presentations and servicing the printers and copiers, but his self-taught Excel and Visual Basic skills were nothing short of amazing. I think he was a student, studying for a history or social science degree, or something like that. They kept him on after uni to pretty much pour the firm's entire work process into Visual Basic-enhanced Excel spreadsheets.

Like many here, I'm not sure something like that is such a good idea. Management-by Excel is about as healthy as thinking in Power Point slides. That's another way you can dangerously oversimplify your company's processes.
>> No. 28288 Anonymous
5th October 2020
Monday 11:54 pm
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Since I have become a high functioning alcoholic during the lockdown, and moved on to downing hard liquor during my evenings (it helps me sleep you see...) Why isn't liquor sold in 500ml bottles? That's more or less how much I drink a night, and it is annoying to either be stuck with 350ml, or 700ml, when I am trying to be discrete.
>> No. 28289 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 12:18 am
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>>28288

Either become a full on alcoholic at 700ml a day, or remain a dabbler at 350. But no pissing about in between.
>> No. 28290 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 12:36 am
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>>28289
That's my hard limit. Hangover kills me if I go higher than 500ml, with the added bonus of not remembering parts of the night before.

Distillers are missing a trick here.
>> No. 28291 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 12:46 am
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>>28288
Could've sworn Asda and the like do 50cl bottles
>> No. 28292 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 1:19 am
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>>28291
Haven't tried Asda, but I tried every other shop.

Also, 2 or 5 litre would be a good shout too. Would last me a week.
>> No. 28293 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 10:40 am
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>>28288
Tequila and Jägermeister comes in 50cl bottles, that's what I always go for when I went to get blasted but not pissed the next day.
>> No. 28294 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 11:08 am
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>>28292
>Would last me a week.
It might last you the first week.
>> No. 28295 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 3:41 pm
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I just realised that I probably should've kept a journal during covid for future historians. They're really going to suffer sifting through old facebook posts to get the human story which might be interesting whenever future pandemics occur.

Although, maybe a tally of wanking and how much more pesto I eat is best left forgotten.
>> No. 28296 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 4:22 pm
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>>28295

Meh. I've done my best to avoid taking any part in the "human story" of the pandemic. Besides amusing myself by occasionally catching up on the newest rage bait on the Mail's web site, including apoplectic reader comments under stories about people during lockdown being spotted with big bags of compost in their shopping trolleys in the Homebase car park.
>> No. 28298 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 5:10 pm
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Don't eat a falafel right before having to put a mask on. It's not recommended.
>> No. 28301 Anonymous
6th October 2020
Tuesday 11:01 pm
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>>28298

Or have a Fisherman's Friend in your mouth. I like the strong ones in the plain white sachet, but the air escaping upwards when you exhale while wearing a mask really stings in your eyes.
>> No. 28305 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 10:34 am
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I think the restraint I've shown in not re-re-watching Freeman's Mind over lockdown was immense and important.
>> No. 28306 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 11:59 am
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I've received a personalised letter from a Jehovah's Witness saying they remember knocking on my door last year and they've been told that 'public witnessing' has stopped due to coronavirus but they've been encouraged to write to people instead.

It's left me slightly unsettled that they've been able to remember that I have kids from talking about what's on their website last year and also that they've got my full name.
>> No. 28307 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 12:11 pm
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>>28306
They probably wrote it down, maybe even in a CRM if they're fancy.
>> No. 28308 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 12:18 pm
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>>28307
I don't know if Doreen from the Jehovah's Witnesses is that savvy. It's all hand written.
>> No. 28311 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 2:44 pm
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No alcohol sold in pubs/bars in Scotland for 16 DAYS??

Lads, I think they're gonna revolt.
>> No. 28312 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 3:49 pm
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>>28311
>Snooker and pool halls, indoor bowling alleys, casinos and bingo halls will also close in the five health board areas for two weeks from 10 October.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54449573

There's going to be gangs of bored pensioners hanging around every street corner.
>> No. 28313 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 4:07 pm
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>The taxpayer faces losses of up to £26bn because of fraud and company defaults on the government’s coronavirus loan scheme for small businesses, according to a report by parliament’s spending watchdog that revealed loopholes have been exploited by criminals.

>The National Audit Office on Wednesday said the government prioritised the need for rapid payments to companies through its bounce back loan scheme, and has been prepared to tolerate a potentially very high level of losses as a result. 

https://www.ft.com/content/3f205365-f41f-482d-94d8-05518bd25d03
>> No. 28314 Anonymous
7th October 2020
Wednesday 7:19 pm
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>>28313
Sometimes it does feel like crime pays well and I'm the mug.
>> No. 28319 Anonymous
8th October 2020
Thursday 7:43 pm
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>>28314
Crime does pay. As long as you don't do anything serious you're golden.
>> No. 28320 Anonymous
8th October 2020
Thursday 10:56 pm
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>A millionaire takeaway pizza chain tycoon is suspected of stealing more than £250,000 of taxpayers’ cash by claiming fake Eat Out to Help Out meals, the Daily Mail can reveal.

>Raheel Choudhary, who owns 61 Papa John’s franchise restaurants, instructed staff to record thousands of ‘phantom covers’ while the Government scheme was running, according to whistleblowers and sales reports seen by the Mail.

>He is the US giant’s largest UK franchisee. Because these non-existent meals were classed as ‘Eat Out to Help Out’, the taxpayer paid half the bill. Most of his restaurants were not even eligible for the offer – which required diners to eat in – because they were collection and delivery only.

https://www.If I post a link to this website again I will be banned.co.uk/news/article-8821117/Millionaire-Papa-Johns-franchisee-suspected-250-000-Eat-Help-scam.html
>> No. 28321 Anonymous
8th October 2020
Thursday 11:04 pm
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>>28320
HERE THEY COME

Tip of the iceberg.
>> No. 28322 Anonymous
8th October 2020
Thursday 11:22 pm
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>>28321

The thing is, only massive faceless pizza chains will be the ones that get caught. No waiter is going to be dobbing the pub they work at in, even if they could tell it was happening.
>> No. 28323 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 7:19 am
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>>28322
I don't think I've ever seen a Papa John's restaurant, only ever takeaways like a Domino's. You'd have to be pretty fucking brazen to ring in £250,000 worth of takeaways as people dining in
>> No. 28324 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 9:58 am
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>>28323

It sounds like that's what actually caught them out, rather than some 'whistleblower'.

It would be completely effortless for an owner/manager of a normal restaurant to pop fake orders in throughout the day. If you did it from the office computer that runs the POS backend, you could even do it without any tickets printing for the order, so no staff would even know. Not that any chef on the planet would dob you in for double dropping tickets, as it also doubles his GP.
>> No. 28325 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 10:04 am
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>>28324
>Not that any chef on the planet would dob you in for double dropping tickets, as it also doubles his GP.
Also they're beings of pure evil incarnate.
>> No. 28326 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 10:17 am
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>>28325

I prefer the term morally flexible.

do you want to buy any speed?
>> No. 28327 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 2:14 pm
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>>28324
It honestly wouldn't surprise me if some restaurants reclaimed the tenner without passing the discount on or reclaimed it on meals served elsewhen in the week. I mean, I don't know what the reporting requirements were, but I do know that shady cunts won't turn down a shot at free money.
>> No. 28328 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 4:19 pm
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>>28327
The numbers of people having meals out quoted during August were just way too high and didn't match what I saw happening in restaurants.
>> No. 28329 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 10:39 pm
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>>28327

I am friends with a lot of restauranteurs.

They're all doing it.
>> No. 28330 Anonymous
9th October 2020
Friday 10:56 pm
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>>28328

I know we're a nation of fat cunts, but it stretches credibility to believe that we ate a billion quid's worth of restaurant meals in 13 days.

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/cost-of-eotho-revealed-522-4483545
>> No. 28331 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 12:15 am
28331 spacer

fuckedit.jpg
283312833128331
How have we fucked it up so badly in just over a month?

In August, we appeared to be doing well - over the past few weeks, its all turned to shit. How?
>> No. 28332 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 12:20 am
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>>28331
Remember there's the two week delay; it went to shit in mid-August but we didn't know until later.
>> No. 28333 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 1:25 am
28333 spacer
Cheflad(s), has there been any thinking on whether Christmas dinner deliveries will be on offer this year? The way I see it the trains will be booked out as soon as tickets go on offer even if we're not in second/third wave so I'll probably be doing Christmas alone.

I'm praying the neighbours don't get communal but it would be nice to get a dinner with all the trimmings.
>> No. 28334 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 1:26 am
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>>28330
Assuming 70 million peeps in the UK, that comes to about 15 quid per person in two weeks, call it 60 per household. I can believe that, given how cooped up everyone was prior.
>> No. 28335 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 1:31 am
28335 spacer
>>28331
>>28332
There's also the issue that we're still limiting who gets tested. If you only test suspected cases, you'll get a higher positivity rate than if you test a broader range of people. You'll also miss what's actually happening in the wider community.
>> No. 28336 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 1:34 am
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>>28335
Test positivity is a useless metric for evaluating the severity of a pandemic quite frankly, it's dependent on far too many things.
>> No. 28337 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 1:56 am
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>>28336
If anything, test positivity is an indicator of how effective your testing regime is. High positivity means you're probably not testing enough people.
>> No. 28338 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 8:59 am
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>>28331

Schools and universities went back which inevitably pushed up the R number, but we didn't do anything equally major to compensate. The mathematics of a pandemic are inescapable - there's a knife-edge between exponential decay and exponential growth. If you're on the wrong side of that line, it's like being in a car rolling down a big hill; even if you're barely rolling, you'll keep speeding up until you hit the brakes.
>> No. 28339 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 12:17 pm
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>>28334
That's a ridiculous set of assumptions. There is no way every man woman and child in the UK went out to eat during August. I would be surprised if that number was in fact anywhere close to 10 million people - none of my family did, and I don't know any others that did either, and in normal times, we eat out pretty regularly.
>> No. 28345 Anonymous
10th October 2020
Saturday 5:41 pm
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>>28339
Data is not the plural of anecdote.
>> No. 28363 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 11:49 am
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https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-new-estimated-infections-of-covid-19?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~GBR&region=World

Not wanting to get all tinfoil hat, but this has also been my suspicion lately, that the new spike in cases is at least in part due to heightened awareness and increased testing, and that case numbers don't accurately reflect the true extent of the "second wave".

The caveat of course being that these models clearly state that they are based on certain "assumptions". Although scientific assumptions are usually to a higher standard than the broad, baseless assumptions made by the average DM reader person on the street.
>> No. 28364 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 12:46 pm
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Everyone is happy to criticise the government plans for a scond lockdown, but nobody comes up with any better ideas. I find that annoying.
>> No. 28365 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 12:53 pm
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283652836528365
>>28364
Yep, there's just no other way to do it.
>> No. 28366 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 12:58 pm
28366 spacer
>>28364
Because there isn't any. If we'd stayed in a stricter lockdown we'd all be doing much better by now, instead the government's focused on smashing a square peg into a round hole repeatedly. It's been incredibly frustrating to be at the whim of people who don't give a shit about reality.
>> No. 28367 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 12:58 pm
28367 spacer
>>28365
South Korea is a radically different society than ours. To say that we should have copied them seven months ago is specious.

Given the country (and citizens) we have, now, what would you do differently today, other than another lockdown?
>> No. 28368 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 1:09 pm
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>>28367
Well clearly we need to be more like them. Let's start by suspending our peace treaties with Scotland.
>> No. 28369 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 1:24 pm
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>>28367
How are they that different? I don't think that is the case. Maybe their government is just more decisive, and have some experience in dealing with a pandemic.
>> No. 28370 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 1:24 pm
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283702837028370
>>28368
I'm down with that - it's not like they have any ballistic missiles or anything.

HOLD ON WAIT.
>> No. 28371 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 1:30 pm
28371 spacer
>>28367
It really isn't, there isn't anything to be done but a lockdown combined with good tracking and tracing.
>> No. 28373 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:03 pm
28373 spacer
>>28371
>good tracking and tracing

Everyone comes back to this point though. Define good. Define a process which the British people will accept and follow. How would it work technically, how would it be organised and who would run it? Everything falls over at this point.
>> No. 28374 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:21 pm
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>>28371
I'm not sure I follow on the idea of deranged cults running the country but elderly prostitution sounds like an untapped market. Free watersports and prices pegged to a loaf of bread in 1973.
>> No. 28375 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:25 pm
28375 spacer
>>28373
>Everything falls over at this point.

Because the government is staggeringly inept, but also we're a country made predominantly of morons.
>> No. 28376 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:31 pm
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>>283759
>we're a country made predominantly of morons

I don't think we are. The morons have got louder and the rest of us are just resigned to it.
>> No. 28377 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:41 pm
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>>28373
Other countries have functional track and trace programs. Look at Germany, Singapore and Korea. The reason we don't is, the government has awarded it to a private company Serco (sponsored an event at last year’s Conservative Party conference) crony capitalism at its finest. Without a tendering process I should add.

The Tories have also rewarded Serco's failure by extending their contract despite Serco missing targets. What's needed is, doing it at the local government level. Redeploy council workers who have local knowledge, keep it in house as part of the NHS.
>> No. 28378 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 2:53 pm
28378 spacer
>>28375

We're not thick, as a nation, we're just a set of half-arsed workshy cunts. We will cut any corner we can so we can clock off half an hour early, we will take any opportunity to ignore or defer a problem if we know it won't come back on us.

I'm a dyed in the wool red, so I think things like this would run more efficiently under the public sector, but I can't deny that the fundamental underlying issue would still be there. Privatisation and outsourcing everything only makes matters worse by adding another layer of obfuscation and protection from accountability.
>> No. 28379 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 3:53 pm
28379 spacer
>>28377

>Redeploy council workers who have local knowledge, keep it in house as part of the NHS.

Have you ever had to deal with local authority staff on a professional basis? I wouldn't trust them to run a bath.
>> No. 28380 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 3:56 pm
28380 spacer
>>28379

Indeed, but the fact that they're still more competent than professional fuck-ups like Dildo Hardon is really the crux of the matter isn't it.
>> No. 28381 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 4:09 pm
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>>28380

You're not wrong, but your comment does rather make me want to top myself.
>> No. 28382 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 6:37 pm
28382 spacer
>>28379
Heeeey. Unfair. [insert sad emoji]
>> No. 28383 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 9:21 pm
28383 spacer
>>28382

Who let you in here?
>> No. 28384 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 9:37 pm
28384 spacer
>>28383
Your mum. She lets everyone in.
>> No. 28385 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:30 pm
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I keep thinking they're on about cyber sex.
>> No. 28386 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:33 pm
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>>28385

People are getting annoyed about the government killing the dreams of ballerinas, but I'm annoyed at the idea that someone can just have a go at "cyber".
>> No. 28387 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:37 pm
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>>28385

Isn't ballet fucking miserable for almost everyone anyway? I don't know why Twitter is in such a huff about this (though it'll manage it about more or less anything) given cybersec jobs are well-paid, in demand and don't require mutilating your feet.
>> No. 28388 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:37 pm
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>>28386
Tomato, potato.
>> No. 28389 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:46 pm
28389 spacer
>>28387

Of course we need more women in STEM. Not my daughter obviously, or any of her friends, but some hypothetical women somewhere.
>> No. 28390 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:48 pm
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>>28387
>Twitter is in such a huff about this (though it'll manage it about more or less anything)

It's too tiresome trying to keep track of everything. I believe the one before this to make the news was people on Twitter getting their knickers in a twist that Gal Gadot has been chosen to play Cleopatra rather than casting a black woman.

I wish the media narrative wasn't driven by the 0.0002% of the population using Twitter.
>> No. 28391 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:50 pm
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>>28387

Much like gymnastics, it's just the institutionalised abuse of young women.
>> No. 28392 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:50 pm
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>>28387

It should be pretty obvious why people are annoyed that the government has suggested that people in the arts retrain to desk jobs.

Either way, though, this picture is from a 2019 campaign specifically about retraining in IT, this has just been pulled and thrown up on twitter to make people angry (not that I'm against the left finally just lying about stuff to make the tories look even worse, it's about time)

The campaign was ran by QA, which probably those in the sector will be familiar with as an apprenticeship/training company for "cyber" jobs. I recognise the campaign as I applied for many, many jobs with QA and was usually ignored, probably because although apprenticeships are open to all nobody hires old people for them because they don't get the free money if they do. Or maybe I was just shit, but I lied enough on my CV that they should have wanted me.
>> No. 28393 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 10:51 pm
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>>28390

Why bother doing real journalism when you can just read the trending topics on Twitter?
>> No. 28394 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 11:11 pm
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>>28377

Apparently Serco had nothing to do with our Track & Trace app, although Russia Today was eager to make that claim:

https://fullfact.org/health/Serco-test-and-trace/
>> No. 28395 Anonymous
12th October 2020
Monday 11:16 pm
28395 spacer
>>28392

>QA

Become a Certified Ethical Hacker in just five days! Courses start at £2,850 (ex. VAT).
>> No. 28396 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 12:02 am
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>>28387
>Isn't ballet fucking miserable for almost everyone anyway?

This is what came to my mind as well. I've known a few ballet/dancers and every single one has had to give up on their dream because their feet or backs go. From what I can see it's an entire deregulated industry of girls doing irreparable harm to themselves while being taught by poorly paid teachers who can no longer do the moves without painkillers. Dancing is a lovely thing but it's also tragic.

Anyway, the outrage merely plays into a narrative about the Tories not respecting the arts. It's true but beside the point, the nation has too many unskilled workers and not enough people with the IT skills necessary for today's workforce. I'm sure twitter wouldn't give a shit if it was targeting nerdy white men but it would only be reinforcing stereotypes of how computers are only for a certain kind of people.

>>28392
This was my experience with apprenticeships generally when I was young and trying to get qualifications and experience. I don't think it's an age thing but more that to actually get the government sponsored apprenticeships you need to be the sort of person who doesn't need one in the first place. Industry won't take the risk of giving a poor lad a chance and I'm not sure how a government outfit can force them. Probably why the government programme to train curry cooks immediately fell on its arse.

Fortunately for me the OU has a sink or swim approach but that doesn't suit government messaging about mittelstand. One would think all the opportunities to gain some sort of accreditation in distance learning would be something worth messaging but what do I know.
>> No. 28397 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 12:21 am
28397 spacer
The bit I don't get is that the arts is the one thing that has kept this country on the map for the past 50 years. We're not a global manufacturing powerhouse, we've not got much by way of technological innovation and research, we don't punch above our weight for anything besides a handful of financial services in London.

But the arts? Music, films, comedy, all the stuff that makes up pop culture as we know it? Britain is an absolute fucking powerhouse. British culture is recognised all over the world, from The Beatles to Black Sabbath to James Bond to Mr Bean, only the Yanks have had a broader cultural impact on the modern world. If the Conservatives are bothered about this country making money, if they're the party of good business and financial prudence, why is the one industry they are intentionally starving the one industry we're actually any fucking good at?

They've pissed untold millions, billions even, up the wall trying to stop fucking Jamie Oliver losing any more of his shite unprofitable restaurants, but they don't want our film and music industry to prosper? Are they actually, genuinely, such utter fucking imbeciles?
>> No. 28398 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 12:26 am
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>>28397
>Are they actually, genuinely, such utter fucking imbeciles?
Yes. Well, no. The shit laws they pass give very small advantages to their mates, with little regard to the country at large. Really if you want to surpass the economic problems, learn to build gullotines.
>> No. 28399 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 1:00 am
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>>28397
>We're not a global manufacturing powerhouse, we've not got much by way of technological innovation and research, we don't punch above our weight for anything besides a handful of financial services in London.

Well, you're wrong. You've almost certainly travelled using a Rolls Royce engine, washed your face with British pharmaceuticals and been annoyed by some wanker on a Sunday afternoon riding a Triumph. Employment has declined and the relative strength of the pound has impacted growth but even in steel we still have a dominant role specialist manufacturing.

As for the rest I'm not sure what you're winging about. The government has put over a billion into the arts this year and Boris told us all to go to the cinema last week despite everything being shit at the best of times.

>>28398
>learn to build gullotines

How original.
>> No. 28400 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 1:09 am
28400 spacer
>>28397
>we've not got much by way of technological innovation and research

Completely wrong. Our strengths in this area tend to go unnoticed because we don't make many recognisable consumer products. But we're among the world leaders in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, defence, satellites, instrumentation and quite a few niche areas. Our R & D spending is roughly in line with the size of our economy, it didn't vanish when British Leyland folded.

Personally I'm not convinced that chucking money at the arts gets you much bang for your buck. The Germans are a good example of this; they heavily subsidise their entertainment industry with next to nothing to show for it , even when they do make English language stuff. Overall I imagine it's very hard to gauge how much national investment directly leads to growth in such a mercurial industry, hence why it has a tendency to end up on the chopping block.

We've got some musical types here, did you benefit from any kind of subsidy or government-provided facilities in your career?
>> No. 28401 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 1:21 am
28401 spacer
>>28397

>why is the one industry they are intentionally starving the one industry we're actually any fucking good at?

According to the Arts Council, the British arts and culture sector contributed £9.6bn to UK GDP in 2016. That sounds like a lot of money, but it's less than 0.5% of the UK economy.

The "creative sector" that contributes 7% of UK GDP is very broadly defined and includes stuff like fashion, architecture and product design; most of that 7% comes from advertising, marketing and software. A single advertising agency (WPP) has higher revenues than the entire arts and culture industry combined.

The idea that the arts are vital to the British economy is a complete myth. We perpetuate it to make ourselves feel less shit about the fact that most of our export economy is in fact made up of international tax avoidance, money laundering and dubious arms deals.

Take away the north sea gas, our incredibly loose financial regulations and the fact that we'll sell fighter jets to dictators and our economy is more like Poland than Germany.

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Economic%20impact%20of%20arts%20and%20culture%20on%20the%20national%20economy%20FINAL_0_0.PDF
>> No. 28402 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 1:26 am
28402 spacer
>>28399

>Rolls Royce

British engineering giant Rolls-Royce will pay £671m to settle corruption cases with UK and US authorities.

The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) found conspiracy to corrupt or failure to prevent bribery by Rolls-Royce in China, India and other markets.

The firm apologised "unreservedly" for the cases spanning nearly 25 years.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38644114
>> No. 28403 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 1:48 am
28403 spacer
>>28401
Uncomfortable truth is the best truth.
>> No. 28404 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 2:01 am
28404 spacer
>>28401

What that fails to take into account is the stuff that ties into the arts. Concerts, for example, don't just make money for the band and the arena they're playing, they bring in 80,000 people at once who all book a hotel and spend the day eating, shopping and getting pissed in that city. British cultural output isn't just about direct profitability, you can think of it like a loss leader for UK Inc, it's the brand that keeps us recognisable.

>>28400

>But we're among the world leaders in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, defence, satellites, instrumentation and quite a few niche areas

Bollocks. We're better than most banana republics, but you'd fucking well hope so.

There's a good argument to be made that the arts thrives just fine without big subsidies, but then again, our best periods for artistic output have been when it was possible to live comfortable on the dole while you dicked around learning guitar. You need at least that level of support, whereas what they're doing right now is telling all of our creative minds to just go work in a call centre instead.

All of this is entirely academic though. You can't get people into jobs that don't fucking exist, and right now the unemployment level is about six times the number of job vacancies.

https://www.cityam.com/uk-unemployment-rate-unchanged-despite-lockdown/

I don't care how optimistic your assessment of the job market is, the numbers are right there. There is no answer to that. There simply aren't enough jobs to go round, and the situation is only getting worse. This is a concrete, black and white fact. No amount of conservative rhetoric can bend reality to that degree. 0There. Are. No. Jobs.
>> No. 28405 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 2:07 am
28405 spacer
>>28402
And my favourite aircraft is the Tu-95 - it has that classic charm of Soviet engineering in being this loud monstrosity that gets the job done.
>> No. 28406 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 2:18 am
28406 spacer
>>28405

I like the IL-76 for similar reasons. I've been in one, though sadly not in the air. It really is like being in a shed, or maybe a communist land rover. I didn't take pictures because I was genuinely afraid they might kill me, they said they were transporting boat parts but how many boats have tracks on them?

The (military) pilots were both wearing adidas tracksuits and trainers.
>> No. 28407 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 3:10 am
28407 spacer
>>28404

Except it isn't bollocks, we have an enormous reserve of expertise in this country. And I didn't mention anything about jobs, but since you being it up I'm not surprised people are finding it hard to find work. Our unemployment rate is around 4%, lower than the expected churn of 5% that most economists would expect for 'full employment'. This is compounded by the fact that our vacancies don't always match people's available skills. There are more available jobs in cybersecurity than in the arts right now, and I would hazard that more of our arts graduates are out of work. If it's any consolation we'll likely see a huge rebound in that sector once a COVID vaccine has been distributed at least.
>> No. 28408 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 5:12 am
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>>28407
>Our unemployment rate is around 4%, lower than the expected churn of 5% that most economists would expect for 'full employment'.
This statistic is so manipulated as to be comical though. Those who've been discouraged for looking for work because they know they won't get any aren't counted as unemployed because they're not actively seeking work (most countries do this, they're still wrong), while underemployment is overlooked. Our government are complete bullshitters.
Economists are bullshitters too though, we managed consistent unemployment of ~2% between about the end of WW2 and the 70s, much closer to actual full employment.
I have a particularly big chip on my shoulder about the way we've just accepted the redefinition of "full employment" to mean "minimum possible mass unemployment" while also imagining that everyone caught in that 4-5% is either just between jobs and so fine, or a feckless tosser who deserves to starve and should try harder. There's something I find unspeakably repugnant about designing a system where a fixed percentage of people will get fucked by design, then blaming the people who fall into that statistical inevitability for their own fate, as though it's not guaranteed that someone will fall into it.
>> No. 28409 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 11:11 am
28409 spacer
>>28407
>we have an enormous reserve of expertise in this country.

A lot of that expertise has been jumping ship.
>> No. 28410 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 11:32 am
28410 spacer
>>28409
Project Fear.
>> No. 28411 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 2:30 pm
28411 https://iea.org.uk/publications/going-viral/
Screenshot_2020-10-13 Steve Stewart-Williams ( Ste.png
284112841128411
Looks like we've got another year of this.
>> No. 28412 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 3:00 pm
28412 spacer
>>28410
Buzzwords.
>> No. 28413 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 4:36 pm
28413 spacer
I've been for an exam today. They put us all in a waiting room, which was fairly small and nobody had a mask on, then they took us into the exam room and we all had to put a mask on and spread out. At least it was a lot easier to do the exam on a laptop than have to write it all by hand.
>> No. 28414 Anonymous
13th October 2020
Tuesday 6:10 pm
28414 spacer
Kier Starmer calling for a full national lockdown is not the headline I thought we would see today; feels like this is a gift to the government given all the criticsim of the northern lockdowns over the past couple of days.

ITZ COMING lads. Acquire rice, tea and toilet rolls.
>> No. 28415 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:20 am
28415 spacer
>>28414


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4i5tcPoX74
>> No. 28416 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:43 am
28416 spacer
Most northern cities will be in "very high" status within the fortnight. The second wave will be brital, and the projected third wave isn't looking promising either. Expect at least more six months of mostly comprehensive lockdown.
>> No. 28417 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:58 am
28417 spacer

w46h4gw-bttf.jpg
284172841728417
>>28416

2020 will be remembered as one almost continuous shit show.
>> No. 28418 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 1:07 am
28418 spacer
>>28417

And let's not forget we've got brexit too.
>> No. 28419 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 1:31 am
28419 spacer
>>28418
True, every cloud has a silver lining.
>> No. 28420 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 8:57 am
28420 spacer
>>28416
This is still the first wave. It never went away fully to be a second wave.
>> No. 28421 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 9:06 am
28421 spacer
>>27266
I know quite a few people who have had the virus, they're all fine and dandy.

This lockdown is the most retarded thing in human history.
>> No. 28422 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 10:00 am
28422 spacer
>>28421
That's because you only hang around with young people.
>> No. 28423 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 10:02 am
28423 spacer
>>28421

Shut up you fat little carpet-bagger.
>> No. 28424 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 10:04 am
28424 spacer
>>28421
Σ(anecdote) ≠ data.
>> No. 28426 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:35 pm
28426 spacer
>>28421
What compels you to keep up with this blatant low level shitposting? Surely all you get out of it is looking like an idiot.
>> No. 28427 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:40 pm
28427 spacer
>>28421
No you're the most retarded thing in human history.
>> No. 28428 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 12:47 pm
28428 spacer
>>28422
Nope.

>>28426
Not a shitpost and first time I've posted in ages m8.
>> No. 28429 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 1:14 pm
28429 spacer
>>28428
Maybe make it the last for another while eh?
>> No. 28430 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 1:20 pm
28430 spacer
>>28429
This one will be, in fact the reason I stopped coming here is because of bellends like you.
Enjoy your bubble.
>> No. 28431 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 1:42 pm
28431 spacer
UH-OH, WE'RE IN TROUBLE
SOMETHING'S COME ALONG AND IT'S BURST OUR BUBBLE
>> No. 28432 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:08 pm
28432 spacer
>>28430

Oh no. Don't go...please. Whatever will we do without you
>> No. 28433 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:17 pm
28433 spacer
>>28421

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling.

COVID-19 has a very unequal impact depending on your age. For people under 40, it is a fairly trivial disease - unless you've got a serious pre-existing health problem, your chances of dying are less than 1 in 10,000. The risk increases exponentially with age however, so for over-60s the chance of death is about 1 in 20 and for over-80s the chance of death is about 1 in 8.

Despite the lockdown, about 50,000 people have died of COVID-19 so far. Antibody sampling tests by the ONS suggest that only about 7% of the population have caught COVID-19 so far, so it doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that we could lose about half a million lives if we just let the virus rip.

There's a valid (if rather barbaric) argument that we should just let half a million codgers die, but let's be honest about what our choices are. COVID-19 is real, it's running rampant and it's incredibly dangerous for the elderly and infirm.
>> No. 28434 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:25 pm
28434 spacer
>>28433

Without sounding completely callous, 500,000 is less than a percentage of the population. It would be awful, but also a lesser damage than we are doing now.
>> No. 28435 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:30 pm
28435 spacer
>>28433
The damage we are doing to our economy and the lives of people seems to be much greater than a virus killing half a million of mostly old and infirm people.
>> No. 28436 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:32 pm
28436 spacer
>>28435
I would also like to add that the quality of life increases greatly for those still alive after a pandemic. We should have just let this rip through the population. We would have been in a better place by Christmas.
>> No. 28437 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:32 pm
28437 spacer
>>28434
78% of recovered covid patients have permanent heart damage. Even if you're fully on board with the whole "We should sacrifice the old people to save money" thing, letting everyone catch it would presumably cost more down the road.
>> No. 28438 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:33 pm
28438 spacer
>>28434

Half a million is more than we lost in the Second World War. If we're going to ask codgers to take one for the team, we should at least have to wear a daft little badge every March and have two minute's silence for all the brave codgers who choked to death so that we could keep the pubs open.
>> No. 28439 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:33 pm
28439 spacer
>>28437
>78% of recovered covid patients have permanent heart damage
Where did you get this from?
>> No. 28440 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:36 pm
28440 spacer
>>28439
I searched for "what percentage of covid permanent" and clicked the first link which was https://www.newsweek.com/most-recovered-covid-19-patients-left-heart-damage-study-shows-1521456
Seems a bit over the top but there are other results that came up citing a 12-15% with nerve damage too. Presumably there are people with lung damage too or I don't know sinus damage. All sorts of things.
>> No. 28441 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:37 pm
28441 spacer
I forgot, that "brain fog" problem seems to be increasing rather than going away.
>> No. 28442 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:50 pm
28442 spacer
>>28441
>I forgot, that "brain fog"

I suggest that we don't know even half of the long term effects of "surviving" covid; given the number of affected people, even among the survivor group we're going to be learning about problems for years to come.
>> No. 28443 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 2:57 pm
28443 spacer
>>28442
Yes, that's what I was ineptly trying to imply.
>> No. 28444 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 3:52 pm
28444 spacer
I was skeptical about the need for one at first, but now it's surely very apparent that we're going to have a full lockdown sooner or later anyway and that sooner is self-evidently better. Even if it's not called a full lockdown it's de-facto one if Cumbria and a handful of small isles accessable only to sea birds are the last places not in tier three.
>> No. 28445 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 3:53 pm
28445 spacer
It absolutely amazes me there are people who still, even at this point, want to just reopen and go back to normal because "only some will get sick and die". I swear these are the people that cannot critically think at all, they don't even show any kind of forethought. I mean, how does the likes of >>28430 survive without society holding their hand all the time? And how dare they make the fact that they don't understand primary school level science everybody elses problem.

It'd all be funnier if it wasn't so tragic.
>> No. 28446 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 3:59 pm
28446 spacer
>>28428
>>28430
You're the lad in my area who graffitied all the nature infographs around here with "infowars.com" aren't you.
>> No. 28447 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 4:01 pm
28447 spacer
Wait I just got the weird hypocrisy:
>I'm shutting you out
>Enjoy your bubble
>> No. 28448 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 5:56 pm
28448 spacer
>>28446
You can tell he is by the fact he used the word "retarded" - it's not a normal English word at all, we just don't use it as an insult in almost any context and only gets into the vocabulary because you've hung around too many septic videos/sites.
>> No. 28449 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 6:40 pm
28449 spacer
>>28445
It's a balancing act though isn't it? If we lockdown too early, the virus will grow like mad over the Christmas period. If we lockdown too late, the high street economy will crash and burn due to no Christmas shopping.

I personally think we should lockdown at the end of October for a month and re-open in December.
>> No. 28450 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 7:57 pm
28450 spacer
>>28449

Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

I wonder how the Swedes will handle it. The Swedish model so far has meant a higher death toll, but at least the pandemic didn't cripple their economy like ours.
>> No. 28451 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 8:15 pm
28451 spacer
>>28450
>Sweden... at least the pandemic didn't cripple their economy like ours

I don't know why we keep speciously comparing ourselves to other countries. They have a population of 10 million people in a landmass that is twice the size of ours. Their GDP is nowhere near what we have.
>> No. 28452 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 8:24 pm
28452 spacer
>>28449

The logic of circuit breaker lockdowns is that we can alternate between being fully locked down and mostly back to normal. If we have a two week lockdown now and another one at the start of December, the high street can have a normal November of trading and we can all have a normal Christmas.
>> No. 28453 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 8:25 pm
28453 spacer
>>28451

They have big cities though, no? In the end, the virus doesn't care if you're in Birmingham or in Gothenburg.
>> No. 28454 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 8:32 pm
28454 spacer
>>28453
They do, but not as big or as densely populated as ours. Gothenburg has just under half the population of Birmingham at a lower population density.
>> No. 28456 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 9:04 pm
28456 spacer
>>28452
I'm surprised we haven't heard more suggestions like that. At this point in the pandemic, having a lockdown every two weeks would seem better than what we are doing now.

Two weeks on/two weeks off, with perhaps the alternates happening in different areas of the country, would seem to make more sense than the seemingly random ones we're having now.
>> No. 28457 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 9:30 pm
28457 spacer
>>28456

>I'm surprised we haven't heard more suggestions like that.

SAGE have been recommending it as a strategy since the first lockdown. We can definitely do better than two on/two off - if the lockdown is sufficiently strict, we could get anywhere from four to six weeks of low case numbers with only basic social distancing measures.

The government aren't keen, partly because they're dithering pricks and partly because they'd be on the hook for furlough again.
>> No. 28458 Anonymous
15th October 2020
Thursday 10:35 pm
28458 spacer
>>28456

>At this point in the pandemic, having a lockdown every two weeks would seem better than what we are doing now.

It was difficult enough getting people to obey all the lockdown rules the first time around. What do you think is going to happen if we really do some sort of on-and-off lockdown.
>> No. 28459 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 6:25 am
28459 spacer
Joining the Greater Manchester Free Militia, if we don't have liberty the whole of the UK's getting a new shopping centre.
>> No. 28460 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 10:44 am
28460 spacer
>>28459

Arndalegeddon.
>> No. 28461 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 11:22 am
28461 spacer
>>28460
In all seriousness though it's very funny watching the Conservative's give themselves a black eye like this. I've no doubt the Cameron-era government though metro mayors and all the other faux-decentralisation they did would be a wonderful way to shirk responsibility and allocate blame, I don't think they foresaw a situation in which the mayors turned around and told central government to do one.
>> No. 28462 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 5:55 pm
28462 spacer
>>28461
Have they actually got any power though?
>> No. 28463 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 6:01 pm
28463 spacer

noshagging.png
284632846328463
NO SHAGGING, LADS
>> No. 28464 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 6:43 pm
28464 spacer
>>28463

>NO SHAGGING, LADS

I think we'll adapt to that just fine.
>> No. 28465 Anonymous
16th October 2020
Friday 8:23 pm
28465 spacer
>>28462
Real power or otherwise they're embarrassing the Conservatives in Westminster by pointing the finger at them and saying "look at those bastards", which certainly wasn't the intention.
>> No. 28466 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 2:42 am
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They're asking for it, lads.
>> No. 28467 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 3:41 am
28467 spacer
>>28466
Anybody who does that thing where they only wear their mask over their mouth with the nose exposed deserves it.
>> No. 28468 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 3:41 am
28468 spacer
>>28466

The next nose I see poking out from the top of a mask is getting fucking broken. I knew that the general public were thick cunts, but their inability to cover their face with a bit of cloth absolutely boils my piss.
>> No. 28470 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 8:07 pm
28470 spacer
>>28466
Who would have predicted the generation known for their 'Blitz spirit' (or the equivalent in burgerland) would start yearning for death because they can only see their relatives over Skype.
>> No. 28471 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 8:27 pm
28471 spacer
>>28470
>or the equivalent in burgerland
I don't think there was such a thing. Did they even have conscription? They certainly didn't get bombed. Pearl Harbour's American in the same way that Las Malvinas are English.
>> No. 28472 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 9:46 pm
28472 spacer
>>28471
Conscription is very much a thing. Both of the last two Republican Presidents dodged it in some way.
>> No. 28473 Anonymous
18th October 2020
Sunday 10:48 pm
28473 spacer
>>28468
I've spent far too much time overthinking how stuff like mesh masks, poking your nose over the mask, moving your mask aside to talk, etc says a lot about how much we value appearances without thinking about the underlying meaning. We all know that you've got to wear a mask, that's the big clear visual thing. But on a much more instinctive level I don't think humans "get" why. It's like a form of magic, or just plain social pressure: You wear a mask because you've got to wear a mask, because big unseen forces want you to ("god") or because everyone else is doing it and says you should too (pressure).
I'm not saying that only applies to thick people either. At the beginning of all this I could rationally explain to you how a mask works (not by magic), but I still caught myself going to move it aside when people were having trouble making out what I was saying when wearing it. I'd put that down not to failing to grasp the seriousness of the situation or how viruses work on a conscious level, but on trying to cheat a social rule on a subconscious one.

Now I'm also not saying some people screwing it up aren't just idiots, but it seems like as good a situation as any to think about those kinds of flaws in human rationality.
>> No. 28474 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 12:56 am
28474 spacer
>>28473

>You wear a mask because you've got to wear a mask, because big unseen forces want you to ("god") or because everyone else is doing it and says you should too (pressure).

Not being funny but that's genuinely all it is even for the rational, cautious people who think they understand why.

Evidence for the effectiveness of wearing masks is thin on the ground, and what we do have shows that while it is better than nothing (and I must emphasise, it is), it's still basically pissing in the wind. It's not a big difference. The science is clear that socially distancing remains the only truly effective measure, and even that falls to shit once you're indoors with a lot of other people (i.e most people's workplaces.)

The reason we're all wearing masks is because the government wanted us back at work and patronising Pret a Manger. It's that simple.
>> No. 28475 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 2:06 am
28475 spacer
>>28474
>The reason we're all wearing masks is because the government wanted us back at work and patronising Pret a Manger. It's that simple.

Masks were a thing months before the government tried to get everyone back in the office and I don't remember us jumping the gun on making them compulsory. Ultimately it's more tool to avoid a mass panic, a mask won't protect you from someone coughing in your letterbox but they will make you feel safer. Chicken soup for the face.

Or more exactly our parents. I don't know about you lot but my mum's mental at the best of times.
>> No. 28476 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 3:39 am
28476 spacer
>>28475
>they will make you feel safer

No, they make other people around you feel safer. It's just about being a decent human being and thinking of others.
>> No. 28477 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 10:00 am
28477 spacer
>>28474
>Evidence for the effectiveness of wearing masks is thin on the ground
No it isn't.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768533
https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR186793
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6940e3.htm
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/15/E410
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v5

>what we do have shows that while it is better than nothing (and I must emphasise, it is)
This is a pretty weasly statement. You're not saying anything quantifiable so you can't be disproven but I think you're still being misleading. People hear what you're saying and decide that means they should be allowed to cough in everyone else's faces.

I echo what >>28475 says; I started wearing a mask out before they made it compulsory, think others should have too and Pret can go fuck itself. That they only made it compulsory because they're cunts, I don't disagree. But they should have made it compulsory for legitimate reasons.
>> No. 28478 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 10:30 am
28478 spacer
>>28477

The evidence base was much weaker when mask mandates came in, for obvious reasons. We're now fairly confident that they do work, but the effect size probably isn't that strong - they're certainly worth wearing, but they're only a small part of the prevention picture.

My concern at the beginning of the pandemic was that mask-wearing would result in risk compensation - people would act like they're immune just because they're wearing a mask, when really they've only reduced the risk of transmission by a few percent. The dreadful phrase "COVID-secure" has done nothing to allay those concerns; there's a real possibility that the transmission rate would be lower if masks weren't being worn and people felt more vulnerable. A mask certainly doesn't offer any protection if it's covering your chin or hanging from one ear.
>> No. 28479 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 11:10 am
28479 spacer
>>28477
>>28478
Hey sciencelads, I wear a Cambridge Mask I purchased before the pandemic which claims to have a "military grade" layer of "activated carbon filaments" that can filter out viruses. Think it's bollocks? Even if it is, it still fits over my face more snugly than a surgical mask does so I'm confident it provides me with some protection.
>> No. 28481 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 11:20 am
28481 spacer
>>28479
> I'm confident it provides me with some protection.

But this is the problem with the mask conversation - people keep getting the idea the wrong way around. A mask probably won't stop you catching the virus, but it could stop you spreading it.
>> No. 28482 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 11:20 am
28482 spacer
>>28479
Even just holding your hand in front of your mouth and nose is better than nothing; the main point of the masks is just to catch some of the stuff you exhale. That reduces the spread in the first place, it doesn't protect you much.

Whether or not the mask you wear protects you I'd say is probably irrelevant because unless you're incredibly vigilant about preventing cross-contamination through touch, which would involve decontaminating anything you bring in from outside, not touching your face, clothes or phone without cleaning them at the door and so on, just wearing a mask isn't going to keep you safe from non-airborne spread. You'd also need to wear goggles outside as eyes are a potential vector for viral aerosol to infect you.
>> No. 28483 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 11:32 am
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>>28479

Viruses are really tiny and it's unlikely that you could breathe through a filter fine enough to catch them, but that's not a massive problem. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is carried by water droplets that are mostly large enough to be trapped by simple fabric masks.

Wearing glasses may reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection, although we're not sure why.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/2770872
>> No. 28484 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 12:34 pm
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The only reason the government didn't make masks compulsory at the start of the pandemic is that we didn't have enough stockpiled for frontline medical staff. They even pretty much said "Don't buy masks because we need them for the NHS".
>> No. 28485 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 12:47 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54598136
Wales is going into lockdown.

>a short, sharp, shock to turn back the clock, slow down the virus and buy us more time
Why do they have to talk in buzzwords?
>> No. 28486 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:24 pm
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>>28476
>No, they make other people around you feel safer. It's just about being a decent human being and thinking of others.

You're getting into semantics and thereby missing the point. Masks make people feel safer both for the user and everyone else. The fact that its not really an action that protects you is beside the point and not how people conceptualise masks generally.

>>28479
>claims to have a "military grade" layer of "activated carbon filaments" that can filter out viruses. Think it's bollocks?

Yes. A decent NBC respirator will have an air-tight leather/plastic seal and have filtration clip/slide ons that get changed every few hours of use. The latter is a problem as if you see someone wearing such a unit they're probably an idiot who doesn't change the filters and is therefore a biological weapon in themselves.

I accidentally kept a respirator when I left the military and will only crack it out in the event of a nuclear ITZ because there's only one replacement filter. Even then, defence procurement is a synonym for bollocks and if I find myself in a covid fog then it's going to get in me once it's bought me a few drinks.

>>28484
The line has always been not to buy the specific N95 and you still shouldn't both because of medical need and because you don't know how to use it properly. It's irrelevant if there's a lack of fabric masks in a fashionable colour.
>> No. 28487 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:38 pm
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>>28486
>You're getting into semantics and thereby missing the point. Masks make people feel safer both for the user and everyone else.

I don't think it is semantics - it's about how (and why) we all convince people to wear masks. We should wear them to protect others not ourselves.

As you suggest, nothing short of an NBC respirator will protect everyone, all the time. If we're telling people to wear masks, we should be clear on why - it doesn't protect you, it protects everyone but you. The current discourse gives numpties too much room.
>> No. 28488 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:48 pm
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>>28485
Because saying shit is fucked, the centre does not hold, might cause a bit of hysteria.
>> No. 28489 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:50 pm
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>>28488
I think it's obvious to everyone right now. Given what Wales have done, I expect Boris to stand up tomorrow and announce the same for us.

Also, come full lockdown, I hope they don't send any money at all to Manchester.
>> No. 28490 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:53 pm
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>>28488

>saying shit is fucked
That reminds me.

>> No. 28491 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 1:57 pm
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>>28481
"I'm confident it provides me with some protection" does not mean I don't understand masks are worn to protect those around the wearer. You're kind of taking the conversation in circles m8.

>>28482
>Whether or not the mask you wear protects you I'd say is probably irrelevant because YOU COULD GET HIT BY A BUS TOMORROW

>>28483
Well thank you for actually trying to answer my question. Yeah I get that the virus is transmitted by droplets in the main and that "it's unlikely that you could breathe through a filter fine enough", I'm just asking if this is that filter. They say it's lab-tested.

>>28486
But it's not a "decent NBC respirator" and doesn't claim to be one - why you are you comparing a consumer mask produced with a material on licence from the military, to an actual military-issued gas mask?

Isn't that like saying "I upgraded my PC with an RTX 3080, is that good enough for most games" and you're like "No. IBM's OLCF-4 can do 200 petaFLOPS."
>> No. 28493 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 2:05 pm
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>>28491
>because YOU COULD GET HIT BY A BUS TOMORROW
I think you're missing the point. If a contagious person is wearing a mask then they won't contaminate as much of the air or objects around them. Breathe out 1L of viral aerosol in a shop and you'll only contaminate the packages directly adjactent to you, instead of the whole shelf. 10 people come in, each of them takes something from the shelf, your mask has reduced the number of people who'll be infected from 10 to 1. It doesn't matter if those uninfected people are wearing the best masks in the world because you've just infected them in a way that makes the mask irrelevant. The obvious implication here is that the answer to "is this that filter" is "there is no such filter to make you 100% safe if you're not also taking extensive, other precautions".
>> No. 28494 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 2:17 pm
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>>28493
OK, well thank you for interrupting our discussion about masks to point out that the virus is not solely transmitted in the air. It's a great point, thank you for making the point, and you made the point very well. If you don't mind, now, we're going to go back to discussing masks and what masks can actually do to prevent transmission.
>> No. 28496 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 2:41 pm
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>>28494
I didn't interrupt anything, you directly asked me a question. My response is that the answer to that question is of little practical importance. Forgive me for assuming the reason you wanted to know if a mask would filter out the virus is because you want to avoid catching or spreading it, instead of whatever other mysterious reason you apparently have.
>> No. 28497 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 3:11 pm
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>>28487
>If we're telling people to wear masks, we should be clear on why - it doesn't protect you, it protects everyone but you. The current discourse gives numpties too much room.

I don't think such catchy jingles as 'don't kill your gran' have given any other impression but like I said its not how people work. "Well I don't have it because I'm not a wrong'un" is what everyone thinks and they assume the masks are protecting them.

>>28490
I got linked to:


A few weeks back and its been the perfect soundtrack for me where I forget its even on in the background. Maybe this is what we need to inform the public, Matt Hancock doing a piece of performance art where we guess from the screams how things are. There won't be many because it'll be reyt.

>>28494
Don't be a dickhead m8.
>> No. 28498 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 3:54 pm
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>>28491

>Isn't that like saying "I upgraded my PC with an RTX 3080, is that good enough for most games" and you're like "No. IBM's OLCF-4 can do 200 petaFLOPS."

In the case of masks it's more like "I upgraded my PC with a 750Ti, is that good enough for most games" and the answer is "Sort of, technically, but you're probably best being cautious."

It's a bit of cloth over your mouth at the end of they day. Use your common sense. It's the filter, yes- But unless you're using three of them and duct taping the edges of it to your face, it's far, far, far from foolproof.

There are plenty of gaps around the edges and most people are not trained in aseptic technique so they're still not washing their hands after using/changing a mask, they're not changing the masks regularly, and so on.
>> No. 28499 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 4:05 pm
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>>28498
Absolutely, I understand that it isn't foolproof, that's where social distancing and handwashing come into play. But if the option is available to me to have a more protective mask why wouldn't I take it?

As such I will take your post to mean, yes, it does work in terms of filtering viruses. I understand there are loads of caveats that come with it, I just want to know I haven't been sold snake oil. Like that Shamwow guy who was selling masks with zinc in them because they kill bacteria - without making any claims as to its antiviral properties.
>> No. 28500 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 4:36 pm
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>>28499

They will filter the virus in its most common aerosol droplet state. However the mask is not filtering out the viral particles themselves, those are too small- It's merely a simple physical barrier preventing the aerosol droplets from getting through.

It's still completely possible that you may be exposed to viral particles in a small enough form to get through, such as if they have previously dried into the mask's fibres, and your breathing is sufficient agitation to work them loose.

You know how different forms of contraceptive have a different rate of reliability? If condoms are the full military hazmat suit, masks are somewhere around spermicidal gel. Better than nothing but I wouldn't be relying on it if my life depended on it.
>> No. 28501 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 4:55 pm
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>>28500
OK, so if it only filters droplets it's no more of a filter than a common surgical mask, which is a completely different answer to the one I just received.
>> No. 28502 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 4:56 pm
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You know what I find funny? The way shops tell you to keep 2m apart, then put all their markings about 1m apart. Or how the scaling on signs usually makes 2 metres look like about 1.5 at most. No other unit of measurement in all history history has been compressed as rapidly as the metre in 2020.
>> No. 28503 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 5:11 pm
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>>28501

You must be misunderstanding what you have been told, or someone has given you the wrong information. Surgical masks (as in, used in operating theatres) are actually rated to a higher level than the ones we're all wearing now.
>> No. 28504 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 5:19 pm
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>>28501

Scratch my previous post. I didn't realise you were talking about something different to the common blue and white masks everyone else has on. I've just read the website on this Cambridge Mask thing and it does sound like marketing guff to me.

>The masks filter out dust and pollution particles such as PM10, PM2.5 and PM0.3 as well as bacteria and viruses using a unique triple layer filtration system.

When I'm back at work tomorrow I'll compare it to whatever the rating is on the plain disposable ones we're using in the lab, and let you know. I think they're PM0.3 as well, which would mean yes, you've been sold snake oil.
>> No. 28505 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 5:31 pm
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>>28502
Another thing this pandemic has taught me is that the average person is completely shite at judging distances.
>> No. 28506 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 5:40 pm
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>>28505
From experience most people are kind of okay at judging distances, the problem is that most people are simply oblivious to their surroundings beyond the one thing that's got their attention at that moment in time.
>> No. 28507 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 5:46 pm
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I have a P2 filtered half-mask that I wear anytime I'm in an urban centre. Gets me some strange looks but I'd rather not catch the virus if that's OK with everyone.
>> No. 28508 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 6:54 pm
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>>28507
I have a similar mask for spray painting but I only wore it a couple of times to be edgy and ironic.

If you're this paranoid over something with a death rate of 0.2% (for people aged between 20-44) then you may as well wear a full NBC suit.
>> No. 28509 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 7:27 pm
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>>28508
There have been a few geniuses around my town wearing full face respirators, without the filters attached.
>> No. 28510 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 7:59 pm
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>>28508

He isn't going to become infected. That's for sure.
>> No. 28511 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 8:02 pm
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>>28508
>If you're this paranoid over something with a death rate of 0.2% (for people aged between 20-44)

Lad let's not start any of this "but the death rate" American bullshit here again.
>> No. 28512 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 8:17 pm
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>>28511
I didn't know that being aware of your chances of dying was an American thing.
>> No. 28513 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 8:35 pm
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>>28512
Approximately a quarter of the population is between those ages ranges. Even with your specious death rate, you're still talking about tens of thousands of people.
>> No. 28514 Anonymous
19th October 2020
Monday 9:16 pm
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>>28512
>>28513


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS3612EIcF4
>> No. 28515 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 4:56 pm
28515 spacer
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/oct/19/jeffrey-toobin-zoom-call-new-yorker-suspended

>The New Yorker magazine has suspended one of its long-time staff writers, legal expert Jeffrey Toobin, while it investigates a report that he was allegedly masturbating during a Zoom work call earlier this month.

> “I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers. I thought I had muted the Zoom video, I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me.”


Nothink like a quick wank break during a Zoom call to clear your mind.
>> No. 28516 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:11 pm
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>>28515
> I thought I had muted the Zoom video, I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me.
I know this phrase gets thrown about a lot these days, but my, my, what a thicky bastard.

Though I'd also like to know how boring of a Zoom call it was for someone to think "to Hell with it, I'm just going to start wanking". Some responsibility lies with the other call participants is what I'm saying.
>> No. 28517 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:18 pm
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>>28515
>Nothink like a quick wank break during a Zoom call to clear your mind.

Surely we've all had a wank during a work call now? It's been 7 months.
>> No. 28518 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:21 pm
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>>28515
This story has been the source of much hilarity during video calls today. I think its a cautionary tale for the age.

>>28516
That's exactly the question everyone I know has been discussing today. Who decides to knock one out halfway through a meeting?
>> No. 28519 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:33 pm
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>>28517

We have an insanely hot young coworker, and I was in one-on-one video chat with her a few times during the middle of summer where she was often just wearing a thin spaghetti strap top with her hair tied up. It seriously crossed my mind a few times to just have a wank under the table during the chat.

I did wank to her, but always only after our chats, and with my laptop closed. It was the decent thing to do.
>> No. 28520 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:50 pm
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>>28516
>>28518
>>28519
Look, I didn't realise I was on trial here. There's those boring corporate stand-up meetings that I need to keep my ears pricked on either for my name or something interesting. I turn the laptop away from me because I don't trust them not to record you and watch porn on my personal laptop.

Don't look at me like I'm the wrong'un here. You sound like people who would move somewhere with you partner and not make a point to do it in every room on principle.
>> No. 28521 Anonymous
20th October 2020
Tuesday 5:57 pm
28521 spacer
>>28520


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_KULzqKuW8
>> No. 28522 Anonymous
21st October 2020
Wednesday 7:19 pm
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https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk

Beta site, but I quite like it.
>> No. 28529 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 5:52 pm
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Not really sure how stopping people from buying things like bedding, irons and kettles will help.
>> No. 28530 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 6:11 pm
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>>28529
Have they actually been stopped? If you just moved that out the way and took it to the self-checkout, would it refuse to process it? Would the cashiers even notice if you brought it to them?
>> No. 28531 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 6:14 pm
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>>28529
My understanding is that at least part of the reason for this is not to prejudice the businesses that have been forced to close. Which is annoying because I could do with some new pillows.
>> No. 28532 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 7:38 pm
28532 spacer
Looks like there's queuing to get into the supermarket again. Just as I was coming out it had reached around the corner and they all looked quite annoyed as I trotted by with bags full of chocolate and other nonsense I'd bought because its Friday.

>>28530
I remember witnessing an argument at a self-service earlier in the year to that effect. One of the staff telling a guy that if he tried to purchase something it would be cancelled on the checkout.

No idea what come of it but the situation looked stressful. If I ever reached the lofty heights of overseeing the self-service checkouts I'd like to think I wouldn't bother but in all probability would soon snap at people thinking I was born yesterday. No doubt I'd be quickly fired for battering a 12 year old who actually had paid for his pack of Rolos.

>>28531
I thought it was because they had to in order to discourage non-essential shopping. It would all seem quite subjective to the man whose shit the bed but I don't make the rules.
>> No. 28533 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 7:45 pm
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>>28529
Just helps Amazon a bit more.

>>28532
I haven't seen queueing here in the South yet. I just came back from Costco and it was very quiet. I'm sure ITZ though.
>> No. 28534 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 8:37 pm
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>>28532
Unless you're a prolific bed-shitter, one would hope you've got enough spare bedding to last three weeks.
>> No. 28535 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 8:46 pm
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>>28534
Woah, get a lot of Mr. Two Sets of Bedding over here.
>> No. 28536 Anonymous
23rd October 2020
Friday 9:49 pm
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>>28529
Gloucestershire police said on Friday they would patrol the border to make sure people in Wales did not cross to buy contraband items.

I mean, really.
>> No. 28537 Anonymous
24th October 2020
Saturday 2:07 am
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>>28536
I have a feeling that this, in part, has motivation other than public health as an experiment in how we can somehow function without centralised controls on the movement of goods and people in GB. It's such a waste of resources to think you can police the Welsh border.

Only it has merely demonstrated the absurdity of the devolved regions trying to do policy out of sync with England and we're going to end up like Canada where the Mounties crack down on people 'smuggling' beer across the provinces.
>> No. 28538 Anonymous
24th October 2020
Saturday 2:33 am
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>>28537
>the absurdity of the devolved regions trying to do policy out of sync with England
We wouldn't have to do it if England would get its shit together.
>> No. 28539 Anonymous
24th October 2020
Saturday 2:40 am
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>>28537

>it has merely demonstrated the absurdity of the devolved regions trying to do policy out of sync with England and

It occurred to me a bit ago that the devolved administrations have a really easy time making themselves look good through all this. Whatever the English government decides to do, they simply have to go one step further, and there you have it.

If we went into a national lockdown next week, Nicola Sturgeon would be declaring martial law by Wednesday.
>> No. 28540 Anonymous
24th October 2020
Saturday 3:12 am
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>>28539
> Nicola Sturgeon would be declaring martial law by Wednesday

This is a very astute observation. Ditto the Welsh dude and what is going on in and Liverpool and Manchester. The government has been generally clueless on COVID-19, and that vacuum is making other clueless people look good.
>> No. 28546 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 8:06 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yv1hE7yHjc
>> No. 28547 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 8:30 am
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>>28539
Then why didn't Scotland, Wales or NI do that during the first lockdown? You were being hyperbolic, but dismissing the notion that areas with different population densities should have different lockdown strategies seems odd.

If it wasn't for the fact that Scots can't be trusted not to throw house parties while ill, the English spreading their Germs up there and elsewhere wouldn't be that impactful on overall transmission.
>> No. 28548 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 2:00 pm
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>>28546
I definitely understand peoples anxiety/anger about not being able to buy things, but what actually the fuck do these people think they're doing, going in to smash up shop displays? It achieves absolutely nothing; he's just a bellend.
>> No. 28549 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 2:09 pm
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>>28548
He was arrested for it and charged with criminal damage.
>> No. 28550 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 2:19 pm
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>>28539
I'd say they actually have a pretty hellish time. They've got accountability, but very limited power: Westminter doesn't have to underwrite all their decisions. Sturgeon can impose all the restrictions she likes, but she's always got to weigh it against the economic costs. If people aren't at work, they're not earning, so they're not paying tax and the Scottish government is getting its budget cut. In Westminster this is an easy problem because there's no actual cap on what they can borrow, or in the worst case scenario they can put up VAT, introduce new taxes, offer bailouts conditional on equity shares, or go full communist and nationalize the entire economy for a laugh. They have a huge range of policy options available. Sturgeon doesn't: She's hemmed in by the limited economic powers of the Scottish parliament and dependent on Westminster to sign off on subsidizing wages, companies, etc to make up the difference.
>> No. 28574 Anonymous
26th October 2020
Monday 10:06 pm
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>In England, children living in households on income-related benefits (such as universal credit) are eligible for free school meals, as long as their annual household income does not exceed £7,400 after tax, not including welfare payments. This is the same in Wales and Scotland, however in Northern Ireland the cap is set at £14,000 a year.

>As of January 2020, excluding year groups where eligibility is universal, 1.4m children qualify for free school meals in England - or 17.3% of the student population. This is the highest proportion of children eligible in at least a decade. In Scotland, the equivalent figure is 89,000 primary and secondary pupils - or about 17% of pupils. In Wales, 20% of pupils are eligible for free school meals and in Northern Ireland it is 28% of pupils.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54693906

I know we've discussed free school meals in other threads recently, but 1.4million kids in England living in a household earning less than £7,400 is fucking mental. That's about one person working 16 hours per week on minimum wage.
>> No. 28577 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 12:48 am
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>>28574

Shouldn't be all that surprising.

>Estimates for June to August 2020 show an estimated 1.52 million people were unemployed, 209,000 more than a year earlier and 138,000 more than the previous quarter.

>Estimates for June to August 2020 show 8.63 million people aged between 16 and 64 years not in the labour force (economically inactive), 51,000 fewer than a year earlier and 3,000 fewer than the previous quarter.

>Redundancies increased in June to August 2020 by 113,000 on the year, and a record 114,000 on the quarter, to 227,000. The annual increase was the largest since April to June 2009, with the number of redundancies reaching its highest level since May to July 2009.

>The Claimant Count increased in September 2020 to 2.7 million. This represents a monthly increase of 1.0% and an increase of 120.3%, or 1.5 million, since March 2020.

>For July to September 2020, there were an estimated 488,000 vacancies, which is a record quarterly increase of 144,000 vacancies from the record low in April to June 2020. The increase is driven by small businesses (49 or fewer employees). Despite the record quarterly increase, vacancies remain below the pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels and are 332,000 (40.5%) less than a year ago.

What's interesting is that the official unemployment rate is 4.5%, but the employment rate is only 75%. A full one quarter of working age adults are a quite euphemistically termed "economically inactive".

No matter which way you slice it, we have a million and a half people, competing for half a million jobs. There's going to be poverty.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/october2020#employment-unemployment-and-economic-inactivity
>> No. 28578 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 7:41 am
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>>28577
If there's 1.5million in unemployed and 2.7million claimants does that mean the other 1.2million are the "working poor"?
>> No. 28579 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:43 am
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>>28577

A lot of those half a million "vacancies" are basically bullshit - it costs an employer nothing to offer a job at well below market rates on the off chance, or to recruit far more zero-hours staff than they actually need.

Underemployment is also a huge factor. There are a million people in part-time jobs who want full-time hours and at least another million who are nominally self-employed but want a job.

The official definition of "unemployment" is so narrow as to be actively misleading, because it has no relation to people's actual experiences of looking for work.

https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-in-the-uk-is-now-so-low-its-in-danger-of-exposing-the-lie-used-to-create-the-numbers-2017-7
>> No. 28580 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:48 pm
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>>28577
>No matter which way you slice it, we have a million and a half people, competing for half a million jobs. There's going to be poverty.

In my own field, it's also very noticeable that new job adverts are being greatly marked down (ie paying less) than they were twelve months ago, presumably because employers know there are so many people on the market and they can get away with paying less.
>> No. 28586 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 6:45 pm
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How fucked are we over winter lads?
>> No. 28587 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 7:10 pm
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>>28586
Yes.
>> No. 28588 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 7:26 pm
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>>28586
We'll be bored at Christmas and suffering small family affairs. Then they'll be two ITZ threads at once come January followed by a global debate on vaccines. Probably an explosion at a custard factory in Ossett at some point too.

The perfect cunt-off will form that neither of us shall escape.
>> No. 28589 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 9:34 pm
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>>28588
>followed by a global debate on vaccines

We're not anywhere near the global cunt-off on this yet - as night follows day, as soon as anyone has a credible vaccine ITZ.
>> No. 28590 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 1:19 am
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>> No. 28591 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 8:57 am
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>>28590
Think that's about right. We have another four weeks to go before the naysayers demand the government DO SOMETHING...
>> No. 28592 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 10:22 am
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Bobby Ball, taken by the virus.
>> No. 28593 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 10:41 am
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>>28592
I can see coronavirus leading to a whole host of new comedy double acts. Are you ready for Cannon and Paul?
>> No. 28594 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:42 am
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>>28586
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-long-winter-why-covid-restrictions-could-last-until-april

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/classified-covid-in-winter-2020-a-worst-case-scenario

These are horrifying. Peak weeks are early January until end of March 2021. Forecast to be 85000 deaths in total. Deaths over 500 per day for at least 90 days.
>> No. 28595 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:47 am
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>>28594
Weren't these modellers predicting we'd have 500,000 deaths during the first wave?
>> No. 28596 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:48 am
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>>28595
It's a Reasonable Worst Case scenario, not a prediction. It's what happens if we do nothing.
>> No. 28597 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:50 am
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RWC.png
285972859728597
>>28596
>> No. 28598 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:52 am
28598 spacer
>>28596
>It's what happens if we do nothing.

So it's definitely happening.
>> No. 28599 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 12:03 pm
28599 spacer
When the folk who like to bring this shite up were talking about having a Blitz spirit I just assumed they were speaking as if from the point of view of Britain and its allies, not the Luftwaffe. Given the indifference to the tens-of-thousands who've died I'm forced to reasses this belief. But then again, most of them were getting on and can you even still call a person a person if they're over 70? If anything if we want to get over this COVID business we should be having some kind of care home focused Kristallnacht.

And, as I, a complete fucking idiot, managed to predict, we're sliding into a de-facto total lockdown again anyway. It's almost as if we should have some kind of independent scientific body to advise the government about this sort of thing, but now I'm dreaming.
>> No. 28600 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 12:24 pm
28600 spacer
>>28597

hmm that looks almost like an inflection point at the start of November, we still have time lads!
>> No. 28601 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 12:45 pm
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>>28590
Pack your souvenir stand.
>> No. 28602 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 1:12 pm
28602 spacer


I've never found clowns scary. Until today.
>> No. 28603 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 6:15 pm
28603 spacer
>>28599
The same folk who give it the jingoism are the same who refuse to follow the measure given to reduce the spread.
>> No. 28604 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 10:24 pm
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tumblr_inline_p6y0pf10uf1ve2agf_500.jpg
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>>28602

I have a clown fetish, but this still horrified me. She doesn't seem to acknowledge that she's in full clown makeup. The backstory in my mind is that she was in an abusive relationship with a vindictive tattooist and now she's trying to move past it. There was a meeting at the public health department about Halloween, it all got painfully awkward and she ended up doing the video because everyone was too polite to mention the full-face clown tattoo and she didn't want to be defined by her past. One of the lads in the office pretended that he knew sign language, just to try and draw some attention away from the poor girl.

The woman in the hooded onesie always dresses like that, she's just terribly depressed. The department really should sack her because she never does any work and her personal hygiene is atrocious, but she's the only one who knows how to unjam the printer and reset the wifi.
>> No. 28605 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 10:50 pm
28605 spacer
>>28604
I reckon she wanted to do Joker due to the green hair but couldn't do the proper makeup due to legal and risk of making a political statement. Frankly, I'm annoyed it got any reaction as they're clearly just fucking about because they have the tedious job of explaining away all the excuses people make.

>The woman in the hooded onesie always dresses like that, she's just terribly depressed. The department really should sack her because she never does any work and her personal hygiene is atrocious, but she's the only one who knows how to unjam the printer and reset the wifi.

How dare you.

As someone whose fetish is brunettes who may or may not be on the spectrum this is starting to give me a stonk on. And for some reason everyone woman I date says they have depression. Okay fair enough; but why is it always just before we have sex the first time that they tell me? I'm trying not to take it personally but this spoon of sugar is starting to get a complex.
>> No. 28606 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 11:59 pm
28606 spacer
>>28605
> And for some reason everyone woman I date says they have depression.

I had that pattern, for a while. I think the reasons are complex; firstly everyone is made to believe or feel like they're broken and that mental health is often the reason, nowadays - so lots of people fall back on it as an excuse for their behaviour, choices, upbringing and things that happen to them, whether it is true or not. Secondly - I grew up with a severely mentally ill mother (and grandmother) so in my twenties was able to actively tolerate being around those kinds of people and felt it was normal - I don't suffer myself though to any degree, and recognised it as a pattern that was happening. I married someone who doesn't suffer with it at all.
>> No. 28607 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 5:13 pm
28607 spacer
Today I've been to the cinema, the Imax at the National Media Museum. Admittedly almost half of the people in the room were kids but, or the 60 or so in the room, I counted fewer than five others keeping their mask on. We're doomed, lads.
>> No. 28608 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 5:54 pm
28608 spacer
>>28607
>I counted fewer than five others keeping their mask on. We're doomed, lads.

People are cunts. This is exactly the problem we face, and why I would have declared martial law by now.
>> No. 28611 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 7:27 pm
28611 spacer
>Covid is spreading "significantly" faster through England than even the government's predicted "worst-case" scenario, documents reveal. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says there are around four times as many people catching Covid than anticipated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

It's been nice knowing you lads.
>> No. 28612 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 7:49 pm
28612 spacer
>>28607
Why the fuck would anyone want to go to a cinema in a pandemic? You saw all that and stayed, and then people wonder why >>28611 is happening.
>> No. 28613 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 9:15 pm
28613 spacer
>>28612
People are fucking odd. Likewise, looking for 'loopholes' to let them drink in packed spaces. If you're going to be a daft cunt, just do it, don't waste effort justifying it.
>> No. 28614 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 10:23 pm
28614 spacer
>>28612
Not him but the government isn't supporting them. I don't want my local independent cinema to shut. We went last month before all this Tier 2 and 3 business and there were only like 10 other people there.
>> No. 28615 Anonymous
30th October 2020
Friday 10:33 pm
28615 spacer
National lockdown on the way by next Friday apparently lads.
>> No. 28616 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 1:35 am
28616 spacer
Tier 3 across all of West Yorkshire from Monday. Bradford has the highest infection rate in the country right now.

There's going to be a big controversy in a year or two's time, about how and why Asian communities were failed by the government, or, how and why Asian communities were allowed to disregard the rules because calling them out for it would be racist, depending on your point of view.

And let's be honest with ourselves- It is a little bit of both isn't it.
>> No. 28617 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 1:50 am
28617 spacer
>>28616

Leeds is the only place otherlad has been where the prostitutes put their cards under the door of his hotel room.
>> No. 28618 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 2:01 am
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>>28616
>And let's be honest with ourselves- It is a little bit of both isn't it.
>>28617
>under the door of his hotel room

I'm glad you remembered that lads, it was a formative experience!

Regardless of culture or race, I remain convinced that everyone in Yorkshire is basically banging the life out of each other; I imagine lockdown has only made it worse.
>> No. 28619 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 3:34 am
28619 spacer
>>28618

It has always stuck in my mind - every time I'm in a hotel somewhere, usually bored out of my mind, I think about it and how it'd be nice if I got the same treatment. I've never shagged a prostitute, but that's mostly because it seems like an inconvenient process - if it was literally room service I'd be on it, I imagine.
>> No. 28620 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 6:21 am
28620 spacer
>>28616
There was a report recently saying that BAME people have been worse hit by coronavirus due to structural racism, but just about everything I've seen in it suggests that it affects poor people the hardest and that's what should be focused on rather than race.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/27/structural-racism-led-to-worse-covid-impact-on-bame-groups-report

A lot of it is also cultural. Chinese people are more obedient so will follow the rules and wear masks whereas other cultures are more likely to ignore them. Asians in particular are very communal so instead of bending the rules by popping around to meet up with your parents or a couple of friends they'll meet up with their 40 siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles and so on, plus the inbreeding does not help either.
>> No. 28621 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 8:29 am
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Nationwide lockdown on Monday.
>> No. 28622 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 9:37 am
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RWC2.png
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>>28621
Inevitable now we're exceeding the Reasonable Worst Case referred to earlier in the thread.
>> No. 28623 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 11:13 am
28623 spacer
>>28620
My brother lives in Bradford and just tested positive. He's been saying for months the Asians haven't followed a single instruction. Hanging around in gangs, no masks, no distancing. Police don't do anything.
I'm respectful of cultures and traditions but Jesus wept. They wonder why it's in overdrive up there.
>> No. 28627 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 1:05 pm
28627 spacer
>>28621
Boris press conference at 4pm. FFS.

Better get down Costco.
>> No. 28631 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 2:41 pm
28631 spacer
>>28627

Costco on a Saturday, the horror.

There was a queue out the door last time I went. I only wanted socks.
>> No. 28632 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 2:54 pm
28632 spacer
>>28631
If there is a trick, I think it's to go in the last hour before closing. I fear that today, after the press conference, might be difficult and tomorrow is going to be minging if the lockdown really is kicking in on Monday.
>> No. 28633 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 3:02 pm
28633 spacer

Annotation 2020-10-31 150010.jpg
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>>28632

That was exactly what I was thinking. The google surveillance probes agree, though like you say, it may change after the conference.

Saying that, the sort of people who will be driving to Costco to buy 500 bog rolls will also probably think "We'll go tomorrow, I want to watch Ant and Dec tonight"
>> No. 28634 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 4:25 pm
28634 spacer
Thursday lads.
Same as last time but school stay open.
>> No. 28635 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 4:31 pm
28635 spacer
>>28632
>If there is a trick, I think it's to go in the last hour before closing.

I find a best compromise is to do it an hour or two before if you also want to have a selection of reduced-priced bakery goods. Pain Au Chocolat just tastes like failure to me - akin to a hunter failing to catch a deer and coming home with berries whose names are altogether too long.

Although if we're in peak panic buying then yeah I can see it. I'd sooner play treasure hunter with cans people had left on other shelves than rub elbows with the cattle loading up their trollies with shit they will just throw out in a few weeks and queuing for an hour.
>> No. 28636 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 5:46 pm
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Untitled.png
286362863628636
I have a feeling that politics is going to get weird over the next few months.
>> No. 28637 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 5:59 pm
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bojo bingo.jpg
286372863728637

>> No. 28638 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 6:00 pm
28638 spacer
>>28636
There seems to be an implication here that leaving the EU will save us from Covid.
>> No. 28639 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 6:22 pm
28639 spacer
>>28637
Has it even happened yet? Seems like someone has fucked up a pre-briefing.
>> No. 28640 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 6:22 pm
28640 spacer
>>28638

WELL IF WED CLOSED ALL THEM BORDERS LIKE WOT THEY SAID THEY WOULD AFTER BREXIT THEN NONE OF THEM DIRTY FORNERS WUD AVE BROUGHT IT HERE WUD THEY? THINK ABOUT IT!!!!1

</iq>
>> No. 28641 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 6:47 pm
28641 spacer
>>28638
There was a professor of virology being interviewed on BBC News about an hour ago who said something like "increases in cases in Germany, France... and embarrassingly for the EU, because that's where their headquarters are based, Belgium, which has seen the highest proportionate number of cases in Europe"

And I was like, what? How is that embarassing? Is this professor just shoehorning some Brexiteer nonsense into his answer?
>> No. 28642 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:03 pm
28642 spacer
Bodger trying to weasel out of responsibility and fucking around with local tiers.
>> No. 28643 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:12 pm
28643 spacer
He seems to be trying to rush this.
>> No. 28644 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:15 pm
28644 spacer
Fucks sake he can't do anything. What the fuck is Boris getting out of being PM at this point? All he does is fuck things up.
>> No. 28645 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:21 pm
28645 spacer
I'm expecting some sort of guidelines on what counts as an essential shop to be released at some point next week, with guidelines broad enough to allow pretty much most types of businesses to stay open.
>> No. 28646 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:22 pm
28646 spacer
>>28643
He wanted to make sure it was over before Strictly starts.
>> No. 28647 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 7:50 pm
28647 spacer
>>28646

Well he fucked that up - Strictly started ten minutes late.
>> No. 28648 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 8:37 pm
28648 spacer

Wheres boris.jpg
286482864828648

>> No. 28649 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 9:04 pm
28649 spacer
>>28648

Expect a new round of DM rage bait showing people buying compost and blinds at Homebase.
>> No. 28650 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 9:05 pm
28650 spacer
>>28649
Who the fuck buys compost this time of year?
>> No. 28651 Anonymous
31st October 2020
Saturday 9:16 pm
28651 spacer
>>28650
Hoarders.
>> No. 28652 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 4:08 am
28652 spacer

VitaminD-iStock-850977856-696x392.jpg
286522865228652
Up to half the UK population has a vitamin D deficiency, and government guidance that people should take supplements is not working, according to a group convened by Dr Gareth Davies, a medical physics researcher.

Low levels of vitamin D, which our bodies produce in response to strong sunlight, may lead to a greater risk of catching the coronavirus or suffering more severe effects of infection, according to some studies. Last week, researchers in Spain found that 82% of coronavirus patients out of 216 admitted to hospital had low vitamin D levels. The picture is mixed, however – some research shows that vitamin D levels have little or no effect on Covid-19, flu and other respiratory diseases.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/add-vitamin-d-bread-milk-help-fight-covid-urge-scientists-deficiency-supplements

Given we already fortify flour, breakfast cereals and other common foods with vitamins, I don't see what the problem would be adding Vitamin D to that list.

What's your view ladm9s? Seems like an easy optimisation. I've already started taking a supplement because I don't eat any of the things in this picture and hate going outside.
>> No. 28653 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 4:33 am
28653 spacer
>>28652
>Low levels of vitamin D, which our bodies produce in response to strong sunlight
It's quite obvious mankind was simply never supposed to live on this horrid little island. It's been dark by half-eleven in the morning the last few days and today I opened my curtains and hardly noticed the difference.
>> No. 28654 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:45 am
28654 spacer
>>28652

>researchers in Spain found that 82% of coronavirus patients out of 216 admitted to hospital had low vitamin D levels

This screams correlation not causation to me - while Vitamin D deficiency in spring might be common in the UK, I'd expect it to be quite abnormal in Spain. "Bedridden and housebound people are more likely to be hospitalised with COVID-19" isn't much of a revelation.

There's probably no harm in taking a supplement, but I don't think it's particularly significant in public health terms.
>> No. 28655 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:55 am
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dbag.jpg
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DON'T BE A GRASS
>> No. 28656 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 9:46 am
28656 spacer
>>28655
Been plenty of that guff going around.
You can bet the same people who share it are the ones to gab on the house they reckon sells weed.
>> No. 28657 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 10:06 am
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>>28654
From the BMJ.
>> No. 28658 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 11:02 am
28658 spacer

gotem.png
286582865828658
When you do a massive, loud, stinking journalism right in your pants and you show everyone so they know that it's the left's fault.
>> No. 28659 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 11:13 am
28659 spacer
>>28658
I couldn't agree more. I have read and followed his writing for a long time, he has written well on a number of topics; but in the past six months he has utterly lost the plot, been consistently wrong on the approach to lockdown and I read that article this morning almost open-mouthed with how stupid it was to travel to Wales and then write that.
>> No. 28660 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 1:46 pm
28660 spacer
>>28658

Just read that article, can it even be called journalism at that point. He seems to be approaching quite reasonable people taking preventive measures and having a teary that they are aware he is violating the rules designed to keep people safe.

It is a wonder he didn't drive home on the M4 on the wrong side to prove a point against draconian rules and blindly following them.
>> No. 28661 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 1:49 pm
28661 spacer
Anybody else seeing the creep of this American/anti-intellectualism bullshit here now? "I don't believe it, it's not that bad, some people can die it's fine" What the fuck is the point of education if we're not going to listen to educated people?
>> No. 28662 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:06 pm
28662 spacer
>>28661

You have failed to understand why people do things and argue points of view.

It isn't about logic or reason it is about feelings. what they want and what argument matches with what they want any matching up with logic is purely coincidental.

What they are saying with these arguments is 'I am frustrated I want to return to normality' it doesn't matter how bad that will be in the long term it is about immediate gratification.

I can tell you repeatedly how it is better to wait till you get home to take a shit. But if you really want one you are going to squat in the street.
>> No. 28663 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:07 pm
28663 spacer
>>28661
It was the inevitable outcome of our education system.

The Tories are happy to starve state schools to keep paupers in their place, safe in the knowledge that they won't be sending their own children there, and New Labour were all too happy to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator because they assumed it'll lead to docile "I'm voting Labour, just like me dad" simpletons and didn't foresee how the uneducated masses would turn on them and be swayed on things like Brexit.
>> No. 28664 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:13 pm
28664 spacer
>>28661
I think people got used to the situation and now they're just fed up with something which feels like it will never end. The economic and mental toll has been enormous to the point where I doubt we will see lockdowns in the new year - certainly not once the real economic impacts are felt.
>> No. 28665 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:18 pm
28665 spacer
>>28661

My mum was on about new world order adjacent stuff the other day, it seems she thinks it's all a scam to reset society, not sure where she got that from as she barely knows how to use the internet. She's a relatively sensible professional, so it was odd to hear her casually mentioning this.

Mind you she was also complaining about families doing trick or treating not following the rules, so I told her to make her mind up. I think she's just doing that thing everyone over 60 does, which is get angry at everyone for any reason.
>> No. 28666 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:27 pm
28666 spacer
>>28665

It's hard to not believe the Icke wannabes at this point.

I followed everything properly in April and May but at this point fuck it. It really is starting to feel like bollocks.

Just go out and get on with things. The more you follow narrative the more they're going to grind you down.
>> No. 28667 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:27 pm
28667 spacer
>>28665
Facebook is radicalising a lot of people. It starts with something innocuous like mummy groups that then lead into antivax territory and then it's full blown Qanon bollocks.
>> No. 28668 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:35 pm
28668 spacer
>>28667
Social media is too prone to psyops around the world and it's become a gigantic problem. Maybe it's just too late and it all needs shutting down.
>> No. 28669 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:39 pm
28669 spacer
>>28662
But even that is just silly at this point, isn't it? I get that people are upset, but feeling a certain way doesn't change reality. It seems a bit like trying to bash a round peg into a square hole and then throwing a massive teary because it's not working, but continuing to try anyway.
>> No. 28670 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:55 pm
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>>28667
>>28668
I think anonymous imageboards are the problem as well. Purps should institute that you can only post under your real name confirmed by a passport scan and a recent utility bill so as to better filter Russians and people who wouldn't want their mum finding out their guilty-would.

That way all incidents of hate-speech and covidiocy can be reported to the police and employers. After-all, you wouldn't put up with someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre.
>> No. 28672 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 7:52 pm
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>>28665

>not sure where she got that from as she barely knows how to use the internet

No, never mind, I figured it out. Should never have bought her that smart TV.
>> No. 28673 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:10 pm
28673 spacer
>>28672
>Alex Belfield

I'll bet she's a fan of JDTV.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8uoZXSG2Ig
>> No. 28674 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:39 pm
28674 spacer
>>28670

Imageboard users aren't a COVID risk, we never leave the house anyway.
>> No. 28675 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:40 pm
28675 spacer
>>28673

I don't think she's that far gone - I distinctly remember she thought are Jim was a twat even back in his Generation Game years.

I think my grandad was about 70 when he started reading the Mail and complaining about darkies. I'll continue to monitor the situation.
>> No. 28676 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:52 pm
28676 spacer
>>28673
Some of those jokes at the end with "Ozzie" were top notch.
>> No. 28677 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 9:09 pm
28677 spacer
>>28673

Is it just me or is it really bloody weird that Jim Davidson of all people has updated himself as a modern internet Alex Jones type? He's the type of bloke I've always imagined struggling to move past the working men's club type days, and yet here he is.
>> No. 28678 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 9:17 pm
28678 spacer
>>28677
He'll have John Virgo making a guest appearance next. A round of Brexit Billiards.
>> No. 28679 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 9:35 pm
28679 spacer
>>28677
He knows there is a ready market for his kind of racism on the interweb and he probably doesn't get many in-person gigs anymore.

I suspect he'll pump out filthy YouTube jizz for a couple of years trying to build a new audience, realise that he can't live on the $100/month ad revenue before trying to monetise it with a comeback tour.
>> No. 28680 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 10:28 pm
28680 spacer
>>28679
The YouTube channel is just advertising for his subscription site.
>> No. 28681 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 1:10 pm
28681 spacer
So it turns out the "world beating" Track & Trace phone app has a pretty catastrophic bug in it.
>> No. 28682 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 1:36 pm
28682 spacer
>>28681
Where did you get that from?
>> No. 28683 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 2:08 pm
28683 spacer

covidapp.png
286832868328683
>>28682
Sky News has independently confirmed the issue, and also learnt that a large proportion of the phantom notifications about exposures - which the Department for Health told users to ignore - were actually real.

According to The Sunday Times' source, Android devices have been the worst impacted - meaning the error has had a disproportionate impact on low-income smartphone owners.

I understand that this software error had an incredibly human source. The risk threshold was meant to be changed before the launch but for some reason no-one one made the crucial update. For weeks, Test and Trace carried on as if the change had gone ahead.


At this point, none of this surprises me.
>> No. 28684 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 2:14 pm
28684 spacer
>>28683
>meaning the error has had a disproportionate impact on low-income smartphone owners.

Anecdotal, but in my experience it tends to be those with money troubles who are more likely to go for an iPhone because it's a status symbol.
>> No. 28685 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 2:40 pm
28685 spacer
>>28684
If you have a "low-income" you don't spaff away hundreds of quid for an iPhone, indeed you likely can't. "Money troubles" just sounds like dafties who are juggling credit cards.
>> No. 28686 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 2:47 pm
28686 spacer
>>28685
>If you have a "low-income" you don't spaff away hundreds of quid for an iPhone

Low income isn't the same as no money at all. Low income might prevent you from owning a Yacht or a house. It certainly doesn't stop you from agreeing to pay £40 per month you can't really afford for an iPhone.
>> No. 28687 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 2:51 pm
28687 spacer
>>28685
iPhones are better value for money than Androids. Change my mind.
>> No. 28688 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 3:04 pm
28688 spacer
>>28687

Who fucking cares?
>> No. 28689 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 3:43 pm
28689 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh3zn2mtazg
>> No. 28690 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 4:05 pm
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>>28689
Who would entrust their kids with such a bellend?

Maybe he thinks we should all submit to the 25 barons? That's it - we need more barons.
>> No. 28691 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 12:29 am
28691 spacer
>>28685

If you've ever worked in the consumer credit industry you'll know that low-income customers are the number one money maker, and the industry goes after them in an extremely predatory fashion. As a moneylender, you don't make a profit on they people who can afford to pay it back. The entire game is getting people caught up in never-ending interest payments.

You can say that these people are stupid for getting sucked in, and you might well have a point. But the thing is it's generally not stupid people's fault that they're stupid, and when your business model relies on exploiting people's stupidity, it's you that's morally culpable.

Like findommes and Belle Delphine.
>> No. 28694 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:17 am
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>>28623
It's definitely the more enriched places that have the highest rates of cases; the dark patch between Wakefield and Huddersfield is Dewsbury.
>> No. 28695 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:24 am
28695 spacer
>>28694
Aye, "enriched"? Cunt.
>> No. 28696 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:42 am
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>>28695
I know some people here get pissy about using memes that have come from elsewhere on the internet, but having a teary and pounding your ape-like fists into your keyboard over the usage of .gs terms is something else.
>> No. 28697 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 10:20 am
28697 spacer
>>28694

Huddersfield is full of muslamics and they seem to be doing alright.

I think it's more that Bradford and Dewsbury are where all the "inbred mountain laplanders" live*, not that Asians themselves are inherently worse or more ignorant at the spread.

*Source: my ex girlfriend's stepdad, Abdar. His words not mine.
>> No. 28698 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 10:33 am
28698 spacer
>>28697
>Huddersfield is full of muslamics and they seem to be doing alright.

Huddersfield is about 15% Asian and I think a fair few of those are Sikhs. Dewsbury is at the very least double that and some areas, like Savile Town, are 1% white British.
>> No. 28699 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:17 pm
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>>28698
Sikhs are usually pretty clever types who adapt to the Covid rules rather than ignore them.
>> No. 28700 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 1:01 pm
28700 spacer
Finally, we're getting around to being racist to the Sikhs. They've had it too easy for too bloody long.

>>28696
All I did was call him a cunt in a three word post. I'd wager not even Hemingway could have managed that, let alone a teary eyed ape.
>> No. 28701 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 1:13 pm
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>>28699
Exactly. It's the areas where there's a prevalence of the religion of peace that are the hotspots, which is why Dewsbury and Bradford are much worse than Huddersfield.
>> No. 28702 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:51 pm
28702 spacer
Did I get side-eyed by the woman next door because I rounded the corner and she was embarrassed to be seen getting out of her daughter's car on the first day of lockdown, or because she's heard me wanking and talking to myself through the walls? I'm going to choose to believe the former or else this next four weeks are going to be Hell.
>> No. 28703 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:59 pm
28703 spacer
>>28702
Stick 'er in your bubble IYKWIM
>> No. 28704 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 3:22 pm
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>>28703
She's spritely for her age, but she's still 75-ish. We'll see in a few weeks.
>> No. 28705 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:59 pm
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Sorry lads, used the wrong Excel spreadsheet, again.
>> No. 28706 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:02 pm
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>>28705
It's shenanigans like this why people have lost confidence in following the science.
>> No. 28707 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 6:08 pm
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>>28706
I know right, its fucking disgraceful that these scientists are making regular projections based on current data when they should have been giving todays data to Boris a month before he decided on the lockdown.
>> No. 28708 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 6:27 pm
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>>28707
I support the science view generally, and if it was down to me we would have a much harder lockdown, earlier, but this is a fuck up.
>> No. 28709 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 7:05 pm
28709 spacer
>>28708

If it was down to me we'd have shut down all flights and sea travel in February, then shortly after that had a total lockdown for at least 2 weeks- No work, no school, no shops, nothing.

That's the only way to stop a virus like this one spreading. You have to have complete quarantine until the existing cases have either died or recovered. The problem with the actions our government has taken is that they leave a reservoir in the populace, and unless everyone becomes immune overnight, that reservoir will ALWAYS lead to a gradual increase in cases. It doesn't matter how much fucking around with masks or shit plastic screens you do, it'll start going back up, there's no two ways about it.

Either you have a full and total lockdown until it's gone completely, or you may as well do nothing. We're preventing deaths, technically, but in reality we're not. We're just delaying them because it'll get round to everyone eventually, just like the common cold.
>> No. 28710 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 7:09 pm
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>>28707
The first lockdown was justified using data that grossly exaggerated the number of deaths. The current lockdown has been justified using data that has been revised down by one-third.

Regardless of whether lockdown was the right thing to do, the credibility of it has been damaged repeatedly by inaccurate information from the so-called experts.
>> No. 28711 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 7:14 pm
28711 spacer
>>28709
>You have to have complete quarantine until the existing cases have either died or recovered.

Completely agree - these half-in, half-out lockdowns aren't doing anyone any favours. I don't want to see anyone ill or dying, but I almost hope that the numbers don't get that much better over the next couple of weeks, and then we can do it properly in December.
>> No. 28712 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 7:30 pm
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>>28711
That's it. I'm telling Angela Eagle chronic masturbators on anonymous British imageboards want Christmas to be ruined. You've had it now.
>> No. 28713 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:04 pm
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>>28712

I live close to Wallasey if you want me to pass the message on to her constituency office via a brick. She loves that shit.
>> No. 28714 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:15 pm
28714 spacer
So can I go out for a walk tomorrow or what? Just a stroll around somewhere like Temple Newsam for a bit of fresh air and exercise.
>> No. 28715 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:31 pm
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>>28712
>want Christmas to be ruined

Happy to see Christmas fully cancelled.
>> No. 28716 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:42 pm
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>>28712

It'd be nice if Christmas was ruined by government edict. Normally it's because Uncle Paul has been on the sherry since 8am.
>> No. 28717 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:06 pm
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>>28714
Of course you can.
>> No. 28718 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:12 pm
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>>28714

I might be taking the missus out for a spot of dogging there tomorrow as it happens. How shall I recognise you?
>> No. 28719 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:26 pm
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>>28718
I'll be wearing a MAGA hat for irony. Happy to fuck your ugly wife.
>> No. 28720 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:47 pm
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>>28709
Is it too late to just copy everything Taiwan has done? Private Eye made a convincing case but I don't remember the specifics.

>>28715
I've gotten quite used to the idea that I will spend Christmas alone. Almost looking forward to it. Doesn't matter if the lockdown is lifted - I know full well there won't be spare seats on the trains and that it'll be packed like a cattle train anyway.
>> No. 28721 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 4:13 pm
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https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article247022937.html

>COVID-19 can invade tissues in the testicles in some men who are infected with the novel coronavirus, according to a new study by a team of University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers.

>“These findings could be the first step in discovering COVID-19’s potential impact on male fertility and whether the virus can be sexually transmitted,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, an associate professor and director of reproductive urology at UM’s Miller School.


ITZ!!
>> No. 28722 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:09 pm
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>>28721
Coronaballs.
>> No. 28723 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:40 pm
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Untitled.png
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>>28721
My balls felt funny just reading that. I'd just gotten over every cough potentially being a death sentence but if you end up with a persistent ball-ache for a lifetime then I'm all for bricking people inside their homes.

Imagine it. Not like a full on whack pain but a chip on a cold day sort of pain where the toe has made contact and it just keeps going.
>> No. 28724 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:41 pm
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>>28721

Now that the virus affects men's genitals directly and specifically, we will have worked out a cure and vaccine by chritmas.
>> No. 28725 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 6:18 pm
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>>28724

Just wait till they discover that it affects ovaries as well.
>> No. 28726 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 7:33 pm
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>>28721
Is it such a surprise that it could be sexually transmitted?

I mean, once you have the virus, surely any bodily fluid transmission would pass it on?
>> No. 28727 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 8:48 pm
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>>28726

It doesn't appear that way. Sputum and blood yes, but there doesn't seem to be evidence for other bodily fluids transmitting it. Of course if you're in close enough contact with someone for their piss, jizz or sweat to be in contact with you, then the chances are you good have already caught it the normal way.
>> No. 28728 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 8:53 pm
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>>28726

Does that mean that instead of a nasal swab, you can have your spunk analysed for Covid?

Would certainly make the testing more fun.
>> No. 28729 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 9:02 pm
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>>28728

I think I saw an EnglishMansion video with this plot.
>> No. 28730 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 9:03 pm
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>>28725
We've all been jumping to conclusions but what if it effects the sex in a good way. Men get massive knobs and women's boobs grow bigger (and some grow a penis)?
>> No. 28731 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 10:26 pm
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We're back to shaming people at The Range again.

https://www.If I post a link to this website again I will be banned.co.uk/news/article-8924033/Furious-independent-traders-call-clampdown-major-chains.html
>> No. 28732 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 1:24 am
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>>28731
FFS, she's not only wearing a mask, she's even wearing it properly.

Can't these cunts go find some real journalism to do instead of camping in retail parks shooting the local wildlife?
>> No. 28733 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 2:42 am
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>>28731

She could carry my goods out of a high-street retailer IYKWIM.
>> No. 28734 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 10:56 am
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>>28731
I'd shame people for buying those shitty ugly lamps coronalockdown or not.
>> No. 28735 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 12:48 pm
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Pfizer say their vaccine is 90% effective - stock market now booming.
>> No. 28736 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 12:53 pm
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>>28735
Is it mink resistant?
>> No. 28737 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 2:55 pm
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>>28735
From this point on how long do you think we can give the best scenario until we return to some form of recognisable normality? Another year, for development and distribution?
>> No. 28738 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 3:14 pm
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>>28737
I don't think this will be the only vaccine - there is so much effort going into it, and such a prize commercially, that I think we'll have more than one.

That said, it has to be refrigerated and distributed, and it sounds like people need two doses before they have any kind of immunity - then there is the open question of how long that immunity will actually last. Spring? May/June before things seem normal? That is only six months away..
>> No. 28739 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 3:58 pm
28739 spacer
>>28738

>refrigerated

That's something of an understatement. The big downside of the Pfizer vaccine is that it needs to be stored at -70°C. The cold chain for conventional vaccines and temperature-sensitive drugs is based around +2 to +8°C refrigeration. Conventional freezers max out at about -35°C, so they're no good for transportation or storage. Dry ice sublimates at -78°C so it's just about adequate, but there's not much margin for error. Nobody has ever made a vaccine of this type before, so we're really in uncharted territory.

This vaccine is going to be really useful, but the logistics of distributing it will be a colossal pain in the arse. "Back to normal by spring" is extremely optimistic IMO - I think a more realistic target is "the NHS will survive next winter". This vaccine is a fantastic first step and hopefully it should resolve the dire situation in care homes, but I think we'll need other vaccines before we can really talk about a return to normality.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/31/cold-chain-and-colder-chain-distribution
>> No. 28740 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 4:17 pm
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>>28739
>he big downside of the Pfizer vaccine is that it needs to be stored at -70°C

Oh I hadn't seen that part - appreciate the info. That is going to make distribution challenging, as you say.
>> No. 28741 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 4:18 pm
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>>28738
>there is the open question of how long that immunity will actually last
Yes, judging by that study that came out immunity lasts only a few months. Doesn't matter, if we have any rolling programme of vaccination we eventually can develop some semblance of herd immunity.
>> No. 28742 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 4:53 pm
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It's sobering to think as little as say 20 years ago covid could have become a mass human extinction event
>> No. 28743 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 5:13 pm
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>>28742
Wat?
>> No. 28744 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 5:20 pm
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>>28742
>> No. 28745 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 5:36 pm
28745 spacer
>>28742

The fatality rate massively drops off below 50 and barely affects the young and the key working/reproductive age demographics at all. Whilst a tragedy if left unabated it doesn't offer much threat to the future of humanity, a cynic might say it would possibly be long term beneficial.
>> No. 28746 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 5:38 pm
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>>28742

20 years ago no one would have fallen for this.
>> No. 28747 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 5:44 pm
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>>28745

All the people who are dying from it now were in their 30s twenty years ago so they would have been the key working/reproductive age demographics. He's right, if this had come along and killed them back then, civilisation would have collapsed.
>> No. 28748 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 6:04 pm
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>>28745
Yeah, I remember watching Logan's Run and thinking "perfect" too.
>> No. 28749 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 6:10 pm
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>>28748
>> No. 28750 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 6:29 pm
28750 spacer
>>28735
>stock market now booming

Some bits anyway. I'm quite happy with the FTSE today but I'm sure tech-lad has felt a sting.

>>28742
I have my doubts on what a Covid pandemic 20 years ago would look like. China was bordering on Anarcho-Capitalist in terms of regulation but there would also be a whole lot less movement.

...I'd also be playing a shedload of Civ II and Alpha Centauri so let the world burn I say.
>> No. 28751 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 6:41 pm
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>>28748

You'll notice how how every plague in history hasn't float around constantly. killing people indefinitely.
>> No. 28752 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:11 pm
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>>28751
Don't they?
>> No. 28753 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:24 pm
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NO, DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR GUT AND BUY CINEWORLD SHARES WHEN THEY FALL TO 22P EACH. LET THE CHUCKLEFUCKS HERE TALK YOU OUT OF IT.

I AM NEVER LISTENING TO YOU LADS EVER AGAIN. YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT.
>> No. 28754 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:45 pm
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>>28753
hahaha. When I saw the list of risers today, I was expecting this post.
>> No. 28755 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:55 pm
28755 spacer
>>28754
FUCKING BOILED MY PISS, IT HAS.
>> No. 28756 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:56 pm
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>>28755
You'd have made more money betting on Biden though - did you bet on Biden?
>> No. 28757 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 7:59 pm
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>>28756
I'm not a gambling man.
>> No. 28761 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 12:20 pm
28761 spacer
>Tax home workers 'to help pay those who cannot'

>Working from home should be taxed to help support workers who jobs are under threat, according to a new report. Economists at Deutsche Bank suggest a tax of 5% of a worker's salary if they choose to work from home. The tax would be paid for by employers and the income generated would be paid to people who can't do their jobs from home.

>It argues this is only fair, as those who work from home are saving money and not paying into the system like those who go out to work. In the UK, Deutsche Bank calculates the tax would generate a pot of £6.9bn a year, which could pay out grants of £2,000 a year to low-income workers and those under threat of redundancy

>"For years we have needed a tax on remote workers," wrote Deutsche Bank strategist Luke Templeman. "Covid has just made it obvious. Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society." A 5% work-from-home (WFH) tax on an average $55,000 salary works out at about $10 a day in the US. For the UK, the tax equates to about £7, based on a salary of £35,000.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54876526

You'll be giving money to Pret whether you like it or not WFHlads.
>> No. 28762 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 12:31 pm
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>>28761

It's almost as if we never really addressed the issue of de-industrialisation, but just papered over the cracks with bullshit make-work jobs.
>> No. 28763 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 1:07 pm
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>>28761
>Deutsche Bank

Ahahahahahahahaha.
>> No. 28764 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 1:43 pm
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>>28761

I've got a better, more equitable idea. Nationalise Amazon and use their revenue to fund Pret as an upmarket soup kitchen, serving artisan toasties to the needy- Estate agents, bar managers, personal trainers, etc.
>> No. 28765 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 2:02 pm
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>>28761

>Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society

So what you're essentially proposing is a shut-in tax.

Weren't Deutsche Bank on trial in Germany for an elaborate tax refund scheme that allowed them to claim back income tax which they had never paid in the first place?

Think of all the money that governments could save if banks were honest.

Greedy bastards.
>> No. 28766 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 2:07 pm
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>>28750

>I have my doubts on what a Covid pandemic 20 years ago would look like.

I believe 100% we'd have closed airports (or at least restricted chinese inbounds) at the first sign of Wuhan rumblings. Even as recently as twenty years ago, national wellbeing (taxpayer/electorate wellbeing) was more important than optics or tourism money. Also the general population would be less queasy about closing our doors for a year or so.
>> No. 28767 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 3:58 pm
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>>28761
I don't see the logic behind taxing home workers when you could just tax the rich. Specifically because he says "For years we have needed a tax on remote workers", which suggests the idea was around pre-Coronavirus. Home working isn't something you want to discourage, so the main moral justification I can see for the tax on home workers would be that jobs you can do from home tend to be nice middle class ones, in which case just tax the nice middle class people. Even the few of them who're showing up to in-person jobs usually aren't in customer-facing hell like supermarket workers.
About the only reason I can see to do it their way is that you might face less political resistance because it looks like a coronavirus thing rather than a redistribution thing.

>>28762
It wouldn't be half as bad if we just did that, at least we'd still have reasonable levels of stable employment, rather than the constant conspiracy to mask unemployment that has defined economic policy since the mid-80s.
>> No. 28768 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 4:45 pm
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>>28767
>I don't see the logic behind taxing home workers when you could just tax the rich.
Das ist verboten.
>> No. 28769 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 5:59 pm
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>>28767
>I don't see the logic behind taxing home workers when you could just tax the rich

The article is specifically talking about a tax not charged at the employee level but on companies who have greatly reduced operating costs for things like office space while simultaneously no longer being able to justify themselves by their activities supporting local economies.

So it is taxing the rich but done in a sensible way that slows pace of change and takes into account the reduced tax revenue generated from employees paying VAT on overpriced lunches and after-work drinks (or whatever taxes service workers pay). Ultimately the counter-argument is that this will filter into wages but that shouldn't sting as much if cost of living is lower and profits go to support the big telly ambitions of feckless imbeciles.

I'm loath to admit it but I am saving more than £7 a month on expenses even though I used to walk to work. I'll still raise hell if I get a pay-cut but it'll be a measured hell where I just have a dirty protest in 'spoons.
>> No. 28770 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 6:08 pm
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>>28769

Their proposal would cost your employer (and by extension you) £7 per day, or £2,555/year.

It's a fucking piss-take of an idea, put forward by people who really, really don't want us to whack a couple of percent on the top rate of income or corporation tax.
>> No. 28771 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 6:12 pm
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>>28761
This is such stupid shite. We have always levied income tax by the amount that is earned, not by where you do your fucking job, that's irrelevant. If the economy is breaking down because people are working from home that isn't the fault of the people working from home, it's the fault of the people in charge of shaping the economy.
>> No. 28772 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 6:19 pm
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100% inheritance tax. It's the only solution.
>> No. 28773 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 6:20 pm
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The WFH tax is not something they expect to really happen. It just makes the other tax rises (like removing capital gains tax exemptions) look more acceptable by comparison.
>> No. 28774 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 7:34 pm
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Today, the attention seeking office bint turned up to work, complaining loudly that she was worried about how ill her boyfriend seemed, 3 people at his work have corona and now he's been coughing and wheezing since Monday so she hopes his results going to be negative.
...................

>oh I'm not meant to be self isolating am I!? they didn't tell us to at the test centre *insert her Jimmy Carr-esque laughter here*
>> No. 28780 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 9:13 am
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>>28773 The WFH tax is a DB flyer as they're so utterly fucking exposed if leased office space drops (further).
Fuck'em.
>> No. 28781 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 9:14 am
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>>28774
It's legal to drown these people as witches. Little known law, but still on the books. Get down to the pond with her.
>> No. 28783 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 11:51 am
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>>28774
Wow some of you guys are really on the front line with the plebs. Now I see why people support lockdown.
>> No. 28785 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 1:50 pm
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I popped to the shops yesterday evening and I counted six houses had their Christmas decorations up.
>> No. 28786 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 2:33 pm
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It's November and shady recruiters are still advertising for "volunteers" to do full-time high-skilled jobs that they should be paying people £40k+ for.
>> No. 28787 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 3:34 pm
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>> No. 28788 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 3:55 pm
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>>28787
Looks like this is in reference to rumours of a 'Winter Eat Out to Help Out'.
>> No. 28789 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 4:04 pm
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>>28788
I assume that'll involve being forced to go to your local carvery at bayonet point.
>> No. 28790 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 5:31 pm
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>>28786

By March, they'll be charging £400/wk for internships. I wish I was joking.
>> No. 28791 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 7:45 pm
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>>28788
Bloody Sunak, unless we've started making roads out of pasta I don't see what benefit I'm getting from this. Maybe that's the Tory masterplan - come an expansion of winter fuel allowance and I'll be banging on peoples doors to tell them to put a jumper on.
>> No. 28792 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 8:15 pm
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>>28790

Don't some high-profile global companies already do that?

I think I read something a while ago, long before covid anyway, that McKinsey were offering internship positions at their U.S. headquarters that cost $1,000 a month that you had to pay them. Or some other company in that field.
>> No. 28793 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 9:13 pm
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>>28792
I remember back in university there was a company offering summer internships that you paid for. The catch was that it paid for lodging in places like Hong Kong iirc*. Might be a similar deal with that only slightly less transparent that you paid to put documents in a binder.

*There was one lad who did it but he was a twat who also joined the Freemasons.
>> No. 28794 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 9:43 pm
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>>28793

No, I distinctly remember that company rationalising it by saying that interns cost them more money than they were getting out of them, and that they had to dedicate resources to them that could then not be used more profitably by giving them to a more senior employee, e.g. a desk or a laptop. Room and board were not included, that would have been your own responsibility on top of the $1,000 a month.

The company said interns should see those expenses as an investment in their career after uni, which would pay back manifold in terms of eventual job opportunities.

Still a bit of a scam.
>> No. 28795 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 9:46 pm
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>>28794
Are you serious? How is this shit not illegal?
>> No. 28796 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 10:09 pm
28796 spacer
>>28795

>How is this shit not illegal?


I'm sure it would be in Britain, but apparently it's legal in the U.S. where this happened.

I'll try to find that story again on google.
>> No. 28840 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 3:58 pm
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Bit nippy at the anti-lockdown protest in Bristol.
>> No. 28841 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:07 pm
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>>28840
Are blonde women more attracted to Tinfoilery?
>> No. 28842 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:13 pm
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>>28841
Neither of them look naturally blonde. They just love the bad boys there.
>> No. 28843 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:14 pm
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>>28840
Phwoar I'd let them hold my placard IYKWIM!
>> No. 28844 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:16 pm
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>>28842

JILL DANDO
>> No. 28845 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:17 pm
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>>28840

I'd violate her lockdown IYKWIM.
>> No. 28846 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 4:29 pm
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>>28844>>28844
Apparently she was part of the Knights Templar.
>> No. 28848 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 5:05 pm
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>>28840
Jesus Christ you can tell there's not much activity going on upstairs can't you.
>> No. 28850 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 5:12 pm
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>>28842
Christ, it's like scribblings of a schizo.
>> No. 28851 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 5:15 pm
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>>28850
There's a reason for that.
>> No. 28852 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 5:21 pm
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>>28850

>? ? ?

Not even he seems to know what he's on about.
>> No. 28853 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 5:44 pm
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>>28842
This lad needs his hard-drive searched.
>> No. 28860 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 12:16 pm
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Another US-based company, Moderna, announce their mRNA vaccine has 94% efficacy.

What happened to all the world-beating Oxford scientists?
>> No. 28861 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 12:26 pm
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>A key advantage of Moderna’s vaccine is that it does not need ultra-cold storage like Pfizer’s, making it easier to distribute. Moderna expects it to be stable at standard refrigerator temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for 30 days and it can be stored for up to 6 months at -20 degrees Celsius.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-moderna/moderna-says-its-vaccine-is-94-5-effective-in-preventing-covid-19-idUKKBN27W1E6

It's over, lads.
>> No. 28862 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 1:53 pm
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>>28861

I had my suspicions that that was going to be a serious competitive disadvantage as other companies were about to announce their own vaccines.

Biontech's vaccine will be almost impossible to deliver to poorer, rural third-world countries in hot climates and with little infrastructure because it needs specialised freezing equipment to keep it at temperatures less than -50°C. If Moderna's stuff stays stable for a month at 8°C, it essentially means you can put it in a household fridge, which can be run off a single midsized solar panel, many miles away from civilisation.

Biontech's stock has taken a beating on those news today, down over seven and a half percent.
>> No. 28863 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 2:58 pm
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It's going to be fun watching this imminent rationing of healthcare.
The whining of those who want but can't have will pretty much balance the whining of those who are being bullied into being microchipped and having their DNA rewritten.
>> No. 28864 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 3:01 pm
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>>28863
I'm gonna skip the queue and just get it on private.
>> No. 28865 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 3:32 pm
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>>28861
>Moderna’s data provide further validation of the promising but previously unproven mRNA platform, which turns the human body into a vaccine factory by coaxing cells to make virus proteins that the immune system sees as a threat and attacks.
>turns the human body into a vaccine factory
>vaccine factory

The fuck?
>> No. 28866 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 4:09 pm
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>>28865
ITZ THEY'RE FaRmING uS!!!111
>> No. 28867 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 8:32 pm
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>>28865
Why contain it?
>> No. 28871 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 3:40 pm
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>>28865

The first vaccine was getting inoculated by pus from cowpox.

Most subsequent vaccines have involved getting injected with viral proteins.

This is done to train your immune system to recognize the virus and destroy it so that if you are exposed to the virus proper your body can destroy it quickly and effectively before an infection can take hold.

Injecting with proteins often doesn't yield a sufficiently strong response from the immune system to achieve immunity.

The strategy being used by some of these vaccines is to use viral RNA to encourage your body to produce proteins for viral recognition by the immune system.

Nature has a pretty good article about it all if you wish to learn more:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01221-y

Lol jk, they're just trying to inject you with Jeffrey Epstein's sperm mate.
>> No. 28883 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 10:30 pm
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Looks like Sweden is really falling on its arse now with its hands-off approach to the pandemic. Numbers are rising sharply, and they are now implementing contact restrictions.
>> No. 28884 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 11:16 pm
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>>28860

Didn't a load of sensitive information from their research end up getting leaked?

Tenner says it was some snivelling Tory bastard selling us out to their big pharma chums.
>> No. 28886 Anonymous
19th November 2020
Thursday 4:31 pm
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AZ's vaccine data is continuing to look good

It looks like the Chinese-Canadian vaccine is also efective

All the vaccines appear to work and have been developed in record time. The previous record was four years, Pfizer have done theirs in 10 months.

Reminder that all the problems and failures relating to COVID-19 are not unprecedented scientific problems but failures of leadership, damage caused by a decade of Austerity Policies, and the psychotic neoliberal economic order.
>> No. 28887 Anonymous
19th November 2020
Thursday 10:35 pm
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>>28886
A friend described scientific progress as like trying to run through knee high mud with a bungee rope pulling you back. However Covid has cut the cord, drained the mud and given them a blank cheque. It shows how our best and brightest can do when they're given the chance.
>> No. 28888 Anonymous
19th November 2020
Thursday 11:39 pm
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>>28887

That's a bit oversimplified; it's more like there are several paths to different places, but the ones that lead to developments that aren't immediately and easily commercially exploitable are made of mud and bungee ropes. The ones that are, have one of those aeroplane evacuation chutes lubed up with silicone grease.
>> No. 28889 Anonymous
20th November 2020
Friday 4:16 am
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>>28887
I can't wait for things to go back to normal.
>> No. 28890 Anonymous
20th November 2020
Friday 10:26 am
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>>28887
Don't forget the clapping x
>> No. 28891 Anonymous
20th November 2020
Friday 10:29 am
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A work colleague has just returned from three weeks in laplanderstan. He had to have a test before he flew out for them to let him into the country but he had to do no such thing to fly back to Britain. He's also broken his quarantine within 24 hours of returning.
>> No. 28892 Anonymous
20th November 2020
Friday 11:47 am
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>>28891
Lock him up!
>> No. 28894 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 5:35 am
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Main story on The Mail at the moment. It's the government's and scientist's fault people aren't taking coronavirus seriously anymore because they're like the boy who cried wolf.
>> No. 28896 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 12:05 pm
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>>28894

Well the DM can just go fuck itself.

If anybody has been crying wolf from the word go, it was them.

Bigoted Murdoch rag.
>> No. 28897 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 12:09 pm
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>>28896
>Murdoch rag.

U wot?
>> No. 28898 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 12:34 pm
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>>28894
>death predictions and reality
>Bed arent fuller
>Critical care can cope
Can't all these be accounted for by the precautions and measures put into place? Ie we acted to avoid the predicted deaths and non-covid patients have been refused from hospital/sent home to make space and cope.

>Factalities are barely any higher
Similar to above, really.

How can a public newspaper get away with being so irresponcible?
>> No. 28899 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 12:46 pm
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>>28898
The editors have no shame and the readers have no memories.
>> No. 28900 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 12:55 pm
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>>28898

>arent
>Factalities
>irresponcible
>> No. 28901 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 1:05 pm
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>>28898
Well if those things are all true then why's that irresponsible.
>> No. 28902 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 1:32 pm
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>>28898
Banning you for the state of this post was my first reaction, but as delete is still broken I'm going to leave it in the hopes the ritual flagellation by your peers serves as a sobering reminder to proof read your fucking posts on .gs, mate.
>> No. 28903 Anonymous
21st November 2020
Saturday 9:27 pm
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>>28900

When I were a lad a single one of those infractions would have warranted a joke one day ban.
>> No. 28907 Anonymous
23rd November 2020
Monday 8:50 pm
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https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-gets-coronavirus-said-he-wouldnt-get-covid-ew-jackson-1548070

>Conservative Pastor Who Said 'I'm Not Going to Get the Coronavirus' Gets the Coronavirus

>In a March sermon shared in an unlisted video by "The Friendly Atheist," Jackson boasted about how he was impervious to COVID-19. "I'm not gonna get the coronavirus. I'm not gonna give anybody the coronavirus, cause I can't get it, cause I've talked to God about it, and I've taken my vaccine, and my vaccine is Psalm 91! I am free from that mess," he shouted in the video. In the Bible, Psalm 91 speaks about God protecting those who believe in him.


Murrica, fuck yeah!
>> No. 28926 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 11:49 am
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>PM Johnson: Don't worry kids, COVID won't stop Father Christmas

>The COVID-19 pandemic won’t stop Father Christmas delivering presents, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a letter published on Wednesday, citing medical experts who said there was no health risk to children if rules were followed. Johnson gave the reassurance to an 8 year-old child named Monti, who had written to him asking if Father Christmas would be able to deliver gifts this year.

>The handwritten note from Monti asked if the government had considered the issue of Santa’s annual visit: “I understand you are very busy but can you and the scientists please talk about this.” Johnson posted the letter on Twitter alongside a copy of his reply. “I have put in a call to the North Pole and I can tell you Father Christmas is ready and raring to go, as are Rudolph and all of the other reindeer,” he said.

>“The Chief Medical Officer has asked me to tell you that, provided Father Christmas behaves in his usual responsible way and works quickly and safely, there are no risks to your health or his.” Johnson said he had already had lots of letters on the subject and endorsed Monti’s suggestion to leave hand sanitiser by any cookies left out for Father Christmas.

>Earlier this year, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern took similar measure to reassure young citizens that the tooth fairy and Easter bunny would be classed as essential workers and still able to go about their business during the pandemic.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-politics-johnson/pm-johnson-dont-worry-kids-covid-wont-stop-father-christmas-idUKKBN2851HT?il=0

Yet again, it's one rule for us and another for gift-givers. I'll be shitting in my stocking this year to let Father Christmas know how I really feel.
>> No. 28927 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 12:19 pm
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>>28926
I refuse to believe a child has been named Monti.
>> No. 28928 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 12:26 pm
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>>28927
Is it any weirder than one of the Rees-Mogg rat king, or the utter nonsense of Musk's latest?
>> No. 28929 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 12:30 pm
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>>28928
I'd expect Rees-Mogg's kids to have better spelling and handwriting.
>> No. 28932 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:06 pm
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>>28929
Scribiatum in excelsior superannuutum ad nostra curriculumus per se in vitro fertilisation. I shall have oneself have known.
>> No. 28939 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 7:16 am
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>An acquaintance and former neighbour of Matt Hancock is supplying the government with tens of millions of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies.

>Alex Bourne, who used to run a pub close to Hancock’s former constituency home in Suffolk, said he initially offered his services to the UK health secretary several months ago by sending him a personal WhatsApp message. Bourne’s company, Hinpack, was at that time producing plastic cups and takeaway boxes for the catering industry. It is now supplying about 2m medical grade vials a week to the government via a distributor contracted by the NHS.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/26/matt-hancock-former-neighbour-won-covid-test-kit-contract-after-whatsapp-message
>> No. 28948 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 1:57 pm
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>>28939
What another surprise that will go completely ignored.
>> No. 28950 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 2:00 pm
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>>28948
Shoosh, these guys know what they are doing.
>> No. 28965 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 4:55 pm
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Questions are starting to be asked about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. We have really fallen far if our science can be trusted less than a company in the fucking US.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/
>> No. 28969 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 6:50 pm
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>>28965

My understanding of this is that during the trial there was a miscalculation when determining the dosage being produced (the vaccine is being produced at multiple different centers). Due to this some candidates received a lower dose than necessary, but this was rectified by giving these subjects a booster shot (which isn't a totally unheard of approach to vaccination).
>> No. 28971 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 7:11 pm
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>>28965
The science can be trusted just fine.
Oxford and Astrazeneca did have problems with the trials but the results are being published and the scientists are being open and honest about what the results show and what the limitations are.
The problem is how the media have created hype and mispresented the facts.
>> No. 28974 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 7:30 pm
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>>28971

The Oxford/AstraZeneca data is properly dodgy though. At best, they totally botched the trial. That's not to say that the vaccine doesn't work, but they're definitely going to need another large trial if they want to get market authorisation in the US and probably for the EU.

Based on the available data, my best guess is that it's highly effective in healthy young people but fairly ineffective in people who are actually vulnerable to the virus, which isn't a disaster. Such a vaccine would be perfectly useful in achieving herd immunity in tandem with the more costly and difficult mRNA vaccines.
>> No. 28977 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 7:45 pm
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One thing the media doesn't give much attention is the ongoing development of antibody-based treatments, i.e medicines that will actually make a difference in treating someone who would otherwise potentially die from the disease.

The Black Death was the most deadly pandemic in human history, but the disease that causes it still exists. People still get it. The reason it doesn't wipe us out today is because being able to reliably treat that disease with antibiotics renders it nearly meaningless as a threat.
>> No. 28983 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 8:40 pm
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>>28977
Black death was caused by some form of bacteria, not a virus.
>> No. 28984 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 8:41 pm
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>>28983
That's probably why he was talking about antibiotics.
>> No. 28985 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 8:59 pm
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>>28983

It was caused by Miasma you burk, that's why we invented perfumes innit?
>> No. 28986 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 9:55 pm
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>>28984
Why mention that? How does it fit this Chinese virus context?
>> No. 28987 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 10:01 pm
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>>28977
>The reason it doesn't wipe us out today is because being able to reliably treat that disease with antibiotics renders it nearly meaningless as a threat.
I feel very confident knowing this alongside all my other knowledge of antibiotics.
>> No. 28988 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 10:42 pm
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>>28986

Because the principle is the same. It doesn't matter what causes the disease, if there's an effective treatment then really it's not much of a problem. The reason covid has been so much of a problem despite the relatively low mortality is because the only treatment we have (or, had, in the early stages) is keeping people on ventilators for weeks and weeks. Obviously there are only so many hospital beds and ventilators to go around.

Like I keep saying though we're all properly fucked when anti-microbial resistance kicks in properly. Enjoy dying of a bog standard staph infection when you prick your thumb on a rose thorn in the garden.
>> No. 28989 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 9:14 am
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>>28988
>Enjoy dying of a bog standard staph infection when you prick your thumb on a rose thorn in the garden.
I've never taken antibiotics after any sort of minor injury, never had an infection that I can recall. I think this is over-hyped. We'd never have lived long enough to discover antibiotics if gardening was regularly fatal.
>> No. 28990 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 9:57 am
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>>28989
Infection Denier!
>> No. 28991 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 10:02 am
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>>28990
I'll grant that of the list of times when antibiotics are used
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/antibiotics/uses/
most people are going to experience at least one of these in their lives so it is still serious.
>> No. 28992 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 1:47 pm
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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/oxford-university-astrazeneca-vaccine-uk-flag-union-jack_uk_5fbfdd14c5b68ca87f827a0e

This article is outrageous.

It's only called a Union Jack when it's being flown on a warship and the ship is not in harbour.
>> No. 28993 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 1:50 pm
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>>28992
>HuffPost UK understands No.10′s newly-formed “Union unit”, tasked with fighting calls for Scottish independence and other campaigns to break up the UK, wanted injection kits to bear the flag.
Because what independence movements love and demand more of is cultural chauvinism and being lorded over, right.
>> No. 28994 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 3:03 pm
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>>28992
If the government are this confident our vaccine is going to be effective and widely well received it'll definitely turn out to give people the tism or something equally hideous.
>> No. 28995 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 3:30 pm
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>>28993
You know full well that if this was a Scottish Government vaccine it would have the Saltire all over it. This is something universal when it comes to programmes whether it be EU logos on any cultural products it funds to every aid package having an origin logo displayed.

That's the nature of soft-power. If the leader of the vaccine programme were Scottish I'm sure at least the National would have it proclaimed as a headline.
>> No. 29000 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 4:12 pm
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>>28995
That image highlights how we're doing it wrong as well as making your wider point. USAid (me typing "USAir" at first notwithstanding) has its own distinct brand and little logo. It says "this is from America" without being tacky about it and coming across as chauvinistic. The EU tends to slap flags on infrastructure it funds, but their flag already looks like a corporate logo.

Meanwhile our tendency is to brand things with something like this, which manages to convey all of the British™ crappiness of a car factory kept on life support by the national enterprise board circa 1976 without any of the underdoggish charm.
>> No. 29003 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 4:28 pm
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>>29000
What should ARE new logo be like, lads?
>> No. 29006 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 4:52 pm
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>>29003

A tree stump.
>> No. 29011 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 5:15 pm
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>>29000
>without being tacky about it

>FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
>> No. 29015 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 6:47 pm
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>>28995
They well might, but that's not going to come across as paternalistic finger wagging so Tories don't have risk pissing away the Union on their watch.
>> No. 29018 Anonymous
27th November 2020
Friday 6:58 pm
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>>29011
>> No. 29031 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 12:10 am
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>>29015
I'm not sure marking a British product developed with public money counts as paternalistic finger wagging. What is more it seems like something that transcends traditional political divides given it's a response to a government whose raison d'être is the destruction of said country.

What's the alternative?
>> No. 29032 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 1:55 am
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99.999% survival rate.

Tell me again, why did we purposely crash our economy?
>> No. 29033 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 1:59 am
29033 spacer
>>29032

Yeah nah m8.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
>> No. 29034 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 2:07 am
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>>29032
How are you bellends still around at this stage of the game?
>> No. 29035 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 2:15 am
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>>29033
The true number is closer to his than yours once you factor in undetected cases.

>During the period 20 June to 13 July 2020, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were measured in the community at an overall adjusted prevalence of 6.0% in England.
>> No. 29036 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 2:18 am
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>>29035

I had a strange cold in September that left me breathless for a few weeks. I wonder if that was one of those undetected cases?
>> No. 29037 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 2:21 am
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>>29036
https://www.bupa.co.uk/health/payg/covid-testing
>> No. 29038 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 2:25 am
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>>29037
>"Only" £65
>> No. 29039 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 3:05 am
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>>28989

That specific example is an obvious over-exaggeration, but in the hypothetical worst-case scenario of anti-microbial resistance where all our current antibiotics are rendered useless, it could very plausibly knock twenty or thirty years off the average life expectancy.

It's a good comparison to covid because it's daft stuff that you might not think about as a young and fit person, but as you start getting older and your immune system gets weaker, things like a simple urinary tract infection can work themselves up to your kidneys, and end up as full blown renal failure. Surgeries would be much more dangerous, because while surgeons nowadays are very careful about preventing infections, they still occur. Germs are persistent little bastards. The kind of operations people need more routinely as they get older would be inherently riskier, and clinical sepsis would more or less be a death sentence.

We live with a popular assumption that modern medical practice is lightyears more advanced than it was at the turn of the century, but in reality it hasn't gone all that far- Antibiotics have been a huge crutch that enabled us to do things which simply weren't feasible before, and that's largely the entire reason life expectancies have shot up since the 50s.
>> No. 29040 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 3:34 am
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>>29031
Marking it as funded with public money and sticking giant British flags on it are two quite different things. Like most things that transcend traditional political divides, everyone is agreed on doing a mediocre idea in a bad way.
Scots aren't going to look at a union flag on their medicine and thing "Oh, golly, we're #bettertogether", at best they're going to tune it out like they tune out the union flags on their groceries and at worst they're going to resent it as an incompetently cynical PR exercise. (especially in light of the way the Scottish press will be unable to resist trumping up this latest superplan to save the Union.)

The alternative is to pay someone to design a proper logo, run a proper UK-wide PR campaign about the vaccine, have the government save the union by getting at the roots of why it's falling apart in the first place (which frankly is a nation-[re]building project even England needs), and have all the major parties in Scotland stop being so terrible at unionism. At some point in the 90s or 2000s there's been a drift from a unionism that fights for sectional Scottish interest within the UK while firmly believing it should be a permanent part of it, to one that often openly accepts that as 10% of the population Scotland should be quiet and stop being weird. Such a unionism might seem scarcely less annoying than the SNP's nationalism, but if not being annoyed by the Scots anymore is the main aim then you might as well just give the SNP what it wants.
>> No. 29041 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 4:00 am
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>>29040

I think the Scots just need reminding that they had more than their fair share of the profit out of the Empire and that in fact they were the ones responsible for some of it's most reprehensible legacies. Snap them out of the Braveheart noble victim fantasy and remind them they're actually just pasty, obese hypocrites.

Billboards the nation over that say GLASGOW WAS BUILT BY SLAVES #tearitdown
>> No. 29042 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 5:49 am
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>>29041
I'm not sure that would work. Despite what a few overenthusiastic people on Twitter would say, Scotland doesn't really have the same sense of colonial grievance that Ireland had. It's more like the same general dissatisfaction that you'll find in the North of England with a dash of resentment over the squandering of North Sea oil, but with a pre-existing nation to use as a rallying point where the North is stuck with regional identity. Sturgeon is very much the type who would voluntarily sign up for big guilt-tripping exhibits about the Scottish role in the British Empire.
It doesn't really undercut the modern Scottish nationalist narrative to mention Scotland's colonial role. Scotland can't and won't ever be a major power, the highest it can aspire to is being a moderately nice place to live. Britain on the other hand remains proud of her imperial history, big enough to send a gunboat over to Cathay again if it has to, and run by politicians who think it's a good idea to do so. It almost risks adding weight to the pro-Independence argument: As part of Britain, you were an active participant in these imperial crimes - if you stay, you'll be an active participant in the next lot. Avoid being involved, vote Yes.

(I have to emphasize, I'm not trying to make a pro-independence argument here, just giving my view on how the situation looks.)
>> No. 29043 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 9:49 am
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>>29041

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/times-higher-education-awards-2020-winners-announced

I don't know lad, it seems like Scotland is pretty aware of its colonial legacy. The waters of Scotland's Imperial legacy are muddied somewhat by things like the Highland Clearances and the Darien scheme which were perpetrated by the wealthy and very detrimental to the commonweal. Reasons why the Scottish electorate is a lot more left leaning than the good parts of the UK.

Most of what people in England perceive as Nationalism on the part of the Scots is actually a desire for an egalitarian society, less concentration of power in Westminster, and more accountable politicians.

You would have to be a moron to look at the last 10 years of British Politics and its economic fallout *before* COVID-19 and fail to understand the increasing support of Independence. The current gallery of rogues being a particularly egregious example of what people outside of London hate about it all.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o1mNg5lblM
>> No. 29048 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 5:19 pm
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I went in Morrisons last week and just about all of the bog roll averaged out at around 60p a roll. I went in Lidl today and all of it has been cleared out.

All I want to do is wipe my arse.
>> No. 29049 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 7:17 pm
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>>29040
>have the government save the union by getting at the roots of why it's falling apart in the first place (which frankly is a nation-[re]building project even England needs)

I'm not sure there's time nor money to do this. Scottish Parliamentary elections are in spring where it's certain the SNP will take a majority and use this mandate for an early referendum. Perfect timing as no any impact of Brexit will be lingering and people will be feeling more confident/autistic following their vaccinations.

Even if you threw money at the problem it would soon be lost due to devolution. Sunak announced this week a raft of new money for the regions but what does that even mean when the money get's rebadged as Scottish Government doing up the local community centre.
>> No. 29050 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 7:25 pm
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>>29049
>Perfect timing as no any impact of Brexit will be lingering
Good to hear the impact of Brexit will only last until Spring.
>> No. 29051 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 8:47 pm
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>>29050
Oh god I had temporarily forgotten that it's almost the end of the year, and we have that nonsense to look forward to.
>> No. 29055 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 11:06 pm
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>>29048
I've been unable to find my favourite smoked ham at Sainsburys. There's roast but I've always felt it a bit shit.

>>29051
Pack your shitpaper. I've half a mind to start slowly stockpiling but then everyone will do it.
>> No. 29056 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 11:58 pm
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>>29048
Get a bidet mate and your arse wiping days will be in the past where they belong.
>> No. 29057 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 2:35 am
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I don't remember the police arresting people for the BLM protests in the summer?
>> No. 29058 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 6:30 am
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>>29057
That's because the twats who are protesting the lockdown are much bigger wankers than any of the BLM lot.
>> No. 29060 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 8:30 am
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>>29057
Well. One lot were protesting about a valid cause, the others are whiny tinfoilers and conspiracy lunatics.
>> No. 29061 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 9:10 am
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>>29060

You've never met a policeman socially have you?
>> No. 29062 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 9:22 am
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>>29057
Didn't BLM get charged by mounted officers?
>> No. 29063 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 9:41 am
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I remember the student protests back in 2010 when kids in their early teens were kettled in the freezing cold, no access to the bogs or fresh water, until the early hours - meanwhile EDL cunts had a very softly, softly approach, despite dog whistling for genocide.

The police have very interesting targets.
>> No. 29066 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 10:02 am
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>>29063
I wonder how much of the police reaction to protests is determined simply by what they think they can get away with? I'm not sure who's going on the anti-lockdown protests, but it wouldn't suprise me if it was a lot of radicalised by Facebook types who'd never been on a protest before in their life, as such, unorganised and unprepared. Similarly the students in '10 were in the same position.

I'm stopping this post because I have no idea what I'm talking about.
>> No. 29067 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 10:09 am
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>>29062
Yes, but a few right wing figures (Farage, Martin Daubney whoever that is, and the Prison Planet dweeb) all made a fuss about pretending they don't remember that and suddenly there are slews of morons repeating the line.
>> No. 29068 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 10:10 am
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>>29048
>>29056

And don't forget to buy a hair dryer too, so you don't have to wipe your arse on a towel anyway.
>> No. 29071 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 11:38 am
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Looks like bird flu is back on the menu, lads.

>Avian Influenza incursion risk raised to high in Great Britain

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/avian-influenza-incursion-risk-raised-to-high-in-great-britain

>More than 10,000 turkeys are to be culled at a farm in North Yorkshire after an outbreak of bird flu. It comes after avian influenza of the H5N8 strain was confirmed at a turkey fattening premises near Northallerton.

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/bird-flu-outbreak-confirmed-at-farm-in-north-yorkshire-12145877

>A highly contagious and deadly form of avian influenza is spreading rapidly in Europe, putting the poultry industry on alert with previous outbreaks in mind that saw tens of millions of birds culled and significant economic losses.

>The disease, commonly called bird flu, has been found in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and, for the first time this week in Croatia, Slovenia and Poland, after severely hitting Russia, Kazakhstan and Israel.

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/1126/1180657-bird-flu-europe/

Get ready to watch people scrapping in the aisles to get a turkey.
>> No. 29072 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 12:01 pm
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>>29066
>radicalised by Facebook types

Is it the case that social media has made people dumber, or is it the case that social media has just made dumb people feel more emboldened?

When I see the 5G/Vaccine/Lockdown protestors it really makes me feel like we're circling the drain as a species.
>> No. 29073 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 1:03 pm
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>>29072
>When I see the 5G/Vaccine/Lockdown protestors it really makes me feel like we're circling the drain as a species.

We really are slipping into Idiocracy, you can see how it could happen over the course of a handful of decades.
>> No. 29074 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 1:20 pm
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>>29071
Yeah, puts me right off keeping chickens, these lockdowns are getting rather frequent and sustained. Dunno f we'll start seeing 'these free range eggs come from chickens that aren't actually allowed outside' stickers again.
Still, it's not killing people (yet), which is helpful.
(15 million birds in one Kazakh farm - fuck me, that's a lot of chickens...)
>> No. 29075 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 2:54 pm
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>>29072
>social media has just made dumb people feel more emboldened

I think it's this - it has allowed the dumbocracy to become more organised and more radicalised.
>> No. 29076 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 3:41 pm
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It's all well and good wanking each other off about how much more intelligent you are, but how would you really feel if you lost your business, your livelihood, etc. for what is to you, an invisible cause? And not only that, but one that has been handled so illogically and badly that even a child could pick holes in it? Maybe a part of the anger from these people stems from what feels like an indifference to their suffering.
>> No. 29077 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 3:50 pm
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>>29076
>an invisible cause

This is what seppos feel like after every hurricane where the Prez is hundreds or thousands of miles away playing golf.
>> No. 29078 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 4:10 pm
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>>29076
As a member of the downwardly mobile middle class with a passing interest in economic history, that all sounds like another day at the office.
>> No. 29079 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 4:22 pm
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>>29076

My business has taken a huge blow and I'm very angry with the government, but that has little to do with believing the virus doesn't exist or that 5G causes it.
>> No. 29080 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 5:18 pm
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>>29076
I don't think I've ever been so angry that I disbelieved basic science.
>> No. 29081 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 5:29 pm
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>>29080

It's worth remembering, though, that science changes as our understanding changes.

You can easily be embarrassed if you trust the science too vociferously and then new findings prove otherwise. I'm not standing up for the 5G conspiracies or anything here, but I'm saying covid is one of those things our understanding will probably still go on developing a long way after all of this is history, and a lot of what we currently believe and hold up as the truth could turn out to have been bollocks. I mean we still don't know how long antibodies last or if reinfection is possible.

For context, I'm the covid testing lab lad, and I made a right tit of myself back in January/February going around telling people "don't worry, covid will be fine, even if it does make it over here it'll be easy to handle, and even if it isn't the death rate will be tiny, nothing to worry about" because that's what the science bods much more highly qualified than me were saying. Arguably some of that is still true, even, but you'd laugh in my face if I was to stand by it today and say we weren't wrong.
>> No. 29082 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 6:20 pm
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>>29079
It's quite possible to oppose lockdown and not believe in lizard men and the like.
>> No. 29088 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 7:31 pm
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>>29082

Yes, that was my point.
>> No. 29092 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 8:39 pm
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I've been mucking around with the interactive coronavirus map and the epicentre during the second wave seems to be the area of the local university camp and where students tend to live.

Are we literally in lockdown right now because of the decision to send students to university this academic year?

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map
>> No. 29096 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 9:14 pm
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>>29092

Pretty much. And when they all go home for Xmas and everybody decides that we're not in the midst of a pandemic so they can eat brussel sprouts with their grotty families we'll see another uptick in cases over the following two weeks.

Data show that the EO2HO scheme has been integral to the spread of COVID in the second wave also. The UK has spent more than any other G7 country on the COVID response and had worse outcomes due to this govts insistence on avoiding any kind of restrictions until after the last minute, and as a result having to impose greater/longer restrictions (e.g. refusal to impose a circuit breaker lockdown in the 3rd week of September means we've had to have a month long one in November). All the cronyism also means that the money spent has been spaffed on enriching mates and neighbours of cabinet members. I never thought I'd look back on 2009 with such a sense of nostalgia for the comparatively stellar political competence.
>> No. 29097 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 9:19 pm
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>>29096
>The UK has spent more than any other G7 country on the COVID response
The rampant cronyism undermines the validity of this statement. That money wasn't spent on the COVID response, it was given away.
>> No. 29098 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 10:46 pm
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A child coughed all over my hand in the supermarket today, it's over.
>> No. 29099 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 11:04 pm
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>>29098

RIP lad. Was nice knowing thee.
>> No. 29100 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 12:01 am
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>>29081

>You can easily be embarrassed if you trust the science too vociferously and then new findings prove otherwise.

That's the point, and a simplification we all fall into. Science is a method of falsifiability wherein everything is open to scrutiny, findings are recorded, corroborated and codified into theories. I know you're not saying otherwise, but it's always really worth pointing out in this climate of authorities "following the science", especially when we saw the calamity in Northern Italy unfold in Feb/March and the rest of Europe didn't pay a single bit of attention to it.

The entire thing has been truly shameful from top to bottom, and others have pointed out the utter scam of our money being handed over, lock and stock, to chums of people in government to consistently fuck up. We aren't following any science, or any scientific method, more specifically, we're following a corrupt political system that's more intent on gambling with our lives for self enrichment. So when the government says they're following the science, some are led to believe that "science" is the evil.
>> No. 29102 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 2:27 am
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>>29096

The govenment has run a coronavirus response like a bureaucratic office HR department, or health and safety inspector.

The attitude has not been one of actually solving any meaningful problems, the attitude has been one of ticking boxes to shield oneself from liability, and then either naively believing or wilfully pretending it's the same thing. I just can't figure out which it is- And obviously there was a powerful shot of cronyism in there for good measure as you say.

Our government cannot tell the difference, and so has responded in the same manner. "Well, we did everything we could, look at all the policies. Look at all the powerpoints we made people watch!"
>> No. 29103 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 7:00 am
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>>29097

Cronyism is a problem, but it's not the problem. The government fundamentally failed to understand the non-linear effects of coronavirus suppression measures.

The countries that successfully controlled the virus went into extremely strict lockdowns as early as possible to get the number of infections as low as possible; once they achieved that, they could throw a lot of resources at contact tracing to keep the case rate low as society started to re-open.

Our response was reactive rather than proactive, with control measures imposed to prevent the health system from being overwhelmed rather than as part of a broader strategy. Our ambivalence about lives vs livelihoods gave us the worst of all worlds - we've got a lot of deaths, the economy is shagged and we've spent a fortune.

Our government still thinks in linear rather than exponential terms. We don't get that the difference between 10 and 100 cases is the same as the difference between 10,000 and 100,000 cases - one order of magnitude. We don't get that starting a lockdown a day too late might take weeks or months to ameliorate. A strange sense of British exceptionalism has prevented us from learning from the tremendous success they've had in the eastern hemisphere.

Ironically, it is Boris and the Cabinet's "dither and delay" that has screwed us. Rather than stamping out the first flames of the pandemic, they waited to see what would happen and now we're fighting a raging inferno.
>> No. 29105 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 11:49 am
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>Shops in England will be allowed to stay open for 24 hours a day in the run-up to Christmas and in January, the housing secretary has said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55126371
>> No. 29106 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 12:20 pm
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>>29105
They only ever gave a shit about the economy, now there's a vaccine who cares if we put a strain on the NHS and some more people die? It's over, don't you know?
>> No. 29107 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 1:14 pm
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>Pubs and restaurants banned from selling alcohol and told to shut at 6pm in Wales

Do they really think this is meant to make any tangible difference? This is fucking shit lads. I can't be fucked any more.
>> No. 29108 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 2:01 pm
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>>29107
Half measures will always lead to their 2nd half.
>> No. 29109 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 2:12 pm
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>>29107
Third wave here we come.
>> No. 29110 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 2:44 pm
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>>29103

This is why we're reaching the stage that people are saying "fuck it, why bother any more" and I find it hard to disagree with them. We've shagged it badly enough that the damage is done, why continue to have the worst of both worlds when you could at least have a bit of normality and stop suffocating our own economy.

Yes, it's awful to put the economy over lives, but your average person has long since concluded it would be naive to expect our government ever to prioritise the opposite, so why half-arse it and draw out the suffering? In for a penny, in for a pound. It's been a long year and I don't think we could ever have realistically expected people to put up with all this for long.

Do you remember that Sun election front page about dangerous daft militant wog loving, jew-hating commie Jeremy Corbyn turning the lights out on Britain? Yeah. Thank god he wasn't in charge eh, with all his daft loony lefty ideas about giving people money to stay at home doing nothing.
>> No. 29111 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 4:25 pm
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>>29110
Those blue lads love to still belt out with "IT WOULD BE WORSE WITH CORBYN!", but would it? And does it matter?
Bodger is in charge, deflection is pointless.
>> No. 29112 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 4:55 pm
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At what percentage of people claiming that they are having their freedoms shit on do we need to reach before its actually, you know, true? Regardless of how valid that point is. If half your people consider it true... Isn't it?
>> No. 29113 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:00 pm
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>>29106
The proposal seems perfectly sensible to me. Supermarkets that remain open late have been a godsend for avoiding crowds where social distancing becomes impossible - And it's noticeable how busy Sunday trading hours are from the opposite end.

>>29110
>>29111
Didn't we already have a cunt-off over what Corbyn would do at the start of this but it quickly became apparent there's no objective way of knowing?
>> No. 29114 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:04 pm
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>>29113
It doesn't sound like this place to have a cunt-off about Jeremy Corbyn.
>> No. 29115 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:10 pm
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>>29114
That's what Corbyn would say
>> No. 29116 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:31 pm
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>>29115
But if he said it it would have been worse
>> No. 29117 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:36 pm
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>>29112

We are having our freedoms constrained, that's not really in dispute. Our rights are being temporarily curtailed in order to save lives, which is morally justifiable and fully compatible with the Human Rights Act. Human rights aren't unconditional, because they frequently conflict and have to be balanced against each other; my right to swing my fist ends at your nose.

In a democratic society, you're free to argue that your right to go to the pub is more important than someone else's right to live, but I don't really see people doing that - the complaints about control measures mainly seem to be coming from people who downplay or outright deny the facts about the pandemic.
>> No. 29118 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 5:51 pm
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>>29110

>We've shagged it badly enough that the damage is done, why continue to have the worst of both worlds when you could at least have a bit of normality and stop suffocating our own economy?

The worst case scenario is still 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. A couple of months ago you could have argued that controlling the virus is a futile game of whack-a-mole, but the successful vaccine trials have given us a viable exit strategy. With the finish line in sight, there couldn't be a worse time to give up.
>> No. 29120 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 6:04 pm
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>>29117

>the complaints about control measures mainly seem to be coming from people who downplay or outright deny the facts about the pandemic.

Not really lad. There's obviously the vocal 5G nutters, anti-vaxxers and what have you online, but most people who object to the measures currently in place do so from a "long term harm" perspective. Whether or not you think they are arguing in good faith is up to you.
>> No. 29122 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 7:10 pm
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>>29105

Working the midnight to 8am shift on the floor at Primark sounds like my own personal hell.
>> No. 29123 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 8:25 pm
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>>29117
> Our rights are being temporarily curtailed in order to save lives, which is morally justifiable.
Well in your opinion. Some might say there's no justification for the government curtailing rights. Some might see it as a failure, if they believe the government is there to recognize and protect those rights.
>> No. 29124 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 10:01 pm
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>>29123

>Some might say there's no justification for the government curtailing rights.

Those people would be anarchists. Everyone who thinks we should have a government believes that we should curtail some rights for some people some of the time, because that's a foundational requirement of any system of government

The only way a government can protect anyone's rights is by taking away some of the rights of someone else. If you believe that you have a right not to be burgled, then you need someone to catch, arrest and punish burglars. If you believe that you have a right to healthcare and education, then you need someone to force people to pay their taxes. If you believe that you have a right to safe drinking water, you need someone to stop people from dumping toxic waste in rivers.

Government is always a trade-off.
>> No. 29125 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 10:35 pm
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>>29124
>Those people would be anarchists.
That or selfish hypocrites who acknowledge that rights may need to be curtailed, as long as it's not their rights.
>> No. 29126 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 11:35 pm
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>>29122
I'll man that shift on .gs if you do boxing day morning when everyone's on a comedown. I heard Purps offering double pay for temps this year.
>> No. 29127 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 11:43 pm
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>>29124
I think this is a rather superficial - and stereotypical - reading of anarchism. I'm not an anarchist myself, but if you talked to some would you be shocked that they have actually thought in detail about how an anarchist society can work?
>> No. 29128 Anonymous
30th November 2020
Monday 11:57 pm
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Lad, I'm not sure what to say.

If I believe that I have a right not to be burgled, then I expect the government to provide sufficient policing and judicial system to protect that right, and collect some taxes in order to do so.

If I believe there is a right to healthcare and education, then I expect the government to collect further taxes for that.

If I believe there is a right to clean water, then I expect the government to ensure that's the case, and punish toxic waste dumpers.

That seems to me to quite a civilised state of affairs, and at no-time is the government curtailing anyone any rights in doing so - since the right to burgle, the right not to pay taxes, and the right to dump toxic waste aren't things.
>> No. 29129 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 12:04 am
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>>29124
In this instance its obviously not a trade-off some people are comfortable making. This is a bad argument and you should be able to see it given the state is also operating as final arbiter. I don't think anyone is even kidding themselves about the massive retrenchment of state power that will follow from this.

But following your own reasoning; if lockdown is worth it to protect lives then you have to balance that against the harm it causes, including deaths. That's a hard metric as it boils into guesswork on long-term health outcomes from issues including poor mental health and poverty but I think you'll be able to guess what a cancelled Christmas will do for loneliness and retailer jobs. It's a balancing act and one that calls for cold decision making that people will evaluate on their own circumstances.

Not even against lockdown, I have a comfortable WFH job and a good part of my life has been spent as a recluse but your argument seem whack to me. If I was some pro-social simpleton out of work since they closed down the ice breaker activity factory I might feel very strongly on the impacts of lockdown.
>> No. 29130 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 12:53 am
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>>29128

False equivalence lad. At no time has there ever been a right to not be exposed to natural pathogens. People make reasonable accommodations to try and prevent the spread of diseases, up to a point, but up until this year it has primarily been a person's own responsibility to avoid exposure.

In many ways we actively discouraged people from doing the responsible thing- How many times have you been sneered at for phoning in to work when you had a cold, when in reality, as we now well know, that's the right and decent thing to do?

The United Kingdom is not so individualist of a country as the United States, and look what a mess they're in. But by and large they appear to understand and accept that their plight is the price of that much vaunted freedom they're always on about. Much like with guns.

Just because you think a certain way doesn't mean it's somehow the natural state of affairs and everything else is weird and unreasonable. That's a very dull view of the world.
>> No. 29131 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 3:03 am
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>>29130
>but up until this year it has primarily been a person's own responsibility to avoid exposure.
Not really, this is just a side effect of all the measures we've historically taken becoming so normalized. It sounds odd to imagine that binmen are a collective measure against illness and disease, but it's a big part of why they were created in the first place. The same is more obviously true of the way we've created sanitary standards in everything else.

In general, most individualist countries seem to have a shared delusion where little things like minimum sanitary standards fall into the background. People forget that there's a law being enforced, then imagine that in the absence of that law they'd still be fine because they've not suffered any ill consequences so far.
>> No. 29132 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 3:09 am
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>>29128

All of those examples involve an infringement of the rights of an individual. You have a right to freedom of movement, except where those rights infringe on the property rights of others. You have the right to liberty, except where your liberty is removed by the criminal justice system. You have the right to own property, except where that property is subject to taxation.

Only a state (or someone acting on authority of the state) can infringe on the rights of an individual in this way; this monopoly of coercive force is the defining feature of a functioning state. If anyone else did those things, they'd be guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment or extortion.

>>29130

>At no time has there ever been a right to not be exposed to natural pathogens.

Being needlessly exposed to a deadly disease is contrary to the most fundamental human right, the right to life. Intentionally or grossly negligently exposing someone to infectious disease is a criminal offence.

Isolating the sick is mentioned in Leviticus. Leper colonies were first constructed in the early Middle Ages. The term "quarantine" originated in the 15th century. States using coercive means to control the spread of infectious disease is not new, nor is it legally contentious.

>>29127

I used to be an anarchist. Anarchism is defined by a rejection of coercive hierarchy. Anarchists have diverse views on how a society could be organised, but by definition they don't believe that anyone should be forced to do something that they don't want to do by a state or state-like entity.

Saying that some anarchists believe in the legitimacy of state coercion is like saying that some atheists believe in god - it might be empirically true, but it's a contradiction in terms.
>> No. 29134 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 9:18 am
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>>29132
>I used to be an anarchist
Oh really. Tell me about that; at what age and for how long?
>> No. 29135 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 12:49 pm
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>>29132

>Intentionally or grossly negligently exposing someone to infectious disease is a criminal offence.


Quite. See also:

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/ouulj/blog/2020/05/crime-and-coronavirus-three-thoughts

>A person who intentionally or recklessly causes another to suffer grievous bodily harm commits an offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, s. 20. Where D infects V with coronavirus, and V suffers severe symptoms, D causes V to suffer grievous bodily harm.

>D is reckless if they foresee harm, yet unjustifiably go on to take the risk of it (Cunningham [1957] 2 QB 396; R v G [2003] 3 WLR 1060). For GBH, D only needs to foresee some harm, not the specific harm which occurs (Mowatt [1968] 1 QB 421). So long as D realises that their symptoms mean they might have coronavirus, and knows that their conduct poses a risk of infecting another, D foresees harm.
>> No. 29139 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 4:21 pm
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Surely the conversation should first be around proving such restrictions actually do anything meaningful? We seemed to have skipped that part entirely. The Welsh Gov have just announced all these debilitating restrictions for hospitality but as for proving that the balance of harms is in their favour, no chance. They just happen. And THEN we all debate as to whether they are justified. I feel like if they painted a better picture as to why, scientifically, they have come to the conclusion that the pubs need to close at 6, people would better accept it (if valid). The obvious thought is that they dont have any method and are purely winging it.
>> No. 29140 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 4:36 pm
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>>29134

I don't want to give precise dates because I'd quite like to remain anonymous, but long story short: Started reading anarchist literature in my mid-teens, got involved with SolFed, got kicked out of school, traipsed around various road protest sites, spent some time at Tipi Valley and Talamh. Got my head kicked in a few times, ended up on the Met's Forward Intelligence list, my mam got harassed a bit by Special Branch, spent time with a lot of people who later turned out to be undercover fuzz.

Slowly realised that the Utopian ideals of the movement were futile in the face of consistent bastardry from the sort of people who enjoyed PE at school, watched the movement fall apart through state-engineered mistrust and paranoia, lost faith in humanity, became a degenerate pisshead for a bit.

Eventually matured into a social democrat with egalitarian ideals and a strong streak of conservatism. State coercion is basically a bad thing, but it's the only thing separating us from even worse tyranny; I learned to cherish the values of civil society and the rule of law, because I'd seen first hand just how fragile they are and the horrendous things that happen when the mask slips. Democracy is a sham, politicians are basically cunts, but it's the least-worst option and things can get really ugly really quickly, so we'd better look after what we've got.
>> No. 29141 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 4:45 pm
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>>29139

>Surely the conversation should first be around proving such restrictions actually do anything meaningful? We seemed to have skipped that part entirely.

We can't, because we're dealing with a novel virus and we don't have the luxury of running controlled trials. We know that SARS-CoV-2 spreads mainly through exhaled droplets and aerosols, so we're trying to restrict close indoor contact in the least disruptive way that gets R below 1. It is just educated guesswork, but the people doing the guessing are as educated as it gets.

When you're in A&E and bleeding all over the floor, you don't ask the doctor for peer-reviewed references for his clinical decisions; you accept that time is of the essence and he's probably going to use a sensible combination of hard evidence and clinical judgement. Same principle here - difficult decisions are being made based on relatively weak data, because we just can't get better data and we don't have the option of doing nothing.
>> No. 29142 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 5:03 pm
29142 spacer
>>29141

Don't be daft lad, you know the pigshit thick decisions like "Well pubs can open but only until X time!" ones aren't made by anyone scientific or medical. You know as well as the rest of us that the decision to come out of Lockdown 1.0 was politically motivated more than anything, and you know as well as we do that EO2HO was a disastrous idea, but oh no it's okay because masks! Masks are correct now!

It's the attempt to have it both ways that's nonsensical. I can respect someone who says "Fuck it, what's 250,000 old people dying, drop in the ocean. I don't want to surrender my livelihood for them" and I can respect someone who says "We must stay locked down until the vaccine is out regardless of the cost to businesses, no ifs or buts, life is more important." What I can not respect is someone who says "We can only go to the pub until 6, that way only 100,000 people will die and on balance that's enough for me to be comfortable with."

We know what works and what doesn't, it's not rocket science. You're pretending like we have no clue, but we do, we're just not willing to do the things we know will work because it's harder. We also know what won't work, but we think that if we dress the things that don't work up with a bit of arbitrary bullshit around the edges, it makes them okay.

In your example of an A&E doctor it's a bit like you're bleeding all over the floor and instead of using bandages he says "Well, I'd rather not cut that lovely Ralph Lauren shirt you're wearing, so instead of dressing the wound I'll just put you under a heat lamp and come back in an hour to see how you are." It's not a difficult decision made on weak data, it's an absurd decision made with other motivations in mind.
>> No. 29143 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 5:29 pm
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>>29142

The government are undoubtedly making decisions influenced by economic and political factors, but don't ignore the immense public health implications of lockdown measures.

Unemployment, financial insecurity and loneliness have severely negative effects on physical and mental health; there are parts of the country where neighbouring boroughs have a twenty year difference in life expectancy, solely due to socioeconomic factors. Since the first lockdown, we've seen huge increases in depression, alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide; that despair will have health impacts that last well beyond the pandemic.

I don't imagine that the Tory government are all that worried about this, but public health scientists certainly are. It's no good saving 100,000 lives this year if you kill 200,000 over the next five years because half the country looks like Middlesborough.

I've posted previously and at length about how badly our government has botched the covid response, but I don't imagine for a second that any of this is simple or easy.
>> No. 29156 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 11:49 pm
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291562915629156
>A new tougher tier system of coronavirus restrictions for England will begin on Wednesday after the plan was approved by MPs.

>The new tier system comes into force when England's current lockdown ends in the early hours of Wednesday. Every area of the country is in one of three tiers - medium (one), high (two) and very high (three) - with the vast majority of the population in the higher two tiers.

>They are tougher than the previous tier system the country was under, before its second lockdown began in November, the government says. In tier two, people are not allowed to mix with anyone outside their household or support bubble indoors, although they can socialise in groups of up to six outdoors. And in tier three, people must also not mix with anyone outside their household or support bubble indoors, or at most outdoor venues.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55149196

Well that's the office's Christmas lunch dealt with anyway.
>> No. 29157 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 12:10 am
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>>29140
What are undercover officers like, did you suspect any of them? Did you make good mates with any and feel betrayed? It seems like something that would really fuck with your head
>> No. 29158 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 12:15 am
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>>29140
>traipsed around various road protest sites
also you weren't ever at Faslane were you?
>> No. 29159 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 1:59 am
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>>29157
There's a podcast from the Telegraph I've been dabbling with recently that discusses situations when these sort of undercover protest cops started relationships with people and led them on for years. Bed of Lies it's called.
>> No. 29161 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 3:33 am
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>>29157

Most of the officers involved had been undercover for many years, so they appeared to be well-known and trusted members of the community. I wouldn't say that I was good mates with any of them, but it definitely fucked with everyone's head.

You got used to the "covert" surveillance from long-lens police photographers hiding in bushes and parked cars, you got used to the idea that your phone might be tapped, you even got used to the dawn raids and the unprovoked kickings, but I don't know how anyone can get used to the knowledge that their community had been systematically infiltrated.

It colours all your memories, because you can't be sure if everyone was who they appeared to be. I'm a very private person and tend to be quite guarded even with people I know well, which I think must be influenced by my experiences of police surveillance.

>>29158

Naturally. Everyone ended up there at some point. As a permanent camp with good community support it was a frequent stopping-off point when you had nowhere else to go.
>> No. 29162 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 4:12 am
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>>29140

>State coercion is basically a bad thing, but it's the only thing separating us from even worse tyranny; I learned to cherish the values of civil society and the rule of law, because I'd seen first hand just how fragile they are and the horrendous things that happen when the mask slip

Not to be glib, but how could you learn that when it seems like half the people you protested with were coppers? Surely you never actually got a taste of genuine detachment from the state, as the state had their hand up the arse of every movement you experienced?

From where I'm standing, that just sounds like further proof state coercion is absolutely not the least worst form of tyranny.

I'm not particularly trying to pick apart your view of the world, please don't mistake my prodding for that - I'm a similarly jaded in my own radical left views, but I was born too cynical to ever be interested in trying to have my voice heard, so I'm hardly au fait with the collective.
>> No. 29164 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 5:29 pm
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>>29162

>Not to be glib, but how could you learn that when it seems like half the people you protested with were coppers?

The people who spied on us were put there by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. This unit was operated by the Association of Chief Police Officers, which sounds very official but was in fact a private company. It had a bizarre quasi-legal status, with access to the resources of the police but with absolutely no political oversight.

When the Mark Kennedy revelations came out, we got a decent amount of support from members of Parliament. It took some time but eventually there was a full inquiry, ACPO and the NPOIU were shut down and the people worst affected by the spying went to court and won considerable compensation payouts.

The only thing that saved us from the misdeeds of the state was the state. That's a bitter pill to swallow for an anarchist, but what we experienced first-hand was a kind of mini Junta, a conspiracy by senior police officers to subvert the rule of law.

More broadly, we had a visceral insight into some quite abstract notions about oversight and transparency. When a protest camp was being evicted, we always feared private bailiffs more than the police because they were subject to far less scrutiny. We learned to scarper if we saw journalists being arrested or detained, because it meant that things were about to get really fucking ugly.

The alternative to state power isn't a utopia of the proletariat, it's a hundred little fiefdoms run by whichever nasty bastards can grab hold of some power. It's quite a pessimistic world view in some respects, but the sheer inevitability of violence has convinced me that the least-worst option is a well-regulated state monopoly on violence.
>> No. 29166 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 7:16 pm
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>>29164

How would you describe your political views nowadays? I know you've already said "social democrat", but that could mean anything from the worst sort of Blairite to the progressive's wet dream Nordic model. Can you give us a bit more oversight where you've ended up?

I don't mean to belittle you by saying this but I feel like although you've obviously come a long way from being an anarchist and learned many lessons the hard way, being an anarchist is a very fringe idea to begin with. I can't help thinking a great deal of the reason for that is because most people can see, without very much outside influence, that anarchism is... Well. It's a bit daft, honestly.

To what extent do you think the spooks and glowies are still elbow deep in the left, if indeed (though I don't think there's much "if" about it) they still are?

Sorry for the twenty questions, it's not often somebody on .gs has something actually interesting to say.
>> No. 29167 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 8:38 pm
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>>29166

>How would you describe your political views nowadays?

Pragmatic, economically well to the left of the British mainstream (but not massively left-wing by European standards) and extremely risk-averse. I strongly believe in redistribution over state ownership because centralisation tends to lead to cronyism, inefficiency and the patching-over of structural problems (c.f. the collapse of the late 70s that led to Thatcherism).

My main political priority right now is defending the independence of the civil service and the judiciary - they're unglamorous, they're often criticised, but they're absolutely essential in stopping everything from going to shit. I'm pro-devolution and pro-EU; local issues should be addressed as locally as possible and global issues should be addressed as globally as possible. I support electoral reform to increase proportionality and actively want to see European-style rainbow coalitions, because they're less stable in the short run but more resistant to wild ideological swings.

I'm ambivalent about Trident and opposed to most kinds of military intervention, but I think we should be spending far more on foreign aid because it's the cheapest way of protecting our interests abroad. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Brexit, we should be preparing for a massive swing in global power away from America and towards China; in many ways we need to swallow our pride and figure out how to peacefully co-exist with the new superpower, because they're calling the shots now.

>To what extent do you think the spooks and glowies are still elbow deep in the left, if indeed (though I don't think there's much "if" about it) they still are?

There's not much of a dissident left left. The Corbynistas aren't a threat to much of anything, because all they ever do is attend rallies and bicker amongst themselves. I'm sure that groups like CND and the Quakers are still heavily infiltrated, but the attention has very much shifted to the Muslamics. The rise of social media and mass surveillance has probably reduced the need for undercover operations, because it's so easy to keep tabs on people via the technological panopticon.
>> No. 29168 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 8:55 pm
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>>29167
>the attention has very much shifted to the Muslamics
I wonder how much harder it is to infiltrate Muslamics, than it is far-left groups.
>> No. 29169 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 9:40 pm
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>>29168
Probably not a huge difference; a lot of the officers infiltrating the left had a lot of difficulty with the amount of reading they had to do to fit in.
>> No. 29170 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 10:16 pm
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I've not even been taking my mask off outside lately because it's nice and warm on my face.
>> No. 29171 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 10:35 pm
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>>29167

>Pragmatic, economically [...] wild ideological swings.

Fair enough, those seem like a thoroughly reasonable set of beliefs to me. Nobody can say you're not philosophically well travelled either.

I've never known what box to put myself in because I tend to find myself in disagreement with other leftists about a lot of things, but at the same time I see a lot of people's views as just sort of shallowly tribal and rigidly defined by the ideology they follow. Not to mention peer pressure, it seems, being especially potent in shaping opinions today.

>Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Brexit, we should be preparing for a massive swing in global power away from America and towards China; in many ways we need to swallow our pride and figure out how to peacefully co-exist with the new superpower, because they're calling the shots now.

Absolutely. The longer we stay entangled with America, the further they're going to drag us down when it's time for the screaming ab-dabs of no longer being the biggest boy in the playground. China are no saints, but that's the way the wind is blowing.

>>29169

So did any of them find themselves reading a bit of Marx and Engels for research, and end up becoming converts?
>> No. 29172 Anonymous
2nd December 2020
Wednesday 10:51 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55145696

>The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination.

>Britain's medicines regulator, the MHRA, says the jab, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19 illness, is safe to be rolled out.

>The first doses are already on their way to the UK, with 800,000 due in the coming days, Pfizer said.


ITZ!!
>> No. 29173 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 12:38 am
29173 spacer
But, the lockdown didn't do anything?!
>> No. 29174 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:04 am
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>>29169
Might be a bit more difficult when it is a different culture with a bit of Arabic needed as well.
>> No. 29175 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:06 am
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>>29172
I won't be getting it for a few years. I will be relying on all the other guinea pigs to protect me.

Chip free.
>> No. 29176 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 9:39 am
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>The UK government has granted pharmaceutical giant Pfizer a legal indemnity protecting it from being sued, enabling its coronavirus vaccine to be rolled out across the country as early as next week.

>The Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed the company has been given an indemnity protecting it from legal action as a result of any problems with the vaccine. Ministers have also changed the law in recent weeks to give new protections to companies such as Pfizer, giving them immunity from being sued by patients in the event of any complications.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-pfizer-vaccine-legal-indemnity-safety-ministers-b1765124.html

Anti-vazxers I know are having a field day with this. They're convinced this means it's gonna be another thalidomide.
>> No. 29177 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 10:04 am
29177 spacer
>>29176
Just a reminder that it's legal to kill antivax on Thursday mornings within walled towns and cities, though check your local by-laws for what weapons you're allowed to use. If in doubt, stick with a longbow.
>> No. 29178 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 10:18 am
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>>29176
Am I "wrong" to be uneasy that they've got a full indemnity?
I see the idea: you want to incentivise them to make the vaccine without being too cautious about whether it'll hurt 0.0000001% of people, but I still feel like you're creating a moral hazard by not giving them some liability.
In the world of magical incentives where people think about these things, I'd add that giving the indemnity presumably discourages the hypothetical rational consumer from taking the vaccine, since if it does go wrong they've got no recourse against the manufacturer if it makes them grow a third eye that ruins their balance or something. I suppose they can still sue the NHS, but who wants to sue the broke?
>> No. 29179 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 10:22 am
29179 spacer
>>29178

The government have a long-standing compensation scheme for people who have suffered severe vaccine side-effects. Coronavirus vaccines aren't yet covered by that scheme, but I assume they will be.

https://www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment
>> No. 29180 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 10:52 am
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>>29178
I totally agree.
>> No. 29181 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 11:24 am
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>>29178

In theory it's sort of a "we wouldn't normally rush it like this, and you're asking us to, so you can't blame us if something's wrong" situation; sort of like if your boss makes you stay late and rush out a load of work in half the time it should take he can hardly hold you accountable if it's sloppy. But of course it's hard to totally buy that idea when these companies are obviously gleefully rubbing their hands together at the prospect of all the money it will make them.
>> No. 29182 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 11:26 am
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Why should I trust a state-private apparatus that's never done a thing to improve anyone's quality of life before this?
>> No. 29183 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 11:32 am
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>>29182
Well, it seems you already trust tired talking points from Labour.
>> No. 29184 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 11:39 am
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>>29182

Pfizer have certainly improved the quality of my life.


>> No. 29186 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 12:21 pm
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>>29183
Yeah, because I need Keir Starmer to tell me pharma multinationals who conveniently get their vaccine finished a week after their major competitor does and a Tory party who've invested effectively nill into the country for a decade now might not have my best interests at heart, okay.
>> No. 29187 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 12:40 pm
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>>29176
This will make a lot of rational people uneasy, not just anti-vaxxers.
>> No. 29189 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:03 pm
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>>29176

>They're convinced this means it's gonna be another thalidomide.

If you consider the numbers, we're going to have to vaccinate around four to five billion people in the near future just to get to a point where the virus will run itself dead and one individual infects less than one other person on average.

For argument's sake, let's say a drug that's considered safe has less than about 1 percent of patients developing severe adverse symptoms. Let's then assume that these vaccines are so safe that only 0.5 percent of patients suffer bad side effects. With five billion patients, that leaves as many as 25 million potential patients worldwide who will have a bad reaction to one of the vaccines. Not everyone of those 25 million is then going to die, mind, but the vaccine might pose a considerable risk to their health.

On the other hand, if we assume about a three-percent overall death rate from Covid-19 worldwide, allowing for different levels of health sector infrastructure between first-world and developing countries, then that could leave over 220 million people worldwide dead from the virus itself. And that still isn't counting potential deaths of people who can't be treated in ICU because all intensive care resources are taken up by Covid-19 patients.

So in essence, we're still better off getting everybody immunised against Covid-19 than if we'd just let the whole thing run its course.

It's probably still a good idea to monitor these new vaccines closely for unanticipated side effects. But I don't see this becoming another thalidomide.
>> No. 29190 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:51 pm
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>>29189
>It's probably still a good idea to monitor these new vaccines closely for unanticipated side effects. But I don't see this becoming another thalidomide.

This. People questioning it is popping up more and more now and I've seen others mentioning thalidomide, makes you wonder if there's another active disinfo campaign going around. It's perfectly acceptable to have doubts of course, but in the face of the evidence right now, the risk is incredibly low and it is still being monitored.
>> No. 29191 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:53 pm
29191 spacer
>>29187
There are two layers to that joke, one for each persuasion.

>>29189
And if you think about it the inherent staggered approach to distribution where we go down age groups might mitigate some of this through experience. If one of the side effects is that women grow more voluptuous (yet firm) breasts and become altogether lusty then I'm sure ARE BORIS Carrie will quickly put a stop to it.
>> No. 29192 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 1:57 pm
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>>29190
> but in the face of the evidence right now,
But the point is that maybe there's currently insufficient evidence.
>> No. 29193 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 2:10 pm
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>>29192
We better not do anything then just because maybe.
>> No. 29195 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 2:21 pm
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>>29193
No, give it to old people and undesirables first, and wait. When we have proper evidence, then role it out.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 29196 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 3:14 pm
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>>29190

>If one of the side effects is that women grow more voluptuous (yet firm) breasts and become altogether lusty

Please, god, give us a silver lining to this shit-show.

I'd say "knowing my luck, it'll probably just give blokes big tits" but TBH I'd quite like a pair of whopping milkers.
>> No. 29199 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 4:21 pm
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>Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious-disease expert in the US, says UK regulators were too quick to authorize Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine.

>The UK on Wednesday became the first Western nation to authorize a COVID-19 shot, and vaccinations are expected to start next week. European Union politicians immediately criticized the move, calling it "hasty" and "problematic." On Thursday, Fauci joined the chorus of critics. He told Fox News that UK regulators hadn't scrutinized the Pfizer trial data as "carefully" as the US Food and Drug Administration, and he warned that rapid approvals could reduce public confidence in the shot.

https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-vaccine-approved-uk-too-fast-fauci-fda-covid-coronavirus-2020-12
>> No. 29200 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 4:35 pm
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>>29199
>The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has claimed the UK was the first country in the world to clinically approve a coronavirus vaccine because the country has “much better” scientists than France, Belgium or the US. Williamson said he was not surprised the UK was the first to roll out the immunisation because “we’re a much better country than every single one of them”.

>Asked whether Brexit was to credit for the world-first, Williamson told LBC radio station on Thursday: “Well I just reckon we’ve got the very best people in this country and we’ve obviously got the best medical regulators.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/03/gavin-williamson-britains-a-much-better-country-than-all-of-them
>> No. 29201 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 4:36 pm
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>>29190
This. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the usual Russian astroturfers have been amplifying anti-vax/anti-mask/anti-lockdown stuff on social media.

Have any other vaccines actually caused these unexpected long-term side effects which only appear years later people keep going on about?

I'm no expert but presumably any unexpected reaction directly caused by the vaccine itself would only happen within the short period the vaccine material remains in the body, and any autoimmune conditions caused by the immune response would develop within a known timeframe, which one would hope is taken into account during phase 1&2 trials.
>> No. 29202 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 4:48 pm
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>>29201

>Have any other vaccines actually caused these unexpected long-term side effects which only appear years later people keep going on about?

Normally there is about a decade of animal testing, so they would fail before you had even heard of them.
>> No. 29203 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 5:06 pm
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>>29199
>as "carefully" as the US Food and Drug Administration

Aren't the FDA generally worse?
>> No. 29204 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 5:13 pm
29204 spacer

1604_mink_1000.jpg
292042920429204
>Culled mink rise from the dead to Denmark's horror
>“It seems like no one really knows the consequences of this,” Susan Münster of the Danish water board told Jyllands Posten. “I must confess I find it worrying.” At least two local mayors had demanded the mink be dug up and incinerated, Münster said.
>Photos and videos of the emerging bodies have set social media buzzing in Denmark, with one Twitter user calling 2020 “the year of the zombie mutant killer mink” and another calling on the population to “run … The mink are coming for you.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/25/culled-mink-rise-from-the-dead-denmark-coronavirus

ITZ
>> No. 29205 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 5:47 pm
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>>29201
>I'm no expert
>one would hope
Your whole post is 'I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it would be nice if...'.
>> No. 29206 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 6:10 pm
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>>29205
And yet you didn't respond to his post at all.
>> No. 29207 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 6:23 pm
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>>29206
What do you mean? You're responding to my response.
>> No. 29208 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 6:24 pm
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>>29206
Yes he did. He even linked back to it to make it obvious that he was doing so.
>> No. 29209 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 7:30 pm
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>>29195
>> No. 29211 Anonymous
3rd December 2020
Thursday 8:11 pm
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>>29209
Yes that is indeed a moronic post.
>> No. 29233 Anonymous
5th December 2020
Saturday 11:56 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdvpJrGzcIU
>> No. 29261 Anonymous
7th December 2020
Monday 8:49 pm
29261 spacer
One of my mum's friends said today that her GP has died from the coronavirus. He was about 60 years old and in good overall health.

Not really reassuring.
>> No. 29262 Anonymous
7th December 2020
Monday 9:14 pm
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>>29261
I think with medical workers it depends on how much of a hot beefty viral load they're exposed to. If you're going to be exposed to lots of people with coronavirus then you're going to get it worse who has only been exposed to one person with it.
>> No. 29263 Anonymous
7th December 2020
Monday 10:06 pm
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>>29261
Doctors are never in good overall health. I didn't realise this until I dated one and found out about their secret lives full smoking and other ills that they keep from us laypeople.
>> No. 29264 Anonymous
7th December 2020
Monday 11:09 pm
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>>29262
>>29263

Medical staff do tend to have a shocking disregard for their own health. Comes with the territory when you think about it.
>> No. 29265 Anonymous
7th December 2020
Monday 11:16 pm
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>>29264

Most doctors I know are either fat or smoke. My ex who was a nurse did a pack of tabs a day and she worked on a cancer ward.
>> No. 29266 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 12:09 am
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>>29265

My GP is a bit on the pudgy side, and he has been for the 20 years or so that I have known him. Wouldn't say he seems in bad health, but he has always been overweight.
>> No. 29267 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 1:56 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnV9LumDxZk
>> No. 29268 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 2:41 pm
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download.jpg
292682926829268
>>29267
>> No. 29269 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 2:49 pm
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>>29267
Who calls their son William Shakespeare?!
>> No. 29270 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 3:05 pm
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>>29267
Is anyone really going to buy this? The old trick of pretending to cry to cover up laughter? Really?
>> No. 29273 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 5:07 pm
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>>29271
>>29272

Sorry mods.
>> No. 29274 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 10:04 pm
29274 spacer
Ah, fuck.
Some old people who get the jab are going to die / get dementia / fall over, aren't they? This is going to be MMR->'tism all over again, isn't it.
Sorry if I'm late to this horrible realisation.
>> No. 29275 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 10:11 pm
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>>29274
No.
>> No. 29276 Anonymous
8th December 2020
Tuesday 10:20 pm
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>>29274

>My Nan got the vaccine and her BUM EXPLODED

Just imagine the headlines.
>> No. 29277 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 12:47 pm
29277 spacer
>>29274
2 people who got the jab yesterday have had an allergic reaction. These people have a history of reactions to jabs.

Of course to our tinfoil enthusiast friends it means they got faulty satanic 5g chips.
>> No. 29278 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 12:51 pm
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>>29277
>a history of reactions to jabs
I don't get it though, what is it they are specifically allergic to? The plastic in the syringe? Saline? Being penetrated (oo-er)?
>> No. 29279 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 12:53 pm
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>>29278
>Saline
There's a bit more to a vaccine than just dead virus bits and saline.
>> No. 29280 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 1:51 pm
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>>29279
You're being sardonic but apparently I'm under a misapprehension that that literally is what a vaccine is. Can you elaborate (and specify what the allergen is, as I originally asked)?
>> No. 29281 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 2:08 pm
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You don't need to answer now, I found this page which has at the bottom a list of other common ingredients in vaccines which could be allergens.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/why-vaccination-is-safe-and-important/
>> No. 29282 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 2:40 pm
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>>29280
I'm not trying to be rude, I just don't quite see why it would take them so long and so much money to develop new vaccines if it was just that.
>> No. 29283 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 3:04 pm
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>>29282
Oh. Well that's because that's another issue entirely. Trials are expensive and take a long time. Some viruses mutate constantly. Some diseases are caused by huge numbers of different viral strains it's difficult to vaccinate against all at once. Some viruses, like HIV, destroy the very immune system vaccines are supposed to provoke a response from. I don't think it has anything do with using particular ingredients.
>> No. 29284 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 3:05 pm
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>>29283
That makes sense, thanks.
>> No. 29285 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 3:27 pm
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>>29282
You want a vaccine to trigger a robust specific immune response across a very large population, and for it to confer lasting immunity. Putting in 'bits of dead virus' was the original strategy but doesn't reliably confer immunity in enough people. You can use viral proteins/attenuated virus alongside an immune booster but this also is not necessarily effective and runs the risk of triggering adverse immune responses in some individuals.

Nature did some really nice infographics explaining how vaccines work https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01221-y

The Oxford vaccine is using RNA to get your cells to produce viral proteins which can repeatably trigger this specific immune response for nCov-19 with less risk of adverse effects. The ChAdOx1 system was being trialed for Malaria prior to the pandemic, and back in 2013 was looking like it was a promising candidate for Ebolavirus (but this pandemic burnt itself out before clinical trials could be completed).

Nothing in a lab is cheap, and when you have infectious diseases the increased bio-security results in increased costs.

When doing clinical trials you need to take into consideration of the costs of clinical space and clinical staff.

There is then the whole legal aspect where it needs to be determined whether the trial is ethical, likely to be successful, and everybody doing their due diligence.

Applications for approval for new clinical treatments have to go through regulatory bodies and processing this again takes time and costs money.

Then you have to take into consideration that manufacturers need to massively increase production capacity whilst maintaining elaborate QC protocols. And then your whole supply chain management to distribute a product that is very sensitive to how it is stored and handled. [spoilers]Now we know the vaccines work, this is going to be the bottleneck in getting this pandemic shite tae fuck.[/spoilers]

These vaccines have been developed for very little money Being the system used was being developed for a decade and they were just able to swap out the viral protein component and in very little time due to all COVID research having money thrown at it and all applications being bounced straight to the front of the queue.

Most medical research doesn't make it to clinical practice (and therefore market) so the costs of all the failed attempts need to be factored in to the profits made by successful products in order to keep the whole enterprise afloat. That said, AZ has committed to producing and selling the vaccines at cost for the duration of the crisis.

Hopefully TPTB learn from the errors of the recent past and instead of focusing only on 24-hour news cycles and quarterly profits, do their civic duty and plan for long term sustainability, engineering systems with redundancy to make them less fragile in the face of adversity, and stop asset stripping the state to make their mates richer. e.g. Operation Cygnus [spoiler]Nothing will be learned. We will be caught as flat footed, if not moreso by the next 'unprecedented' event
>> No. 29286 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 3:43 pm
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>>29280

Any foreign biomolecule that gets into your blood is going to be allergenic (as will many non-biological proteins). The main component of this in the context of vaccines is hopefully going to be the viral proteins of interest.

In that list Aluminium and Squalene oil are listed as adjuvants meaning that they are also promoting immune response. The idea is that if you just inject the viral protein, you might not end up with a strong enough response. If you inject more viral protein the vaccine becomes more expensive to produce and potentially results in toxicity. Use of adjuvants aims to summon immune system cells to the site of vaccination and hopes that some of the cells summoned by adjuvants will respond to specific viral proteins of interest. (The aim of vaccination is to make you allergic to the virus, not to aluminium or whatever).

The immune system is a very complex and nuanced system and varies widely between individuals. this is why some people are killed by bee stings, some people are killed by eating peanuts, and some people are basically invincible There's a trade off between 'We want to stimulate a strong immune response to the virus' and 'we don't want to trigger such a strong immune response that the person gets anaphylaxis, meningitis or cytokine storm.

I am not the person you responded to earlier, but hopefully some of what I wrote was helpful, or interesting.
>> No. 29290 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 7:14 am
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It was on Jeremy Vine that antivaxxers are more likely to have a degree than the general population, although I'm not sure what source they used for this.
>> No. 29293 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 10:20 am
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>>29290
I wouldn't be surprised honestly. One of the silliest concepts on earth is that of the "smart person". What happens is that someone gets a little education and then decides that since they're a genuinely good physicist and everyone is impressed by how clever they are, they're intelligent, and therefore qualified to pontificate on vaccines despite having no real understanding of biology. For some fields (and strangely, not others) a lot of people seem to think that their intelligence will make up for a complete lack of domain specific knowledge.
>> No. 29294 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 1:34 pm
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>>29293

People are always asking me about biochemistry, when I'm in microbiology, and they give me a dour look as if I'm either thick or shit at my job when I tell them I haven't the foggiest.
>> No. 29295 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 1:53 pm
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>>29293
If you were a smart person you'd understand that you're wrong.
>> No. 29296 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 2:48 pm
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>>29293
I find a lot of times the antivax folk who claim to be Doctors etc, are herbal medicine or Chiropractic types.
>> No. 29297 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 2:53 pm
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I was walking with my girlfriend earlier and I suggested she kept her mask on because it keeps your face nice and warm. She told me that she'd heard that masks can cause you to retain extra carbon dioxide, which can lead to lung damage. She has a degree in sociology.
>> No. 29302 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 4:24 pm
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>>29297
Yes, we all know CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. Wearing a mask too much is effectively subjecting your lungs to climate change. Her lungs will be dead in 12 years.
>> No. 29303 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 5:08 pm
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>>29294
Keep things simple and just say "I'm a chemist not a biologist", and hopefully more people will understand it on that level.
Like when people ask me what I do for a living, I tend to start with "an engineer", because 9 out of 10 people have no clue what a metallurgist is.
>> No. 29304 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 5:29 pm
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>>29303
>metallurgist

I always had this down as someone who must Mosh by any means necessary. Next you're going to tell me that The Demiurge isn't actually an epidemic of procrastination.
>> No. 29305 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 5:38 pm
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>>29303

Would that it were that easy, it's more like just "but you're a laboratory person, you should know about all the things that happen in the laboratory" without understanding that The Laboratory encompasses about six departments and you'd have to have a totally different degree and specialisation to work in most of them.

I usually simplify it to something like you wouldn't ask a bricklayer what's going on with the plumbing, just because they both work on the same building site.
>> No. 29307 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 7:28 pm
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>>29305

It's all houses tho i'n't it mate?
>> No. 29308 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 8:48 pm
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>>29307

No it's a lab.
>> No. 29310 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:01 pm
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>>29308
When did dogs come into it?
>> No. 29311 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:06 pm
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>>29310

Whenever they want, we haven't put the doors in yet.
>> No. 29312 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:17 pm
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>>29311
How do they smell?
>> No. 29313 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:25 pm
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>>29312
Sensory cells called chemoreceptors. When an odorant stimulates the chemoreceptors in the nose that detect smell, they pass on electrical impulses to the brain. The brain then interprets patterns in electrical activity as specific odors and olfactory sensation becomes perception.
>> No. 29314 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:36 pm
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>>29313

I think there's also some sort of quantum physics effect at play.

Jim Al-Khalili described it in detail in his series on quantum theory.

In short, your nose doesn't just detect certain molecules in a lock-and-key kind of way, but it actually picks up vibrations from the molecules that the cells in your nose then convert into the actual electrical signals and the olfactory sensation.

https://maxiamoperfumes.com/2018/05/09/quantum-biology-explains-why-we-hear-with-our-noses/
>> No. 29315 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:43 pm
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>>29314

So when you smell fart, you're not directly inhaling particles of arse gas?

I've always intuitively thought this must be the case somehow, otherwise you wouldn't be able to smell harmful chemicals without being harmed by the inhalation of them, kind of thing.
>> No. 29316 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:56 pm
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>>29315
No, you are inhaling arse gas and harmful chemicals, that's why poisonous gas is poisonous. It's just that your scent receptors don't send bits of them to your brain directly.
>> No. 29317 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 9:56 pm
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>>29310
>> No. 29318 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 10:23 pm
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>>29316

>It's just that your scent receptors don't send bits of them to your brain directly.


There should be a joke in it that ends with the words "brain fart", but I can't think of it now.
>> No. 29370 Anonymous
14th December 2020
Monday 12:34 pm
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https://archive.vn/UWnAm

This is interesting if you still have the stomach for reading a semi-forensic look at how badly things went between the summer and now.
>> No. 29373 Anonymous
14th December 2020
Monday 4:01 pm
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>>29370
It's terrible if this poor chap really did "have to beg" for a scan, but realistically, how much difference to his prognosis did those five weeks make? I don't know a lot about cancer so if someone who does could enlighten me whether it really is true he would "still be here" if they had diagnosed him in March as his wife contends.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-55300747
>> No. 29374 Anonymous
14th December 2020
Monday 4:17 pm
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>>29373
It can make a big difference to severity and the level of treatment required. I know several people, all female if that makes any difference, who weren't taken seriously enough by their doctors and it turned out to be cancer, with one of them having to be off work for about two years due to the late diagnosis. I imagine it's even worse nowadays.

No idea how much a private cancer test would cost.
>> No. 29375 Anonymous
14th December 2020
Monday 11:42 pm
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I feel as though I'm going insane. Everything I ever hoped for the UK is an impossibility and that which is and will be much worse shall be our collective fate. I must give up to avail myself of the abject misery.
>> No. 29376 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 1:22 am
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>>29375
Don't be a soggy biscuit, lad. They'll still be easy slags, Sunday roasts and nice cups of tea in the future - only they will have jetpacks and your Yorkshires will be in suppository form.
>> No. 29377 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 1:29 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/14/how-a-new-covid-strain-may-have-spread-virus-in-south-of-england

>Why is coronavirus rising in parts of southern England?

>One factor could be a new strain of coronavirus that has shown up in England’s genomic surveillance in the past two months. The strain contains a number of different mutations and has been detected in parts of the south where cases of the virus are rising fastest, according to the health secretary, Matt Hancock.


ITZ!!
>> No. 29378 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 2:02 am
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>>29377

Or maybe it's because of the much more lax control measures taken in the south-east compared to the north? Just a thought like.
>> No. 29379 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 5:04 am
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>>29377

Fucking southerners.

"Why is the pandemic worse in the most highly populated city we have that's also taking fewer precautions than most other cities? Must be the virus evolving"
>> No. 29380 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 3:21 pm
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Where are you virologylad? We need you to tell us the likelihood of mutations and strains affecting the effectiveness of the vaccine.
>> No. 29381 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 3:32 pm
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>>29380
It's all part of the plan m8. The different strains, combined with the vaccine will make the 5G mind-control more potent.
>> No. 29382 Anonymous
15th December 2020
Tuesday 8:02 pm
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>>29380
Not him but I don't think there's enough data/evidence yet to draw any conclusions. Anything else is just wild speculation.
>> No. 29383 Anonymous
16th December 2020
Wednesday 1:54 am
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>>29380

Virologylad here, it's about...

checks watch

30 percent, give or take. We've got to watch out for stray RNA strands interfering with the polymerase replication mechanism.

That's why you've got to have your flu jab first, or we could be looking at a catastrophic wave of deadly hybrid influrona virus by March.
>> No. 29389 Anonymous
16th December 2020
Wednesday 3:01 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55331366

>The lockdown has no end date

That's a nice Christmas surprise.
>> No. 29390 Anonymous
16th December 2020
Wednesday 3:20 pm
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>>29389
>Wales
>> No. 29391 Anonymous
16th December 2020
Wednesday 3:49 pm
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>>29380

I believe that the study did in March identified around 12k nCov-19 genomes and the study being referenced in this alarmist tabloid muck found 250k genomes. The story could be trying to scare people into conforming with sensible pandemic times behaviour, but all the people currently acting like dicks are basically psychopaths and it will only encourage your mum's friend to panic buy toilet paper and penne pasta again.

Whilst it is possible that a more virulent strain Occam's razor would suggest that the more likely reason for the uptick is due to the reason suggested by >>29378


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGeQhbw-UU

If anything the reduction in the rate of mortality per case suggests that the virus is evolving towards a less lethal strain.

My 65 year old Uncle died last weekend after a week in ICU which he was admitted to approx. two weeks after going to an anti-masker event in Glasgow.

I implore you all to not travel over the festive period, and definitely don't be attending multiple household dinners.

Every case of COVID from here on out is utterly avoidable as we are in the end game with regards to rolling out effective vaccines.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qdzd/panorama-the-race-for-a-vaccine
>> No. 29392 Anonymous
16th December 2020
Wednesday 3:55 pm
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>>29380

Whoops. Whilst it is possible that strain mutation could effect vaccine efficacy, unless a mutation major structural changes in the spike proteins (which is unlikely) rest assured that it shouldn't be a concern.

The fact that we now have multiple vaccines employing different strategy there are contingencies for contingencies and contingencies.
>> No. 29394 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 7:40 pm
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>>29391
Why that haircut on all the guys, why
>> No. 29395 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 8:09 pm
29395 spacer
>>29394
Crew cuts have been in fashion for a couple of years now.
>> No. 29396 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 8:18 pm
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>>29394

POIKOIY FOOKIN BLOINDAHS
>> No. 29397 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 8:38 pm
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>>29395
Yeah I know, I do actually leave my house, it's just that in this group of people who want to risk penalties to stand around outside a fancy shop all the guys happen to have this haircut, at a rate higher than witnessed in the general population, it's kind of beguiling.
>> No. 29398 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 8:39 pm
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>>29395
>>29396
I remember seeing them at least 10 years ago. It evolved from the classic taper that probably become fashionable from Mad Men, a show that has had a grossly disproportionate impact on fashion to its cultural memory.

Could be worse, at least you don't see many ear gauges anymore.
>> No. 29399 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 9:44 pm
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>>29397
Basically 2010's version of chavs.
>> No. 29400 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 10:32 pm
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>>29398
>>29399

Yeah I think the true origin is from shows like The Only Way Is Newcastle or whatever it was. It's sort of like that shite aspirational high-fashion look that you got on indie lads in the mid-00s, mixed in with a bit of hipsterism, and it's all sort of amalgamated into the default, vanilla fashion we see today. Crew cut, one of those broad-shouldered geezer coats, skinny jeans that show your ankles, and that specific type of shoe I don't know the name of.
>> No. 29401 Anonymous
17th December 2020
Thursday 10:52 pm
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>>29400
>skinny jeans that show your ankles

Also no socks which I still don't fucking understand.
>> No. 29402 Anonymous
18th December 2020
Friday 2:15 am
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Place your bets lads: Do you reckon we will see more or less babies being born in 2021 than usual? I looked online for an answer but all I could see was an article calling a baby bust in June and something else about hundreds of births still waiting to be registered.

I can see it going both ways between bored couples at home and the ambient terror. In many ways it's a horrible time to have a baby but it might be the best for long-term outcomes if school classes are hollowed out.

>>29400
>it's all sort of amalgamated into the default, vanilla fashion we see today

You'll be after blue jeans next!

Anyone who wears blue jeans is a bit suspect if you ask me. It's not much removed in a conformist line of thought from paying extra to wear a corporate logo on your clothes.

>>29401
I'm told that at least some of the smarter ones do wear socks but they use ultra low ones. I know this because I've complained about it before.

Showing some ankle is the height of fashion in the '20s you see.
>> No. 29403 Anonymous
18th December 2020
Friday 5:58 am
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>>29402

My money is on fewer. The sort of people who plan pregnancies are going to be put off by fears over the lack of maternity care and economic uncertainty; the sort of people who have unplanned pregnancies have had much less opportunity to get blackout drunk on blue booze and barebacked behind the bins.

I also suspect that a lot of Eastern Europeans have gone home because they're worried about no-deal and/or just don't feel very welcome any more; they've been a big driver in propping up the birth rate against a more general downward trend.
>> No. 29409 Anonymous
18th December 2020
Friday 10:31 pm
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We're spending more in the shops on booze and less on things like deodorant and brushing our teeth.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/18/virus-drives-healthy-lager-sales-wipes-180m-makeup
>> No. 29410 Anonymous
18th December 2020
Friday 10:36 pm
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>>29409
Why does it have "excluding tobacco" on both the fastest falling and growing lists? It can't be on both and anyway why is it excluded?
>> No. 29414 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:16 am
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>>29401
Like on the left? It's awful.
>> No. 29415 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:52 am
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>>29410

Dunno m8. I assume that the retail industry doesn't want to brag about selling loads of fags. It's been a really wild year in the tobacco market, with overall tobacco sales up £971m. Travel restrictions leading to a reduction in duty-free imports is probably a factor, but I think the elephant in the room is illegally imported tobacco - it's hard to buy knock-off baccy from some bloke in the pub when the pubs are shut.

The EU ban on menthol fags came into force in May, so there have been huge shifts within the market. Menthol filters, cigarillos and heat-not-burn products aren't covered by the ban, so there has been a huge shift from cigarettes to other previously niche categories.

https://www.retailtimes.co.uk/covid-19-sends-supermarket-meat-and-booze-sales-soaring-and-corona-lager-emerges-as-a-surprise-winner-in-the-battle-of-the-brands/

https://www.acs.org.uk/advice/menthol-ban
>> No. 29417 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 8:38 am
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>>29415
>I think the elephant in the room is illegally imported tobacco - it's hard to buy knock-off baccy from some bloke in the pub when the pubs are shut.

This is what a lot of people miss when they talk about povvos spending all of their money on fags and Sky TV. Almost every single one I know is very active in the black market. They buy knock-off fags, they pirate what they watch through Kodi, they know people who sell things on the cheap that have "fallen off the back of a lorry" and so on. They're extremely resourceful and their life isn't as grim as is made out but this is something they can't ever admit to. It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if a large contributing factor to the rise in food poverty this year and parents being unable to feed their kids over the school holidays was because the black market has been more restricted.
>> No. 29418 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 9:54 am
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>>29417

Agreed. I think the great untold story of 2020 is how people on the margins of society have been pushed to breaking point by things that most people are oblivious to.

Research consistently shows that about 10% of the British economy is illicit. Huge amounts of that economic activity has been halted by COVID, but nobody is even talking about it as an issue. There must be millions of people who normally do a bit of minicabbing at the weekend, flog dodgy fags and shoplifted meat round the pubs, do a bit of cash-in-hand labouring or sell a few pingers from time to time. Millions of people who were eking out a half-decent life last year, but are now on the bones of their arse.

I hope, perhaps vainly, that there'll be long-term political consequences from all of this, a collective awakening to just how insecure life in Britain has become for a lot of people, a realisation that nobody is quite as secure as they thought. I fear that the sheer generosity of the furlough scheme and SEISS will have been enough to shelter "decent, law-abiding citizens" from that reality.

I might be overly cynical, but I think that the Tories have done everything in their power to avoid plunging the normally-securely-employed into the sort of insecurity that might make them question the austerity agenda; just when people were starting to ask "how the fuck am I supposed to pay the bills on Universal Credit?", Dishy Rishi swooped to the rescue with 80% of their salary.
>> No. 29419 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 10:00 am
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>>29414
What do you reckon those lads do for a living? It's not manual labour. Estate agents?
>> No. 29420 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 10:49 am
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>>29418

It took me a couple of moments to get what you're saying, but yeah, I think you might be right. This could have been a big moment of realisation for the general public, what it's like when you're not able to find secure work.

The furlough scheme and SEISS could be seen as an extension of the typical "deserving" and "undeserving" poor distinction we make in the UK.

It could also have the opposite effect, though; people might realise that it's actually nice to have the government cover their basic income needs beyond the Universal Credit system.
>> No. 29422 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 11:35 am
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>>29420
The sentiment I've seen has tended to be "I've worked hard all my life and now I need help I'm not entitled to any so I have to deplete my savings instead whereas if I'd spent everything I'd earned I'd have got the full whack. The system is geared towards supporting irresponsibility." or complaining that benefits they're eligible for are so low but if they were a scrounger who knew how to game the system they'd be on far more.
>> No. 29423 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 11:42 am
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>>29419

From left to right: Vodafone call centre, security guard at Currys, quantity surveyor, accounts receivable clerk for a regional uPVC company.
>> No. 29426 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 1:09 pm
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>>29419

Gay porn.
>> No. 29428 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 1:40 pm
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Lockdown 3 : Lock Harder.

Coming soon.
>> No. 29429 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 1:45 pm
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>>29400
It's such a weird look. The no socks + short skinny jeans is a fashion that exists not for its own sake. It's a fashion that exists solely to show off how much you spent on your shoes.
To me it just makes it look like you skipped leg day and will topple over in a slight breeze.

>>29414
I'd post that clip from Burnistoun but I can't be arsed and I'm sure you've all seen it before.
>> No. 29430 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 2:57 pm
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>>29429

I get the feeling that Burnistoun is for people who wouldn't understand Naked Video, Absolutely, Chewin' The Fat, or even Limmy.
>> No. 29431 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 3:53 pm
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In fairness to the government and their evil backbenchers, you need at least a keystage 1 reading level and a heart that's not black as coal to have known this would happen. And they're still going to wint he 2024 election because people will think "well, they tried their best didn't they?".
>> No. 29432 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:07 pm
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>>29431
>And they're still going to wint he [sic] 2024 election

I wanted to say "Christ, there's still another 4 years to go" but it's not 4, it's 10 at the minimum. If Scotland goes then it's a Neverending Tory.
>> No. 29433 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:10 pm
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>>29417
>>29418
I think you're overstating how many people are connected to the black market. It's not lots of people but a dozen or so lumpenproletariat who are duplicitous and altogether scummy enough that their suffering can only motivate them to find honest sources of income.

Certainly the pot dealers must be having a grand old time and have started putting stickers out on lampposts or otherwise trying to get me to give them my number whenever I pop out for a smoke. Smack addicts seem to of had a supply problem in lockdown 1 but as far as I can tell was sorted rather quickly considering the motivation involved.

>>29432
Just think, if Scotland hadn't flipped to SNP in 2010 you might've seen a Lib-Lab coalition. No EU referendum, no rising succession, rainbows wouldn't just be sky frowns.
>> No. 29434 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:13 pm
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>>29432
>it's 10 at the minimum
I'm confused, why's that?
>> No. 29435 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:20 pm
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CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-55376873
>> No. 29436 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:31 pm
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>>29431
It's amazing how some decisions have been allowed to be honest, when it's clear as day these people are thick as fuck. They'll only continue to fuck this country up with this utter lack of accountability.
>> No. 29437 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:32 pm
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>>29435
Out of interest, how many of you lot are doing Christmas alone this year? I sacked off doing anything months ago.

We could get a radio show going.
>> No. 29438 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:36 pm
29438 spacer
>>29436
Are they thick? They're successfully getting bungs for their mates and not being held accountable for any of the things they don't care about. They can get away with it, why should they put in more effort than that?
>> No. 29439 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 4:53 pm
29439 spacer
>>29437
I was meant to visit my parents on the 23rd to swap presents so I guess we'll just have to meet outdoors somewhere instead.
>> No. 29440 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 5:07 pm
29440 spacer
>>29437
Lol no. Don't be ridiculous.
>> No. 29441 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 5:59 pm
29441 spacer
>>29437
Good one.

Just filled the tank. Leaving tomorrow night, nice 150 mile trip.
>> No. 29442 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 6:02 pm
29442 spacer
>>29418

Excellent post. The bottom line is they've done just enough to stop anything of real consequence happening as a result of it.

Then, as always, we've got the classic narrative that povvos making bad decisions is their own fault and that they deserve our derision for it. It's no surprise that a great number of the proles have started coming out as anti-maskers, ignoring the restrictions, and so on. Because unlike the rest of us, they've either got the choice of sucking it up and going out to at least try and lead a somewhat normal life, or slowly starving and freezing to death at home.

People often say the Tories are incompetent, but they're really not. What they are best at is misdirection.
>> No. 29443 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 6:18 pm
29443 spacer
>>29439
I just used Amazon delivery and the only wrapping is the cardboard packaging because Bezos wanted £4.99 to do that.
>> No. 29446 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 7:16 pm
29446 spacer
Lol @ Boris being the first English PM to cancel Christmas since Oliver Cromwell.
>> No. 29447 Anonymous
19th December 2020
Saturday 7:59 pm
29447 spacer
>>29446
>Lol @
Don't do that.
>> No. 29449 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 6:29 pm
29449 spacer
https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563

Virology lad here. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Avoid all unnecessary travel.

One missed xmas is no big deal. Seriously.
>> No. 29450 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 6:35 pm
29450 spacer
>>29449
Seems a bit late for that now, after the pictures from London last night.
>> No. 29451 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 8:59 pm
29451 spacer
>>29450

Best part being that every twat who fled the London lockdown will just spread it around further. Should have shut the trains down too.

Fucking Londoners.
>> No. 29454 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 9:02 pm
29454 spacer
>>29450

Never too late to wash your hands mate
>> No. 29455 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 9:16 pm
29455 spacer
>>29454
Why isn't it you who's making the government advice slogans?
>> No. 29456 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 9:43 pm
29456 spacer
>>29451
Shouldn't have given people notice. Or at least enough notice to get packed and get on a train anyway. I know people that have become stranded, but at least they're not spreading everywhere, unlike the cunts who brought it back from Spain when they rushed to beat the quarantine requirement and in doing so rendered it pointless.
>> No. 29457 Anonymous
20th December 2020
Sunday 9:54 pm
29457 spacer
>Covid-19: Dover port halts exports to France for 48 hours
>Eurotunnel is suspending access to its Folkestone terminal from 22:00 GMT for traffic and freight heading to Calais in France.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55389505

Trust the French to put the boot in. There's not going to be haulage coming in either because nobody wants to get stuck in Britain.

>>29451
The plus for me is that everyone has fucked off. Good time to be a burglar I guess.
>> No. 29458 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 2:01 am
29458 spacer
Lads, I went to look up erotic calendars for 2021. Something dead classy involving ladies hockey or firewomen getting raunchy for a good cause.

I'm sorry to say this but there isn't any this year aside from the Cambridge one that's mixed. There's a naked farm lady one too but it doesn't look very good. This is awful. My year is ruined.
>> No. 29459 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 5:15 am
29459 spacer
>>29458

https://www.foxycalendars.com/
>> No. 29460 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:15 am
29460 spacer
Sainsbury's are warning of food shortages now.

Isolated even before No Deal, new viral mutations, we are completely fucked.
>> No. 29461 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:38 am
29461 spacer
>>29459
Cheers, somehow I knew you lads would come through for my erotic calendar needs.
>> No. 29462 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:52 am
29462 spacer
>>29460
Big supermarket are just stirring the pot to induce panic buying. Nice big christmas profits for them.
>> No. 29463 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:05 am
29463 spacer

EpnbOCwW8AEO-ro.jpg
294632946329463
This is terrifying.
>> No. 29464 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:08 am
29464 spacer
>>29462
Jokes on them, the foreign corner shops have much bigger, cheaper sacks of rice and other dry goods.
>> No. 29465 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:37 am
29465 spacer
>>29460

It'll be alright lad.
>> No. 29466 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:37 am
29466 spacer
>>29460

It'll be alright lad.
>> No. 29467 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:39 am
29467 spacer

131968507_3416636648458503_7080294029650577662_n.jpg
294672946729467
Fuck leaf munchers. They've had it too good for too long anyway.
>> No. 29468 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 11:53 am
29468 spacer
>>29467

I like broccoli though.
>> No. 29469 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 12:02 pm
29469 spacer
>>29467

For once having a diet of nothing but meat, dairy and carbs might pay off.
>> No. 29470 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 12:25 pm
29470 spacer
Just had an exposure notification. It's been nice knowing you lads.

Jokes on them I haven't had 15 minutes of close contact with someone since May
>> No. 29471 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 2:53 pm
29471 spacer
>>29470
Well it's your own fault for installing the app.
>> No. 29472 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 3:08 pm
29472 spacer
>>29471

This.

Don't install the app and give fake information. Otherwise you only have yourself to blame.
>> No. 29473 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 4:19 pm
29473 spacer
When should we start seeing death counts decoupling from hospital/+ve test counts? Immediately or in a few weeks after people have got the second dose?
>> No. 29474 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:16 pm
29474 spacer
We ain't never getting rid of this little nibba. It's gonna keep mutating every year like the flu.
>> No. 29475 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:28 pm
29475 spacer
>>29474
>nibba

What?
>> No. 29476 Anonymous
21st December 2020
Monday 10:41 pm
29476 spacer
Ugh, uggghhh, ughghghghg, fughghgck.

>>29475
He wanted to say it with two Gs.
>> No. 29478 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 1:18 pm
29478 spacer
I've been out this morning. No wonder we're all fucked. People ignoring one way systems and no entry signs. People ignoring social distancing. People meeting in groups of more than 10. People ignoring signs stating the maximum number of people allowed in an area. Proper fucked.
>> No. 29479 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 3:32 pm
29479 spacer
>>29478
10 months in and I still see people with masks below their nose.
>> No. 29480 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 4:55 pm
29480 spacer
>>29479

I was in a shop the other day and a woman in her 50s came in without a mask. She said she didn't need one because she had a "preexisting condition" that made her exempt. But when security staff asked for documentation or any other kind of proof, she made a fuss and gave some wishy washy answers that she left her documents at home. They then pretty much told her to go home and get the papers, or get lost.
>> No. 29481 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 5:59 pm
29481 spacer

United Kingdom Coronavirus.png
294812948129481

>> No. 29482 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 6:15 pm
29482 spacer
>>29481
Odd that this was when much of the country was travelling at over 50 miles per hour. I think we all know what that means.
>> No. 29483 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 6:55 pm
29483 spacer
>>29482

I for one don't have the first fucking clue what point either of you are trying to make.
>> No. 29484 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:01 pm
29484 spacer
>>29481
What am I supposed to infer from this?

>>29482
>this was when much of the country was travelling at over 50 miles per hour.

What?
>> No. 29485 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:03 pm
29485 spacer
Notice the constant dips and spikes, those dips are Weekends and the spikes are when the weekends get totalled up afterwards. So showing a small dip is consistent with this past weekend before the updated cases are added to the graph.
>> No. 29486 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:25 pm
29486 spacer
>>29485
I'm pretty sure most people are aware of this be now mate.
>> No. 29487 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:27 pm
29487 spacer
>>29486
*by

Can't remember how to delete my posts fuck sake sage.
>> No. 29488 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:35 pm
29488 spacer
>>29487
Nobody can delete posts anymore. All part of the master plan.
>> No. 29489 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:43 pm
29489 spacer
What are the odds the EU cuts its losses and just glasses us? They could turn the flattened remains into a big airport.
>> No. 29490 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 7:59 pm
29490 spacer
>>29488

>All part of the master plan.


Clearly the fault of Big Post.

Crafty bastards.
>> No. 29491 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 8:47 pm
29491 spacer
European papers calling us "Plague Island" apparently. I don't know how true this is.
>> No. 29492 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 9:02 pm
29492 spacer
>>29491

I'm pretty sure that we've had a reputation as disease vectors since Thomas Cook started flying to Magaluf.
>> No. 29493 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 9:26 pm
29493 spacer
>>29483
>>29484
The dip coincides with people going home/somewhere for Christmas. Many of these journeys will have speeds exceeding 50mph. The classic 90s movies Speed had a bomb that went off when the bus went under 50 mph.

Obviously coronavirus therefore has a speed limit. Philistines the lot of you.
>> No. 29494 Anonymous
22nd December 2020
Tuesday 11:14 pm
29494 spacer
>>29493
kin ell lad. We're not all cryptic crossword autismos even if we like to give off the impression we are.

Also as the other chap said surely the dip is just the usual weekend dip?
>> No. 29495 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 12:25 pm
29495 spacer
I've been on the train travelling between Preston and Manchester constantly since this all began and I haven't caught COVID yet. The only difficulty is having to duck into the loo when the ticket inspector approaches.
>> No. 29496 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 1:22 pm
29496 spacer
>>29495

Why the fuck are you carrying a ticket with COVID on it though
>> No. 29498 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 3:23 pm
29498 spacer
More Tier 4 and 3, new deadlier strain discovered from SA.

We're fucked.
>> No. 29499 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 4:18 pm
29499 spacer
>>29498

As long as there are no mutations that prove impervious to the vaccines, we should be good. But even then, mass vaccinations must begin very soon and on a broad scale, because just because there isn't a resistant strain yet, doesn't mean there won't be. Especially if the virus is allowed to continue to run rampant. So the more people are vaccinated, the less there will be the opportunity for it to mutate into a resistant variant.
>> No. 29500 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 4:35 pm
29500 spacer
>>29498
>deadlier strain

They haven't said it's "deadlier" but that it spreads more easily. I agree that is going to have an effect on overall deaths, but it isn't the same thing as saying its a more severe version of the virus.

Agree we're fucked. I'm in one of the Tier 2 areas moving to Tier 4 in a couple of days; actually think the full lockdown is the best approach to be honest.
>> No. 29501 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 4:39 pm
29501 spacer
Laughing maniacally as I sit atop a throne assembled from luxury toilet rolls I've been hoarding since April while eating pesto pasta (which is the only thing you are allowed to eat during a lockdown).
>> No. 29502 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 5:07 pm
29502 spacer
>>29500
>actually think the full lockdown is the best approach to be honest.
YES!
YEAH IT WAS!
IT WAS WHEN WE DID IT FUCKING APRIL! IT FUCKING WORKED! I'M GOING TO EAT BORIS JOHNSON'S FUCKING HEART!
>> No. 29503 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 6:17 pm
29503 spacer
>>29502

Well we're already in Tier 4 in London, and it honestly isn't vastly different from the April lockdown.


Although the new regulations aren't always immediately understandable:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/23/covid-tier-4-rules-in-england-latest-restrictions-explained

>Those in tier 4 must stay at home over Christmas and must not meet up with other households. One resident could meet up with another one person for a wank walk, but not a whole household of people.


I'm not sure the harm is going to be greater if you go to visit one single person in their home. A gust of wind outside can blow your germs into that person's respiratory tract just the same as if you're having a cuppa in your kitchen together.

It's probably an enforceability consideration. Easier to spot goups of people gathering illegally when they're outside.
>> No. 29504 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 6:29 pm
29504 spacer
>>29502

Unfortunately, the April lockdown won't be enough to control the new strain. We need to find some extra measures to reduce transmission, or we're up shit creek. We do have the vaccine now, but we can't get enough of it quickly enough to make a real impact.

>>29503

>I'm not sure the harm is going to be greater if you go to visit one single person in their home.

Gathering outdoors is much safer. Infected aerosol particles stay suspended in the air for a considerable time, so they rapidly accumulate in an enclosed space and circulate throughout the room. Outdoors, even a slight breeze will diffuse the aerosol to very low concentrations.

If you have to meet indoors, ventilation is at least as important as distance; unfortunately most people won't be willing to leave all the windows open for the whole of Christmas day.
>> No. 29506 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 8:20 pm
29506 spacer
>>29504
>unfortunately most people won't be willing to leave all the windows open for the whole of Christmas day

You say that but it's 9c at the moment and somehow I had a mozzie come in last night. Put London into Tier 6 and nuke the site from orbit I say.
>> No. 29507 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 8:30 pm
29507 spacer
>>29504

And why not? People weren't allowed out besides essential work or buying food.

a) What kind of extra measures can you realistically take from there?

b) Most of the "measures" we're taking right now are of minimal realistic impact, it's the restriction of contact that actually does anything. Are you talking out of your arse, perchance?
>> No. 29509 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 8:41 pm
29509 spacer
>>29499

The mutation thing is unsurprising, and these "new" strains have been around for a while. Furthermore the detection of a new strain here has more to do with the fact we've got one of the most advanced genetics labs in Europe, it doesn't mean nowhere else has mutant strains. Scientists reckon the vaccines will still be effective, but of course they would say that.

Hypothetically, though, in the worst case scenario... I t could well mean the people saying it's folly mankind to try and fight this virus instead of allowing it to run its course were correct. Many would be dead, but by now we might be starting to approach a degree of herd immunity, wherein the virus would be more likely to mutate in a more infectious, but less lethal direction. The trouble is that if the vaccine isn't effective on mutant strains, we'll be playing vaccine catch-up forever like we are with the seasonal flu, and obviously there's a breaking point in that endeavour where we have to just accept a certain level of mortality.

The war on covid would end like Vietnam did for America- Difficult to call a victory, difficult to call it worth it, sustained mostly by sunk cost fallacy and a stubborn determination to save face.
>> No. 29510 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 8:51 pm
29510 spacer
Lockdown 1 actually seemed to work, the streets were empty and going to the shop felt like a supply run.
Do it again, restrict numbers in shops again, close schools.

Arrest tinfoilers protesting.
Enforce the mask restrictions.
>> No. 29515 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 11:25 pm
29515 spacer
>>29510

Of course it worked. It pretty much turned the whole of Britain into a Tier 4 zone. And until a substantial-enough majority of people have had the vaccine, that is going to be the only way to keep the virus in check.

What do they think is going to happen in zones that are Tier 2 or 3 at present? People are going to be careless, because hey, they're in Tier 2, so it can't be that bad. There have already been numerous changes where areas went up a tier. And we are going to see loads more of it in areas that seem safe at the moment.

We'll probably end up with most of Britain in Tier 4. Which, again, it should have been all along. And we would have had far fewer casualties than we have now.
>> No. 29516 Anonymous
23rd December 2020
Wednesday 11:28 pm
29516 spacer
>>29507

>Are you talking out of your arse, perchance?

No. The new strain is really, really infectious. Measures that were sufficient to control the primary SARS-CoV-2 virus will be nowhere near sufficient to control VOC-202012/01.

I don't know what extra measures we can realistically take, but the virus doesn't care about political realism. Within the next couple of months, we might be faced with the choice between a Wuhan-style mega-lockdown or the health service being totally overwhelmed.

https://khub.net/documents/135939561/338928724/SARS-CoV-2+variant+under+investigation%2C+meeting+minutes.pdf/962e866b-161f-2fd5-1030-32b6ab467896?t=1608491166921
>> No. 29542 Anonymous
25th December 2020
Friday 7:27 am
29542 spacer
There's a new South-African strain too. It's more transmissible and has worse symptoms. This is it.
>> No. 29543 Anonymous
25th December 2020
Friday 9:49 am
29543 spacer
>>29515
He meant work as in people paid attention. Now no-one gives a shit.
>> No. 29544 Anonymous
25th December 2020
Friday 11:03 am
29544 spacer
It's only a matter of time until a vaccine-resistant mutant arises.
>> No. 29545 Anonymous
26th December 2020
Saturday 6:34 pm
29545 spacer
>>29516
>The new strain is really, really infectious.

Finally we've started to export something again! Seems like cases of "our" strain are being reported all over the world now.
>> No. 29546 Anonymous
26th December 2020
Saturday 6:45 pm
29546 spacer
>>29545
The empire will live again!
>> No. 29547 Anonymous
26th December 2020
Saturday 9:22 pm
29547 spacer
>>29516

Which measures will be insufficient? Not being a smart arse or anything, but I was coming from the perspective that most of our measures were already insufficient against the "current" strain. Lockdown getting people to stay at home was the only thing that actually worked, whereas making people wear masks in Morissons and putting plastic sheets up between the seats in Maccies did fuck all, relatively speaking. So from that perspective there's really no difference.
>> No. 29548 Anonymous
26th December 2020
Saturday 11:13 pm
29548 spacer
>>29547

There's a critical tipping point in virus control measures: getting the reproduction rate (R) of the virus below one. If the average person who catches the disease goes on to infect more than one person, the prevalence of the virus increases exponentially; if the average person passes it on to fewer than one person, it diminishes exponentially. Controlling the virus is pretty much a binary either/or because of the nature of exponential growth - either you're on top of things, or you're on the road to destination fucked.

The strictest part of the first lockdown got us down to a reproduction rate of somewhere between 0.8 and 0.9, which caused the virus to rapidly decline. We're not absolutely certain how much of a contribution each aspect of the lockdown measures made, but we have some reasonable estimates. Strict stay-at-home orders are the most effective measure, but the other stuff is useful and did work to control the old strain of the virus for most of the summer, when factors like the weather made it easier to control the virus.

The problem we're facing is that the new strain is so much more infectious. Control measures that beat the old strain down to an R of 0.8 or 0.9 will only be enough to achieve an R of 1.4 at best with the new strain in widespread circulation. An R of 1.4 is barely better than just letting the virus rip - it buys you a little bit of time, but the worst-case scenario of "the health service is overwhelmed, everyone gets it, people are dying in the streets" becomes inevitable if you can't get R below 1.

That's the unfortunate reality we're dealing with. Everyone staying at home as much as they did during the first lockdown will help, but it won't be enough. The unavoidable social contacts of people doing essential work and running essential errands will still allow the virus to grow exponentially. We need to find something more. Maybe, maybe the use of rapid testing in care homes and hospitals will help us sneak under the crucial R=1 threshold, maybe better availability of PPE this time around will be more useful than we expect, maybe the vaccine will come through quicker than promised, but we're kind of clutching at straws.

Pack your rice and spruce up your shed, because February is going to be fucked. I wish I could be more optimistic, but the data doesn't lie - we don't know how to contain the new more infectious strain and the best we can do is guess and hope.
>> No. 29549 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:16 am
29549 spacer
>>29548

How do you know the increased R for the new strain is due to virology and not just behavioural? I don't disbelieve you, but would like to see the sources that inform your opinion?

The new variant is associated with a higher R no, and there are potentially mechanistic reasons for it; but has anybody observed higer viral load in humans, or shown greater infectivity in vitro?

The current restrictions are the ones that should have been implemented in March. No foreign travel should have been allowed, and people returning to the UK should have had to undergo a mandatory, enforced quarantine akin to what Western Australia done. EO2HO, and keeping the schools and unis open during the most recent lockdown was fucking mental.

Hoping we can all get vaxxed asap.
>> No. 29550 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:19 am
29550 spacer
I wonder why restrictions weren't lifted one by one, in a staggered fashion to see which restriction worked best. That would have been helpful. For instance, opening Unis a couple of weeks after schools opened, etc.
>> No. 29551 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:21 am
29551 spacer
>>29550
Because the govt is run by tabloid journalists driven by the profit motive, not scientifically-minded people motivated my the maximization of the common weal
>> No. 29552 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:57 am
29552 spacer
>>29549

>Estimated transmissibility and severity of novel SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern 202012/01 in England
>Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases
>London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

>molecular evidence is consistent with a potentially altered infectiousness phenotype for this variant

>we did not find evidence of differences in social interactions between regions of high and low VOC 202012/01 prevalence

>we found strong evidence that VOC 202012/01 is spreading significantly faster within southeast England than preexisting non-VOC 202012/01 variants. Our modelling analysis suggests this difference can be explained by an overall higher infectiousness of VOC 202012/01

https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/reports/uk-novel-variant/2020_12_23_Transmissibility_and_severity_of_VOC_202012_01_in_England.pdf
>> No. 29553 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 1:02 am
29553 spacer
>>29552

Cheers bud. But this is still correlations based on modelling and not mechanistically definitive.
>> No. 29554 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 1:32 am
29554 spacer
>>29548

>We need to find something more. Maybe, maybe the use of rapid testing in care homes and hospitals will help us sneak under the crucial R=1 threshold, maybe better availability of PPE this time around will be more useful than we expect, maybe the vaccine will come through quicker than promised, but we're kind of clutching at straws.

As the lad doing covid testing at work, I wouldn't hold your breath. You can pretty much choose fast or accurate, the rapid ones are dogshit (that's a scientific term) and we're actively trying to dissuade our clinicians from requesting it if at all possible.

Honestly, there's not much we can do besides enforcing a stay at home order and having the army deliver rations to people's doors. Like you say, it's pretty much all or nothing. Our last hope is the vaccine, otherwise we're about as well telling people to shut their curtains for extra protection. It's real Protect and Survive shit.

I realise I might be biased and hopelessly disillusioned by my position at the epicentre of all this but I think we should all be mentally preparing ourselves for difficult decisions.
>> No. 29555 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 10:12 am
29555 spacer
>>29553

In London the new strain went from ~0% to 60% in 5 weeks.
>> No. 29556 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:18 pm
29556 spacer
>>29555
That's faster than a Robin Reliant.
>> No. 29557 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 12:46 pm
29557 spacer
>>29554

The only moral decision at this point would be to open up and to just let it rip through and see where we are in a year.
>> No. 29558 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 1:20 pm
29558 spacer
>>29557
Granny-killer!
>> No. 29559 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 1:54 pm
29559 spacer
>>29557
My only advice is that we don't base public health on your sex-life.
>> No. 29560 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 1:55 pm
29560 spacer
I've finally got into the habit of going to the gym again for the first time in four years, and now I'm wondering if it's a wise decision to continue going (whilst I still can). Fuck's sake.
>> No. 29561 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 8:23 pm
29561 spacer
We have a tiny lift in our flat-block, there's signage everywhere saying one household at a time. Most of the time everyone is perfectly co-operative and respectful, and just let's whoever is waiting/in the lift go first. I had just gone downstairs to pick up a food delivery and was carrying it in, mask on, and as I'm waiting in the lift some guy walks up and into it, no mask. I tell him that there should only be 1 of us at once and he says "no, no is ok, is ok, no sign". I point to massive laminated sign and he replies the exact same. And this is where I'm wondering if I was childish because I lie, and say "I have corona", to which he practically shits himself and leaps out of the lift.

Is that a dick thing to do? I probably should have just got out, but ill be fucked if my pride would allow that, and I'm always worried about people reacting by spitting at me or something if I get more verbal. (I have underlying health issues).
>> No. 29562 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 8:42 pm
29562 spacer
>>29561
Not at all, he was being a dick potentially exposing you to his symptomless virus. Fuck him.
>> No. 29563 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 9:05 pm
29563 spacer
>>29561
What would you have done had he called your bluff and wanted to travel up with you anyway?
>> No. 29564 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 10:04 pm
29564 spacer
>>29561
Can't you be a team player for once.
>> No. 29565 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 10:05 pm
29565 spacer
>>29561
I look forward to reading the increasingly absurd rumours of you being an immigrant covid-pedo that are spreading through the estate as we speak. Like your computers do ya? Leaving dirty tissues in the local playground? I'd be putting a washing up bowl full of water under your letterbox for a few weeks.
>> No. 29566 Anonymous
27th December 2020
Sunday 10:14 pm
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>>29563
I would have just got out because covid is incredibly dangerous for me, but I really felt my blood boiling, I hope I wouldn't have said anything stupid.
>> No. 29567 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 2:29 am
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>18 care home residents have now died of Covid after a visit from a superspreader Santa Claus who was infected with the virus. The death toll has since been rising throughout the month following the ill-advised event at the Hemelrijck care home in Mol, Belgium, reports VRT.
>It is reported some 121 residents and 36 staff have been infected in the local outbreak. Lab tests are still trying to work out exactly where the infection came from but questions have been asked over visit from the unwittingly infected Santa.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13576675/18-dead-covid-santa-claus-belgium/

I was only curious as to what was going on in other countries because the news cycle seems to have broken down on international reporting. Now I know that it's probably an emotional capacity thing.
>> No. 29568 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:27 am
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>>29567
I know it shouldn't, but I did find that story darkly amusing.
>> No. 29569 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 1:31 pm
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>>29568

A Grim Reaper costume probably would have been more apt than a Santa costume.
>> No. 29570 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 2:31 pm
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>>29569

They are both very Saturnine figures. Did this perchance happen the day of the Great Conjunction. WOOOOOOOOOOO I'M SPOOKY
>> No. 29571 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 3:06 pm
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>>29569
Why not both?
>> No. 29572 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 6:02 pm
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A mate tested positive today. I told him not to go to his "family gathering" on Christmas, and now he has it. I was holding back laughter, but I just said that I hope he gets better.

Now his old parents might have it. They are getting booked for a test. I wonder if any of them would feel guilty if they manage to kill their parents.
>> No. 29573 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 6:32 pm
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>>29572

One of my mum's friends and her family got in trouble with the police for having a family get-together with about 15 people on Boxing Day. They met at her son's house who lives in a Tier 4 area. Neighbours alerted police, and they were fined £200 and told to go home immediately.

My mum was shocked at the disregard for safety in her friend's family, but honestly I think the bigger outrage is that it's only £200, at least on the first offence. If you've got 15 people together, that's £13.33 for each of them if they all pitch in. That's less than you pay for a Christmas party at a halfway decent restaurant. It's a slap in the face for everybody who was obeying government rules over Christmas.
>> No. 29574 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 6:40 pm
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>>29573
I'm shocked at the neighbours dobbing them in.
>> No. 29575 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 7:04 pm
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My neighbours had people around yesterday. They weren't even been subtle about at as they were making a lot of noise. She works for the NHS.
>> No. 29576 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 7:17 pm
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>>29575
We built the Nightingales, we may as well get some use out of them.
>> No. 29577 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 7:27 pm
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>>29575

When you're in the eye of the storm, seeing Aunt Jean for a couple of hours isn't going to make much difference. I think trying to morally condescend NHS staff by this point is only deserves to be met with an extra forceful "fuck off".

Unless she's some kind of back office HR drone or something, but in that case it's barely even relevant that she does work for the NHS.
>> No. 29578 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 7:48 pm
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>>29574

I guess when there's 15 people at your house, cars out front and all, it can feel a little upsetting to other people in these times where you're told that the pandemic situation has become so dire that you pretty much can't have people around at all in Tier 4.

Also, never underestimate people's willingness to tell on their neighbours.
>> No. 29579 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:09 pm
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>>29574
>>29578
I think that there's just a growing distaste toward those acting like reincarnated plague rats because they're playing a big part in prolonging all this.
>> No. 29580 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:20 pm
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>>29577

>When you're in the eye of the storm, seeing Aunt Jean for a couple of hours isn't going to make much difference.

Not to you, but you're putting your Aunt Jean at massive risk. I understand that people are getting fatigued by the whole thing, but I don't remember anyone offering up that excuse back when HIV was still the "gay plague".
>> No. 29581 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:31 pm
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>>29580
Why isn't Aunt Jean responsible for her own decision to attend?
>> No. 29582 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:35 pm
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>>29580
I've noticed a rise in contrarianism on this site. Longstanding viewpoints held on here for many years are suddenly criticised because certain supporters perceive them as being now aligned with their political opponents, which now means it's an incorrect opinion to hold.
>> No. 29583 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 8:40 pm
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>>29579

There's some deeper kitchen psychology at work there. When you're told that people who behave a certain way are a threat to your own wellbeing, which they very well may be, then the natural reaction of many people is to counter that threat by reporting them.
>> No. 29584 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 9:23 pm
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>>29581

She is, and she should get fined as well. We're days, possibly hours away from running out of hospital beds, at which point doctors will have to choose who to help and who to leave to die. It's everyone's responsibility to keep themselves safe and give their fellow citizens a fighting chance.
>> No. 29586 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 9:34 pm
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It's tough, because I know the 'correct' answer is that having people round is bad, and if otherlad isn't exaggerating, 15 people is certainly taking the piss. On the other hand, I'm still visiting my grandma and two other friends. I am certainly putting my grandma at risk, but she's fine with it. Maybe I'll have to throw my socialist card in the bin for having such a tory viewpoint as wanting to see a couple of people now and then, but if we must make it political, I'd rather just cover for my own pandemic based irresponsibility by talking loudly about how your lot has mismanaged the entire thing.

Additionally, up until about a week ago I was regularly mixing with hundreds of people at a time in airports and on planes, because the government wanted us to keep doing our jobs, and I can't afford not to. So it seems it's morally wrong to visit aunt jean, but not go to Tenerife on a tube with 200 other people? The obvious answer here is that it's also definitely morally wrong to be going on holiday right now, but tell that to whoever's writing the rules we're so up in arms about.
>> No. 29587 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 10:16 pm
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>>29582
It's the American plague.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E
>> No. 29588 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 10:34 pm
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>>29586

> On the other hand, I'm still visiting my grandma and two other friends. I am certainly putting my grandma at risk, but she's fine with it

I do my mum's weekly grocery shopping at the moment. And by that, I mean pretty much since this spring. She hasn't left the house literally in months, for obvious reasons because she is elderly and of increasingly frail health. I am working from home until further notice, and also only leave my flat briefly every other day for my own groceries, and I always wear a mask in shops, so we've figured that she has a lower risk of catching something from me than if we'd get her her groceries via a delivery service. And I'm sure that reasoning will hold up if police ever ask me what I am doing visiting somebody's house in Tier 4 in another town.

And my mum appreciates the company I keep her, I understand some of her friends who still live independently haven't had anyone around for weeks besides British Gas or the postman and they are beginning to feel incredibly lonely.
>> No. 29589 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 10:48 pm
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I live opposite a YHA where they've been housing all the homeless since March and it's been an absolute mare. In the summer it was especially bad with groups sitting drinking outside my house, shooting up and leaving needles in the street, screaming at each other at all hours of the night.

Things had really calmed down since the weather has gotten a bit chilly, but the other day I was woken by people shouting. When I got up to walk to the shop I passed an ambulance outside, a resident covered in blood (not their own), and staff deep cleaning the front door of the property. It was pretty harrowing.
>> No. 29590 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 11:26 pm
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>>29589

I went into a bank branch the other night to withdraw some cash from their cashpoint after hours, and there was a homeless person asleep in a sleeping bag in the corner behind the machine, of course not wearing a mask. I got a bit paranoid and tried to breathe as shallow as possible while I was in there. It was the one time I had left my mask in the car.

Not sure if homeless people are more at-risk to catch covid. They do spend most of their time outside, so maybe not.
>> No. 29592 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 11:46 pm
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>>29591
Well, she would. The fucking nut.
>> No. 29593 Anonymous
28th December 2020
Monday 11:51 pm
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>>29588
So aren't you support bubbling her? That's allowed so long as one of you is a single person household - you can have a cuppa and everything. If you want to be a good boy then you can make sure all her friends all set-up online and can chat that way making your mum popular.

>>29589
>In the summer it was especially bad with groups sitting drinking outside my house, shooting up and leaving needles in the street, screaming at each other at all hours of the night.

I remember this bullshit. One day I had a desperate heroin addict pawing at me to lend him my phone and give some change with no attention paid for social distancing. It was getting to the point that I was being bothered almost every time I left the house.

Children live on my street though (in some of the houses) so once they started shooting up in doorways I contacted the police with full details on where and at what times the dealers were operating. Fuck 'em. The problem died right down after that and I think they replaced them with asylum seekers who keep to themselves.
>> No. 29594 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 12:17 am
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>>29593

Yes I guess that counts as a person's support bubble. So that's even less to worry about.

My mum could probably still drive her car to the Tesco's a mile down the road from her house, at least she was perfectly capable of it at the beginning of this year, but she just chose to stay at home and be safe from the outside world for the most part of this year, and until this whole thing finally blows over. Even when she's having a really good day health wise, it's worth remembering that she's 70.
>> No. 29595 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 12:20 am
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>>29589

The hotels across from work are housing the homeless, but this has somehow ended up with a tent village along the grass verge too.

It doesn't seem particularly terrible from our perspective, just the odd drunk person wandering in, but I bet anyone working at the hotel is pretty annoyed they've been job switched from receptionist to community outreach worker.
>> No. 29596 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 12:56 am
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>>29595

We had the tent village thing happening on the verge between us and the YHA in the summer, but the police were good at getting the people in more suitable accomodation, and the council cut a lot of the overgrowth they were concealed by.

We also had a sex worker seeing clients on the verge and sleeping under the stars in a kind of jakey cuddle puddle. It wouldn't have been a big deal to me if not for the fact she would be arguing with her man at full volume under my window at 5am every morning. The police told us that this couple actually weren't homeless and had a council house nearby, but I guess they didn't want to conduct sex work out of that for fear of losing it or something?
>> No. 29597 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 12:57 am
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>>29596

>arguing about her man about who got to hold the money she had earned the night before

that should be.Mods please fix the delete post feature
>> No. 29598 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 10:27 am
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>>29576
They're being dismantled.

>Meanwhile, London’s Nightingale hospital has been stripped of its beds as medics warn there are not enough staff to run the facility, the Telegraph reported.

>The facility at the Excel centre is being dismantled, while the majority of the seven Nightingale units – created at a cost of £220 million – have yet to start treating Covid patients during the second wave, according to the paper.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-nightingale-hospitals-b538294.html
>> No. 29599 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 5:03 pm
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Pack your rice and shit tickets lads.
Things are in rapid decline.
>> No. 29600 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 5:37 pm
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>>29599
>Things are in rapid decline.

So we're in familiar territory at last?
>> No. 29601 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 5:37 pm
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>>29599
I've never been in this sort of situation before, I keep feeling like since doom is obviously nigh I must DO SOMETHING but fuck knows what. My job is safe. I assume I'll still be able to go out and buy food no matter what. I've already had corona and didn't die of it. Just can't get rid of this bloody anxiety about it all.

What the fuck did people actually do in the Blitz? I assume wet depressed twentysomethings who overthink the state of the world existed back then too.
>> No. 29602 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 5:40 pm
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>>29601
Lots and lots of shagging because they might die at any moment.
>> No. 29603 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 5:42 pm
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>>29601

>I assume wet depressed twentysomethings who overthink the state of the world existed back then too

I'm sure they did, but they'd have all been drafted.
>> No. 29604 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 6:11 pm
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>>29601
>since doom is obviously nigh

It's not though. The vaccines put us passed the end of the beginning and the Covid advance into Russia has become bogged down - the Blitz is long over.

Coming soon: D-Day and Operation Market Garden.
>> No. 29605 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 6:40 pm
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>>29601

Thing is way back at the start, I was going around posting numbers about how even in a worst possible case scenario, where nobody did anything and the virus infected every possible person, it still wouldn't put us below net population growth for the year... This is why. Perspective. Not because I'm a cold hearted bastard who wants everyone dead but because honestly, I'm amazed we've all made it this far, it's the most terrifying thing any of us have lived through by a good measure if you actually stop and think for a minute. But you can't lose sight of one fact (and it is a fact)- Overall, it'll be reyt. We might be a bit poorer, some people will lose their jobs, times might indeed get hard, but it'll be reyt. There's no comet crashing down to wipe us out.
>> No. 29609 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 8:12 pm
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>>29605 There's no comet crashing down to wipe us out.

Couple of days left of 2020, ladm8
>> No. 29610 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 8:20 pm
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>>29601
> I keep feeling like since doom is obviously nigh I must DO SOMETHING but fuck knows what.

Drugs, obviously.

Mods that art Gods please take mercy and do not ban me for a relevant image even though it be of the format known as macro. Amen.
>> No. 29611 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 8:38 pm
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I must confess that I'm far less scared of the virus than I am of the idea of returning to the "normality" we had at the start of the year.
Everything's been shaken up, but as time goes on and on it's feeling more and more like the opportunity to rearrange things for the better while everything's uprooted will not be taken, that the moment has already passed, or perhaps even that the only changes will be for the worse.
Can we really run through it with WW2 analogies if we don't get a comfortable postwar consensus as a reward at the end?
>> No. 29612 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 8:41 pm
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>>29611
What are people realistically expecting to get changed for the better? Most of what I've seen tends to be "the pandemic is an opportunity to implement beliefs I've held all along."
>> No. 29613 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 9:13 pm
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>>29612

>What are people realistically expecting to get changed for the better?

Things I would hope (but not necessarily expect from this government):

Fiscal policy based on resilience rather than crude "efficiency", with surplus capacity created in most public services to deal with emergencies.

A broader consensus that a) unemployment is mostly a structural problem rather than a personal failing and b) our welfare system is arbitrary, unfair and doesn't provide a meaningful safety net.

A recognition that if society continued to function with nearly 10 million people on furlough, maybe a lot of jobs are basically bullshit and we could find better things for people to do with their lives.

A greater political focus on the issue of ageing and how demographic shifts will affect health, the economy and society over the coming decades.

More flexible working cultures based on our new knowledge that working 9-to-5 in an office isn't meaningfully more productive than working wherever and whenever suits you.

Alan Partridge in a pear tree.
>> No. 29615 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 11:14 pm
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This nibba ain't slowing down yet.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 29616 Anonymous
29th December 2020
Tuesday 11:15 pm
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>>29602
Illegal to shag right now, missus is in a different bit of tier 4.

I'm on phone and too stupid to reply to multiple post, but worry not drugslad, sorted on that front. Item 1 on the Pack Your Rice agenda.
>> No. 29618 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 1:31 am
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>>29613
>A greater political focus on the issue of ageing and how demographic shifts will affect health, the economy and society over the coming decades.
>More flexible working cultures based on our new knowledge that working 9-to-5 in an office isn't meaningfully more productive than working wherever and whenever suits you.

Both of these things have happened. The latter is difficult to quantify at the moment but I don't see it going back to normal when companies are still saving a fortune of floor space. The shocking losses to the Empire of Covid have shown the oppressed of the world our vulnerability.

The rest is a 'remains to be seen' I don't think anyone really knows what is going to happen next year as we've never been here before. The best historical example we have would be something like after the Black Death where Parliament made being unemployed illegal while capping wages and prices to pre-crisis levels. That'll be fun - we can go back to 2001 prices for a pint and anyone caught selling Freddos for more than 10p will be taken out and flogged.

>>29616
>Illegal to shag right now, missus is in a different bit of tier 4.

That doctor bloke on the news told us from the start that it was time to move in together. Why didn't you listen? Sex is never just sex.
>> No. 29619 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 1:59 am
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>>29618

>we can go back to 2001 prices

You're obvs joking, but if prices returned to the halcyon days of yore the quality of life of everybody would increase immeasurably. Why is it that everything is getting progressively more expensive as the years unfurl, but the lives of 90% of the population are getting steadily worse?

I want 1970s Scampi prices.

Does not compute.
>> No. 29622 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 10:36 am
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>>29621
If a genie were to grant me three wishes I would have that man piss and shit himself on television as my first.
>> No. 29623 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 10:57 am
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>>29622
Solid choice.
>> No. 29624 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 12:02 pm
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>>29618
She's a 2020 grad, no job and still living with family. I'm reasonably high-earning but not enough for a kept woman yet.
>> No. 29625 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 12:19 pm
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>>29624
How much is high earning?
>> No. 29626 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 12:26 pm
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>>29618

>but I don't see it going back to normal when companies are still saving a fortune of floor space

I think physical offices were still one of the last areas of society and (work) culture that hadn't fully been transformed by the Digital Revolution of the last 20-odd years. Maybe in a similar way that inexpensive high-bandwidth Internet access for streaming video has rendered video rental shops obsolete, it is now making it less of a necessity that every employee be at their desk in the office at 9am every day of the week.

Does it increase productivity? Yes and no. The average commute in the UK is just under an hour, although I think everybody knows someone who has a far longer commute. So you gain one hour a day that isn't spent on a train or behind a steering wheel. But I think what an office environment enables you to do much better is that you focus on a task without many distractions, and stick with it until it's finished. If you do your sales report or your summary in your jammies on your sofa, what's to stop you from turning on the TV and ending up spending an hour or two watching Antiques Roadshow repeats.

What I find a bit awkward is that it opens up windows into people's personal lives that you really don't care to know about. I had to call a senior member of a law firm the other day to ask about a case where they are representing our company, and he quite clearly answered the phone from his home, and then excused himself for a second because you could hear his young child crying in the background.
>> No. 29627 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 12:36 pm
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>>29626
Shocking. I know. People have lives outside of work.
>> No. 29628 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 1:07 pm
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>>29627

I wasn't expecting a senior law firm partner to be one step removed from a web site chatbot. Just that you don't, or at least until now never expected that a strictly-business phone call would involve him having to attend to his crying child while you're talking.
>> No. 29629 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 1:55 pm
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>>29628
Is it because of people like you women with children struggle to find jobs?
>> No. 29630 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 2:03 pm
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>>29625

Just passed 50k, dunno if that's seen as high earning in the grand scheme of things but I managed to double my income within the last year by switching jobs so it feels like an awful lot.
>> No. 29631 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 2:52 pm
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>>29630

I think over £4K a month allows you a comfortable lifestyle, maybe you're not filthy rich, but it should mean that all your expenses are covered, and you've still got enough money left over for a bit of frivolous spending.
>> No. 29632 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 3:00 pm
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>>29631
£50k gross is £3100 a month (or £200 less than that if he's repaying a student loan). If you take a London property rental out of that you're doing fine but life would be appreciably better with a second income.
>> No. 29634 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 4:03 pm
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>>29633

You know it's time to buy a pipe and carpet slippers when your idea of a good laugh is the thought of a bunch of feckless banter berks getting their shit kicked in by the repurposed council estate thugs we call our armed forces.
>> No. 29635 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 4:04 pm
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>>29633
It obviously won't happen, but I don't know how people can convince themselves of this barmy totalitarian takeover stuff when the largest government intervention this year has come in the form of a few quid off a chicken burger. I suppose we've all been inside too much this year and folk's minds are wandering.
>> No. 29636 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 4:57 pm
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>>29632

Aye, am in London with a fat fucker of a student loan as I did a Masters. So not like she can just live off me as things currently stand, and I doubt she'd want to either. Just a bit shit how the job market is right now.
>> No. 29637 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 5:13 pm
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Let's say I live in a Tier 3 area. If it has been announced that a neighbouring area is moving from Tier 2 to Tier 3 does that mean I'm now able to visit it? If so that's a bit of a result.
>> No. 29638 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 5:21 pm
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>>29632

London has its own rules. You have to be proper minted to really enjoy the good life here, and £50k does not go far if that's your goal. You'll be better off somewhere in the sticks up north. But if it doesn't have to be a flat or house in one of the obvious neighbourhoods, and a good bit towards the outskirts, then you'll be more or less ok with 50 grand. It'll still be a matter of your expectations, but it's possible.
>> No. 29642 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 5:50 pm
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>>29638

I kept myself and my then missus on £50k/yr in Amsterdam but that was over a decade ago now. We didn't exactly live in the lap of luxury but we had a nice enough two bed flat in a decent part of town and never went without in terms of bars, cages, or eating out.

London just seems to get exponentially more expensive year on year and I can definitely attest that £50k will go a damn sight further in some shitpit like Stoke than it does in That London.

I'm not really sure what sort of salary I'd need to enjoy the "good life" in London these days but I'd estimate somewhere north of £120k post tax. But then again given that whenever I spend any time whatsoever in London I have a £500 a week meth habit again within weeks maybe take my estimate with a pinch of salt.
>> No. 29644 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 6:47 pm
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>>29642

My mate lives in London on 100k+ and he lives in a fucking shoebox and never has any money.

That might just be him, though. But every time I visit him I do seem to end up spending about a grand a week, and that's without rent.
>> No. 29645 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 7:18 pm
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>>29638
My plan is neither to stay in London nor to stay on 50k, what I do can be done mostly remotely so I'm absolutely not paying London prices when I buy a place.
>> No. 29647 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 7:25 pm
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>>29644

One of my distant cousins lives in South London and he has inherited a four-bedroom house, debt free from his parents that they bought in the early 1970s. It was an unremarkable middle class new build at the time, but it was valued at pretty much dead-even £500K in mid-2018 when he took over. It's probably worth an extra 50 grand now, especially with some of the elaborate renovations he has done himself. The property market is absolutely mental.
>> No. 29649 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 10:17 pm
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>>29626
I reckon it will just hit the half-way mark. The thought of maybe 3 days in the office seems popular and with a good rota and desk booking system you could require less space. Due to overcapacity I was doing that before all this started and it was alright - got a chance to get the washing done.

Only catch is that nobody would want to be in on Fridays but everyone I work with is looking at moving out of London (myself included) so it'll have to happen.

>>29630
I'm on just over 40k and feel like I have more money than I know what to do with. Especially as I'm not going out anymore.

Admittedly I live in a Central London shoebox and have a good deal but I'm still putting away £600 a month, with odd bungs because my eating out and dating budget just accrues money aside from the odd takeaway. You should've said earlier and we could've split a bigger place for less. But probably not as I'd be a third wheel and you'd both think of me as a your friend.

>>29647
I assure you that unless it's somewhere ghastly like Croyden it will be worth a lot more. You could probably rent it out and live off the income somewhere cheap if you'll be a proper bastard and split it into 4 rooms charging £800 a month. 5 if you convert the attic.

Get bored of that and you can torch the place, collect the insurance money and sell the land on to some shady developer.
>> No. 29650 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 10:22 pm
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>>29649
>sell the land on to some shady developer.
Out of curiosity, say you had a bit of unused land in London, how would you find and negotiate with a shady developer?
>> No. 29651 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 10:50 pm
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>>29649

>I assure you that unless it's somewhere ghastly like Croyden it will be worth a lot more. 

No, not Croydon, but you're not far off.

It did need some repairs, but my cousin is good at that sort of thing, I think he said something that all the repairs and renovation would have cost him around £25-30K if he'd hired a professional to do them.
>> No. 29652 Anonymous
30th December 2020
Wednesday 11:32 pm
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>>29650

>how would you find and negotiate with a shady developer?

In Soviet London, shady developer finds you.



But seriously, there is no shortage of developers, shady or otherwise. If they're not cold calling you after they somehow found out that you own a particular property, then just look on the Internet or in the Yellow Pages. Some newspapers also have ads.
>> No. 29655 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 4:12 am
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>>29654

>Sooooooo

Nobody answer until he apologies for this.
>> No. 29656 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 4:15 am
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>>29654
Lad, that is literally how all vaccines work. Through the vaccine, your body learns how to efficiently fight it (via antibodies), hopefully meaning the virus has been purged before you notice any symptoms, but your body has to recognise it to produce the antibodies in the first place.

What did you think it did? Construct nano guard turrets in your lungs to shoot down covid particles as they enter?
>> No. 29657 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 6:42 am
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>>29649

>I'm on just over 40k and feel like I have more money than I know what to do with

I'm on ~24k (it varies because I get enhancements for late shifts and the like) up north and it's plenty. My job is cozy and easy enough that I'm not actually in a rush to chase more money because wherever I go, the job itself is likely to be harder.

I've put a good wedge of savings towards a deposit this year with having no social life. I really don't know what the otherlads are on about when 50k isn't enough to live "comfortably", I know London takes the piss financially but that can't be all it is. I'd suggest they're a bit shit with money in one way or another.
>> No. 29658 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 6:50 am
29658 spacer
>>29656

No.

Viruses can't reproduce on their own, they need to hijack your cells. If you have a very strong immune response, your immune system will kill off the virus before it has a chance to usefully reproduce, so even if you're exposed to the virus you have no chance of passing it on. That's how we eradicated smallpox - if the virus can't get a foothold in your body, it can't reproduce and can't spread.

At this stage, we don't know if the covid vaccines provide that level of immunity, or simply keep the virus sufficiently in check to prevent you from becoming seriously ill. That uncertainty exists because of the very broad spectrum of disease severity, our poor understanding of why some people are severely affected, the relatively small population who have been vaccinated so far and the ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to spread asymptomatically.

We have enough data to show that the vaccines offer very good protection against severe illness, but we don't yet have any conclusive data to show that it prevents milder illness or asymptomatic transmission. We expect to gather that data over the coming months. The scientific assumption is that the vaccine will eliminate or drastically reduce the risk of transmission, but we're not sure yet and we're not taking any chances.
>> No. 29659 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 6:59 am
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>>29658

The simple answer is that in practical terms it doesn't matter. If you're deploying a vaccine en masse like this, the goal is to prevent risk to the groups who are most vulnerable to the serious effects. We can deal with a virus going around giving people a bit of a cough for a week, but what we need to prevent is the people ending up on ventilators.

If we reach a sufficient level of "immunity" that hospitals aren't getting flooded out the doors, and people can just have a week off work instead, we've cracked it. It can infect as many people as it likes if the majority of them are protected from the worst of the harm. This is how we deal with the flu, anyway.

Going into the future it seems plausible (I am speculating here of course) that we'll be able to get by just using something like a yearly targeted vaccine, updated to the newest strains and delivered mainly to the elderly or otherwise vulnerable. Immunocompromised people might be shit out of luck, but they already are for a great deal of things and there's not much modern science can do for them.
>> No. 29660 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 7:05 am
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>>29657

>I know London takes the piss financially but that can't be all it is.

They clearly have more expensive tastes than you, but London is still brutally expensive. An OK-ish two-bed flat and a travelcard won't leave you with much change from £1,500/mo. Once you've paid your bills and had a few nights out, £3,000ish net income a month dwindles away with alarming speed. A £50k salary is maybe just barely enough to get you on the bottom rung of the property ladder if you scrape together an absolutely massive deposit, but it's a hard ask.

There's a reason why so many people leave London when they have kids - a third bedroom is an unattainable fantasy for most Londoners.
>> No. 29661 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 7:24 am
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>>29659

>If we reach a sufficient level of "immunity" that hospitals aren't getting flooded out the doors, and people can just have a week off work instead, we've cracked it.

For now. If vaccines don't prevent transmission or we botch the vaccine roll-out, there's a very serious risk of a vaccine-resistant strain evolving. The actual efficacy of the vaccine is also dependent on infection rates - 95% or 98% protection against serious illness is fantastic if the disease is relatively uncommon, but it's not all that great if everyone gets it every winter. It's worth bearing in mind that covid is many times more infectious than the flu, which was already a major cause of death despite widespread availability of good vaccines.

We really don't know why SARS-CoV-2 is so deadly and we don't know why the new strain is so much more infectious. A vaccine that doesn't prevent transmission may be enough to get us back to normal, but we can't bank on it. There are still far too many unknowns about our immune response to the virus, the effects of the vaccine and the medium-term evolutionary trajectory of the virus.

I don't want to sound overly negative - the covid vaccine program has been a triumph of science - but it's just too early to be declaring victory yet. We've won a major battle, covid appears to be fighting one last stand, but strange things happen in war. At this stage, we can afford to be hopeful, but not triumphant.

If I were to put my neck out, I'd say that we're more likely than not to have a mostly-normal Christmas by 2021; possibly fully back to normal, or possibly with mass testing and restrictions on large public gatherings. I wouldn't bet on a mostly-normal summer, but it's a possibility. I would bet my left bollock that the next three or four months are going to be absolutely fucking dreadful. There's light at the end of the tunnel, but we'll have to crawl through half a mile of dogshit and broken glass to get there.
>> No. 29662 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 7:52 am
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>>29661

Which is why I brought the flu up- It's not a perfect comparison, but it's a good one. Covid is many times more infectious but if flu was a brand new virus we'd only just discovered this year, the situation would be much the same. Herd immunity will, eventually, develop; and setting apart the blunder where Boris thought we could build it in three weeks in February, it is ultimately what we have to develop or else we'll live in fear of this thing for the rest of time.

I think a more pragmatic reality is that people are getting just about to the end of their patience for restrictions and safety measures. It might be too early to declare complete victory, but I get the feeling that by March or so, most people's attitude will be surmised as "Fuck off, we've got a vaccine now, the oldies are fine, I'm going on holiday this year and you fucking try to stop me."
>> No. 29663 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 8:57 am
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>>29652

I can only find big ones doing many-multi-property constructions.
>> No. 29664 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 11:13 am
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>>29662

>most people's attitude will be surmised as "Fuck off, we've got a vaccine now, the oldies are fine, I'm going on holiday this year and you fucking try to stop me."

As long as they won't complain that their dad can't get cancer surgery because hospital beds are still booked up with covid cases, that's fine then.

Not everybody who gets seriously ill from covid is elderly. Your likelihood may decrease the younger you are, but there are still plenty of people in the 30-50 age group who need to be hospitalised.

And young people's attitude that it doesn't affect them is part of the reason why much of Britain is in tier 4 right now.

It is going to get better once a significant number of the general population have been vaccinated, but for much of the coming year, that is only going to be half the battle.
>> No. 29665 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 11:33 am
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>>29661
>95% or 98% protection against serious illness is fantastic if the disease is relatively uncommon, but it's not all that great if everyone gets it every winter.
True, but its still not quite fair to compare against the flu in the current situation.
With the flu, we usually only vaccinate those most at risk and then allow it to run rampant in the general population, what's more due to the high mutation rate of flu virus, the vaccinations produced months in advance often turn out to be not effective against the strains circulating the following winter.

With covid, even 50% effective protection will drive a huge decline in transmission rates if you're able to vaccinate enough people.
>> No. 29666 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 3:05 pm
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>>29660
> An OK-ish two-bed flat and a travelcard won't leave you with much change from £1,500/mo.

You must be having a bubble, lad. I was paying £1500 for a one bed flat with a "half bedroom" I used as a home office (I could basically fit a desk and a computer chair in there) way back in 2013-2014. I can't imagine rents have gone down any since then.

> There's a reason why so many people leave London when they have kids - a third bedroom is an unattainable fantasy for most Londoners.

I'd also argue that the number of bedrooms you can afford is pretty low on the list of reasons to leave London if you have kids. It's a great place to spend your twenties but it was a fucking awful place to grow up. Then again maybe it's a bit different if you aren't poor as muck.
>> No. 29667 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 3:49 pm
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>>29664

The fact is it's not a zero sum game, mate. I'm sorry, it's not nice, but it's the truth. We're going to have to reach a point where we can say well, it's near enough, and call it a day.

We're not going to eradicate covid like smallpox. It's just not that Kind Of Thing, I'm afraid. How low you want the numbers to be before it's "safe" again is up for debate, but I can assure you the official one won't be zero.

Despite all the analogies, this isn't a war. There will be no VE day. People will just gradually start to get back on like it didn't happen. You might still be screaming from the rooftops about how covid is still out there, but the newspapers will have moved on, the news will have moved on, and people will look at you with disdain for reminding them of a bad dream.
>> No. 29668 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 3:52 pm
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>>29657

London property really is that mental.

A game I have been playing (not really a game as I'm in the market and have a job offer in the city) is comparing what you can get in London for what you can get in my endz in Northumberland:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87292705/
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/99889433/

An admittedly quite nice 4 bed terraced house vs. a grade II country pile with a cottage chucked in for good measure, for about the same price. I know what I'd rather have for a million quid, even if it meant a grisly commute. I'm sure I could find even more stark differences if I was looking in other areas, I bet you could buy an entire street in Middlesbrough for 600k.

And I know this is just cheating, but city centre rent comparison is just laughable :

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/75154101/
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/76666647/

Yes, not everyone is going to want to live in Newcastle, particularly if you're accustomed to the lifestyle you can have there - I fucking love London, but even on a very, very good salary (six figures) it just doesn't seem a good idea to move there, when I can buy a mansion up here and still have change left over for about as many taxis to the airport and flights to Heathrow as I'd ever want when I feel like going there - and that commute is still probably quicker that work in London but live outside of it.
>> No. 29669 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 3:54 pm
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>>29668

>particularly if you're accustomed to the lifestyle you can have there

By "there" I mean London, of course
>> No. 29670 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 3:57 pm
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>>29668
Fuck me there are some beautiful places in NE66 I could have for the same price as where I am now. I'm stuck here for work but the difference is sickening.
>> No. 29671 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 4:24 pm
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>>29670

It's pretty much the same story for any rural-ish area in the top half of Britain, but seems particularly pronounced up here, and on the Scottish borders - I have a friend right on the border whose 200k cottage essentially came with a free forest. Similarly I bought my grandparent's house - it is currently valued at about £450k, and is a converted farmhouse with about an acre of garden. It's fifteen minutes drive from the city centre, five from the airport, yet since its surrounded by trees it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere. I just simply haven't been able to find a better compromise yet, for any sort of money. I think I've posted about the garden here before.

And to go down another rabbit hole, my grandad bought this house on a fireman's salary in the 50's and paid it off in about 15 years.
>> No. 29672 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 7:13 pm
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>>29671

I predict that there will be a trend of country cottages, without land, fetching upwards of £300K even in the most remote areas. The property market is still going strong, and there will be demand from people who would like a two- to four-bedroom home but just haven't got the possibility to fork over half a mill for a semi detached two up, two down in central London.

One of my friends has a sister who, together with her husband, has made an absolute fortune fixing up dilapidated homes and selling them on at a premium. That moment has probably passed for much of London for anybody wanting to get into that line of business nowadays, where even the worst kind of run-down shithole 4-bedroom will fetch over £250K. When they started 20 years ago, a house like that, in bad shape but with good potential, could be had for under £100K. If you knew what you were doing and were able to do most of the fixing-up yourself, you could net a profit of more than £75K on a project like that. The potential profit margins are even bigger today, but again, having to come up with £250K up front is much different from £100K.
>> No. 29673 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 8:15 pm
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>>29672

What the fuck was going on in the 80s and 90s where people just owned all these dilapidated homes?
>> No. 29674 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 8:18 pm
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>>29673

The past was shit.


>> No. 29675 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 8:49 pm
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>>29673 They paid little for them, but they weren't rich. You get older, and the maintenance on a big old place becomes overwhelming to do yourself, but you can't afford to get it done. You really don't want to move. It all gets run down.
It's a well trodden path.
Places with property taxes just push them out earlier into trailers and tent cities, or jam them in with relatives.
>> No. 29676 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 9:29 pm
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>>29675

This. An all new natural gas heating system, which is recommended you swap out every 20 to 30 years, can set you back £20,000 for a four-bedroom home nowadays. A new roof can be up to £10,000 to install. If your hydronic underfloor heating starts to leak, a popular feature since 1970s new builds, add another £10-20K to have your whole floor jackhammered away and new pipes installed. And before you know it, you're talking £50K-75K to get your house back in good nick. It just adds up, and not many people can just spend that kind of money. And then the older you get, the less you will be able to find a bank to remortgage so you can pay to have it fixed. Let alone do any of it yourself.

You can often still live in a house for quite some time that needs all those repairs, but they naturally don't get any better on their own as time passes. And so the dilapidation builds up and your house gradually becomes a dump.

Which is where my friend's sister and her husband come in. If you can do almost all those repairs yourself, £75K worth of damage can go down to less than £25K that you have to pay out of your own pocket to make everything good as new. And that even includes hiring one or two people to help you with the hands-on stuff.
>> No. 29677 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 10:13 pm
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>>29672
> half a mill for a semi detached two up, two down in central London.

Where are you getting these numbers from? A house in the road I grew up on in London was going for £2million a few years ago and it was basically a gutted out shell "in need of significant renovation".

You can barely get a two bedroom flat for half a million in a decent part of Zone 2 never mind "central London".
>> No. 29678 Anonymous
31st December 2020
Thursday 10:58 pm
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>>29677
Yup, half a mil buys you a flat. Anything you'd call a "house" (some noveltly properties which are about as wide as a narrowboat aside) go for £750+ in a shit area for a fixer upper and easily >£1million in an area you might actually want to live. Fuck "The Economoy", house prices need to crash and soon.
>> No. 29679 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 12:21 am
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>>29678
>Fuck "The Economoy", house prices need to crash and soon.

They won't if things stay the same because they'll always be demand in London. Property in the centre of any major city is probably the safest investment you can make and another Great Depression won't change that on a multi-year track.

I'm hoping improvements in transport and working away from central offices will take off. The former is unlikely but it's the only way people will be able to afford homes in reach of their career for the future.
>> No. 29680 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 12:32 am
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>>29678

A trend for a number of years now has been basement extensions underneath the more expensive inner city properties in London.

https://www.businessinsider.com/london-bans-construction-of-iceberg-homes-for-the-rich-2014-12?r=US&IR=T

The driving force is usually that houses there have become so expensive that even a lot of millionaires have to settle for smaller properties to buy now, but they then increase the space by expanding the basement. While the price per square foot in some areas of London is now easily around £2,500, adding a square foot of basement space to a property like that comes in at roughly £350 to £500, depending on how fancy you want your new basement to be.

They've banned a number of types of basement extensions now because people were taking the piss with multi-story subterranean extensions, and because some listed buildings were starting to crack or warp from the vibration and the changes in structural load.
>> No. 29681 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 7:36 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55507012
Is this itz?
>> No. 29682 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 7:42 pm
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>>29681

It's not armageddon, the vaccines will at the very least bring down hospitalisations and give the NHS some breathing room, but we're going to have a really awful few months.
>> No. 29683 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 8:48 pm
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>>29681
I've been feeling a bit more ITZ about it all the past few days - the number of cases in my area has actually exploded the past couple of weeks. We were one of the Tier 2 areas not so long ago, and now there are 800+ cases per 100k; those are only going to go up with people being twattish about Xmas I'm sure.
>> No. 29684 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 10:19 pm
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Amor fati lads. The night is always darkest before dawn etc etc etc.

2021 is likely going to be another shit year until Autumn unless rate of vaccination increases considerably, but we all now have all the coping mechanisms to deal.

It will soon be spring and the weather will get better.
>> No. 29685 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 10:21 pm
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>>29683

We're just going to have to ride it out at this point. Do your bit to protect yourself and others, get the vaccine... and collect the dead when it's all over.
>> No. 29686 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 11:20 pm
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>>29681
I'm still confused on what this new lockdown is going to look like. I mean, I only leave the house to buy food and go for a walk - me taking up a delivery slot would probably be a bit cuntish on those who need it. It's something I've done already but I think we're more at the point where the government bites the bullet and sends out Vitamin D supplements out because almost nobody has a balanced diet in this country and you'll be more likely to survive.

Anyway, the real ITZ will hit when Covid simmers down and the shagpocalypse happens. Imagine sexual health clinics overwhelmed and a new untreatable super-mumps giving those of us left the ultimate blue-balls. You go out and meet a nice girl only on the way to her place you hear a klaxon sound and Boris telling you that sex is in lockdown and you'll have to talk about Jesus all night.
>> No. 29687 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 11:40 pm
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>>29686
It's going to be a glorious time to be one of those steady couples currently getting blueballed by lockdown.
>> No. 29688 Anonymous
1st January 2021
Friday 11:56 pm
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>>29686
> You go out and meet a nice girl only on the way to her place you hear a klaxon sound and Boris telling you that sex is in lockdown and you'll have to talk about Jesus all night.

You'll be able to have sex, as long as Chris Whitty can watch on Zoom.
>> No. 29689 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 1:07 am
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I just watched a Panorama thing about the Oxford vaccine. Most of the scientists were women. I thought it'd have been a massive sausagefest.
>> No. 29690 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 3:51 am
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>>29689
I went to a dork uni and the bio/medical subjects were the only courses with an appreciable number of women. If I was to idly, sexist-ly speculate, I'd say because there's a clearer angle towards technologies that help people rather than pursuing more abstract goals. Or defence stuff.
>> No. 29691 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 10:17 am
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>>29690

I would say it's more likely just that you can qualify in biomedical science just by extensively remembering shit. You don't have to really understand the principles of much, just be good at those revision techniques with flash cards and such that women love.

Physics or chemistry on the other hand require lots of intuitive understanding and hard sums.
>> No. 29692 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 10:43 am
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>>29691
>> No. 29693 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 10:52 am
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>>29692

I'm not saying women can't do those subjects, but by and large they choose not to, and it's not down to institutional sexism or any such bollocks. Men just tend to prefer and perform better in those more autistic mechanical fields.

Differences between the genders do exist and it's only mental gymnastics to try convince ourselves otherwise.
>> No. 29694 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 11:10 am
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/au.news.yahoo.com/amphtml/covid-wards-full-of-children-as-uk-pandemic-explodes-053207113.html

New strain much worse for kids.
>> No. 29695 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 11:38 am
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>>29694
>shut primary schools in London on Friday (local time) to counter the rapid

As opposed to shutting the schools in London on Friday (Japan time)?
>> No. 29696 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 12:06 pm
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>>29686
> me taking up a delivery slot would probably be a bit cuntish on those who need it.
What, just grab a slot lad. Carrying eight pints of milk can be heavy.
>> No. 29697 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 12:07 pm
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>>29695
He seems to be reading aussie news.
>> No. 29698 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 3:27 pm
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>>29693
>I'm not saying women can't do those subjects
You are a bit m8. You're telling us men are better at 'those subjects' in your next sentence, and that we're better at them because of innate sex differences. Your earlier post was about how women are only really good at remembering and regurgitating information, and implying men dominate the harder sciences because we're better at actually understanding things and doing maths.
>> No. 29699 Anonymous
2nd January 2021
Saturday 4:54 pm
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>>29696
There's not delivery capacity for everyone to do that and it doesn't allow me to snaffle discount pastries.

>Carrying eight pints of milk can be heavy

Get yourself a cheap backpack (WENIG is alright) load one inside and if you really think you need 8 pints then carry a tote bag. If this is still too heavy then get a man to help you.
>> No. 29700 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 10:38 am
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Re the Government; what is to be done? The level of ineptitude is staggering and knowing that none of these cretinous scoundrels will ever suffer ill-consequences turns my stomach. The country, indeed the whole world, but specifically a country like ours with a talentless and immoral government, are beyond fortunate this virus is commonly less-lethal, because I shudder to think what Johnson and company consider "acceptable losses".
>> No. 29701 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 10:41 am
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>>29700
>I shudder to think what Johnson and company consider "acceptable losses"
Other people's.
>> No. 29702 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 12:15 pm
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>>29700
Why can't we just drag them out onto the streets again?
>> No. 29703 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 12:37 pm
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>>29702
We don't protest in this country anymore. It's not the done thing.
>> No. 29704 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 12:45 pm
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>>29700

> what Johnson and company consider "acceptable losses".

Depends on where you stand on the value of an individual human life, I guess. Without wanting to get too philosophical here. Every casualty is a tragedy, just like they would be in a fatal car accident or a plane crash. But you cannot just shut down life in its entirety. People are going to die during a pandemic or in a car wreck or a plane crash. If you accept that there is that possibility in itself, it doesn't mean you have a disregard for a single person's life. It's just being realistic.

Using the phrase "acceptable losses" is still dangerous ground, as a politician, because there will always be enough people who will get the wrong idea. Including your political opponents.


In terms of the virus being less-than-lethal, we are where we are with the extent of the pandemic because the virus largely doesn't kill its host, with the exception of two to five percent. The virus stays unnoticed in a considerable majority of people, and even among those that get sick, three out of five times they will have trouble telling covid from a common cold. That's why it has spread so successfully around the globe.

Viruses like Ebola, on the other hand, have a death rate of around 90 percent and patients almost without exception get violently sick within the first 48 hours. Which means that outbreaks are much easier to spot and victims can be isolated effectively before larger groups of people can be infected. That's why when you hear about Ebola outbreaks in rural Africa, it tends to be just one or up to a handful of villages that are affected.
>> No. 29705 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 3:10 pm
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Israel is aiming to end of all this by February - it's going to be fun to see if they can pull that off. Maybe summer won't be so awful for the rest of us.

>>29700
Re you; what specifically are you whinging about?
>> No. 29706 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 3:51 pm
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>>29705

They want people to spend their shekels in Israel next summer, no doubt.
>> No. 29707 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 4:28 pm
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>>29705

>Israel
>> No. 29708 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 4:50 pm
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>>29703
Maybe because protests in the UK don't give results

When was the last time a large protest result in change? Poll tax riots?
>> No. 29709 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 5:23 pm
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>>29705
Apparently refusing to give any to the Palestinians though.
>> No. 29710 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 6:22 pm
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It's ok lads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T72TopWbXJg
>> No. 29711 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 6:31 pm
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Now, I don't mean to alarm you, lads, but it occurred to me today.

The reagent kits we're using at work to detect covid have been steadily piling up in our store cupboard for the last several months, to ensure we don't hit a shortage. However- These old kits just happen to detect the new strain, almost like Hologic Inc. knew about it in advance..

Draw your own conclusions. But I think them Germans are up to summat.
>> No. 29712 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 7:00 pm
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>>29711
I read that testing has been going down for a while as a result of people not wanting to find out whether they had it before Christmas and having to cancel their plans.
>> No. 29713 Anonymous
3rd January 2021
Sunday 7:57 pm
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>>29711
> Draw your own conclusions. But I think them Germans are up to summat.

My granddad always said you can't trust the buggers and that they'd do it again.

I always assumed he meant beat us on penalties in the semi finals of a major tournament but maybe he was a psychic wot knew about covid.
>> No. 29714 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 1:08 pm
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Can the kids go back to school yet? I'm already sick of home-learning.
>> No. 29715 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 1:54 pm
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>>29714
Today yes.
Next week, probably not.
>> No. 29716 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 3:23 pm
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Set your Video+ lads.
Bodger is on at 8.
>> No. 29717 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 3:48 pm
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>>29714
That doesn't really make any sense. They should have stopped them this week, or the lockdown will be longer now.

This government is so stupid that I am starting to think I could run the country better between wanks and posting on this board.
>> No. 29718 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:12 pm
29718 spacer
>>29716

Tier 6: Electric Weetabix
>> No. 29719 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:16 pm
29719 spacer
I'm informed that this is going to be a full on border shutting job complete with a curfew.
>> No. 29720 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:18 pm
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>>29717
> that I am starting to think I could run the country better between wanks and posting on this board.
Only starting now. Catch up lad.
>> No. 29721 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:24 pm
29721 spacer
>>29715>>29717
Sorry, I don't think I was clear.

I'm already sick of home-learning because my son is a massive pain in the arse and needs to be constantly spoon-fed. The sooner he fucks off back to school, the better.
>> No. 29722 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:27 pm
29722 spacer
>>29721
Why did you have a kid?
>> No. 29723 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:33 pm
29723 spacer
>>29722
He's not an annoying little kid, he's a teenager. This past year or so he's turned into a right pain in the arse; the Harry Enfield sketch of Kevin's birthday really isn't far off the mark.

He should have had three live lessons over Teams today but he missed the first one because he wasn't aware how to join, i.e. he decided not to think for himself, so watched YouTube videos of people using power tools on trees instead.
>> No. 29724 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 4:55 pm
29724 spacer
>>29723
Probably time to send him to the Army Cadets.
>> No. 29725 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:27 pm
29725 spacer
>>29723
> watched YouTube videos of people using power tools on trees instead.

Probably more educational than schools these days.
>> No. 29726 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:47 pm
29726 spacer
So, another full-lockdown? Place your bets..
>> No. 29727 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:49 pm
29727 spacer
>>29726
It already is, isn't it? If the entire nation's in tier-4 I fail to see what else could change.
>> No. 29728 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:51 pm
29728 spacer
Will there be a tier 6 after tier 5 fails?
>> No. 29729 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:53 pm
29729 spacer
>>29727
They'll probably close the borders for most travel so we don't end up with loads of posho going to ski resorts and spreading it around again.
>> No. 29730 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 5:57 pm
29730 spacer
>>29723
There're all sorts of craft training providers who offer weekend introduction courses. Maybe your current stress regarding your son could be alliviated somewhat by attending an arboriculture course with him. Hands on experience and education in a subject he seems to be keenly interested in.
>> No. 29731 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 6:25 pm
29731 spacer
>>29719
>a full on border shutting job

Things must be getting bad if they're starting to fulfil election pledges.
>> No. 29732 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 7:02 pm
29732 spacer
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/04/no-10-resists-pressure-to-step-up-england-covid-19-lockdown

>“The virus is out of control. The tier system clearly isn’t working and we all know tougher measures are necessary,” he said.


Did anybody seriously think that it was going to work?

What did you think people were going to do in a tier-2 zone?

If you tell people "You're safe here, you're in a lower-risk area", they will do fuck all to make sure it stays that way.

You have to take into account the average, thick as pig shit resident of a tier 2 area. Making them think that things weren't so bad in their area was practically an invitation to them to go and lick the muck off shopping trolley handles.
>> No. 29733 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 7:35 pm
29733 spacer
>>29719
>Curfew

For fuck's sake. I've become nocturnal and started doing my shopping in the wee hours to avoid the plague-ridden masses. Now you're telling me I'll have to be in the shop at the same time as them?
>> No. 29734 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 7:56 pm
29734 spacer
>>29733

I can't see a curfew working in this country. Plus last real lockdown all the 24 hour shops shut at 11 anyway, the cunts.
>> No. 29735 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 7:59 pm
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tenor.gif
297352973529735
>>29733
No, we had reduced hours during the last lockdown. I read on the wall of a public toilet that they're bringing in Supermarket Sweep.
>> No. 29736 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 8:00 pm
29736 spacer
>>29732
Same here in tier 4. People have lost interest almost. No effort to stay apart in queues, whole family out shopping etc.
>> No. 29737 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 8:39 pm
29737 spacer
>Exercise with one other person from a different household is permitted but the advice is to stay local and limit activity to once a day.

How local is local in this instance?
>> No. 29738 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 8:46 pm
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index.jpg
297382973829738
>>29737
>> No. 29739 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 8:51 pm
29739 spacer
>>29737

Best not leave your postcode area.

Any day now for the DM to start shaming people again for having compost and bathroom blinds in their shopping trolleys.
>> No. 29740 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:11 pm
29740 spacer
>>29732

It's like several people have said here before, you can't take half measures with something like this, because half measures are essentially no measures at all.

And in that sense, even a national lockdown is a half measure. People who can work from home already are, most people's employers aren't taking it as seriously as they did before because when it actually all comes down to it, maintaining business is more important, and they've done some bollocks like putting up screens and handing out masks.

Nobody is mentioning the elephant in the room and nobody wants to- The vast majority of your contact with other human beings, as an adult, comes from work. For kids it's school. Having a lockdown only barely affects my life and I'm sure that's the same for many of you. For those of you who are working from home it's a big difference, but I'm willing to bet the number of people who still have to commute and go in to a physical workplace vastly outweighs the number of people who are now working from home.

You can't blame people for just getting fed up of it all and paying less attention to the rules by this point. I don't think we'll be far off proper civil unrest if it carries on much further than the end of spring.
>> No. 29741 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:15 pm
29741 spacer
>>29740

>end of spring

Got some bad news for you sunshine...
https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk
>> No. 29742 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:18 pm
29742 spacer
>>29741

2022? Wonderful.
>> No. 29743 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:34 pm
29743 spacer
>>29742
If they up the rate of vaccinations to 2 million per week it drops from next year to July to October this year.
>> No. 29744 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:36 pm
29744 spacer
>>29740

> but I'm willing to bet the number of people who still have to commute and go in to a physical workplace vastly outweighs the number of people who are now working from home.

You still need to keep basic services in place and running. Literally making everybody stay home would do much worse damage than the virus itself would ever be able to cause.

There's a reason why many of them are called essential workers. Without them, you wouldn't have supermarkets open, or pharmacies, hospitals, service stations, the lot.
>> No. 29745 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:43 pm
29745 spacer
>>29741

>Given a vaccination rate of 1.000.000 a week and an uptake of 70.6%, you should expect to receive your two doses of vaccine and be fully protected by between 01/02/2022 and 02/07/2022.


I'm probably more adept at climbing a tree than somebody like you.

If I'd still be smoking and probably had COPD by now, it would move me up to June of this year according to their list of underlying health conditions.

Here I was, thinking I was doing my body some good by quitting smoking a few years ago.

Maybe "severe mental illness" is the ticket. Shouldn't be too hard to have a doctor declare you a nutter.
>> No. 29746 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:45 pm
29746 spacer
>>29745

>I'm probably more adept at climbing a tree than somebody like you.


That's really a funny word filter for a change.
>> No. 29747 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 9:55 pm
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>>29746
I don't get it
>> No. 29748 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 10:00 pm
29748 spacer
Half of my have family tested positive for covid. I possibly have it - just got over a weekend of 'flu like symptoms' during which I had a 6 hour hallucination that I was a purple spreadsheet.
>> No. 29749 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 10:06 pm
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>>29741
Good thing I am "morbidly" obese (I'm guessing based on a BMI of 30). I will get it in September.
>> No. 29750 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 10:10 pm
29750 spacer
Not used Hinge at all for months but I've noticed that every few weeks I get likes from medical staff - junior doctors and nurses mostly. I had assumed it was just catfishing but now I'm starting to think that I've been ignoring women looking to take the edge off.

>>29740
>I don't think we'll be far off proper civil unrest if it carries on much further than the end of spring.

I don't understand you miserable sods - wasn't the stock market supposed to implode last year and we'd have those horse-drawn carts for the bodies?

I've not noticed any change in people's behaviour since about September and having spoken with people at work I think we're all just used to it now. Lockdown won't make much difference to our routines other than bringing back the shaggy hair look and, if the stars align right, in about 7 months we'll have a piss-up that'll put the Millennium to shame.
>> No. 29751 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 10:21 pm
29751 spacer
>>29748
> hallucination that I was a purple spreadsheet.
I think I saw that on one of the symptoms list of the new strain.
>> No. 29752 Anonymous
4th January 2021
Monday 10:37 pm
29752 spacer
I've just got an email from my daughter's school about the closure; the anger at the short notice from the government is palpable in every sentence.
>> No. 29753 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:10 am
29753 spacer
>>29752

I kind of understand BoJo's urgency given the current situation, but giving people barely four hours notice is kind of a cunt move. It would not have made a huge difference in terms of the case numbers if they'd given us two days.
>> No. 29754 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:33 am
29754 spacer
>>29753

But two days ago he was telling us schools are safe, so it wouldn't have made any sense to pre-warn us he was going to change his mind.
>> No. 29755 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:53 am
29755 spacer
>>29754

One of many misconceptions he has been under in this pandemic.

Two days notice would have meant that everything would have continued to function as before for two more days, which would have given people at least a bit of time to react.

If you're being told at 8pm one night that your child won't be going to school the next day, then that is really quite disruptive to many families' routines. What if you and your partner are essential workers, and suddenly one of you needs to phone into work that they can't come tomorrow because your child will stay at home. With two days notice, maybe even three, many people would have been much more able to swap work shifts with somebody, or change their work schedule in some other way.
>> No. 29756 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 1:10 am
29756 spacer
>>29755
>What if you and your partner are essential workers, and suddenly one of you needs to phone into work that they can't come tomorrow because your child will stay at home
What does that have to do with Boris? Schools are remaining open for those children.
>> No. 29757 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 1:20 am
29757 spacer
>>29755
Wouldn't it be smarter to decide on Friday that there will be a lockdown from 8PM Saturday onwards? Why state that everything will be open, then on Monday say no?
>> No. 29758 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:08 am
29758 spacer
Are there any sellers you'd recommend for a fairly cheap computer on eBay or elsewhere? Schools have decided they want to do live lessons via Teams this lockdown, which isn't entirely practical when you have more than one child. I was thinking a refurbished office computer is probably the best bet, something like:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Dual-Core-8GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-Windows-10-Full-Bundle-Desktop-PC-Computer/264804499934

Thanks, lads.
>> No. 29759 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 10:51 am
29759 spacer
>>29758

A desktop is probably your best bet if you've got the space, because decent second-hand laptops have doubled in price over the last year. Any of the big refurbishers should be fine. If you can afford it, I'd spend a little bit more on a machine with an i3 or i5 processor - "Intel dual core" probably means an old Core 2 Duo, which is going on for 15 years old and will really struggle with video conferencing.

A quick skim through the listings turned up this, which is the cheapest machine I'd consider suitable.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cheap-Fast-DELL-HP-i3-2nd-DESKTOP-PC-Computer-System-Monitor-Complete-4GB-1TB/233241476778
>> No. 29760 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 11:14 am
29760 spacer
Johnson was advocating sending children to school as recently as two days ago and then does another u-turn a day later and fucks over millions of kids and their parents who've had no time to prepare anything, or were having to live in two minds about the whole thing. That man is a villain and should be shamed out of office, but oddly-pink-non-entity Starmer appears to think "opposition" means encouraging the government to try harder after another cock-up.
>> No. 29761 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 11:21 am
29761 spacer
>>29760

I think it takes a certain level of denial to think that Labour are really a different party to the Conservatives, at this point.
>> No. 29762 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 11:25 am
29762 spacer
>>29759
That one would be £90 for an i3 processor, 500GB HDD and 19" monitor with 6 months warranty.

Is this one any different? £89 for the same specs but with 12 months warranty and a keyboard and mouse thrown in. I feel like I've missed something.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FULL-DELL-HP-DUALCORE-i3-i5-DESKTOP-TOWER-PC-TFT-COMPUTER-SYSTEM-WINDOWS-10/292750832977

Thanks, lad.
>> No. 29763 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:29 pm
29763 spacer
>>29762

Go for it m8, I didn't look very hard.
>> No. 29764 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:31 pm
29764 spacer
>>29761

This. I find it hilarious that people think we would be in a better position now with Labour, at no point have they opposed any measures the government has put in place. It's Labour for fucks sake, they would have had longer and earlier lockdowns, masks outside, mandatory tracking and all sorts of awful shit. No legitimate party has actually offered serious opposition.
>> No. 29765 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:32 pm
29765 spacer
>>29764
Sorry, you're looking for the pro-COVID party to emerge from all this?
>> No. 29766 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:35 pm
29766 spacer
>>29765

No, just an anti-restriction party that realises that it is going to affect a lot of people regardless. Let it rip through and rebuild from there.
>> No. 29767 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:47 pm
29767 spacer
>>29766

Are Jimmy's new party might have you covered there, not sure like but I have a hunch.

I would have thought that at least under Labour, the restrictions would have more severe, but the support given to those put out of work and what have you more comprehensive.

I dislike the implication that Labour and the Tories are the same, that only seems to be the fashionable view amongst arsehole student hipster types who have been saying it roughly since they figured out it's hilarious to call Kier Keith. It's really not true in the same way as you can, for instance, claim that the Republicans and the Democrats are the same party, and I think it's just a shallow copy-cat act they've started after watching the US election, because these kinds of fuckwits are usually the same terminally online retards who think American social issues resemble our own.
>> No. 29768 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 12:57 pm
29768 spacer
>>29732

>'It is essential that we lock down the country to stop the spread of the virus... but we can still all go on holidays to Cyprus'

People are morons.
>> No. 29769 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:37 pm
29769 spacer
Some cunt delivered some stock my missus' business, didn't wear a mask, and a day or two later the company texted us to say he'd tested positive. Missus just got her positive result this morning so 99% chance me and the nipper are love and cherished too. It was nice knowing you lads. Remember to pick me up a Crunchie bar, a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch and a Tizer every time you pop to the shop at 4am. Ta.
>> No. 29770 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:39 pm
29770 spacer
>>29769

F
>> No. 29771 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:41 pm
29771 spacer
>>29769

Grow up mate.
>> No. 29772 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:43 pm
29772 spacer

37628700-9114409-image-a-3_1609858363795.jpg
297722977229772
On the one hand, people are unhappy at the lack of notice before we went into the current lockdown.

On the other hand, leaks from the government the week before the second lockdown led to infections to spike as people made the most of their last few days of freedom.

On the other-other hand, pissflaps.
>> No. 29773 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:44 pm
29773 spacer
>>29771

Fine pick me up some foie gras and a bottle of chablis if you prefer. It's coming out of your pocket Tescolad.
>> No. 29774 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 6:51 pm
29774 spacer
>>29769

This is what happens when you let your lass run a wax melt or nail salon page on instagram.
>> No. 29775 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 7:07 pm
29775 spacer
>>29774

Those wax melt things have to be some sort of pyramid scheme. I remember a lad I worked with doing something similar with that raspberry ketone tea a few years ago too.

My favourite part is when you see bints on Tinder saying "I run my own business" and this is what they mean.
>> No. 29776 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 7:16 pm
29776 spacer
>>29775

There's a lass at work that does the wax melts, she seems to be doing well, there's at least a couple of "I just bought these wax melts from @waxmeltbint" posts on her story each day. I imagine it's mostly profit once you've bought a big lump of wax and some bottles of smelly extracts from ebay or wherever. And I assume none of these people are paying tax, it seems like the second best way of making money on the side, after onlyfans.
>> No. 29777 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 7:18 pm
29777 spacer
>>29774
>>29775
>>29776

What in the name of German buggery is a wax melt? It sounds like a vaguely offensive Yorkshire insult.
>> No. 29778 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 7:34 pm
29778 spacer
>>29777
It's scented wax like you would have in a candle, but it has no wick. You have to put the melt in a dish and then burn a tea light underneath to melt the melt and produce a nice smell.
>> No. 29779 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 8:54 pm
29779 spacer
>>29778

Ah! you mean a post-modern deconstructed candle display. Gotcha.
>> No. 29780 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:10 pm
29780 spacer
I've never heard of a "wax melt" before, but after looking some pictures for five seconds I gather they're scented candles sans wick?
>> No. 29781 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:19 pm
29781 spacer
They're kicking off on the local Facey group because the Asian barbers was still open today.
>> No. 29782 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:19 pm
29782 spacer
I'm booked in for the vaccine ladm8s, in 2 weeks. Wish me luck. Hope it's the Pfizer one.
>> No. 29783 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:21 pm
29783 spacer
Weird that they've been mentioned on here now as I recently got one, I can't use incense in this room so they've been a good replacement, works pretty well just you can't switch between waxes until you've burned through one obviously. The wax melts themselves cost at maximum 50p so I don't really know how much of a profit they're making on these things.
>> No. 29784 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 9:38 pm
29784 spacer
>>29782
How did you manage that?
>> No. 29785 Anonymous
5th January 2021
Tuesday 11:12 pm
29785 spacer
>Britain’s National Grid, which is responsible for ensuring supply and demand are balanced in Britain’s energy systems, has issued a tight electricity margin notice for Wednesday afternoon and evening. In a market message, National Grid said there is a reduced margin between the hours of 1600-1900 GMT on Wednesday, with a system shortfall of 584 megawatts.

>“An electricity margin notice is used to send a signal to the electricity market. It highlights that, in the short-term, we would like a greater safety cushion (margin) between power demand and available supply,” National Grid said. “It does not signal that blackouts are imminent or that there is not enough generation to meet current demand.”

>A further update will be issued tomorrow.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-power-idUKKBN29A1XZ?

Put a jumper on you lot.
>> No. 29786 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 12:49 am
29786 spacer
>>29785
What an absolute third-world shithole.
>> No. 29787 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 1:02 am
29787 spacer
>>29784
Average poster age is 68. You're probably the rogue 20-something dragging the avarage down, eh?
>> No. 29788 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 1:31 am
29788 spacer
>>29786
Just think, if coronavirus had never happened we'd all be having a cunt-off right now about how subsidies for renewables have eroded the resilience of the power grid. Assuming there's enough of us left here who weren't blinded from the Project Epsilon disaster.
>> No. 29791 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 10:02 am
29791 spacer
>>29784

I assume he works in the NHS.
>> No. 29792 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 10:23 am
29792 spacer
>>29791
Or weak-immune-system-lad that had a lift adventure the other day.
>> No. 29794 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 11:13 am
29794 spacer
>>29792

Clinically vulnerable people under 65 are well down the priority list. NHS and care workers are top of the list, alongside care home residents and the over 80s.
>> No. 29798 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 12:40 pm
29798 spacer
>>29784
I work in healthcare.
>> No. 29802 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 1:35 pm
29802 spacer
What exactly is a key worker?

I know quite a few people who've sent their kids into school under the guise of being a key worker. It's all things like "I work in payroll so if I can't work people don't get paid" and "I repair windscreens, so if I can't work then people who need to drive won't be able to" rather than it being NHS staff, firefighters, carers and people like that I thought it actually meant. Can just about anyone spin themselves as being a key worker?
>> No. 29803 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 1:45 pm
29803 spacer
The time of judgement is upon me. Proper night shifts. 8 til 8.

Fuck you corona. Suppose I'll be doing a lot more late night shitposting on here than I already did.
>> No. 29805 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 1:57 pm
29805 spacer
>>29802

People who work in supermarkets are key workers so why wouldn't the Autoglass man be?
>> No. 29808 Anonymous
6th January 2021
Wednesday 3:10 pm
29808 spacer
>>29802

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision
>> No. 29827 Anonymous
7th January 2021
Thursday 12:47 am
29827 spacer
it's just the flu, bro

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 29943 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 1:00 pm
29943 spacer
>>29805

I think car repair is an essential service even in these times that is needed to keep us going, even in a lockdown. And it isn't going to make the streets any safer if an essential worker is driving to work in a car that desperately needs repairs, but which can't be carried out because garages are deemed non-essential. If there is an accident with a car like that, it means one less A&E or ICU bed for covid patients.

On the other hand, if Helen in accounting says she is an essential worker, then that's quite likely bollocks. I have a friend who works in corporate finance, and he can log into his company's intranet and get access to all the numbers from home, no problem.

I am pretty sure almost any job that is purely numbers-related can be done via remote working. Or maybe you need one or two people at the office going through incoming paper receipts, but that should be it.
>> No. 29946 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 1:31 pm
29946 spacer
My neighbours have sent their kids to school today. He's on furlough and she's a stay-at-home mum so fuck knows.
>> No. 29947 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 1:43 pm
29947 spacer
>>29946
Technically if you have no way to learn from home the kids can go in.

Huge loophole for parents who can't be arsed. My son's School is at about 10p kids in comparison to the 24 in lockdown 1.
>> No. 29948 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 2:28 pm
29948 spacer
>>29943
In my work you can actually go in if your home working environment is unsuitable. I have no idea what that means but they're strongly against you doing it. Probably for people living in a sex dungeon and/or monastery.

Can't imagine anyone would do a commute if they had any choice considering it entails getting up earlier and sitting in an empty office.

>>29947
From what I understand they could also be special needs etc.

I have no idea how this is working in Welsh schools where parents who might not speak Welsh are being asked to supervise learning for children who have been doing it for years. Then again the same applies for French and German across the country but my own experience in school was that these subjects aren't really attempted.
>> No. 29949 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 2:53 pm
29949 spacer

iwalker.jpg
299492994929949
Christ almight, this is a bleak use of technology.

Actual dystopia.
>> No. 29951 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:18 pm
29951 spacer
>>29949
I don't understand what I'm looking at. What is the intended purpose of this man and his harness?
>> No. 29952 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:24 pm
29952 spacer
>>29949
I thought robots were meant to be taking these jobs?
>> No. 29953 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:27 pm
29953 spacer
>>29951
Mobile propaganda station.
>> No. 29954 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:35 pm
29954 spacer
>>29952
It's cheaper just to round up Asians in Bradford.
>> No. 29955 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:41 pm
29955 spacer

eat the bugs.jpg
299552995529955
>>29949

Best I could do.
>> No. 29956 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 3:57 pm
29956 spacer
>>29955
Hello far-right lad.
>> No. 29958 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 4:51 pm
29958 spacer

Untitled.png
299582995829958
>>29951
Some company is trying to push a weird advertising style in the North of England.
www.facebook.com/pg/GomoDigital/photos/

I looks like they've won contracts from a couple of city councils or just did it pro-bono because they're otherwise collecting dust.
>> No. 29959 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 4:57 pm
29959 spacer
>>29958
Definitely the kind of gig I'd like to wear a mask for.
>> No. 29960 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 5:04 pm
29960 spacer
>>29958
I'd rather wear a mascot costume than walk around with one of these things.
Jesus wept.
>> No. 29962 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 5:12 pm
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>>29958

How is this better than a sandwich board? It's smaller, not so easy to read and more expensive to produce.

What they ought to be doing is making animated sandwich boards using retina screens.
>> No. 29963 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 5:27 pm
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1,325 deaths today, the highest ever.

This little nibba's picking up speed.
>> No. 29964 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 5:29 pm
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>>29963
The most infected country per capita in the world, somewhere around third for deaths.
>> No. 29966 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 6:05 pm
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>>29964

Maintaining the cognitive dissonance involved in embracing the concept of herd immunity for the majority while vaccinating the over-eighties first so they can keep on drawing the state pension for a few more years must be almost impossible. Good thing we've got an experience Tory government in at the moment, parties less able to deal with the double think would be bleeding from their ears by now.
>> No. 29968 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 7:09 pm
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>>29966
What cognitive dissonance? Herd immunity isn't something that can be established overnight so we have to prioritise who to inoculate first. Those people are top of the list because they are the most at risk, by a very significant margin. You and I aren't going to die because we waited a few more weeks for the vaccine. Is it my imagination or is this place becoming thicker?
>> No. 29970 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 7:54 pm
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>>29968
I guess that lad means that the Herd Immunity approach has it's ideological roots in 'only the strong survive' type Darwinism, and that the Govts whole management of the Pandemic has been with greater consideration for Economic preservation not public health, and that the current approach fails to conform to either of those ideological aims.

IMO the least bad approach would be to tell the vulnerable to shield and those that can WFM should do that. Vaccination should first be given to front line healthcare workers, then teachers and students, then hospitality staff, then everybody else.

The current approach is indicative of the fact that the actual reigns of decision making are well grasped by the weak hands of a Gerontocracy.
>> No. 29971 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 8:21 pm
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>>29970

>I guess that lad means that the Herd Immunity approach has it's ideological roots in 'only the strong survive' type Darwinism

What? No it doesn't, it has its roots in the firmly established scientific knowledge that having the majority of a population immunised to a pathogen renders it unable to spread effectively.

Don't confuse the concept of herd immunity with the method of achieving it.
>> No. 29972 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 8:41 pm
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>>29971

When the Govt embarked on the Herd Immunity thing we knew sweet FA about the virus. Specifically whether immunity would be retained long-term after an infection.

Whilst Herd-Immunity as a scientific concept, the government's attempted implementation of it was purely to save the profits of their all their shareholder and landlord mates.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQDXmipIYF8
>> No. 29973 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 8:46 pm
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>>29971

>that having the majority of a population immunised to a pathogen renders it unable to spread effectively

Yes, but you are going to have to answer the question of how many deaths you think are acceptable on the way to that herd immunity. There will without question always be more people who will get seriously ill or who will die from the virus than if you lock down the country for a few weeks, tell people to stop seeing each other, and do all kinds of other things until the vaccine is widely available.

Sweden's demographics and population density may be different from ours in Britain, but even they have now abandoned the herd immunity approach because they've realised they just haven't got the healthcare capacity to deal with all the casualties.

Herd immunity - reasonable approach in theory, but unfeasible in today's world, with this virus.
>> No. 29974 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 9:39 pm
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>Sweden's demographics and population density may be different from ours in Britain, but even they have now abandoned the herd immunity approach because they've realised they just haven't got the healthcare capacity to deal with all the casualties.

With Sweden its not even that.
When you look at the actual numbers, the last time I looked they had more deaths than Norway, Finland and Denmark all put together. And that's despite the Swedish population and businesses going a very long way in implementing many measures voluntarily.

Regarding Borises decision making during the epidemic, this article makes a lot of sense:
https://theconversation.com/why-does-boris-johnson-delay-coronavirus-lockdown-decisions-a-psychologist-gives-her-view-152699
The long and short of it is that there has never been any sort of over-arching master plan to put the economy first or promote herd immunity. The much more probable truth is that Boris is just repeatedly falling into all the traps of a poor-decision maker.
>> No. 29975 Anonymous
8th January 2021
Friday 9:53 pm
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>>29974

>The long and short of it is that there has never been any sort of over-arching master plan to put the economy first or promote herd immunity.

Even the most benevolent observer can attest him little more than muddling through, and that he reacted to unfolding events only when his back was against the wall. Same thing right now. We should've shut down the country weeks ago. No mucking about with tier-1 and tier-2 zones, which anybody could have told him were going to turn into tier 4 before long.
>> No. 29994 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 1:32 am
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>>29974

>The much more probable truth is that Boris is just repeatedly falling into all the traps of a poor-decision maker.

I would agree, even as a dyed in the wool class warrior lefty, I don't think it was sheer malice on his part. He genuinely wanted to get it "right" because he'd just won a landslide election and his head was full of all these fantasies of being Brexit Churchill who everyone would end up loving, immortalised as Britain's 21st century founding father. A Tony Blair who didn't turn out to be a war criminal. And look how it's turning out for him, poor old Bodger.

However, he got it all wrong because he's a bit of a numpty, and part of the reason he dithered and dallied over every decision is because he comes from that background of relatively libertarian soft righty ideals. He has been trying to balance the neccesity of restrictions with the obvious unpopularity it will cause him to put people's livelihoods at risk. Even as a conservative, he's populist enough to have considered something like UBI or the US governments simple "give everyone some free money" approach, but then known he's really not going to look good doing that after winning the election on the basis that the other guy was a commie.

I'm rambling a bit but anyway, he's essentially done that thing anyone does when they feel compelled to act against their own personal feelings on a matter, conflicted and pulled in different directions, and you usually end up choosing a shit compromise that fulfils neither side. He's not got enough backbone to call the shots and deal with the critics, and he's not clever enough to decide on the most coldly rational or pragmatic approach either.
>> No. 29995 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 1:40 am
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How chubby was he back in April though?
>> No. 30005 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 9:07 am
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>>29995
I'd post that picture of him in his bike helmet comparing him to Cartman but I can't be arsed.
>> No. 30009 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 12:01 pm
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>>29994
>However, he got it all wrong because he's a bit of a numpty

Did anybody really expect anything different from him though? He's always shown his incompetence and lack of empathy, the man just cannot lead.
>> No. 30011 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 12:12 pm
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>>30009
That's what happens when a man is elected after 90% of his promo is him being a loveable wacky oaf.
>> No. 30013 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 12:40 pm
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>>30011

"You can't rule out the possibility that beneath the elaborately-constructed veneer of a blithering idiot there lurks a blithering idiot." - Boris Johnson
>> No. 30014 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 1:08 pm
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>>30011
I seem to recall Boris Johnson being either a funny endnote on the news for his oh-so-funny, and not in any way undemocratic, antics at the GLA during his mayorship or an oh-so-funny idiot on HIGNFY.

It's either that, or people are genuinely in awe of some fat cunt who can quote a bit of some classical Greek/Latin.
>> No. 30016 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 1:35 pm
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>>30014

I think a lot of people thought that having a posh clown with a populist bend as PM wouldn't do the kind of harm that it's now been doing. Granted, in fairness, nobody saw the extent of this pandemic coming.
>> No. 30019 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 2:10 pm
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>>30016
>in fairness, nobody saw the extent of this pandemic coming.

Who could've possibly seen us being underequipped for a public health emergency after years of cuts to the NHS.
>> No. 30023 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 2:52 pm
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>>30019

Operation Cygnus
Event 201

When CCP said there was nothing to worry about and Taiwan and Japan closed their borders only morons thought this was nbd.
>> No. 30024 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 3:00 pm
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>>30016

>in fairness, nobody saw the extent of this pandemic coming

A lot of people have been warning about the threat posed by pandemic disease, most notably Bill Gates. China, South Korea and Singapore were well-prepared for COVID, because they took the 2002 SARS outbreak as a warning. They built out testing capacity, built up reserves of essential supplies like PPE and developed well-rehearsed response strategies. China might have publicly downplayed the epidemic in the early stages, but there's no doubt that they responded competently and efficiently.
>> No. 30039 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 5:51 pm
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>>30024

Then again, recent history up until 2019 gave you a - false - sense of security that SARS-type pandemics originating in Asia never quite made it to Britain or Europe. It wasn't impossible that it could have spread to here, but the odds seemed to be low, going by a number of actual examples.

Bit like car insurance. You may think that you only need third-party insurance, and it'll serve you well for many years because you're a careful driver, but then you rear end somebody in traffic and have to pay over 1000 quid out of your own pocket to have your own front bumper and bonnet fixed.
>> No. 30041 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 6:33 pm
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Almost at 2 million deaths worldwide.

In the same amount of time 20 million people have died from traffic accidents.

Tell me again, why did we crash our economy for a new type of flu?
>> No. 30042 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 6:41 pm
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>>30041

I'd be up for crashing it to stop traffic accidents.
>> No. 30043 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 6:46 pm
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>>30041
I can only figure people like you are wilfully staying uninformed and not reading anything because it's almost a year in and there's no excuse for this stupidity at this stage.
>> No. 30044 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 7:15 pm
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>>30043
That's not an answer. Is it so they can bring in the great reset?
>> No. 30045 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 7:38 pm
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>>30041
>Tell me again, why did we crash our economy for a new type of flu?

The key fuck up last lockdown was that the message wasn't clear enough about working from home. It should have been "work from home if possible, but if not keep working if it's safe to do so" but people interpreted that as if you can't do your job from home and you don't work in a supermarket then shut everything fucking down. At least this lockdown everyone seems to be half-arsing it and a lot more businesses are staying open.
>> No. 30046 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 8:03 pm
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>>30044

Okay what is this great reset thing? What's the deal? I've heard a lot of people mention it in very /boo/ terms but when I've looked it up it only sounds like some pie in the sky fantasy some ineffectual global non-profit occasionally makes noise about, and the intention behind it seems like a genuinely good thing. Something about wiping away everyone's debts and such.
>> No. 30047 Anonymous
9th January 2021
Saturday 8:18 pm
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>>30024
>China might have publicly downplayed the epidemic in the early stages, but there's no doubt that they responded competently and efficiently.

You mean when they outright suppressed information on the pandemic doing nothing while it tore through Wuhan and even as it spread around the world?
https://www.ft.com/content/82574e3d-1633-48ad-8afb-71ebb3fe3dee

I get that this thread is 99% bullshit but you should really consider working for the WHO.
>> No. 30053 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 1:58 am
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One of my mum's friends has told her tonight without a hint of irony that she believes that it's the American and Chinese governments who have been spraying chemtrails and that that is what is making people sick, not the coronavirus.

She's 65 and lives in a tiny Yorkshire hamlet, but even for that, it's laying it on a bit thick.
>> No. 30054 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 9:50 am
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>>30016
I hope this thread gives you pause for thought lad

https://nitter.nixnet.services/D_Raval/status/1344968681894375424
>> No. 30055 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 10:54 am
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>>29994
Enjoyed this analysis and it actually did make me think of Corbyn doing the same- personally anti-EU but forced to tow the party line and surprise surprise it went tits up and Labour lost the red wall. I often think about an alternative timeline where Leftybrexit happened.
>> No. 30056 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 10:58 am
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The Wuhan lab *just happens* to have a virus called "Bat Cov RaTG13" which is genetically very similar to covid.
>> No. 30057 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 11:34 am
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>>30055

You're not wrong actually, it's a very similar situation and outcome I think>>30056

It looks very compelling when you put it like that, but genetics is just a bit wierd like that. Humans are something like 74% similar to salamander*, so you really ought to take it with a pinch of salt.

*I've pulled that completely out of my arse but I've definitely seen a "shocking" hot fact where it's humans and some massively different animal that we share the majority of our DNA with. Point is a tiny number of genes can make a fuck huge difference
>> No. 30058 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 11:35 am
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>>30057

Forgive my shit formatting, phoneposting in bed. Fuck it.
>> No. 30059 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 12:23 pm
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>>30056
They have samples of virus which have been circulating in the populations of bats that live around Wuhan, yes.

It's thanks to this information being released early on in the epidemic that scientists were fairly confident that bats were the original source of the virus, although there's still the possibility of there being an intermediary like pangolins where it picked up that few % genetic variation from the bat virus before it went on to infect humans.

I would make a guess that that lab has tens, hundreds or even thousands of virus samples from all over the world. If the release was deliberate or accidental either way it doesn't make much sense that it just so happened to be that particular one which was local to the area.
>> No. 30060 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 12:43 pm
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>>30057
As a Virologist who has lived in China, I fully believe this outbreak originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-%201.18787

This lab was doing 'gain of function' research into coronavirus as recently as 2015. This paper was controversial enough that the NIH revised their rules so that this kind of research would no longer be supported by them.

It's naive to think that China stopped doing this kind of research just because America said so.

Bear in mind He Jiankui's lab produced genetically engineered humans late 2018.

WHIV was advertising for a post-doctoral position in December 2019
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/job-ad-experts-bats-virus-21832704

I know it's the Mirror, but this ad was live on the Uni's website http://english.whiov.cas.cn/ back at the time. Maybe the new guy forgot to wash his hands before going to get lunch at the wet market

The website was also scrubbed of information regarding CCP members affiliated with the institute and staff during the time it was still being denied that this virus was an issue for concern.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-cable-shows-us-officials-flagged-safety-issues-at-wuhan-lab-years-ago

Visiting American researchers raised concern about biosafety in the lab as early as 2018.

Labs working with infections pathogens have the highest safety designation of BSL4. This means that all contaminated waste must be sterilized before leaving the lab. All waste leaving the lab has to be incinerated in specialist facilities.

When I lived in China we didn't have recycling for our district. People would put their trash in the bins and there were some people in the district who would root through all the mixed garbage to sort it into recyclable and non-recyclable. I would be walking to the bins with a bag of cans and random people would take them off of me (I guess so that they could claim the money for recycling them from the scrappie).

If people are picking through the waste coming out of a virology lab looking for items of value, this is an issue. If waste is not being decontaminated before being dumped and people are raking through the bins out back, this is an issue.

I don't believe that this virus was engineered as a weapon, or even with a gain of function. But given all the coincidences surrounding the events of the early days of the virus I believe that the outbreak emerged from the WHIV due to corner cutting and the 差不多 attitude.

That said, it doesn't matter. The UK gov failed to respond when it became obvious that COVID-19 would become a major public health problem and the response to it has been utterly shambolic in every respect at every stage of the pandemic.
>> No. 30061 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 1:14 pm
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>>30060
I'm not a virologist and I've not lived in China, but what do you say to the fact that your view is regarded as a conspiracy theory? I'm admittedly getting my information from Wikipedia here, but it states that the consensus among the virology scientific community is that there is no evidence to suggest the virus came from the WIV and significant evidence to suggest it came from nature.
>> No. 30062 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 1:43 pm
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>>30059

If the Wuhan Institute of Virology wasn't researching local coronavirus strains, something would be seriously amiss. In the last couple of decades they've had SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu and god knows what else; you'd hope that someone was keeping track of it all.
>> No. 30063 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 1:59 pm
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>>30061

>>30059 here again, I'm with you on this. Not a virologist either but my own understanding of the subject is that the argument that the virus was genetically engineered is very very unlikely, as the technology just doesn't exist to create a virus with the large-scale drift from the source virus that we see. An intentionally created virus would instead be quite distinct.
The argument that the virus was just accidentally released from the lab is possible too but has Occam's razor stacked firmly against it, as you're looking at a very specific strain being accidentally released and a very small oppurtunity for exposure. On the other hand you have the wet-market scenario where you have a very large pool of animals to propagate and mutate many types of viruses, and daily exposure to thousands of people it becomes inevitable.
A virus picking up the specific mutations it needs to jump from animals to humans is a billion to one chance, but that dice gets rolled millions of times each day.

Believing the virus to be intentional also falls into the same fallacies that drives people to believe in creationism and such, accepting that something like this can occur through random chance and from nature alone means confronting nihilism, in much the same way as people want to believe in a creator of the universe even atheists will cling to incredibly improbably conspiracy theories to protect the ego they have built around the idea of omnipotence of humanity and science.
>> No. 30064 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 2:02 pm
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On the German site they're saying it was made by the jews.
>> No. 30065 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 2:04 pm
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>>30064
Putins army of Chinese Jews?
>> No. 30066 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 2:12 pm
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I would say that it's possible that my speculation about the virus escaping from a lab being a conspiracy theory is possible.

I would argue Occam's Razor would suggest the lab origin is the simplest explanation for the outbreak. As a concentrated lab sample being ingested by a human is a more likely method of transmission than a person eating a pangolin or bat or whatever. It is bizarre that the outbreak first occurred at a market that is super close to the one BSL4 Virology lab in China and not at one of the other many markets in the country (Places like Guangdong being more famous for weird exotic food habits).

Ultimately we will never know the true origin definitively one way or the other and it doesn't matter.

What's important is that our country was woefully unprepared to deal with a pandemic, and corrupt allocation of contracts to companies with zero oversight means that taxpayers are footing the bill for what is shaping up to be one of the worst COVID responses in Europe.

Even now, with the NHS on the brink of being overwhelmed morons are protesting the lockdown and maintaining that they don't believe that COVID-19 is real.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/hundreds-turn-up-for-anti-lockdown-protest-held-outside-covid-ward/01/01/
>> No. 30067 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 2:14 pm
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https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/5g-covid-guitar-pedal-b1782573.html

>“The Russians have managed to remove the nanochips from the Pfizer vaccine and have published a function diagram!”, posts sharing the diagram claim.

>They go on to say that the bass and treble elements control instructions that can be heard in the recipient’s brain, as well as a controls to overwhelm the immune system.

>“The VOLUME control is used for the overall power of the chip, which is sometimes sensitive to your frequency. from personal vibrations, it depends on whether you are at the stage of happiness or generosity or sadness”, it continues, without any justification.

>However, the image is in fact the plans for a Boss Metal Zone MT-2 guitar pedal, which would explain the mention of “MT-2 Gain,” “Footswitch,” “Treble,” and “Bass,” in the diagram – as well as a “5G frequency”.
>> No. 30068 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 2:29 pm
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"The USSR killed citizens when Anthrax was accidentally released from a biological weapons research facility" was a conspiracy theory until it wasn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
>> No. 30070 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 3:18 pm
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>>30066
>As a concentrated lab sample being ingested by a human is a more likely method of transmission than a person eating a pangolin or bat or whatever.

Again, I defer to Wikipedia here:

>The virologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which studies emerging infectious diseases, has had a 15-year collaboration with Shi Zhengli, a leading WIV virologist, to study bat coronaviruses. Daszak noted estimates that millions of people who live or work in proximity to bats in Southeast Asia are infected each year with bat coronaviruses.In an interview with Vox, Daszak comments, "There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let's compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it's just not logical."
>> No. 30071 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 3:27 pm
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>>30070

And yet samples of those bat coronaviruses are handled in WIV, but no infected animal matter was identified at that market where the outbreak occurred (which is a couple miles away from the lab).

Look at what caused the anthrax leak in the wikipedia I linked. The reason for the outbreak was even given by the government at the time as being due to 'tainted meat'.

Just saying that after living in China for a couple years, if CCP told me the sky was blue I'd have to go outside to check.
>> No. 30081 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 5:20 pm
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Reports of a new strain from Nigeria.
>> No. 30082 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 5:38 pm
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>>30071
>but no infected animal matter was identified at that market where the outbreak occurred
Source for that?

Later on in the outbreak we saw a lot of pressure from the CCP to reopen the wet markets, as well as plenty of ludicrous claims about the source of the outbreak such as virus being found on frozen food imported from other countries.

Making comparisons to anthrax is a terrible strawman argument.
>> No. 30084 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:15 pm
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>Every adult will have been offered the coronavirus vaccine by autumn, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said. The cabinet minister made the announcement as he told Sky News more than 200,000 people are currently getting a COVID-19 jab every day and the government is on course to reach its target of two million vaccinations a week.

>He told Ridge the government was set to meet its goal of vaccinating more than 13 million of the over-70s and the most vulnerable by mid-February - a target that requires two million jabs to be carried out a week. Mr Hancock said: "Yes we're on course. The rate limiting factor at the moment is supply but that's increasing. I'm very glad to say that at the moment we're running at over 200,000 people being vaccinated every day. We've now vaccinated around one third of the over-80s in this country so we're making significant progress but there's still further expansion to go. This week we're opening mass vaccination centres. Big sites for instance at Epsom racecourse, there's seven going live this week with more to come next week where we will get through very large numbers of people."

>Meanwhile, Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the vaccine rollout will already have prevented thousands of people from having to be admitted to hospital with the virus. The professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol told Ridge: "It's really too soon for the vaccine to have started having a measurable impact, but we can predict that already it's preventing cases just simply from the numbers of people who've received the vaccine which is now approaching one-and-a-half million people, and the rate of infection that's occurring which is really very high now. So there are certainly thousands of people already who have not been admitted to hospital and who will not be dying of this infection as a consequence of the programme that's begun in December."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-more-than-200-000-coronavirus-jabs-a-day-as-uk-on-course-to-meet-vaccination-target-12183970

Pack your sunscreen lads. In a few months we'll be laying belly to belly on some horrid British beach.
>> No. 30086 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:29 pm
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>>30084
Judging by the pictures in the papers today, shitloads of people have gone to the beach anyway.
>> No. 30087 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:30 pm
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>>30084

>Every adult will have been offered the coronavirus vaccine by autumn

I can't see that possibly coming back to haunt him.

>This week we're opening mass vaccination centres. Big sites for instance at Epsom racecourse, there's seven going live this week with more to come next week where we will get through very large numbers of people

So we'll be gathering large numbers of people who are not yet vaccinated in one place? Sounds like a good plan.
>> No. 30088 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:34 pm
30088 The Ghost of Ronald Maddison
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>>30082
What is the source for the belief that it originated in tainted meat at the market? There's no evidence. Initial outbreak was (maybe) linked to the market.
Maybe not according to the Lancet https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally[/spoiler]


I don't think the comparison to the anthrax leak is a strawman argument. I suggested that it may be the case that poor health and safety protocols in a lab doing secretive research with pathogens led to an outbreak which was subsequently covered up by the government. I cited multiple sources earlier in the thread pertaining to this.

You are correct about CCP pressuring to reopen the wet markets which is incongruous with the suggestion that the virus originated with animal produce here. CCP has also been very sterno towards anybody who wants to attempt to identify the source of the virus.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55333200
>A team of 10 international scientists will travel to the Chinese city of Wuhan next month to investigate the origins of Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
China is guarding ancient bat caves against journalists and scientists seeking to discover the origins of the coronavirus
16th December 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55555466
>A World Health Organization (WHO) team due to investigate the origins of Covid-19 in the city of Wuhan has been denied entry to China.
6th January 2021

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-scientists-hope-coronavirus-clues-inside-2020-12?r=US&IR=T
>China is guarding ancient bat caves against journalists and scientists seeking to discover the origins of the coronavirus

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/29/a-year-after-wuhan-alarm-china-seeks-to-change-covid-origin-story
>A year after Wuhan alarm, China seeks to change Covid origin story

Again, the origin is unimportant at this time. What is important is the response, which at this moment is about reducing spread and rolling out vaccination expeditiously
>> No. 30089 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:35 pm
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>>30088
I fucked up a spoiler tag and now I look like a pure moron
>> No. 30090 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:37 pm
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>>30084
>Pack your sunscreen lads. In a few months we'll be laying belly to belly on some horrid British beach.

I CANNOT FUCKIN WAIT.
>> No. 30092 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:55 pm
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>>30090

Already happened this past summer.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/trips-and-breaks/inside-blackpools-boom-corona-kills-18717117

>But with the government advising against all but essential foreign travel at the moment, Blackpool is enjoying a boom on a scale similar to the Victorian era, when competition from foreign beach resorts was non-existent.

>The town has seen footfall surge by ten times in the last two months, and Compare the Market has it as the third most searched for destination in the country, behind the capital and Cornwall.


Why run naked through nocturnal Magaluf off your tits, when you can have a shag in the toilet of a backstreet chippie in Blackpool.
>> No. 30093 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 6:57 pm
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>>30092
Looking forward to a couple rides on the waltzers IYKWIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPv-Ftxvu6I
>> No. 30095 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 7:51 pm
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>>30086
In January? It actually snowed in London of all places on Friday night, initially I thought it was raining covid.
>> No. 30096 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 8:10 pm
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>>30095
Yeah. Not with towels and deckchairs, but hundreds have gone to the coast for their daily exercise.
>> No. 30097 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 8:43 pm
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>>30096

Fuck's sake.
>> No. 30098 Anonymous
10th January 2021
Sunday 8:46 pm
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>>30067

Dan and Mick were right all along - the Metal Zone is toxic.


>> No. 30105 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 11:30 am
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Jeremy Clarkson has survived Covid.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ib4PPFUzi4

I think we'll all make it. It's going to be alright.
>> No. 30116 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 1:53 pm
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>>30098

Those two are a right pair of cork-sniffing fuckwits though. Or at least, Mick is. He's the type who genuinely believes your AC power source colours your tone. He believes you can hear the difference between a laminated and a carved fretboard.

I made a comment on one of their videos about how you need to use silver solder when you're re-wiring your pickups, or you're damaging your tone. It's no good having handwound '59s running through your boutique pedalboard into a priceless vintage Deluxe Reverb, if you're only going to spoil the whole lot with cheap solder on your pots.

Mick replied saying he thought that might be going a bit far, but I think it genuinely troubled him.
>> No. 30121 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 4:56 pm
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>>30116

Mick sounds like he'd use Superfuses.

https://theaudiophileman.com/is-it-a-bird/
>> No. 30122 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 5:02 pm
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Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm
>> No. 30123 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 5:13 pm
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>>30116

>believes your AC power source colours your tone

I'm no expert but isn't that true? Certainly if a pedal uses the frequency as a reference and the power adaptor is shite and affects that in some way then it will make a difference, right?
>> No. 30127 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 5:24 pm
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>>30122
>Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Stop doing this, you mong.
>> No. 30129 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 5:42 pm
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>>30123

They even did a test on the show using 110vAC and 240vAC and they were sat there going "Oh yeah wow, it's sort of... Squishier... A little bit more compressed..." when it was plain and obviously identical from a listener's standpoint.

There's a lot of placebo effect in guitar tone, but I've seen back to back tests using re-amped identical tracks, comparing waveforms, that a surprising amount actually makes little to no difference at all. Even the difference between 6L6 and EL34 tubes is miniscule when compared objectively.

There's a lot of things that all add up together to make the end sound; but lots of people obsess over the minor details that are really almost imperceptible, if they even matter whatsoever. Many pedals that are held up as classics use exactly the same op-amp circuit as £25 Behringer clones.

It's like the whole vinyl versus CD thing, or people buying £80 gold plated HDMI cables. If you're that way inclined, you can go down an absolute rabbit hole with it, and there's always some snake-oil salesman willing to indulge you.
>> No. 30132 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 6:09 pm
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>>30122
It was just a bit of spoiled meat mate.
>> No. 30133 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 6:12 pm
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>>30123

Power quality makes a huge difference for guitar amps, because the technology is really archaic. A switched-mode power supply on a modern hi-fi amplifier has tons of filtering and really doesn't care if your AC power is noisy as hell, but the primary transformer on a valve amp will pass everything straight through. Half the reason everyone tours with Kempers these days (or at least would if they were still allowed to tour) is because of how temperamental valve amps are in electromagnetically noisy stage environments.
>> No. 30134 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 6:21 pm
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/coronavirus-strong-strains-cannabis-could-22069569

>Scientists from the University of Lethbridge claim to have found strong strains of cannabis that could help prevent and then treat COVID-19.

>They say that the strains appear to affect the ACE2 pathways that the virus uses as a gateway to the body.

>Speaking to CTV News, Olga Kovalchuk, one of the researchers, said: “We were totally stunned at first, and then we were really happy.”

>Cannabis can reduce the virus’ entry points to the body by up to 70%, according to the researchers.

We need to legalize weed immediately and then all smoke an inordinate amount of it in the name of Public Health.
>> No. 30135 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 6:25 pm
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>>30134
I am pretty sure cigarettes do the same thing.
>> No. 30136 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 6:30 pm
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>>30133

>Half the reason everyone tours with Kempers these days (or at least would if they were still allowed to tour) is because of how temperamental valve amps are in electromagnetically noisy stage environments.

In my years of road experience I never met anyone who complained about the quality of power or interference messing with their sound, and the scene I was playing in practically everyone was using either a second hand JCM800, Rectifier or 6505.

Granted Kempers were only just brand new by the time I hung up my guitar and called it quits, but the reliability of valve amps really wasn't an issue on anyone's radar. The reason everyone uses them now is simply because you don't break your back carrying them in and out of the van.
>> No. 30137 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 7:45 pm
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>>30134
At last, some good news.
>> No. 30139 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 8:36 pm
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>>30136

Those are relatively modern amplifier designs, presumably being used with a shitload of gain. Old Fender and Vox amps are much more touchy, you notice the interference more when you're playing fairly clean and the major problems generally occur in larger venues with big lighting rigs and wireless everything.
>> No. 30140 Anonymous
11th January 2021
Monday 8:52 pm
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>>30139

Wrong tools for the job in the first place then. If you take an old 60s or 70s Vox on the road of course it's going to be touchy, they probably don't even pass modern safety standards- But a modern production version of the same design, an AC30 for example, doesn't use a 40 year old power transformer. If they did you wouldn't have know-nothings on internet forums talking through their arsehole about how putting a "bigger" transformer in completely fixes the tone.

Swings and roundabouts, but you're getting 99% of your interference and unwanted noise in an electric guitar rig from the guitar itself. They rely on picking up electromagnetic signals to function, after all, there's no level of shielding that will completely fix it. Kempers are better in this regard because they have a very nice noise gate, not because of the AC power.
>> No. 30142 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 1:15 pm
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I don't get it.
>> No. 30143 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 1:20 pm
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>>30142

A litre of vodka and 60 fags for £30 is a bargain.
>> No. 30144 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 1:34 pm
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>>30142

purple hair dye, eh?

Always a mark of true class.
>> No. 30145 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 1:38 pm
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>>30142

I think it's what council estate single mums buy?

They do love a red onion, the council mums. I think that's the true measure of class in this country - whether or not you think a red onion can replace a white onion in every single recipe you try.
>> No. 30146 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 1:53 pm
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>>30145

> I think that's the true measure of class in this country - whether or not you think a red onion can replace a white onion in every single recipe you try.

probably one of the few ways that are affordable to them to feel a little less chav about themselves.
>> No. 30148 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 2:25 pm
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Why is our death rate so high? Is are NHS just that underfunded?
>> No. 30149 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 2:29 pm
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>>30148
Sheer volume of patients, terrible health as a population in general. Too many cases because of the it wont happen to me brigade.
>> No. 30150 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 2:31 pm
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>>30148
It's because we have a higher infection rate per million, mainly because of gross govt incompetence. Scotland's is much lower because they have made decisions like locking down much more decisively, which is the issue.

Boris is a weak leader and doesn't do anything unless forced.
>> No. 30157 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 5:35 pm
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>Tesco, Asda and Waitrose ban shoppers without face masks
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55633843

Wasn't this already the policy?
>> No. 30158 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 5:37 pm
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>>30157
Pretty much, but a lot of people have decided this lockdown doesn't have to be taken seriously.
>> No. 30159 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 5:51 pm
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>>30158
I suspect it's this. Last year, people were mostly complying, whereas now fatigue is starting to set in, and the stores are actually going to have to enforce it.
>> No. 30160 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 5:54 pm
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>>30145

My working class roots proven conclusively at last. I'm trying to think of a single recipe where I'd choose white onions over red. Probably something where I didn't want the sweetness or if I was going to be deglazing with white wine.

Probably chicken, fish, and most pasta dishes (basically stuff I rarely cook).

inb4 cheflad pops up and calls me a cunt because I'm supposed to use white onions in my Rogan Josh and I'm just too thick chav to know it.
>> No. 30161 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:08 pm
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>>30160

I think white onions are generally in dishes that are supposed to be cooked as they are a bit stronger in oniony flavours, whereas red onions are generally eaten raw as they are more delicate and aromatic.

I had a raging row with someone once because I thought that the different colours of bell peppers were different varieties and not just the same plant at different ages, so maybe don't listen to my culinary or botanical opinions.
>> No. 30162 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:10 pm
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>>30160
Absolute madman. I would never fry with a red onion. I'd only use it for salads.
>> No. 30163 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:11 pm
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>>30157
You can ban them all you like but the sort of cunt that thinks they are too good for a face mask is also the sort of cunt that will just force their way past security and shop anyway? Not like the police are going to come out.
>> No. 30167 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:40 pm
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>>30162

>I would never fry with a red onion

Isn't red onion the same as shallots in that respect?

You have to be very careful when you fry or sear shallots because if you overdo it, it will make them taste bitter, and I vaguely remember reading the same about red onions.
>> No. 30168 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:49 pm
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>>30161
>>30162
Not him but I think the sharper flavour of a white onion works better with a cheese sandwich. Fried and in hotdogs\burgers as well.
Red onion works better when you don't want to overpower the dish and involves proper food like a casserole.

>>30163
I've not seen a single person try and come into a supermarket without a mask. If security don't solve it then they will refuse them at the till and cancel their purchase on the automated checkout.

Of course you could just say you have a medical condition but that would involve lying and other customers would tut at you.
>> No. 30169 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:52 pm
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>>30168
>Of course you could just say you have a medical condition

Which in itself is a load of shite, if anyone can't wear a mask due to a medical condition then they should be shielding and not going into a store maskless for fucks sake.
>> No. 30170 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:53 pm
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>>30168
>I've not seen a single person try and come into a supermarket without a mask.

A few weeks back I walked into a shop without one, stood around for a minute with a pack of bacon in my hand, staring around at everyone like a complete mong trying to remember what it was I'd forgotten.
In my defence I'd had a migraine the day before and I think I was still slightly out of it.
>> No. 30174 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:55 pm
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>>30169

Which is how you know none of those people have a legitimate medical condition. If their lungs are so fucked that they can't hack wearing a mask for 15mins, then they very shouldn't be out in public.
>> No. 30175 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 6:58 pm
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>>30169
And they say this whilst ignoring the fact that they're allowed to use a clear plastic visor instead (which are next to useless at protecting the wearer on their own but that's beside the point)
>> No. 30176 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:17 pm
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>>30169
I've been saying this for a while, in the week after facemasks became mandatory while standing up in pubs, I had numerous little shits claim they were medically exempt from wearing a mask, yet were happy enough to nip for a cig every 20 minutes and play Sunday league footy. Also had some old bag complain she couldn't wear one because of her eyesight (sic).

If you genuinely cannot tolerate breathing with a facemask on for the 10 seconds it takes to find a seat in a pub, you will likely be clinically dead within half an hour.
>> No. 30177 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:30 pm
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>>30169
>>30174
>>30176
Rotters the lot of you.

>"My attacker literally pulled me off the street and raped me," Ms Fallows says. "Having something in front of my mouth feels like his hand."
>She has severe post-traumatic stress disorder and flashbacks, sometimes so extreme she has been sedated by paramedics.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54779697
>> No. 30178 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:31 pm
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>>30175
Facemasks protect other people from us, not the other way around, so I'm sure the plastic ones are just as good.

They probably fog up like a bastard though.
>> No. 30179 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:33 pm
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>>30178
>> No. 30180 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:40 pm
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>>30178
We all had a nervous chuckle at my hairdressers when they first reopened and had to cut my hair wearing them.
>> No. 30181 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:43 pm
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>>30179
I'd rather someone pissed on me whilst I was naked than if I was wearing jeans, piss soaked jeans.
>> No. 30182 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:45 pm
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>>30181
Whatever you're into lad. I'm not here to judge.
>> No. 30183 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:47 pm
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>>30182
Piss on my skin, it doesn't soak in. Piss on my jeans, I'm as wet as sardines.
>> No. 30184 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 7:54 pm
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>>30179

>if the guy who pees also is wearing pants, the pee stays with him


How shit do you have to be at pissing on somebody, when you can't even remember to unzip your fly first.
>> No. 30185 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 8:00 pm
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>>30183
>>30184
>> No. 30188 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 8:28 pm
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They've posted the schematic for the 5G Mind control chip in the Pfizer vaccine but it's real this time.
>> No. 30189 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 8:42 pm
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>>30188
Looks like women are in on it, they're all over the internet.
>> No. 30190 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 10:24 pm
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Nevermind the economic boom of getting out of this before the EU and US, we might even have a chance at a bronze medal.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
>> No. 30191 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 11:14 pm
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>>30190

Seriously though what's with Israel?
>> No. 30192 Anonymous
12th January 2021
Tuesday 11:31 pm
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>>30191
Israel is very good at this sort of mobilisation since their country is on a near-constant military alert. On a side note, I wonder what the rabbinical debate about vaccination is like. Would a vaccine not be kosher if it involved splicing a gene found in pigs into a virus?
>> No. 30193 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 1:32 am
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>>30162
>>30167

I generally do tend to gently sautee red onions as opposed to full on give them a bit of a singed hint like you would if you were doing onions for a burger or something. Two things I make where I couldn't imagine using white onions are my red onion, spinach, chickpea, and sweet potato curry and when I use sauteed red onions and spinach as a bed for poached eggs.

When I'm doing certain lamb or chicken curries I've also used both in the same same dish in sort of "one for flavour, one for texture" kind of deal.
>> No. 30194 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 2:17 am
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>>30163

I know it's a bit different but we've seen several people arrested for refusing to wear their mask on a plane (a couple of months ago when red onion eating plebs were still allowed to fly to turkey). While it might not be law to wear a mask in a shop, it's certainly a law to not enter a shop you're defacto banned from.
>> No. 30195 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:45 am
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>Scientists raise concerns over whether the vaccines will be able to protect against the new variant from South Africa.

>Scientists at Porton Down are researching whether vaccines will be effective against both the new strains from South Africa and Kent.

>Sir John Bell said a "big question mark" remains over whether the super-infectious new variant can be prevented with the vaccines being rolled out across the world.

>The Oxford University scientist also said the South Africa strain is "more worrying" than a mutant strain discovered in the southeast of England because it is even more infectious.

>He told Times Radio: "The mutations associated with the South African form are really pretty substantial changes in the structure of the protein."
>> No. 30196 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 10:02 am
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>>30195
OH, GIVE US A FUCKING BREAK!
>> No. 30197 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 10:49 am
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>>30195

Well, fuck.

Sounds like this whole thing will be with us for years to come.

Best not make holiday plans for this year. Or any other plans.
>> No. 30203 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 12:53 pm
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>>30197
>Best not make holiday plans for this year.

I do not understand how people have still be trying to plan tips and travel, even trying to book cruises for this year. Absolutely mental idiots.
>> No. 30204 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 1:26 pm
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My mother has tested positive for covid, felt unwell since last Thursday. Her main symptom is just a bunged up cold, and loss of taste and smell. How long until she's out of the woods for anything more serious? She isn't bedbound or anything.
>> No. 30205 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 1:29 pm
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>>13687
I just bought myself an egg boiler (a standalone thingy, not a pan).
It's all I'd hoped for - insert eggs and a bit of water, turn it on, get soft boiled eggs a short time later. No manky pan, far less time and energy, and reliable breakfast eggs.
Obviously not a life changer, but a pleasure each time I fire it up.
Yours, Big Egg. sgge erom tae
>> No. 30206 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 1:30 pm
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>>30205 Clearly a misfire, sorry, all.
>> No. 30208 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 2:13 pm
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>>30205

Those things are absolutely brilliant. I gave one to my nan for her birthday one year, and when she died a few years later, I got it back. It eventually broke last year after over a decade of daily use.
>> No. 30209 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 2:20 pm
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>>30204
Sorry to hear it lad.

I think If she's still okay at the 7-10 day mark she should weather it well.
>> No. 30210 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 2:39 pm
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>>30195
That's a bit alarmist, they've only just started analysis having confirmed the UK's current top export is still vaccine friendly. I don't really see why it would be resistant.
>> No. 30211 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 2:41 pm
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>>30210
I went to read some more SMBC and typed in smbc.com and ended up on a delightful Web 1.0 website.
>> No. 30212 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 3:00 pm
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>>30210

The vaccines are tailored to specific protein spikes on the virus. If they mutate too much the vaccines won't work any more.
>> No. 30213 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 3:25 pm
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>>30211

> smbc.com and ended up on a delightful Web 1.0 website


That site is just fucking disturbing.

Never mind the absence of visual design and the use of actual fucking Comic Sans with every letter of the logo in a different colour. Even in the mid-90s when this site was undoubtedly made, you should have been hanged, drawn, quartered and shot for using a java applet for simple, text-based HTML hyperlinks.



Self sage.
>> No. 30215 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 5:50 pm
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>> No. 30216 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 5:52 pm
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>>30215
Be the change you want to see in the world. Make your own new thread.
>> No. 30217 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 5:53 pm
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>>30215
Make one then, instead of being passive aggressive.
>> No. 30220 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 6:15 pm
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>>27266

>How long do you think it will be until we're fully back to normal?

>28th August 2020



Ah, the optimism of those days.
>> No. 30222 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 6:22 pm
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>>30220

The longer it goes on the more convinced I am that we'll never see the end. Everyone's so wrapped up in the hysteria of it all that nobody will want to go "back to normal" until we've gone full smallpox style eradication on the bastard, and that'll take forever.

I have a very bad feeling it turns out there are vaccine resistant variants after all, then Pandora's box can't be closed again. Meanwhile the fallout from the whole ordeal will make the Great Depression look like a picnic, the first thing we will all want when it's over is a massive piss up, but we'll emerge into the town centre on Friday night, for the first time in two years, only to find all the pubs closed down while we weren't looking.

I hate this timeline. I already had my early 20s stolen by the financial crisis, I had promised myself my 30s would be different but here we are.
>> No. 30223 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 6:22 pm
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My friend works in the care industry and tested positive for coronavirus 3 times this last month, but a most recent antibody test returned negative results - suggesting she never had the virus.
Now the friend says she's being harrassed to take the vaccine if she wants to return to work - the alternative is to refuse work without furlough.

Another very unhealthy friend tested positive for coronavirus but felt no symptoms. He claimed to find information that the coronavirus test could not differentiate between covid and the common cold.

Presumably these positive results go toward national statistics, which the government are using to decide strategy (likey the antibody test too, albiet weeks later).

Admittedly i'm rather dense and have read barely a single article on the pandemic since it began, but something seems very suspicious here.
>> No. 30224 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 6:37 pm
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>>30222

> I already had my early 20s stolen by the financial crisis, I had promised myself my 30s would be different but here we are.

I still think people in the early 20th century had it worse. They had WWI and the Spanish Flu, then ten years later the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, and then WWII another ten years later. If you were born circa 1895-1900, much of your adult life was going to be pretty shit.
>> No. 30225 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 6:54 pm
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>>30223

As one of the people doing the testing, I can tell you it's very hit and miss.

Some tests are more reliable than others, and the swab itself needs to be taken properly, lots of things can affect the outcome. For instance most of the "rapid tests" are so unreliable as to be near useless, a proper PCR is much better but inherently takes longer and is more labour intensive. Even then it's not as simple as positive or negative, that result has to be clinically interpreted and naturally, under so much pressure the interpretation has become quite generous.

Ultimately the pressure to get volume of tests up has made all that a secondary concern, and due to the inherently complex nature of the subject nobody is exactly willing to talk openly about things like testing accuracy when it would only pour fuel on the fire of 5G anti-vax lunatics. Essentially the unwritten rule through it all is that if someone might have covid, treat it as though they do, because it's better acting on false positives than missing actual positives.
>> No. 30226 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:06 pm
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>>30223
>the coronavirus test could not differentiate between covid and the common cold

https://fullfact.org/online/PCR-test-coronavirus/
>> No. 30227 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:10 pm
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>>30223
>The scale of the “false positive” problem is apparent from the Government data on sensitivity (58%) and specificity (99.68%), together with the number of Liverpool residents tested by LFT (119,456 as of 2 Dec) and the number with positive result (798). From these figures, the prevalence in the relevant population – those Liverpool residents who choose to take an LFT test – is 0.6% and the positive predictive value, in this population, is 52%.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4744/rr

Lateral flow tests have a very high false positive rate.
>> No. 30228 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:15 pm
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>>30225
>>30226
Thanks for the reassurance and your patience.
>> No. 30229 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:18 pm
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>>30212
>If they mutate too much the vaccines won't work any more

No, if they mutate too much in certain ways while remaining viable and a threat. Which is itself constrained as COVID-19 has a slow rate of mutation.

>>30222
>I have a very bad feeling it turns out there are vaccine resistant variants after all, then Pandora's box can't be closed again.

No, it means vaccines are tinkered with or in a worst case scenario new one's developed. We know the virus now and we have the tools to fight it including in the quantum leap of RNA vaccines.

And there's no way your 'early 20s' were stolen by the financial crisis yet your still in your 30s. Think about why.

>>30224
I'd say 1923 if for no other reason than it being the absolute shittest year to be born a male in the USSR.
>> No. 30230 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:28 pm
30230 spacer
New York Magazine has just published a piece on the evidence for the nutcase theory that the virus is from the lab in Wuhan, and how it's so terrible you can't suggest the virus is from a lab without being called a nutcase.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
>> No. 30231 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:32 pm
30231 spacer
>>30223

The rapid swab tests are basically like flipping a coin from what I can tell. The PCR tests are much better but like otherlad said it can still be fucked up if you're not swabbed correctly or if your sample is mishandled at some point.

As far as I am able to understand the only way to tell if you had the virus or not is a serum antibody test, although I'm not altogether sure how accurate any of them are.

I know there are tests that simply look for total antibodies (i.e. you could have been sick from any cold or flu) and ones that look for IgG, IgM or both. I assume the combined IgG/IgM test is the best one but no one seems able to agree when to get the PCR and when to get the antibody exam. I've been told that PCR is most accurate between 4 and 10 days after exposure while others have told me that a PCR is basically useless if you've been infected for more than 7 days. Likewise answers for the time-frame for taking an antibody test are being given as anywhere from 10 to 30 days post exposure.

It's a bit of a faff, in other words.
>> No. 30232 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 7:42 pm
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>>30229
> And there's no way your 'early 20s' were stolen by the financial crisis yet your still in your 30s. Think about why.

Not him but I was ~26 when the financial crisis first started cranking up in mid 2008 and I'm basically in my late thirties now (I've been kidding myself for too long that I'm still mid thirties). If he'd been 21 and just coming out of uni in 2008 then he'd be about 33/34 now.
>> No. 30233 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 8:11 pm
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>>30230

I still think that nature is entirely capable of coming up with a virus like covid-19 all on its own. Look at all the other potentially deadly viruses that exist.

We had a teacher at school who was a full-on conspiracy nut. He was unshakably convinced that the HIV virus was created in an American government lab in the 1960s as a weapon against hippies and the counterculture.

But the first known descriptions of HIV go back all the way to the 1930s, which told of a then-unnamed mysterious wasting disease that was occasionally seen in people in rural African villages who hunted apes for their meat. We now know that that's how HIV was first transferred to humans. And it was decades before genetic engineering as a science even existed. And yet, after it became epidemic in the late 1970s and early 80s, it took medical science several decades to come up not even with a cure, but with medications that can just about suppress it, which is where we stand with it today.

If nature was able to create such a harmful, difficult to treat virus on its own, then it should have no problem coming up with something like covid-19 also without human intervention.
>> No. 30234 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 8:23 pm
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>>30230

I thought it was pretty balanced. I had forgotten about how there were a ton of SARS outbreaks in China in the early 00s due to poor lab practice.

I did notice that there is not a single mention of the Microsoft mind control device that has been placed in the vaccine which says it all really...
>> No. 30235 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 8:47 pm
30235 spacer
fucks sake. Some hacker has released internal Pfizer documentation and now boomers are poring over some very dull QC info looking for evidence that the vaccine will turn us into Cybermen.
>> No. 30236 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:23 pm
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>>30235
> the vaccine will turn us into Cybermen

I fail to see the downside of this. I'd pay double for one that turned me into a Dalek (one of the MKII's that could hover up stairs, obvs).
>> No. 30237 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:31 pm
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>>30235

>and now boomers are poring over some very dull QC info looking for evidence that the vaccine will turn us into Cybermen.

Boomers are at the thin end of their life expectancy on a good day.

They should count themselves lucky that we're not going by that in prioritising the vaccine. If you've only got two years to live anyhow, then you're blocking somebody else's spot on the list who could go on to live another 30 years but who now has to wait until fucking June of 2022 because the government thinks you're more important.
>> No. 30238 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:31 pm
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>>30227
That's kind of misleading. The false positive rate is less than 1 out of 100 tests will incorrectly give a false positive.
The bigger issue with these tests is that at the current prevalence of covid in society we're doing 100 tests, finding 1 person who has covid, telling 1 person they've got covid when they haven't, and telling 1 person they're clear when they're actually infectious.

The sensitivity will likely be much lower if we start posting these to people for them to test themselves as they wont be getting a good enough sample.

All in all the accuracy of the tests is much less of an issue than the haphazard way they're being utilised in the community. but as >>30225 it's better than nothing and mass-testing using even such inaccurate tests will keep the R rate down.

>>30223
Antibody tests aren't perfect. Back in the early days of the pandemic Boris was touting these as a magic bullet that would let everybody get back to work, but after buying millions of tests they shelved the idea because they found them to be so unreliable.
Some of the antibody tests are better than others. Different tests are checking for different specific antibodies, so a person confirmed to have had the virus may test positive one one antibody test and negative on another. And many people who have had the virus don't have detectable levels of antibodies at all, which is much more likely to be true in people who had no symptoms or mild symptoms.

>>30230
Thanks for that, I'm about halfway through and there's a lot to think about. Details like how the cave where the closest know bat virus is are actually about 1000 miles away from Wuhan, or how there were quite a few of the earliest cases with no known connection to the wet market. And other scary reading
>> No. 30239 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:43 pm
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>>30230
>>30238

The massive spike in inter-governmental hacking at the beginning of the pandemic meant that world governments either had very good reason to believe that someone had created the virus in a lab or a very good reason to believe that someone had a massive proactive lead on the creation of a vaccine.

It wasn't just the big players like the Doughnut Lads and the Alphabet Boys who were at it either, places you would never think of when it comes to having a military cyber capability were in on it too; whatever the Vietnamese military found on the Chinese computers they broke into in early 2020 was enough for them to clamp down hard enough that the rest of the world called it an "overreaction". Whatever else can be said about it, it certainly doesn't look like an overreaction now.
>> No. 30240 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 9:47 pm
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>>30238
> And many people who have had the virus don't have detectable levels of antibodies at all, which is much more likely to be true in people who had no symptoms or mild symptoms.

What that sounds like to me is that you can be exposed to the virus but not to the extent that it produces an extensive immune response which in turn means that just because you got a positive PCR (which are very sensitive) doesn't mean that you gained any kind of immunity to reinfection. That would certainly explain the reinfection rates that we've seen, if I'm understanding correctly.
>> No. 30241 Anonymous
13th January 2021
Wednesday 10:03 pm
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>>30240

>That would certainly explain the reinfection rates that we've seen, if I'm understanding correctly.

It's still not 100% clear or understood how that happens. They've now got confirmed cases of people who have had the "standard" covid infection who have now become reinfected with the aggressive South African mutation and are showing symptoms. It's not certain yet if they were just very unlucky, or if the new strain is really different enough that the immune system doesn't recognise it as the same virus species anymore.

It's not impossible that this virus will then eventually mutate faster than we can retool the vaccines that we're making to fight it. Which would mean we'd be thrown back to square one over and over again. Especially now that the case numbers are exploding on such a massive scale.

It's a complete numbers game; the faster the virus spreads, the more likely new mutations become, which may cause it to spread even faster, again producing more mutations.

Which would also mean that any kind of herd immunity strategy would be even more unfeasible than it has turned out to be so far. There's no point immunising the herd against one virus, when its mutation will go on to act like a completely different virus.
>> No. 30251 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 9:31 am
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New strain in Brazil!
>> No. 30252 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 9:35 am
30252 spacer
This is positive. Quantifying immunity means we will know how often we have to immunise - looks like booster shots every four months?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55651518
>> No. 30253 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 10:00 am
30253 spacer
>>30252

Being that the virus has only been observed to exist this is very positive news.

Like, the longest you could say that immunity lasts post exposure is =<1year.

It is likely that the vaccine will provide robust, long-term immunity. It is likely that the new variants will be effectively treated by the currently approved vaccines, and as a contingency there are about a dozen alternative vaccines waiting in the wings.

When people say things like 'this virus will be with us forever' they mean it is pretty much impossible to completely eradicate a virus, especially one which is airborne.

People have been working on developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine for some time now but research into infectious diseases has been subject to reduced funding relative to other medical concerns in recent decades. It is likely that there will be a much more concerted effort to achieve this goal on the other side of the pandemic.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33315546/

Here's hoping that funding bodies are more proactive about tackling the problem of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in the coming years also.

And a cure for baldness must surely be just around the corner also.
>> No. 30254 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 10:02 am
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>>30253
>When people say things like 'this virus will be with us forever' they mean it is pretty much impossible to completely eradicate a virus, especially one which is airborne.
They don't mean that we will be under permanent lockdown for the forseeable future (although you should assume that 2021 will play out much like 2020 did especially given the unprecedented levels of incompetence consistently displayed by the UK government).
>> No. 30255 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 10:39 am
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>>30253

>Here's hoping that funding bodies are more proactive about tackling the problem of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in the coming years also.

I'm always banging that drum to anyone who'll listen, but then again, without the need for sensitivity testing I'd be out of a job.
>> No. 30270 Anonymous
14th January 2021
Thursday 2:22 pm
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We just got word that one of my mum's distant relatives, something like her third or fourth cousin, has died from covid.

He's leaving behind a potato farm that's highly in debt and has narrowly avoided bankruptcy a few times in the last few years (apparently he was just notoriously bad with money), so on top of his family mourning him, they might also have to deal with losing the farm in the near future.
>> No. 30341 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 2:53 pm
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>>30270
If it was purely him and not the business that wasn't viable, maybe they can come to an arrangement with the creditors.
>> No. 30343 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 4:25 pm
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>>30341 You'd have to be daft to start growing spuds, though. Taking the place on to try and turn the buildings into a brothel or weed growing operation, maybe, but unless there's something stellar about it, spuds are a hard game. Let some other, bigger spud farmer run their machines over the fields, sure, but DIY on a farm that wasn't doing brilliantly, nah.
All the cool kids are very much into diversification. Is the farm somewhere convenient, or middle of fecking nowhere?
>> No. 30344 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 4:54 pm
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>>30341

I guess it'll depend on whether or not they have faith that his wife is up to the job. I believe his sons are both in their mid-20s, so they're probably still a bit young to take over at the moment.


>>30343

>Is the farm somewhere convenient, or middle of fecking nowhere?

It's in the East Midlands, but a bit off the beaten track. I'm not sure how big it is, we went there a few times to visit, but I don't remember them telling us those details.

The way I understand it, even if you're good with money, profit margins in potato farming aren't huge. The buyer side in the UK is dominated by supermarket chains and they want low prices so they can compete on the consumer market. If a 2.5kg bag of spuds is about one quid at Tesco, then something's got to give.
>> No. 30352 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 6:40 pm
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>>30344
The government's about to stop just giving farmers money for having land (with a few token ecological caveats), so if the farm was marginal before, it's about to get worse, or have to invest a lot in eco-bollocks to keep rural payments.
As you say, growing spuds is hardly a lucrative game. You're up against every other spud farmer, and if the farm has been struggling, its gear and land may not be up to scratch. You also need deep pockets to survive a bad year, if one comes along (and they do). If they don't passionately want to farm, then it's hard to recommend starting.
And then there's brexit. Who knows if we're going to let Ukraine dump their spares here. Hmm, some juicy trade deals to be had here:
http://www.thedailyrecords.com/2018-2019-2020-2021/world-famous-top-10-list/world/largest-potato-producing-countries-world-importing-states/6863/
>> No. 30353 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 6:43 pm
30353 spacer
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/14/uk-potato-farmers-fear-another-washout-for-this-years-crop

Not with a bargepole
>> No. 30356 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 7:03 pm
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>>30352

Your options are limited though with a failing farm, especially at the moment. Even if you want to stop growing traditional crops as such.

On my dad's side, I've got relatives who own a farm in Wales, picturesque location in the Welsh countryside, five miles from the sea. They've converted the farm into a b&b with some attractions and activities, like horses and guided hiking tours, but after a pretty decent summer holiday season from what they told me, their income has now effectively dropped to zero, except for a little bit of take away cooking that they have started doing now, but even that isn't big business if you're in rural Wales with the next town a mile away.
>> No. 30362 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 8:01 pm
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>>30356 My farming wankmags always have adverts along the lines of 'hate farming? grow solar panels, it's money for old rope'.
I doubt it's as rosy as their ads make it seem, but, well..
>> No. 30374 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 11:44 pm
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https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-man-battling-long-covid-23312607


>The 29-year-old said he was left struggling to get out of bed, and could barely feed or clean himself after he was overwhelmed by fatigue brought on by the virus.

>Since then Callum has suffered the effects of 'long Covid' with intense breathlessness, fatigue and what he describes as 'brain fog' and the inability to think clearly.



Fucking hell.
>> No. 30375 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 11:47 pm
30375 spacer
>>30374
This brings it home a bit:
>He continued: "I was quite a fit guy- I'd run 5k and 10k and was in alright shape.
>"That's gone now and it now can take me hours to recover from doing something minor like driving a short distance or emptying the dishwasher.
>> No. 30376 Anonymous
15th January 2021
Friday 11:57 pm
30376 spacer
>>30374

Now he knows how I feel, you don't hear me complaining about it, because people just say "cheer up" and "why don't you just go to bed a bit earlier" and "are you still taking your meds".

Big girl's blouse.
>> No. 30380 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 12:44 am
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>>30376

I still think some people need to read something like this. And I'm sure that's the exact reason why the lad told his story.
>> No. 30383 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 9:13 am
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>Several EU countries are receiving significantly fewer doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine than expected, after the US firm slowed shipments.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55666399

Apparently Pfizer chiefs predict a riot.
>> No. 30384 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 9:59 am
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>>30380
Just government propaganda m8. He's probably got fucked up lungs from smoking crack or something.
>> No. 30385 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 10:58 am
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>>30383

The article does mention that half a dozen other companies will deliver vaccines as well. And Pfizer is only slowing down delivery because they are in the process of increasing production capacity. Could be they are installing new machines that can do bigger outputs, or something.
>> No. 30387 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 11:34 am
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>>30385
I wonder what else is not being made while they turn as much production as possible over to this stuff. I've got no idea how they do this - is it a line per drug, or a load of lines that can do, say, RNA-based stuff and can chop and change within that?
Even if it's just packaging lines being taken over by this rush, you'd imagine there would be a knock-on effect after a while.
Or are the actual volumes so small that it's a bloke in a white coat, a monkey, a spoon and a bucket?
>> No. 30388 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 1:55 pm
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>Advisers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have raised fresh concerns over Covid vaccine uptake among black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (BAME) as research showed up to 72% of black people said they were unlikely to have the jab.

>Historical issues of unethical healthcare research, and structural and institutional racism and discrimination, are key reasons for lower levels of trust in the vaccination programme, a report from Sage said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/16/covid-vaccine-black-people-unlikely-covid-jab-uk

Seems a bit odd to pin it on racism, particularly when it's known that there is a lot of disinformation about the vaccine being spread around black and asian communities.
>> No. 30389 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 3:33 pm
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>>30388

Meh. It's a tiny portion of the population, we don't need every single person vaccinated. If they get it that's on them.
>> No. 30392 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 5:16 pm
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>>30389
Well the first problem I see is that the UK is not uniform in ethnicity and these communities have interaction with the wider world. So you could see periodic coronavirus outbreaks and associated lockdowns combined with local health services falling on their arse.

>It's a tiny portion of the population

Save it for the 2021 census cunt-off we're going to have whenever the results are published.
>> No. 30393 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 5:26 pm
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>>30388

Identity politics at its most harmful. There have got to be actual reasons for covid disproportionally affecting BAME people, and we're not going to find them out when pricks are busy pointing the finger at abstract concepts.

Have they not noticed half the NHS' staff are ethnic these days? Do they imagine Dr Singh is putting black patients to the back of the queue? Do they think I'm putting the test to the bottom of the pile every time I see the name Mohammed?

Yep, it's a class thing.
>> No. 30394 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 5:41 pm
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>>30393
Both Sage and the otherlad aren't discussing infection rate you thick twat. It's about level of vaccine compliance.
>> No. 30395 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 5:58 pm
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>>30394

They absolutely have suggested racism is behind both the infection and death rate in BAME communities.

You thick twat.
>> No. 30396 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 6:54 pm
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>>30395
Where in the article does it point to this, go on and show us.

Do take your time, I know reading wasn't encouraged in the council house you grew up in.
>> No. 30397 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 8:24 pm
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>>30396
>Marginalised and/or ethnic minority communities (e.g. BAME) which are already more susceptible to coronavirus due to wider structural inequalities may also be particularly vulnerable to the effects of local restrictions. These communities disproportionately live in crowded
accommodation or multi-generational households and are more likely to be financially disadvantaged by restrictions (e.g. employed in sectors with no potential for furlough). Given the current epidemiological trend of transmission concentrations within BAME communities, there is the risk of racial stigmatisation and discrimination. This situation could be exploited by far and extreme right-wing groups.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/909383/s0659-spi-b-consensus-statement-local-interventions-290720-sage-49.pdf

It's mainly Labour and the Graun that are banging the drum that certain ethnicities are more vulnerable to coronavirus due to structural racism, but it has certainly been acknowledged by SAGE.
>> No. 30398 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 8:38 pm
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>>30396

Not in that article (which frankly I can't be bothered to read) but I definitely heard exactly that sort of thing on the radio and in other news stories throughout 2020. It's definitely A Thing.
>> No. 30399 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 8:39 pm
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>>30396

>I know reading wasn't encouraged in the council house you grew up in.

How new to this site are you that you think we'll be fine with your tedious classism?
>> No. 30400 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 9:47 pm
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>>30392

Can't be that big outside of London/Birmingham surely. Can't remember the last time I saw a coloured.
>> No. 30401 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 10:35 pm
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>>30400

West Yorkshire would like a word with you.
>> No. 30402 Anonymous
16th January 2021
Saturday 11:42 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55659820


>Will vaccines still work?

>The current vaccines were designed around earlier variants, but scientists are confident that they should still work against the new ones, although perhaps not quite as well.

>Lab studies are underway to check this.



Pack your rices lads, ITZ!!
>> No. 30403 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 8:57 am
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>Ice cream tests positive for coronavirus in China

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-ice-cream-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-in-china-12188761

Don't forget to test your food for coronavirus.
>> No. 30405 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 1:25 pm
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>>30403

No, not Chinese ice cream! My favorite!
>> No. 30406 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 1:44 pm
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>>30402
>although perhaps
News speak for "this is a bullshit unsubstantiated claim, but we're going to whip up fear anyway". Come on BBC, I thought you were supposed to be better than this.
>> No. 30407 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 1:46 pm
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>>30405
Until I've sprinkled MSG over some ice cream I can't say it not.
>> No. 30411 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 2:57 pm
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>>30406
Initially CCP claimed that covid came to china via American war soldiers
Then they claimed it was beef from Australia
This is the latest in a line of disinfo being put out by CCP to convince the people of China that the virus originated elsewhere and given how banging that Wuhan pool party was and how fucked up the rest of the world currently is, why wouldn't you believe them?

>>30407
Don't knock it til you've tried it ladm8
>> No. 30413 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 3:22 pm
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>UK to face a gonorrhoea pandemic once lockdown ends, London doctor warns

>A London sexual health chief has warned Britain will be faced with a gonorrhoea pandemic once the lockdown ends. British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) President Dr John McSorley called for Londoners to use the lockdown productively to go and get themselves tested to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
>He also raised concerns that London will see the return of high rates of STI as people’s behaviour returns to normal at the end of the coronavirus pandemic. >Prior to the lockdown Britain was facing its worst rates of STIs since the Second World War.

>And although the first lockdown last year saw a huge drop in the number of people using sexual health clinics, rates are beginning to climb again in London. There was a 85 per cent reduction in people going to sexual health clinics across the country when the first lockdown broke out since people were afraid to go outside. However, since the initial lockdown the number of people using clinics has begun to dramatically rise again.

>Dr McSorley added: “People are rebounding back to living a normal life as they can and that includes a safe and entertaining sex life. “About 80 to 90 per cent of people have seen their sexual activity reduced in the last year.”

https://www.mylondon.news/news/health/uk-face-gonorrhoea-pandemic-once-19631086

I like how we saw all this coming - including in WW2 analogies.
>> No. 30414 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 4:16 pm
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>>30413

Not to sour the mood, but I think the story you have linked may be related to this one:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sex-work-coronavirus-poverty-b1769426.html

>Increasing numbers of women are turning to sex work for the first time as the pandemic pushes them into “desperate poverty”, campaigners warned.
>> No. 30417 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 4:58 pm
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>>30399
>How new to this site are you that you think we'll be fine with your tedious classism?

.gs was gentrified years ago but you just didn't notice. We're the Slough of the internet. Hence why we discuss middle class parlour games like class warfare.

>>30414
I'm not sure what they're asking for here. They legally can't do their job because we're in a global pandemic so presumably they would be eligible under the self-employed support scheme unless they're working in the grey/black economy as she seems to suggest. Otherwise they claim benefits.

I agree that brothels should just be legalised and tightly regulated (obv. not now though because thousand of people would die) but it seems the story is 'we live in hard times and it's a bit hard to get a job at the moment'. The austerity bogeyman has very little to do with that, there isn't labour demand and HMT can't make it magically alright on even the most generous support scheme - UBI would require root and branch reform for instance and has already shown that a rush job fucks over everyone.

The silver-lining is that by the end of the year we'll be out of this mess and people can make a fortune selling their bodies to the very lonely.
>> No. 30418 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 4:59 pm
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>>30414

At least they have that. I remain convinced that this is why the homeless population is near exclusively male- You've got to be a properly ugly bint if you can't even let someone slip you one for fifty quid. Absolute worst case scenario for a woman is they have to start including more niche content like watersports on their OnlyFans, but what can a bloke fall back on?

To be clear I'm not saying it's a good state of affairs for anyone involved, but I think it's pretty hard to argue it isn't true.
>> No. 30419 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 5:28 pm
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>>30417
>a global pandemic

As opposed to a local pandemic?
>> No. 30420 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 5:39 pm
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>>30419
Yes. A pandemic can be on a national or global level.
>> No. 30423 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:10 pm
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>>30420
>national

No.
>> No. 30425 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:15 pm
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>>30419
As opposed to an interplanetary pandemic.
>> No. 30426 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:21 pm
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>>30420
I think you're wrong, to be a pandemic an epidemic has to be across borders or affecting more than one population.
>> No. 30427 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:21 pm
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>>30423
A pandemic isn't inherently global - that would be quite wrong and delay response.
>> No. 30428 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:37 pm
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>>30426
Borders is the wrong way of looking at it given countries don't have green belts and an epidemic stretching from St Petersburg to Vladivostok or Paris to French Guiana would be silly territory. The problem I think we're hitting is that a specific and objective criteria that immediately say this or that is a pandemic doesn't exist.

At any rate, having sexual partners you don't live with is effectively against the law at the moment outside of a social bubble or employing webcam/telegraphs/etc.
>> No. 30429 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 6:50 pm
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>>30428

>At any rate, having sexual partners you don't live with is effectively against the law at the moment outside of a social bubble or employing webcam/telegraphs/etc.

Wonder how dating apps are faring with the new restrictions. I understand they experienced a massive boom as such in 2020, but I can't imagine Tinder doing well at this moment, where you effectively have to hold off on any physical dating. Or are people happy just communicating with somebody online for the time being?
>> No. 30432 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 7:24 pm
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>>30429
People are ignoring the lockdown measures and fucking anyway.
>> No. 30433 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 8:06 pm
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>>30418
I had an experience recently where a new girl was selling big issues outside of my local supermarket in the cold. It's been awhile so it was nice to see a real woman about my age irl. A week later I'm walking nearby at night and see her heading off with some blokes and never saw her again. I hope she's okay and didn't fall further because she couldn't sell a magazine in an effectively cashless society - not a damn thing I can do about it either way though.

>>30429
>Or are people happy just communicating with somebody online for the time being?

My hunch is that most people use it for absent minded swiping during a boring call - still seems to be a fair few women using it and you get to feel wanted. If it works out then you can still go for a romantic walk if you live alone and what-not.

I feel for the women my age (30s) who want kids because their effectively losing two years where it's already a pretty shit scene for them.
>> No. 30434 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 8:18 pm
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>>30433

>I feel for the women my age (30s) who want kids because their effectively losing two years where it's already a pretty shit scene for them.


Even with biology a valid concern, you were not forbidden from dating since March. And save for the two lockdowns, there was still some amount of opportunity if you really wanted to meet someone. Especially with online dating at your disposal.

But you have a point in that birth rates in many countries have gone down in the last year, so there is something going on with that.
>> No. 30435 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 8:44 pm
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>UK hopes to ease lockdown from March: minister

>Britain’s government hopes to ease some lockdown restrictions in March as it presses ahead with Europe’s fastest rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday. The country, which also has Europe’s highest COVID-19 death toll, has been under national lockdown since Jan. 5, with schools closed for most pupils, non-essential businesses shut and people ordered to work from home where possible.

“What we want to do is get out of this national lockdown as soon as possible,” Raab told Sky News television. “By early spring, hopefully by March, we’ll be in a position to make those decisions. I think it’s right to say we won’t do it all in one big bang. As we phase out the national lockdown, I think we’ll end up phasing through a (regional) tiered approach.”

>Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set a target of vaccinating the oldest age groups, the clinically vulnerable and frontline workers - roughly 14 million people - by the middle of February. He has said that England can consider easing lockdown restrictions from that time if all goes smoothly.

>The Sunday Times said that British ministers had settled their differences to back a three-point plan that could lead to some lockdown restrictions being lifted as soon as early March. Areas will have restrictions eased once their death rate has fallen, the number of hospital admissions drops and some people aged between 50 and 70 are vaccinated, the newspaper said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain/uk-hopes-to-ease-lockdown-from-march-minister-idUSKBN29M06H

ITZ. Iron your work-shirts!
>> No. 30436 Anonymous
17th January 2021
Sunday 9:06 pm
30436 spacer
>>30434
>Even with biology a valid concern, you were not forbidden from dating since March. And save for the two lockdowns, there was still some amount of opportunity if you really wanted to meet someone. Especially with online dating at your disposal.

I don't know, say you met someone over the summer then you've had some months where you're long-distance which likely means the relationship lost steam. Assuming that you want to stick with them anyway.

>But you have a point in that birth rates in many countries have gone down in the last year, so there is something going on with that.

I expect it will be a creeping death for many more rural communities that were already struggling to keep local schools open. If there's no schools then there's no families and it becomes a glorified retirement village with decaying children's playgrounds. Ditto for most skilled jobs as well.

Immigration might be a solution and something Holyrood wanted before all this but you need a mechanism for nudging people to the middle of nowhere and (depending on your take) avoiding ethnic cleaves between the rural and mid-sized towns.
>> No. 30443 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:59 am
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>>30435
>Lockdown is ending in March
Great news!
>I'm fat now
Oh.

I need to lose about a stone and half in that time, wish me luck lads. Who would have thought sitting indoors for a year eating nothing but curry would pile it on.
>> No. 30452 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 12:54 pm
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>>30443

Not many options right now to fight the flab. I've got a cross country bicycle, but it needs repairs, and cycling in this cold weather as I normally do requires months of preparation so you don't get a cold. I haven't been on my bicycle in almost a year.

I absolutely hate jogging or running, so that's also not an option.

One thing you can always do is control your eating. Being sedentary all day like most people are in this lockdown only requires about 1800 calories a day for the healthy male adult. You can eliminate loads of unnecessary calories with healthy home cooking and smaller portion sizes.
>> No. 30453 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:20 pm
30453 spacer
>>30452

You can get a thing that lets you turn your actual bike into a stationary one. Just sort of replaces the back wheel with a geared thing. The one I've seen was quite fancy and tied in to some MMO bicycle race but there must be cheaper versions.
>> No. 30456 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:30 pm
30456 spacer
>>30453
Not the lad you're replying to but I've been looking at these. The cheapest are about £100 and constantly sold out, but most seem to be in the £300+ range, which is fucking ridiculous. I'd consider building one myself but I don't have access to any welding kit, or anywhere to weld. I've seen a couple made out of wood but I don't imagine they'd last very long even with proper bearings in just from the tension on it all.

I have EDS (Hypermobility) so most forms of exercise are out of the question for me unless I want to crawl up stairs for the next week. The best cardio I can do is cycling and x-training so I can't fucking wait to get back into the gyms again.
>> No. 30457 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:35 pm
30457 spacer
>>30452

One of .gs's resident muscle Marys here. Resistance bands and an Iron Gym pullup bar have done wonders for keeping my weight down.

Supersetting 'thrusters' with a set of assisted pullups gets me out of breath and gives a nice little pump, as well:
https://youtu.be/ya_rO6VhCAo
>> No. 30458 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:36 pm
30458 spacer
>>30456

£300 is a lot to you and me but it's cheap compared to even a second-hand Peloton or just a decent real bicycle.
>> No. 30459 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:38 pm
30459 spacer
>>30453

Unfortunately, it's the entire chain drive that needs replacing because it's completely worn out. It's a 21-speed drive and it likes to suddenly switch gears all on its own at the moment, it often won't stay in a selected gear, and sometimes the chain itself gets snagged.

I tried cleaning the rear sprockets with plenty of kerosene because I thought the culprit was all the dirt in the grease on them, but it had no real effect, and only exposed substantial metal wear. The whole system needs a complete replace.

I'm good with car repairs, so changing the entire chain drive of a bicycle should not be much of a problem although I've never done something like it before. I just need to find the time to devote myself to it.
>> No. 30460 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:40 pm
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>>30456

An indoor trainer isn't just a sprocket on a frame, you need resistance for it to emulate anything approaching useful pedalling. The most basic ones use magnetic resistance and they're not bad at all, but not very realistic feeling - which if you're just trying to blast off some fat and not actually training your cycling technique is not an issue, but nonetheless that's what the more expensive ones are for, and use complicated hydraulic methods of simulating real world pedalling resistance.
>> No. 30461 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 1:42 pm
30461 spacer
>>30456
Why not use your daily outside time to go for a long (yet local) walk with a good audiobook/podcast/album? It's not exactly efficient but something that keeps me sane so spending an hour half isn't such an inconvenience. You can limit or take breaks depending on need or even carry a backpack.

Plus you might catch a ray of sunshine and become accustomed to the big roof in the sky so you'll have an advantage over the other mole people.
>> No. 30465 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 11:15 pm
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Untitled.png
304653046530465
Just .05% off Bahrain, lads. Denmark has collapsed.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Just think, soon we could have the third cleanest elderly in the world.
>> No. 30466 Anonymous
18th January 2021
Monday 11:53 pm
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>>30465

At this rate, it's absolutely going to be fucking ages till we get our jab.

Prepare to spend this summer in lockdown altogether, lads. It'll be 2022 before you will get off your tits in Magaluf again.
>> No. 30467 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 1:03 am
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>>30466
It's already at 4 Birmingham's or just under half the population of London. Looking at it another way it's more than the confirmed Covid infections we've had:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55710758

I doubt we'd see the end of restrictions before Autumn but, well, my parents have decided to book a holiday to Magaluf in the summer assuming they'd have had their jabs. Bloody kids.
>> No. 30468 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 1:05 am
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>>30466

As soon as it gets warm, lockdown is as good as over. Compliance is already in the pits.
>> No. 30469 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 7:43 am
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>>30465

The Covax agreement on fair vaccine distribution means that our initial lead will disappear quite quickly, because it isn't first-come-first-served - once we've received enough doses for 20% of the population, we'll have to rejoin the queue with everyone else.

The death rate should hopefully start dropping over the next couple of months, but we're a long way from herd immunity. We've also got to face up to the long tail of the spike in hospitalisations. Some patients recover quickly, but others need several months in hospital before they're ready to be discharged. We've still got COVID patients in hospital who have been there since last March, so it'll be a long time before the NHS is anywhere near returning to normal.

We should be on top of things by 2022 (provided we don't see variants with substantial immune escape mutations), but a lot of people are being way too optimistic about the prospects in the short term. A million doses a week still means we'll need the best part of a year to reach herd immunity and it's unlikely that we'll be able to procure doses that quickly. We'll probably be able to get out of full national lockdown within a few months, but we're likely to be under tiered restrictions for much longer.

https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax
>> No. 30470 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 8:56 am
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>>30469 We've still got COVID patients in hospital who have been there since last March

Enough to make a difference? Are we heading for covid wards and separate sanatoriums?
>> No. 30471 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 9:07 am
30471 spacer
>>30469
I reckon once it gets to the under 50s turn it'll slow right off. Get the oldest done so it looks good on paper.
>> No. 30472 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 10:41 am
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>>30471

My grandma was supposed to her hers on monday but they'd ran out of it.

I can't wait to post on facebook implying the vaccine doesn't exist at all.
>> No. 30473 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 12:33 pm
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just the flu bro.png
304733047330473

>> No. 30474 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 12:40 pm
30474 spacer
>>30473

Another unfortunate result of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rise of armchair epidemiology.
>> No. 30475 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 1:19 pm
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>>30473
Jesus wept.
>> No. 30476 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 3:15 pm
30476 spacer
2000 deaths today
>> No. 30477 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 3:35 pm
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>>30476
We're #1! We're #1!
>> No. 30478 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 3:53 pm
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>>30476
Do we have a breakdown for this by the likes of age and pre-existing conditions?
>> No. 30479 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 4:08 pm
30479 spacer
>>30478

over 85: 2000
85 and under: 1

there may be an error of +/-1
>> No. 30480 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 4:15 pm
30480 spacer

tony.gif
304803048030480
When Tony Soprano picks up the pillow with the intention of smothering his mother to death with it, it's not actually a shocking insight into how brutalised he was by his upbringing and how the world of organised crime corrupts everyone involved. Instead we have to understand that she was already old, therefore it doesn't matter, you can do what you want to old "people". Folks really don't [i]get[i/] this show.
>> No. 30481 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 4:19 pm
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>>30470

>Enough to make a difference? Are we heading for covid wards and separate sanatoriums?

The big issue is post-COVID and post-ICU convalescence. Younger patients usually survive severe COVID, but they don't come out of it unscathed. The usual rule-of-thumb is that for every day you spend on a ventilator, you need a week on a normal ward before you're ready to be discharged. Being completely immobile causes very rapid muscle wasting, which is amplified by the inflammation and lung injury caused by COVID. We also see significant cognitive impairment, probably because of hypoxia.

A lot of survivors will end up with chronic lung conditions, but less widely-known is the huge amount of severe kidney disease in hospitalised COVID patients, particularly those from BAME backgrounds. Most of those patients will need dialysis for a significant period and many of them will eventually need kidney transplants. We've also got a huge backlog of inpatient treatment for non-COVID illness to work through and a lot of patients who are much sicker than they would have been if they had received timely care.

The NHS will be dealing with the consequences of COVID for many years to come, even if we conquer the disease itself by the end of this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-intensive_care_syndrome

https://academic.oup.com/ndt/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ndt/gfaa184/5901856
>> No. 30482 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 4:21 pm
30482 spacer
WAKE UP, SHEEPLE.

https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3624439041008086&id=1535982816520396
>> No. 30483 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 4:59 pm
30483 spacer
>>30480

But Junior was around the same age as Livia, and he was certainly not dismissed or mistreated due to his advanced yesrs.
>> No. 30484 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 5:59 pm
30484 spacer
>>30480
>>30483
Stop posting spoilers you bellends, I want to watch that some day.
>> No. 30485 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 6:02 pm
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>>30484

It's twenty years old.
>> No. 30486 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 6:21 pm
30486 spacer
>>30485
And if you'll be a dear and clam up, I can enjoy the anticipation for another twenty.
>> No. 30487 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 6:25 pm
30487 spacer
>>30486

The ducks fly away.
>> No. 30488 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 7:20 pm
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>>30469
>The Covax agreement on fair vaccine distribution means that our initial lead will disappear quite quickly, because it isn't first-come-first-served - once we've received enough doses for 20% of the population, we'll have to rejoin the queue with everyone else.

Yeah about that...
>The world is on the brink of “catastrophic moral failure” in sharing COVID-19 vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday, urging countries and manufacturers to spread doses more fairly around the world. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the prospects for equitable distribution were at “serious risk” just as its COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme aimed to start distributing inoculations next month.

>He noted 44 bilateral deals were signed last year and at least 12 have already been signed this year. “This could delay COVAX deliveries and create exactly the scenario COVAX was designed to avoid, with hoarding, a chaotic market, an uncoordinated response and continued social and economic disruption,” he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/vaccine-nationalism-puts-world-on-brink-of-catastrophic-moral-failure-who-chief-idUSKBN29N0TB

>>30487
A meadow gets ploughed.
>> No. 30489 Anonymous
19th January 2021
Tuesday 7:46 pm
30489 spacer
>>30488

Catch-22, innit. People who get the two-dose Pfizer vaccine need their second jab in time so that it will be effective altogether. But also, even with all the other vaccines, if we don't ramp up vaccinations in any one country so that a larger number of the population get immunised as soon and as quickly as possible, then it will have no effect on the situation in that country at all. And neither will it have an effect in some poor African country that is allowed to have a few thousand doses.

If fair distribution is the goal, then we'd have to come up with a way of manufacturing and delivering probably five billion doses of all the different vaccines by the end of this spring.

I'm not sure how feasible that would be, but failing that, it's bound to be every country for itself.
>> No. 30500 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 11:04 am
30500 spacer
>>30489

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-19/covid-uk-has-worst-daily-death-rate-in-the-world-oxford-university-research-shows
>The UK has the world's worst daily death rate for coronavirus related fatalities, research by Oxford University has shown.
WORLD BEATING
>> No. 30501 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 11:16 am
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>>30500
Didn't it turn out that loads of other countries are recording coronavirus deaths differently? I'm sure I read that if someone in Germany had, say, cancer and they died of coronavirus it would be recorded as a cancer death.
>> No. 30503 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 11:33 am
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>>30501

It would kind of make sense. If you're already very gravely ill from an underlying condition, then covid isn't your main problem. Just as you would say that somebody died from AIDS, and not just from the bout of severe pneumonia that finished them off.

On the other hand, if you are clinically depressed and jump off a roof, your cause of death will be put down as multiple injuries, and not as depression, although that is what caused you to jump in the first place.
>> No. 30505 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 12:01 pm
30505 spacer
>>30501

This is why 'excess deaths' is the important figure to consider when discussing the death toll from this.

If somebody has a heart attack and dies because there is no space for them in ICU due to hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID patients, one could argue that they died because of COVID even though they never had the virus.
>> No. 30506 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 12:34 pm
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>>30505
Correct me if I'm wrong but excess deaths are currently below average aren't they? Which I'd probably put that down to fewer risky activities taking place, whether that be jumping out of a plane or having unprotected sex.
>> No. 30508 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 1:10 pm
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>>30506
We're at around 100,000 excess deaths. Over 80% of excess deaths in the first week of January were at least 70 years old.

https://www.ft.com/content/5f7b58fb-97ad-4fef-bbc9-b71d328c6700
>> No. 30529 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 10:30 pm
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>Police discover first cannabis farm in London financial district

>The first cannabis farm has been found in London’s historic financial district, where office buildings have been emptied because of lockdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19, British police said on Wednesday. The City of London Police said 826 cannabis plants were found in a building near the Bank of England. The police said there were reports of a “strong smell of cannabis”, which led to the raid.

>“This is the first cannabis factory in the City, no doubt being set up in response to fewer people being out and about during the pandemic who might have noticed any unusual activity,” the police said in a statement. The City of London, which is home to the world’s largest commercial insurance market, banks and fund managers, has been largely deserted since March after most employees were asked to work from home.

>During an online event on Wednesday, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said people are likely to make jokes about what the central bank’s staff have been doing. “We are now going to be the subject of endless jokes about ‘now we know what the Bank of England has been on,’” he said. “I’m sure there will be many other jokes. It is very quiet around the Bank of England, I should say.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-police-cannabis-city/police-discover-first-cannabis-farm-in-london-financial-district-idUSKBN29P2NJ

We shall rebuild.
>> No. 30530 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 10:32 pm
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>>30529
THE CITY SHALL FALL!
>> No. 30531 Anonymous
20th January 2021
Wednesday 10:50 pm
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>>30529
God forbid we focus on actual crimes. I can't see any argument for it being illegal anymore, it's most odd.
>> No. 30535 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 12:59 am
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>>30529
I am totally gutted by this story. Back in the day when we went to work, my office is about 100m from this site; couldn't find drugs for love nor money usually (but fifteen Pret's obv).
>> No. 30536 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 1:18 am
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>>30531
Mate, if it's a farm it is an actual crime. 826 plants is organised crime and there were likely some poor sods forced to live there to pay off their "debts" to the scoundrels who trafficked them into the country. I don't think it should be illegal either, but this wasn't exactly for personal use.
>> No. 30537 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 1:43 am
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>>30536

But it's only organised crime because it's a crime in the first place.
>> No. 30538 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 1:45 am
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>>30537
I'm glad we're in concordance with one another.
>> No. 30548 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 5:22 pm
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>>30536

>Mate, if it's a farm it is an actual crime. 826 plants is organised crime

And where do you think the personal-use weed comes from that you buy from "your guy"?

Not defending illegal commercial farming, mind.
>> No. 30549 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 5:31 pm
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The fact that weed isn't legal and being taxed is beyond absurd at this point.
>> No. 30550 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 5:36 pm
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>>30548
I don't buy weed, I don't have a "guy". I'm quite paranoid enough as is.
>> No. 30551 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 5:44 pm
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>>30548
>And where do you think the personal-use weed comes from that you buy from "your guy"?

Uh oh, it might be me, but I don't have a massive farm and I'm not a part of organised crime.
>> No. 30554 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 7:09 pm
30554 spacer
>>30535
You'll have to swing by the office at some point and have a bit of treasure hunt. I hear they also drank all the alcohol and shit on the desk of one of the more annoying employees.
>> No. 30555 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 9:07 pm
30555 spacer
The headline story on the Guardian is about the government potentially giving everyone who gets a positive COVID test £500. This makes me nervous not because of any kind of national economic anxiety or longing for austerity, but because I've heard of so many poor bastards being given money they weren't actually supposed to get by the DWP and being screwed over by the repayments. I wouldn't trust these ministers give someone a pair of socks for Christmas. Indeed, now I've said that maybe cuts, austerity, etc. are all just a big cover for Tory ministers being too incapable to spend taxes and figure out how welfare payments are supposed to work? HS2 and Universal Credit are the brainchildren of the brainless.
>> No. 30556 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 9:15 pm
30556 spacer
>>30555
How could a political elite with such stellar education behave in such a moronic manner?

It's almost like characteristics such as compassion and integrity are the most important thing for competent leadership...
>> No. 30557 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 10:16 pm
30557 spacer
>>30555
>the government potentially giving everyone who gets a positive COVID test £500

Brb, just getting covid.
>> No. 30558 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 10:26 pm
30558 spacer
>>30557

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
>> No. 30559 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 10:27 pm
30559 spacer
>>30557
You'd get better remuneration at a flu camp
https://flucamp.com

Usual pay is nearly 4k altogether. I'm almost tempted to cash in my holiday time considering I can't go anywhere.
>> No. 30560 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 11:20 pm
30560 spacer
>https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05
>WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases
>Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

Considering the speed and number of results being processed, and the fact that the test sites are simple drive through centers, is it any wonder the positive count is so high?

Apparently the above article was released mere hours after Joe Bidens swearing in as President - Is there a political relevance?

I also found this for myself and anyone else who're struggling to make sense of the WHO article - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/926410/Understanding_Cycle_Threshold__Ct__in_SARS-CoV-2_RT-PCR_.pdf
>> No. 30561 Anonymous
21st January 2021
Thursday 11:51 pm
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>>30560

That's basically what I was saying a bit ago. There are very few diagnostic tests which are as simple as yes they've got it, no they haven't. There's no magic number for a viral load that means a definite positive, but as you say, with pressure to crank tests out it's very much being treated that way.

Then again you'd be shocked how often I give a result out to a doctor over the phone and they follow it up woth "And what does that mean?" Motherfucker if I'm doing the diagnosis for you, why are you getting paid fifteen grand more than me. It's your job to assess the data in combination with clinical evidence and decide what it means.
>> No. 30563 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 8:24 am
30563 spacer
How do I get my £500?
>> No. 30578 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:16 pm
30578 spacer
New strain is confirmed deadlier alongside more infectious.

Bugger.
>> No. 30579 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:24 pm
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>>30578

Sure it is. You gullible fuck.
>> No. 30582 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:38 pm
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>>30579
He might be gullible but you're a fucking idiot.
>> No. 30583 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:39 pm
30583 spacer
>>30582
Yeah, well, my knob's bigger than yours.
>> No. 30584 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:40 pm
30584 spacer
>>30583
It's longer but his is thicker.
>> No. 30585 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 5:46 pm
30585 spacer
>>30578
Maybe.
>> No. 30588 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 7:51 pm
30588 spacer
The way I understand it, mutations that will be outside the scope of effectiveness of the vaccines that are being shipped out aren't a big problem as such. Beyond the logistics of having to bin millions of doses of the old vaccines and making new ones with a different mRNA molecule.

The mRNA gets synthesized and doesn't come from actual viruses, like it used to. Essentially, you just quite literally print the molecule chains using DNA printers that can regroup and recombine the nucleosides of your RNA molecule just like you would regroup text in a Word document, and then print it out. If the virus's spike protein at some point mutates too much, all you have to do is edit your blueprint for the RNA molecules you're making and print new mRNA.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/

Fascinating stuff, takes a bit to get your head around, but it's kind of massively amazing how far biotech has come.
>> No. 30589 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 8:14 pm
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>>30588
>The way I understand it, mutations that will be outside the scope of effectiveness of the vaccines that are being shipped out aren't a big problem as such. Beyond the logistics of having to bin millions of doses of the old vaccines and making new ones with a different mRNA molecule.
I understand what you're saying, but that actually sounds like a massive problem.
>> No. 30590 Anonymous
22nd January 2021
Friday 11:31 pm
30590 spacer
Comment sections on FT articles concerning COVID and lockdowns are... concerning.
>> No. 30591 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 1:45 am
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>>30590

Care to elaborate? I'm not paying for their £1 trial.
>> No. 30592 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 6:32 am
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>>30589
He says, without a single slice of context.
>> No. 30593 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 8:32 am
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Screenshot_20210123-083026_FT.jpg
305933059330593
>>30590
>> No. 30594 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 9:34 am
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>>30593
Sounds reasonable.
>> No. 30595 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 9:49 am
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>>30593
Must try harder.
>> No. 30596 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 12:45 pm
30596 spacer
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/new-uk-covid-variant-may-be-more-deadly-says-boris-johnson

>“I think we will have to live with coronavirus in one way or another for a long while to come. I think it is an open question as to when and in what way we can start to relax any of the measures. Obviously, we want to do everything we can to open up but only safely, only cautiously.”

>The government is preparing to launch a hard-hitting new advertising campaign featuring footage of severely ill Covid patients and exhausted medical staff, exhorting the public to stick to lockdown rules. The ads, which will run across TV, radio and social media, will carry the message: “Can you look them in the eyes and tell them you’re helping by staying at home?”
>> No. 30597 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 1:01 pm
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>>30596

This would have been a pretty effective approach back in March
>> No. 30599 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 2:52 pm
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>>30597

I'm not sure. Guilt shaming people into doing something is an approach that's controversial in advertising. And I'm not sure you'll reach people that way who are behaving irresponsibly with regards to other people's health.
>> No. 30600 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 3:58 pm
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>>30596
Nudge unit are busy then. I get why it's being done but it feels like such an awful and manipulative way to get people to comply, people's heads are completely fucked as it is, I can only really see this increasing anxiety and worry in people who give a fuck and as >>30599 says people who don't give a fuck aren't gonna start because of a weepy advert.

Horrid shit.
>> No. 30601 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 10:06 pm
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I've barely been outside these four walls since November, and my attention span has been completely cooked of late. I just can't stop simultaneously getting distracted and being bored by everything. I can barely watch a 25 minute episode of a TV programme. I've ended up doing work far after hours because I'm so distracted and unproductive it takes so much longer to do anything.

Fuck, I can't wait for this to be over.
>> No. 30602 Anonymous
23rd January 2021
Saturday 11:12 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55780331

>King conducted an estimated 50,000 interviews in his six-decade career, which included 25 years as host of the popular CNN talk show Larry King Live.

>He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Ora Media, a production company he co-founded.

>Earlier this month, he was treated in hospital for Covid-19, US media say.
>> No. 30603 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 12:13 am
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>>30602
Who cares? The only good thing he's done recently is had the piss taken out of him by Danny Pudi.
>> No. 30604 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 10:52 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Pw9zVQT2k
>> No. 30605 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:17 am
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>>30604
This is how the government gets the blame pointed at other people.
>> No. 30608 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:22 am
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>>30605

So is the cameraman the useful idiot for doing this? Or am I the useful idiot for sharing it?

If you look at the tone and content of Government messaging it's no surprise we have so many people ignorant as to the seriousness of the disease.

The PM was saying schools were safe even as their own data showed that uptick in cases in the autumn were strongly correlated with high schools and universities.
>> No. 30609 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:23 am
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>>30608
>So is the cameraman the useful idiot for doing this? Or am I the useful idiot for sharing it?
Yes.
>> No. 30611 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:40 am
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>>30608
Everyone knows the government are full of shit. People tend to point to Dominic Cummings and his trips but there's so much more that has undermined their credibility. It goes right back to the beginning; we had the government telling us that workplaces were safe and you had a very low chance of catching the virus there, ignoring the fact that Boris Johnson and a number of MPs had caught it through work.

Speaking of which, the largest workplace outbreak has happened at the DVLA, with staff pressured into turning up to work despite showing coronavirus symptoms and were also encouraged to opt out of test and trace.
>> No. 30612 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 12:17 pm
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>>30611
>Everyone knows the government are full of shit.

I've been telling everyone through this to not listen to government advice on the virus, listen to the actual medical professionals. The government has not had the peoples best interests in mind at all through all this, they chose the economy over the people, but there is a fault on the percentage of people not listening to healthcare professionals or not "believing" in science too.
>> No. 30614 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 12:49 pm
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>>30612

It's compounded because the government insist that their advice is what the medical professionals are saying, resulting in people deciding it's the science that's wrong.
>> No. 30616 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 12:52 pm
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>>30612
>they chose the economy over the people

Has this actually worked? The economy still seems shit.
>> No. 30619 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 12:59 pm
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>>30616
Rather predictably, no.
>> No. 30621 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 1:02 pm
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>>30619

Eh, those at the top of the pile are doing alright so it seems that the system is still working as intended.
>> No. 30622 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 1:04 pm
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>>30616

We are a nation run by Landlords to suit the interests of Landlords. All of you 'orrible lot are merely the organic matter which fuels the furnace that runs the whole operation.
>> No. 30625 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 1:42 pm
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>>30622


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg


I know this has been posted here before but it's still funny
>> No. 30639 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 7:01 pm
30639 spacer
>Indyref2: SNP reveal 'roadmap' to another independence referendum

>The SNP has revealed a "roadmap to a referendum" on Scottish independence, setting out how they intend to take forward their plans for another vote. It says a "legal referendum" will be held after the pandemic if there is a pro-independence majority at Holyrood following May's election.
>The 11-point plan says it will "vigorously oppose" any legal challenge from the UK government. Boris Johnson has repeatedly stated his opposition to another referendum. Opposition parties accuse the SNP of putting the push for independence ahead of the Covid pandemic.

>As the document was published, Mr Russell said: "The referendum should be held after the pandemic, at a time to be decided by the democratically elected Scottish Parliament. The SNP believes that should be in the early part of the new term. Today I am setting out how I believe that right can be secured, and I welcome the discussion that will take place around this idea and others. But what is absolutely not for discussion is the fact that if Scotland votes for a legal referendum on 6 May this year, that is what it will get."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-55780100

You can just see it can't you. The SNP rushing into a referendum as they balance risk with political expedience only to fail at both and ultimately divert attention from both the pandemic and recovery. Meanwhile they will win bigly come May because Scottish Labour has managed to do everything possible to lose an election.

>>30621
>>30622
I was looking at what I could afford in Newcastle the other day. The amount of 10-odd bedroom places going cheap gave me a chuckle so we really must be all in it together.

Maybe I'll buy one, knock walls in until there's a decent sized set of flats for families and sell them on. It'll be like one of those house flipping shows done backwards.
>> No. 30653 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 8:30 pm
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>>30639

>I was looking at what I could afford in Newcastle the other day. The amount of 10-odd bedroom places going cheap gave me a chuckle so we really must be all in it together.

Pour one out for the Liverpudlian brothel owners who have had to sell a property to avoid insolvency.
>> No. 30654 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 9:24 pm
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>>30639
They wouldn't make a gambit like that unless they were expecting a majority, which they'll almost certainly get. It's a hell of a gambit though, if they push through a referendum on shaky legal grounds and lose it then it could tear the party apart.
>> No. 30657 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 10:23 pm
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2-xyNnfAl.gif
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https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210121-the-coronasomnia-phenomenon-keeping-us-from-getting-sleep

>A new year comes with resolutions. One of the most perennially popular goals is, unsurprisingly, getting more sleep. But there’s a problem: the ongoing coronavirus crisis has made getting a good night’s rest significantly harder. Some experts even have a term for it: ‘coronasomnia’ or ‘Covid-somnia’.
>> No. 30658 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:43 pm
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>>30657
But a lot less commuting should mean more sleep.
>> No. 30659 Anonymous
24th January 2021
Sunday 11:58 pm
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>>30658
It should do, I personally find myself staying up later since I don't have to 'plan' my morning beyond having enough time for a coffee & fag before my morning meeting.
>> No. 30660 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:23 am
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>>30657
I think I'm actually sleeping better these days and its not just because I can stay up later.

Counter-intuitively I find watching cartoons before bed can be a very relaxing way of stepping out from the world. Obviously the light is a problem but it's good for switching your brain off and we've talked before about Family Guy having this effect. People shit on anime for turning people into drooling morons but sometimes what you need is just to forget your troubles.

>Added to this is the fact that we miss our hobbies and friends – vital outlets for relaxation and destressing.

Agree with this though, I forgot to reply to otherlad but I too suffer from concentration problems. The underlying issue of burn-out being that weekends just aren't as rejuvenating anymore because all you can do is sit at home or go for a solitary walk.

I posted about this all before on /emo/ and like was said then it's time for another holiday but what's really missing is drinks at the pub, officer chatter and making a girl smile with my antics. I bet the skeleton crews still in Antarctica don't have the problem and they're still up to endless shagging, trips to the pub and more penguins than you can possibly eat (the chocolate kind). Lucky bastards.
>> No. 30661 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:34 am
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>>30659
I had to do a double take that this wasn't me. Used to be that I'd build in time for a wank and a wash but that soon fell away as I realised I could do those on the clock after my morning meeting.

Since packing in the fags I'm getting down to 10 minutes beforehand so I can make a brew. I'm now so lazy I'm tempted to just have a few sips of water so my voice doesn't show. One time I overslept until midday and made the excuse that IT was playing up for a meeting but other than that nobody noticed. Scary how easily I got away with that.
>> No. 30662 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:38 am
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>>30661

We've recently had a memo saying that nobody is expected to have their cameras on anymore so whenever I do have a meeting it's usually from bed.
>> No. 30663 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 1:15 am
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>>30662
It's an unspoken rule at mine that cameras aren't generally necessary. I'm usually out of bed with enough time for a piss and to unhibernate my PC before the morning meeting.

>>30657
Oddly enough, if I go to bed at 0600 or so, I can sleep normally. Trying to sleep through the night has been a (pun intended) nightmare for me as of late.
>> No. 30664 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 1:53 am
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I've been working nights lately and I find getting up at 6pm to be ready for work at 8 is piss easy, whereas I I don't think I've ever successfully got up at 6am without snoozing my alarm five times and eventually getting up and rushing to get dressed and brush my teeth ten minues before I have to be out the door.

On my days off I've been in this wierd sleep pattern where I'll have a few hours kip as soon as I get in from my shift, then another couple hours later on that afternoon, but never a full night (or day's) sleep. Just 3 hours or so out of every every twelve. Seems to work perfectly fine.
>> No. 30665 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 3:32 am
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>>30663
I've been the same. If I try to sleep at a normal time I can't but the MINUTE the sun rises I'm fucking knackered and can sleep like a baby.

Also, missus gets up at quarter to 9 these days, has a coffee and then goes on Teams without even having a shower and to begin with she was getting up as normal and doing full make-up. I think most people have got into a rhythm where they realise there isn't much point.
>> No. 30666 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 6:20 am
30666 spacer
Since New Year, I'm going to bed between 10-11 as per usual but I'm waking up at 3 or 4 and unable to sleep. I give up trying around 6 after lying in bed with my eyes closed but by 9am I am tired enough to sleep again.
>> No. 30667 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 11:57 am
30667 spacer
The new Covid TV advert is a bit on the nose, now that I've seen it. I understand the sentiment and wholeheartedly support the underlying message, but as has been said here, I am not sure you are going to reach people that way who just don't give a fuck.

I didn't need much convincing to stay at home and protect myself and others, let alone by this ad, but what if you're just some dickhead who very generally thinks everybody can kiss his arse.
>> No. 30668 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:20 pm
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>>30667
I think you need to get outside and stop watching the telescreen.
>> No. 30669 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:43 pm
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>>30668
Is this an unironic "I for one do not even own television" post with a side of "wake up sheeple"? Impeccable idiocy.
>> No. 30670 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 12:51 pm
30670 spacer
>>30667
It's much softer than the warning labels on fags and I never gave a fuck about them either. I reckon they're having to go quite soft after the whole fiasco of Covid Father Christmas where it upset Mumsnet users.

Then again, we're probably not the target audience as neither of us own a television. It's for middle aged housewives and their long-suffering husbands organising dinner parties. Were up to me I'd threaten to take their homes away when they die and give it to gypsies who will rip-up garden. That'll make 'em comply.

>>30668
>you need to get outside

Are you encouraging us to break UK law?
>> No. 30671 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 2:17 pm
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>>30669
No. It's a You are allowed to go outside for exercise, and it sounds like you fucking need to for your sanity.
>> No. 30672 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 2:21 pm
30672 spacer
>>30671

Point taken.
>> No. 30678 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 8:49 pm
30678 spacer
Covid: 'Why I'm breaking lockdown rules'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-55668923

kind of feels like the BBC are putting out propaganda.
>> No. 30679 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 8:52 pm
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>>30678

>feels like the BBC are putting out propaganda.

Welcome to 2014 or possibly earlier?
>> No. 30680 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 10:05 pm
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On facebook they're saying the vaccines only provide protection for a month. Is that right?
>> No. 30681 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 10:06 pm
30681 spacer
>>30680
No.
>> No. 30682 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 10:08 pm
30682 spacer
>>30680
>On facebook they're saying

LAD.
>> No. 30683 Anonymous
25th January 2021
Monday 10:10 pm
30683 spacer
>>30678

>"You make decisions, and you take risks. Sometimes the risks get you fined, sometimes the risks get you arrested, sometimes the risk spreads a massive disease to the rest of the world."


Blimey.
>> No. 30684 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 9:42 am
30684 spacer
I've got the dread. When is this going to end? Biting the bullet and welding everyone into their flats for a month is looking like a more humane solution than this interminable, lukewarm 'well, it's really your fault for not following the rules, but maybe we could think about gradually lifting the lockdown in Spring if...' shit.
>> No. 30685 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 9:52 am
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>>30684
I've woken up feeling very glum and demotivated today. I barely did any work yesterday and I can see today being the same.
>> No. 30686 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 12:57 pm
30686 spacer
>AstraZeneca has offered to bring forward some deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union while the bloc has asked the British drugmaker if it can divert doses from the UK to make up for a shortfall in supplies, European officials told Reuters.

>The Anglo-Swedish company unexpectedly announced on Friday it would cut supplies to the EU of its vaccine candidate in the first quarter of this year, a move that a senior EU official told Reuters meant a 60% reduction to 31 million doses for the bloc. That complicated the EU’s vaccination plans, after Pfizer had also announced a temporary slowdown in deliveries of its vaccine, and triggered an outcry in Brussels and EU capitals.

>Two European officials told Reuters on Tuesday that AstraZeneca at two extraordinary meetings on Monday had offered the EU to bring forward to Feb. 7 the start of deliveries from an initial plan to begin on Feb 15. One of the sources, briefed on talks, said that AstraZeneca had also revised upward its supply goals for February compared to the cuts announced last week, but the company offered no clarity on supplies for March.

>This appears to be an overture by AstraZeneca to try and keep the peace with the EU as the row over its sudden cut to deliveries escalates, damaging trust between Brussels and the drugmaker before the shot has been approved in the region. The second EU official, directly involved in the talks, said however there was no offer to increase supplies. AstraZeneca has quarterly supply targets. Therefore an increase in February, if not followed by a rise in March, may not constitute an overall increase in the quarter.

>After Monday’s meetings, EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said AstraZeneca had not offered adequate answers to questions posed by the EU. The EU official involved in the talks also said that the EU had explicitly asked AstraZeneca whether it could divert to the 27-nation bloc doses produced in Britain, at least through March. But the company did not answer these questions, the official said.

>AstraZeneca has said the revised timetable was caused by production issues in Europe. One EU senior official told Reuters last week that the problem was at a vaccine factory in Belgium run by AstraZeneca’s partner Novasep. On Dec. 30 Britain granted emergency approval to the shot developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. A decision on authorisation in the EU is expected on Friday.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca-exc/exclusive-astrazeneca-offers-eu-earlier-covid-19-vaccine-supplies-in-feb-no-clarity-on-rerouting-from-uk-sources-idUSKBN29V16X

Cheeky bastards.
>> No. 30687 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 1:18 pm
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>>30686
Don't look at me, I voted to remain.
>> No. 30688 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 1:38 pm
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>>30686
>the bloc has asked the British drugmaker if it can divert doses from the UK to make up for a shortfall in supplies

Well that shouldn't be a problem, according to Hancock a month or two back we have more than anybody and there was no reason to worry, everybody would be vaccinated. Wait..Oh..What's the story now?
>> No. 30689 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 1:59 pm
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>>30684

Mate what world do you live in? Go outside, there's nothing worth panicking over.
>> No. 30690 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 2:24 pm
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>>30689

https://news.yahoo.com/global-ice-sheets-melting-worst-121152467.html
>> No. 30691 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 2:28 pm
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>>30689

Remember the Grenfell Tower disaster? We had eight Grenfells worth of deaths yesterday. The NHS is at breaking point, as is everyone working in it. If absolutely everything goes to plan we might have this under control by next winter, but one mutation in the wrong place could send us back to square one.

We shouldn't be panicking, but we're in a really grave situation right now and we need to acknowledge the terrible suffering that's going on. Being on lockdown is shit, losing your job or missing out on big milestones is shit, but we need to remember why we're doing this.


>> No. 30692 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 2:31 pm
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>>30689
I'm not panicking, you patronising cunt. I'm living in the world in which we're in a national lockdown, where everything is closed, and the police are supposed send you home and/or fine you if you're going outside too ostentatiously.
>> No. 30693 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 3:09 pm
30693 spacer
>>30690
>>30691
Free yourself from consuming endless news. It's all panic all the time. None of these things are your problems. It's just an escapism without the stigma of playing games all day.
>> No. 30694 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 3:29 pm
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>>30693
>None of these things are your problems.

Well that's just not true lad.
>> No. 30695 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 3:36 pm
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>>30693
Fair point.
It's everyone's problem.
>> No. 30696 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 3:49 pm
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>>30691

>but one mutation in the wrong place could send us back to square one.

Just imagine if that happens in mid- to late 2021, after an up until then successful vaccination campaign, with billions in private resources and government money spent, and all of a sudden you have millions, perhaps billions of people around the world who all got their jabs, but it's useless because a fast-spreading virus mutation is impervious to the current vaccines.

You can then still go back to the drawing board and rework your mRNA molecule that is the backbone of every vaccine, but it'll almost be as if six months of worldwive vaccination were all for nothing. And even that in itself could happen over and over again.

We could end up eliminating the pandemic by early next year or even sooner, or at least contain it in such a way that we won't see infection numbers of the current magnitude again. That's certainly the optimistic scenario, but it's not impossible. But it could also turn into an endless cycle of new mutations and having to play catch up to them.
>> No. 30697 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 4:02 pm
30697 spacer
What do you lot reckon, sustained housing boom come April with all the young people who have accidentally saved for a 5% deposit or an uptick followed by a crash?

>>30688
We're still on target for Mid-Feb and the doses have already been manufactured to do just that which is why Ministers are using minimal weasel words. The concern would be medium term supply barring Godzilla attack.
>> No. 30698 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 4:25 pm
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>>30696
Continual vaccination over years/decades is the best case scenario anyway:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2021/01/covid-19-will-likely-be-with-us-forever-heres-how-well-live-with-it/

New mutations will hopefully be detected early and then the impacted communities can be isolated before they spread. Then you just have to live with the realisation that eventually coronavirus mutates into a nuisance strain that merely offs you when you're in your 70s as a bad cough.
>> No. 30699 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 5:06 pm
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Everything's horrible. I bet society's going to be so much better in one-hundred years, the smug future cunts.

If you're reading this, space-prick, and I know that you are because it'll only be on page three or four by then, go fuck yourself!
>> No. 30700 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 5:28 pm
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>>30691

>Remember the Grenfell Tower disaster?

Not him, but outside of London no one cares about Greenfell. I'm in the NE and the average person has forgotten about it. It isn't a good measuring scale.
>> No. 30701 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 5:30 pm
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>>30691>>30690

Stop watching the news so much. I've been all over the place during the lockdown, some places for work, some for fun. Things aren't as bad as you might think. I say that with a missus in healthcare.
>> No. 30702 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 5:50 pm
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>>30698

Some virologist said the other day another scenario could be that at some point, most of the living adult population will have had an actual covid infection or is vaccinated against it, so it will become something that mainly young children will go through just as they go through measles or the small pox. And because children very rarely get sick from covid-19 in the first place, it might be something that will just self regulate like many other pathogen-borne diseases.

Kind of a very optimistic forecast, but it sounds plausible.
>> No. 30703 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 5:54 pm
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>>30702
One of the things I've been wondering about is that they keep talking about reaching a level of herd immunity through vaccination but don't seem to mention or count the amount of people who will have a level of immunity through infection as well, which whilst I understand isn't really possible to measure would surely bump up the level of immunity in the general population as well no?

Or maybe they have talked about it and I've just not been paying attention.
>> No. 30704 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 9:39 pm
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>>30703

It would make sense in theory to test people for covid antibodies who may unknowingly already have had it, if just to have more doses available for those who really need them, but in practice that doesn't solve your problem, because it isn't even known yet how long a natural immunisation through contact with the virus itself will last. Initial studies point to a pretty certain immunity for about five months, but what will happen after that is impossible to know at this point as we're barely a year into the whole thing. It could be that the average healthy person will have immunity for years, but it's also not yet understood why a couple of people have verifiably become ill with covid twice.
>> No. 30705 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 9:53 pm
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>>30704

The Ab tests are woefully inaccurate though. And you can lose expression of circulating antibodies, so test negative, but still be immune due to memory T cells and other Immunological witchery I don't really fully understand.
>> No. 30706 Anonymous
26th January 2021
Tuesday 10:32 pm
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>>30705

>The Ab tests are woefully inaccurate though

Which is why fewer and fewer countries accept antibody tests from travellers wanting to enter that country. A lot of them now insist on negative PCR tests that aren't older than 72 hours. I've read that about Spain, and I think it now also goes for Germany. Which is probably a logistical nightmare of its own if you want your lab results back in time to catch your flight.
>> No. 30707 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 12:34 am
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>>30704
>but it's also not yet understood why a couple of people have verifiably become ill with covid twice.

I'd add 'completely' to that. Your body builds immunity upon exposure to this or that (or the other) but that doesn't mean that after it your immune and most of the time that is fine - you catch the same cold again. The article I linked further up had 95% of a sample with some level immunity (down to the immune response in question), that's not invincibility but if they got sick again they wouldn't be as sick with all things being equal.

That is why at the moment people aren't worrying about the children, its assumed they'll exercise their bouncebackability and that their immune system will be trained over a lifetime of exposure just as we get colds. Anyone who says otherwise is being a bit of a rice-merchant.
>> No. 30708 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 12:54 am
30708 spacer
>>30706
>Which is probably a logistical nightmare of its own if you want your lab results back in time to catch your flight.

I bet it would be hilarious if someone did turn out to have covid and you end up trapped in a plane on some foreign runway. In hour 16 your trying to listen to Pets 2 for the third time through broken headphones as everyone else sings songs over it to keep their spirits up, broken up by screaming toddlers and the smell of dirty nappies.

Like married life only your married to an obnoxiously loud events manager on one side and an oddly smelling guy who works in a slaughterhouse on the other who keep glancing at your cock.
>> No. 30711 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 6:01 pm
30711 spacer
>>30706
That was about the rapid lateral flow tests, not the antibody tests.

The lateral flow tests tell you if you have covid at the time of test, not in the past. They've just got a high false negative rate.
>> No. 30712 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 9:17 pm
30712 spacer
>>30708

You'd have to be pretty stupid to board a plane to countries like Spain without a valid test, because it's not only illegal per se, but you'll get fined 6,000 euros upon arrival in Spain and have to spend two weeks in mandatory quarantine there. Even missing your flight and having to pay for an all new ticket because your test results didn't come back in time will be cheaper than just taking a chance.

I would like to go to Andalucia some time this year, so I've been eyeing the situation there a bit, but it probably won't happen
anytime soon. And covid is absolutely rampant down there right now, with over 900 cases per 100,000.
>> No. 30713 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 10:09 pm
30713 spacer
>>30712
I was thinking more about what happens when you (or someone on the plane - you'll all get it) get antibodies after the test has been done and remain asymptomatic right up until take-off.
>> No. 30714 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 10:44 pm
30714 spacer
>>30713

Transmission of the virus through being on an airliner has, as far as we can tell, been remarkably rare - out of all flights in 2020 up until around October, according to IATA, there were only 44 cases of transmission found to be caused by being on a plane, out of 1.2 billion passengers.

Naturally, the number will be higher, and IATA will do all they can to count a case as anything but "caught on a plane", but there's only so much you can fudge.

Still don't fucking go on holiday, like. Just don't.
>> No. 30715 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 10:44 pm
30715 spacer
>>30713

I don't understand your question. They're not going to administer an antibody test right before takeoff while you're already on the plane. How is anybody going to know that you've become infected after you did your test?
>> No. 30716 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 10:52 pm
30716 spacer
>>30714

I think I remember seeing something on TV that your chances of catching covid on a plane aren't high because of the way air circulates inside a cabin, i.e. it enters it through the overhead air vents, and that cool air then tends to sink to the cabin floor and drags dust, aerosols and virus particles with it, so that they don't normally stay suspended at nose and mouth level of a person sitting in their seat.
>> No. 30717 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 10:54 pm
30717 spacer
>>30716

That's the theory, along with the fact the air is constantly pulled through all sorts of filters. I didn't really believe the fluff they published early on about why it was safer, but the numbers seem to support it, as near as they can ever be accurate.
>> No. 30719 Anonymous
27th January 2021
Wednesday 11:16 pm
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>>30717
It's safer than spending a similar amount of time with a similar number of people in a similar sized room that doesn't have air filtration, but most of that chatter earlier was propaganda to keep the tourism monies flowing.

https://newsthump.com/2021/01/27/tabloids-praise-and-forgive-thanos-following-heartfelt-apology/
>Tabloids praise and forgive Thanos following ‘heartfelt apology’
>> No. 30725 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 1:19 am
30725 spacer
>>30715
When they start coughing up their lungs and that innit.
>> No. 30736 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 10:44 am
30736 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYamnit-eKM
>> No. 30776 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 2:01 pm
30776 spacer
On facebook they're saying competition over vaccines might start WW3.
>> No. 30777 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 2:42 pm
30777 spacer
>>30776
>On facebook
Stop it.
>> No. 30778 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 3:40 pm
30778 spacer
>>30776

It'll never happen, think about it - because of social distancing the trenches will have to be dug a lot wider than the last time, we just don't have the space.
>> No. 30779 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 3:52 pm
30779 spacer
>>30778

On the other hand, few things are as antiseptic as a 100-million-degree fireball from a nuclear explosion. If you don't mind the life-threatening levels of radioactive radiation afterwards, those areas will be instantly covid free. In a flash.
>> No. 30780 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 4:09 pm
30780 spacer
>>30779

"Bang! And the dirt Corona is gone!"
>> No. 30783 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 5:36 pm
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>>30779

Neutron bombs would effectively eradicate the germs whilst preserving infrastructure
>> No. 30785 Anonymous
28th January 2021
Thursday 6:47 pm
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>>30783
Chris Grayling, is that you?
>> No. 30793 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 1:49 am
30793 spacer
An institute produced an interactive comparison on Covid response with things like political system, economic development and region also being analysed:
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

There's a country table at the bottom and we're only 66 between Poland and Bulgaria. That sounds about right, we could never compete with Poland. I bet Tyskiechan has a delete function.
>> No. 30800 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 9:16 am
30800 spacer
>>30785

Save the hedgehogs!
>> No. 30806 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 10:18 am
30806 spacer
I just want a proper sleep. Christ.
>> No. 30811 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 10:48 am
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>>30806
Get some decent drugs.
>> No. 30820 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 11:57 am
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Es1-QC4WMAQGet7.jpeg.jpg
308203082030820

>> No. 30821 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 12:06 pm
30821 spacer
>>30820

God I'm fucking sick of reductive hot takes on Twitter. I understand people are just trying to be funny, but I swear if you spend enough time immersed in this stuff your world view really does get narrowed down to snippets. History extends beyond the last time you personally were happy.
>> No. 30823 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 4:26 pm
30823 spacer
>>30821

>your world view really does get narrowed down to snippets


https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/

Interesting writeup of findings about Twitter users. They only surveyed American users, but I'm sure some of it can be applied to other countries.
>> No. 30824 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 4:59 pm
30824 spacer
>>30823

>more likely to be Democrats than the general public.
Especially since the mass banning of Q types.
>> No. 30825 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 5:25 pm
30825 spacer
>>30820
Take it somewhere else GME-lad.

>>30823
I wonder how many bots and Not-Kremlin activists they ended up surveying.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots?t=1611939968770

The sobering thought is that you can link Hansard to what is trending on twitter for a given day. If the three of us and our aunties got together we could make arse-pissing a trending political issue debated in Parliament. I don't doubt we'd turn the hashtag into an absolute cunt-off at any rate.
>> No. 30826 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 5:41 pm
30826 spacer
>>30823

The snippets posted are obviously a function of the 140 character limit, and coupled with people being incentivised to make such posts to get likes and retweets (for the dopamine hit), this format of tweet pretty quickly becomes the dominant style of post on the platform.

People who spend a lot of time on Twitter are being exposed this type of content excessively. There is this thing called 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' which suggests that language is the operating system of your brain and the manner in which you think is shaped and limited by the structure of the language you speak.

I would imagine that the same is true for the type of content you ingest.

For people who have never read a book who only read twitter and watch tiktok videos for hours a day I imagine it would condition their brains tho think along lines set by the structure of these mediums.

Marshall MacLuhan famously said that it was the structure of a medium that was the important thing with regards to its effect on culture and content was kind of irrelevant.

>>30825
The bot thing is an interesting aspect. Especially when you take it in consideration with Zuboff's Thesis on 'Surveillance Capitalism'. Reactions and engagement with media is statistically analyzed by content providers who can then use their knowledge to influence and manipulate consumers, then when consumers are sufficiently pliable it is possible to manipulate the content of a user's feed to further condition them to a desired outcome.


Everybody always goes on about 'Brave New World' and 1984 as being the dystopian future, but given everything we now know about things like PRISM and Cambridge Analytica and the Nudge unit type stuff, B. F. Skinner's 'Walden TWO' is arguably the most important dystopian sci-fi novella of our times.
>> No. 30827 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 5:47 pm
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>>30825

Twitter is the waste pit of human intellect on a good day.

Just think if aliens dig up our civilisation in 10,000 years and they find all the old tweets on twitter's derelict servers. They'll think we were fucking morons.
>> No. 30828 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 9:55 pm
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>>30827
But we are.
>> No. 30829 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 10:17 pm
30829 spacer
>>30828
That image gave me brain cancer and I am now dead.
>> No. 30830 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 10:22 pm
30830 spacer
>>30823

We didn't need a study to tell us Twitter is mostly an echo chamber for privileged, socially detached Yank women to spout their political bile without too many people inconveniently contradicting them; but it's nice to have your prejudices confirmed as truth sometimes.
>> No. 30831 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 10:28 pm
30831 spacer
>>30828
No doubt produced by someone born in 1982.
>> No. 30832 Anonymous
29th January 2021
Friday 11:46 pm
30832 spacer
>The EU has backtracked on its decision to temporarily override part of the Brexit deal amid an ongoing row over Covid vaccine supplies. In a statement, the EU Commission said it would ensure the Northern Ireland Protocol is "unaffected". Boris Johnson had called on the bloc to "urgently clarify its intentions" over the move. The EU had said it would trigger a clause to introduce export controls on vaccines to Northern Ireland. Under the Brexit deal, all products should be exported from the EU to NI without checks.

>On Friday, the bloc invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol in a bid to prevent the region becoming a backdoor for EU vaccines to be sent to the wider UK. The EU previously defended the move as "justified" to avert problems caused by a lack of supply.

>The EU's actions were criticised by a string of politicians, with Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Forster describing it as "an incredible act of hostility" that places a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Cabinet minister Michael Gove told his opposite number on the EU-UK Joint Committee, Maros Sefcovic earlier that the UK was concerned by the "lack of notification from the EU about its actions in relation to the NI protocol" and warned that Britain "would now be carefully considering next steps".

>In a phone call with the Irish Taoiseach, Micheál Martin on Friday evening, Mr Johnson "set out his concerns" about the move and "what these actions may mean for the two communities in Northern Ireland", according to a No 10 spokesperson. The PM is also said to have "stressed the UK's enduring commitment" to the Good Friday agreement and called on the EU to "urgently clarify its intentions and what steps it plans to take to ensure its own commitments with regards to Northern Ireland are fully honoured". In a statement released on Friday evening, a No 10 spokesman said Mr Johnson had spoken to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and expressed his "grave concerns" about the "potential impact" of the EU's actions on vaccine exports.

>In an interview with the Times, Michel Barnier, who was the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, said he was calling for "cooperation" between the EU and the UK over the vaccine supplies across Europe. He said the world was facing an "extraordinarily serious crisis" which he argued must be faced with "responsibility" rather than the "spirit oneupmanship or unhealthy competition". He added: "I recommend preserving the spirit of co-operation between us."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55865539

Welcome to Brexit indeed.
>> No. 30833 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 12:01 am
30833 spacer
>>30832
The EU have behaved appallingly in all of this, to the extent they're making the government look competent.
>> No. 30834 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 11:39 am
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>>30830

I agree with you. And I also think Twitter is an echo chamber.
>> No. 30835 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 6:44 pm
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>Twitter is a circle jerk
No it isn't. You can find any number of radically opposed mentalist circle jerks on Twitter.
>> No. 30836 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 7:06 pm
30836 spacer
>>30832
I actually read the contract, and in my opinion it's kind of vaguely in the EUs favour as it lumps all AZs production capacity in as a whole and make no concession to 3rd party contracts.
But it's still a hypocritical dick move for the EU to try and claw back doses from the UK.

However, I think our government should at least have made an offer to surrender say about 10-20% of UK produced doses for the next month. Both out of good faith and also to reserve a favour in case we run into any production issues later in the year.
Doing that would have only a small delay on our vaccination program, it would make us look good, and it would make the EU look even bigger dicks if they did try and implement any export controls.
>> No. 30837 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 7:53 pm
30837 spacer
>>30834

>And I also think Twitter is an echo chamber.

And it is that, both for mentally deranged left-wingers and for alt-right fuckheads. You will always find someone on Twitter who agrees with you and shares your opinion, no matter what that opinion is.




Maybe that's why .gs is so refreshing. Edgelords are frowned upon and don't normally last long on here. Also, the ten of us aren't going to do much damage either way.
>> No. 30838 Anonymous
30th January 2021
Saturday 11:07 pm
30838 spacer
>>30835

Yes, but the biggest one is by far that spoiled middle class Yank tarts archetype. That's the meta-jerk, if you will, meanwhile most of the opposition jerks are framed by their objection to the SMCYT cultural hegemony.
>> No. 30870 Anonymous
1st February 2021
Monday 5:46 pm
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308703087030870
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/captain-tom-moore-hospital-battling-19739816

Captain Tom is in Hospital with COVID-19 after returning from Barbados with his family.
>> No. 30871 Anonymous
1st February 2021
Monday 5:53 pm
30871 spacer
>>30870
he was being treated for unrelated pneumonia and caught covid in hospital.
>> No. 30886 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 4:21 am
30886 spacer
>>30870
Little bit of a pisstake that the old fart pisses off to Barbados after all the guilt tripping for us to SAVE ARE TOMS AND HEROES by watching Netflix. I get that he's 100, so from his pov, fuck it, but we've been told all along our sacrifices are for the greater good.
>> No. 30887 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 4:38 am
30887 spacer
>>30886

He's not the government, he's an old man that did some charity work and now sells gin or something.
>> No. 30888 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 9:21 am
30888 spacer
>>30887
Not hating on him or his family, but the kind of casual attitude that people have to this going on international vacations in the middle of a pandemic is amongst the reasons that the situation is so bad here.
>> No. 30889 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 9:30 am
30889 spacer
>>30871
If someone travels abroad and doesn't catch the virus you should be thinking "thank fuck" not "well that's evidence it's a fuss about nothing".
>> No. 30890 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 10:05 am
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Eo9oLYaXEAYvd50.jpg
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If someone offered me an all expenses paid trip to Barbados with my own personalised headrest in first class I'd be off. Bollocks to the rest of you.
>> No. 30891 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 11:11 am
30891 spacer
>>30890
OK mate. Personally I'd say 'please make me that offer again when it's safe to travel'.
>> No. 30892 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 11:30 am
30892 spacer
>>30891
It was deemed safe to travel when he went about two months ago.
>> No. 30893 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:07 pm
30893 spacer
>>30892
If this government told you it was safe to jump off a bridge, would you?
>> No. 30894 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:13 pm
30894 spacer
>>30893
No because I've no interest in jumping off a bridge, but I'd certainly like a free trip to Barbados.
>> No. 30895 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:21 pm
30895 spacer
>>30894
If this government told you it was safe to jump off a bridge, would you believe them?
>> No. 30896 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:21 pm
30896 spacer
>>30891
He's one-million years old, he's not got time to wait.
>> No. 30897 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:35 pm
30897 spacer
>>30896
I don't care how old he is, its no different to influencers flying to Dubai. There are elderly people all across the country who "don't have the time" too, and they aren't jetting to fucking barbados, they are for the most part dying alone.
>> No. 30898 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 12:36 pm
30898 spacer
>>30895
Depends on the bridge.
>> No. 30899 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 2:31 pm
30899 spacer
>>30893

He's either going against the advice at the time or he's following it, which is it? If your point is he's a bad influence and yet he followed governemnt advice, the problem you have is with the government, not him.
>> No. 30900 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 2:44 pm
30900 spacer
>>30898
One that the SAGE advisory group have, for a long time, been saying is unsafe to jump off.
>> No. 30901 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 2:48 pm
30901 spacer
>>30900
Which bridge is that, then?
>> No. 30902 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 2:53 pm
30902 spacer
Schools in Scotland will start to gradually reopen in three weeks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-55904466
>> No. 30903 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 2:59 pm
30903 spacer
>>30899
The government said it was fine so I threw all other logic out the window" is just fucking stupid.
>> No. 30904 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 3:04 pm
30904 spacer
>>30901
If you're having memory problems, just scroll up a little.
>> No. 30905 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 3:23 pm
30905 spacer
>>30904
If you're having memory problems, I feel bad for you son.
>> No. 30906 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 4:17 pm
30906 spacer
Captain Tom has died.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-55881753
>> No. 30908 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 4:26 pm
30908 spacer
>>30906
All you had to do was clap, lads.
>> No. 30912 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 5:18 pm
30912 spacer
>>30899

Look, at the end of the day he went on vacation during a pandemic and died of the virus what caused the pandemic

At the end of the day he was in an 'at risk' group and exposed his family to the risk. Who knows what strains of COVID-19 they have in Barbados? Probably some new foreign strains we don't have here yet and they risked taking mucky foreign germs back with them.

A lot of less sensible people who looked up to Captain Tom would look to his behaviour to guide their own and many more have probably experienced some sorrow due to their misguided misadventure.

It's a bit disingenuous to say 'well he's not the government' when he was heavily featured as the main news propagrandad as being exemplary of the great British war COVID-19 effort and received a knighthood for this very reason lad.
>> No. 30920 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 6:32 pm
30920 spacer
>>30912

At the end of the day he was in hospital for pneumonia and caught covid in hospital.

He's still not the government even if he was on TV.
>> No. 30921 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 6:35 pm
30921 spacer
>>30899
It's not my problem.
>> No. 30925 Anonymous
2nd February 2021
Tuesday 6:49 pm
30925 spacer
>>30920

Is there an echo in this thread?
>> No. 30931 Anonymous
3rd February 2021
Wednesday 10:42 am
30931 spacer
>>30925

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JpnZBLMETs
>> No. 30933 Anonymous
3rd February 2021
Wednesday 5:42 pm
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EtUClK3WgAEZqdg.jpg
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I was going to make a post yesterday about how they'll probably arrange a 'Clap for Captain Tom' as we reach deification not seen since the hysteria following Diana's death, but I thought it was a bit too crass and cynical. Turns out I should have.
>> No. 30934 Anonymous
3rd February 2021
Wednesday 6:00 pm
30934 spacer
>>30933
Stop posting this and get ready to clap, you bastard!
>> No. 30935 Anonymous
3rd February 2021
Wednesday 6:00 pm
30935 spacer
>>30933
>since the hysteria following Diana's death

"And it seems to me / you lived your life / like an amble on the brink"
>> No. 30936 Anonymous
3rd February 2021
Wednesday 6:05 pm
30936 spacer
>>30934
I didn't hear shit.
>> No. 30941 Anonymous
4th February 2021
Thursday 3:24 pm
30941 spacer
>>30936

Me neither. I don't think people were aware it was even a thing. I brought it up to someone and his response was 'oh yeah, that lad who died'.
>> No. 30942 Anonymous
4th February 2021
Thursday 10:49 pm
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The Mail have launched a campaign for a statue of Captain Tom. This is their mock up of how it may look.
>> No. 30944 Anonymous
4th February 2021
Thursday 11:11 pm
30944 spacer
>>30942

Love it.

It should be 50 ft tall and in the middle of Parliament Square, looming over Churchill
>> No. 30945 Anonymous
4th February 2021
Thursday 11:44 pm
30945 spacer
>>30944
Did Churchill walk around his garden to raise money for the NHS? Did he fuck. Pull his one down.
>> No. 30946 Anonymous
4th February 2021
Thursday 11:54 pm
30946 spacer
Why include the fucking zimmerframe though? I don't want my posthumous statue to include the knee brace I sometimes have to wear when my joint's acting up. I want my statue to look exactly 30% younger and 40% more handsome than me at the point of my death.
>> No. 30947 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 12:34 am
30947 spacer
>>30946
Exactly, this is a bit of an insult.
>> No. 30948 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 1:07 am
30948 spacer
>>30946

The point of a statue is to immortalise a moment in history, if your finest hour was when you were 30% younger expect it then, if you're yet to have it, then expect to look older. Moral of the story, always dress your best you never know when the event you are remembered for might come along.
>> No. 30949 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 1:26 am
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>>30948

A statue of wor Tom should immortalise him, not his shuffle round the garden.
>> No. 30950 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 1:53 am
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Something more like this? But 25 meters tall and bejewelled. If you don't want it The Sun's going call you a Marxist luvvie and stick your face on page 1.
>> No. 30951 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 7:49 am
30951 spacer
>>30946
They've turned a picture of him sepia and crudely placed it in top of a plinth. I think photoshopping the zimmer out is beyond their capabilities.

There's been a couple of local deaths announced recently on the local Facey group. In both instances the pictures they've used in the posts announcing it are fucking awful. I'm going to have to take an emergency "use this in event of death" picture of myself.
>> No. 30952 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 7:55 am
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FUCKING BLM.
>> No. 30953 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 7:59 am
30953 spacer

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It turns out the statue already exists. Boris Johnson has announced he'll name a hospital after Captain Tom.
>> No. 30954 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 9:36 am
30954 spacer
>>30953
See, BLM have already pulled it off the plinth.
>> No. 30955 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 9:56 am
30955 spacer
I bet we'll find out that he didn't really do 100 laps now.
>> No. 30956 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:01 am
30956 spacer
>>30955
He'll have had wheels on the bottom of his shoes and been using a remote control to make the zimmer frame move.
>> No. 30957 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:04 am
30957 spacer
>>30951
I miss the days when someone would be killed on the news and they would show a passport photo, or a family photo of them on the balcony of a hotel or at Christmas.

Now they are all horribly high contrast, highly made-up, filtered gawping selfies.
>> No. 30958 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:36 am
30958 spacer
Lionising Captain Tom is a bit offensive to all the front-line care workers who have been going above and beyind to treat people for COVID and keep other hospital operations online IMO.

The story of Captain Tom should be a damning indictment of the Government's long standing austerity policies and their being tumescent at the thought of privatizing the NHS.
>> No. 30959 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 12:38 pm
30959 spacer
>>30957

Unless one of my friends betrays me, the only public photo of me is a professionally shot one of me doing Work Stuff for the companys awful "meet the team" section on the website.

I'm not particularly thrilled that the news will show me in a forced, posed action shot of me pointing at something like a stock photo engineer but at least I look good in it.
>> No. 30960 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 2:20 pm
30960 spacer
Vaccine resistant strain will emerge this year.

Screencap this.
>> No. 30961 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 2:21 pm
30961 spacer
>>30960
>Screencap this.

Why have people started adding this into posts on this incredibly slow moving website.
>> No. 30962 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 2:24 pm
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>>30961
It's part of revengelad's dastardly scheme.
>> No. 30963 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 2:39 pm
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>>30960
>Screencap this.
No.
>> No. 30964 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 3:30 pm
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>>30960

The Novavax trial showed that the vaccine was 89% effective in the UK, but just 60% effective in South Africa. The Janssen trial showed 72% efficacy in the US versus 57% in South Africa. We don't have robust data on how effective the other vaccines are against the new strains, but it's safe to assume that the numbers will be in the same ballpark.

Any kind of herd immune strategy is fucked, at least in the short-to-medium term. Even if we vaccinate 100% of the population, the South African strain has sufficient vaccine resistance to continue circulating and mutating, which will almost inevitably lead to greater vaccine resistance and greater transmission.

The vaccines will save a lot of lives, they'll take a lot of pressure off the NHS, but Hancock and Johnson are completely deluded if they really think we'll be back to normal by summer. Covid is mutating a lot faster than we expected, it's getting more infectious and more deadly, and we don't have anywhere near the vaccine development and manufacturing infrastructure to keep up.

When GAVI said that nobody is safe until everyone is safe, this is what they were talking about. We know about the UK and South Africa variants because both countries have decent genome sequencing capacity, but nobody will know if a new strain is running rampant in Libya or Guatemala or Bangladesh until it turns up here, by which point it's probably too late to stop it from getting a foothold.

The situation is definitely improving, but it won't be over until we've got global production capacity for ~1bn vaccine doses per month.
>> No. 30965 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 3:37 pm
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>>30964
Nah, we'll be reet m8.
>> No. 30966 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 3:37 pm
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>>30964
>but Hancock and Johnson are completely deluded

Could've stopped there mate, we are completely fucked as long as they're at the helm, whatever happens.
>> No. 30967 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 3:50 pm
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>>30964

>and more deadly

I don't think it has been confirmed yet that the mutants are more deadly. They spread more quickly, yes, but so far they don't seem to kill significantly more people.
>> No. 30968 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 4:00 pm
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>>30964
Can we not shut the borders to dodge whatever exciting new strains are cropping up in Ruritania? Everyone who needs to get home has surely had enough notice by now, stick the rest in some overpriced hotel to quarantine and be done with it.

(I'm sure there are all sorts of logistical complications, but I'm very fed up knowing my NZer friends are basically back to their normal social lives while we're still fucked.)
>> No. 30969 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 4:28 pm
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>>30968

We could, but they're not going to.
>> No. 30970 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 8:34 pm
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>>30968

>Everyone who needs to get home has surely had enough notice by now

It's not about us normal folk though who have been sitting on our arses at home pretty much the last weeks or months straight. You still have to have people entering and leaving the country from abroad just to make Britain as such function. We need imports of food and other supplies, and some people, albeit few at the moment, still have to commute abroad and back for work.

What really should stop though is people who aren't bothered and are still going on holiday in the midst of a worldwide fucking pandemic. You're not going to get a shag in Tenerife anyway when you're the only person there. Eighty percent of bars and clubs will be closed, so you can't even get off your tits in a proper way besides downing a litre bottle of Sol in your hotel room at 10pm because that's when the nightly curfew starts. And classic long-haul winter destinations like Australia or New Zealand are closed entirely to foreign travellers. So just get the fucking hint already, and stay at home.
>> No. 30971 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 8:37 pm
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>>30970
Weird how other countries have managed to do it.
>> No. 30972 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:18 pm
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>>30971

Australia and New Zealand don't have Ro-Ro ferry traffic or a tunnel linking them to Asia. The entire British economy would collapse if all cross-channel cargo had to travel unaccompanied. We could (and should) drastically limit the number of people entering and leaving, but there are enough essential (and "essential") travellers that we can't bank on keeping foreign strains out.

>>30967

>Initial assessment by PHE of disease severity through a matched case-control study reported no significant difference in the risk of hospitalisation or death in people infected with confirmed B.1.1.7 infection versus infection with other variants.

>Several new analyses are however consistent in reporting increased disease severity in people infected with VOC B.1.1.7 compared to people infected with non-VOC virus variants.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/955239/NERVTAG_paper_on_variant_of_concern__VOC__B.1.1.7.pdf
>> No. 30973 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:31 pm
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>>30972

Doesn't have to be unaccompanied, just has to be as unaccompanied as other countries have had their incoming and outgoing goods have been.
>> No. 30974 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 10:46 pm
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>>30973

The cross-channel link is pretty much unique in the world - it's short enough to be almost like a land border, but it's severely bottlenecked by port capacity. The whole infrastructure is built around lorries and drivers passing freely in both directions with almost no margin for contingencies. We're already struggling to cope because of post-Brexit paperwork cockups and there's not a lot more we can do that wouldn't result in supermarket shelves running empty.

A competent government might be able to find a half-workable solution, but we do not have a competent government.
>> No. 30975 Anonymous
5th February 2021
Friday 11:02 pm
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>>30972

>increased disease severity in people infected with VOC B.1.1.7 compared to people infected with non-VOC virus variants.

That's really sad for people who will feel even more shit with the new strain than the average person so far, but as long as they will live, the virus as such isn't really more dangerous. It will probably put more people in ICU, but up to a certain point, our health system will be able to deal with it by setting up makeshift covid hospitals like they did in China early last year.

As mutations go though, it's pretty much impossible to predict when suddenly, somewhere, a strain will emerge that will turn everything we know on its head and suddenly start killing not two percent, but 10 to 15 percent of patients, and maybe put 30 percent of all patients who become infected in ICU. This would be especially disastrous not only for the health system as it is now, but for as long as we don't have the capacity yet to vaccinate billions of people in a very short period of time. If that will ever be possible. And also, such a new variant could be impervious to the current vaccines, and then we're talking mediaeval plague-style rapture.

It's probably not that likely, but at the same time, you can't really rule it out, and then we'll really all be fucked.




Just a flu, eh?
>> No. 30976 Anonymous
6th February 2021
Saturday 2:20 am
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>>30975
>our health system will be able to deal with it by setting up makeshift covid hospitals

Sure, we can just set up some makeshift Staff to operate them too! It's not like Intensive Care Nurses take several years to train up for their roles or anything. If there aren't enough skilled Staff for these makeshift (we could call them "Nightingale") hospitals, we can just entice them from existing hospitals or fast track inexperienced Nurses and deflect all accusations in the inevitable inquiry.
>> No. 30977 Anonymous
6th February 2021
Saturday 2:22 am
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>>30975

>It will probably put more people in ICU, but up to a certain point, our health system will be able to deal

That's still a much worse outcome than you might imagine. The general rule-of-thumb is that a patient will need a week of inpatient care for every day they spend in ICU, but severe covid has some particularly nasty side-effects. Persistent lung damage is pretty obvious, but a lot of people with severe covid end up with kidney failure. Once this wave is over, we're looking at an aftershock of dialysis and transplant patients. These ICU survivors with long-term disease are disproportionately young because geriatric patients rarely survive.

https://www.ccjm.org/content/87/10/619

This is an absolute prick of a disease. I don't want to sound like a doom-monger because we will get through this, but it'll take years to return to something resembling normality and we'll be living with the health and economic consequences for a generation.
>> No. 30978 Anonymous
6th February 2021
Saturday 7:03 am
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>>30975

The thing is the low death rate is part of what has made this disease so difficult to contain. Between people being callous and cavalier about it, and governments grossly underestimating it, it has been what it has been. And it's funny because we know that's exactly what evolutionary selection pushes viruses like these towards; our modernity didn't spare us one bit from those implications.

If it was killing ome in five people who got it, you'd suddenly get people taking it a lot more fucking seriously. The economic impact wouldn't be because of people being forced to stay at home when really they'd rather be earning money to keep the lights on, it'd be people saying "fuck that, I'm not risking getting on public transport in this situation" and so the system grinds to a halt. There'd be looting and stealing if the government didn't step in to provide support.

So in a way, it'd force our hand and result in the thing actually being contained a bit better than the half arsed job we've done so far. I definitely think we've done more harm than good with the way we've handled it thus far; we've neither defeated the virus and yet everyone is at the absolute end of their patience for it, meanwhile there's every possibility we've pressured the thing into getting worse.
>> No. 30979 Anonymous
6th February 2021
Saturday 12:30 pm
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>>30978

>If it was killing ome in five people who got it, you'd suddenly get people taking it a lot more fucking seriously.

True enough; in Britain, with our standards of healthcare, you realistically have about a two-percent overall chance of dying from the virus. Which in most people's minds is a risk that's negligible at best. Add to that the fact that young people are even less likely to get seriously ill from it than an average middle aged adult, and you see why people are behaving the way they are.

It would actually mean less strain on the NHS if more people died from it quickly, because somebody who is dead and buried doesn't take up an ICU bed and hospital staff taking care of them. It would shift the problem to morgues and cemetaries, but in the end, it doesn't matter if a corpse stays in a cooler drawer somewhere a week longer.
>> No. 30981 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 2:32 pm
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Has everyone decided in the past week to take this lockdown even less seriously than before?
>> No. 30982 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 2:35 pm
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>>30981
I haven't left the house in weeks, you're going to have to be more specific.
>> No. 30983 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 2:39 pm
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>>30982
Lots of people seem to have decided that meeting up with friends and family is now absolutely fine. My neighbour has had people round to get drunk twice this week.
>> No. 30984 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 4:06 pm
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>>30981
No, from speaking to people we're in autopilot now. You wear a mask at the supermarket without thinking about it, you don't speak to girls because you're much too busy wanking to your neighbours aerobics etc.

To be honest we could be doing much worse as a society given we're already so atomised and...German when it comes to social contact. Maybe it's different for poor people.
>> No. 30985 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 4:52 pm
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>>30983
Support bubbles m8.
>> No. 30986 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 4:53 pm
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>>30984
>You wear a mask at the supermarket without thinking about it

I went to Co-op earlier and just about everyone was ignoring the one-way system and the divider at the entrance to keep apart those leaving and entering the shop. I also saw a woman fail to comprehend what to do with her empty shopping basket at the checkout and another woman struggling to use the car park. I think a few people are forgetting how to function as a human in society.
>> No. 30987 Anonymous
7th February 2021
Sunday 5:20 pm
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>>30986
>I think a few people are forgetting how to function as a human in society.
Supermarkets have seemed to be more than some people can cope with even at the best of times. A lot of people just have no awareness of anything outside their own centre of attention.

I had to take a trip up the motorway for the first time in a while yesterday. It was pretty quiet, but I nearly lost my shit at how many people I saw on that one drive who were joining off sliproads and then instantly swerving into the middle lane, even when the first lane was empty as far as you could see.
And then there's the people who speed up to 80 and then slow down to 60 over and over again.
>> No. 30988 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 12:00 am
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Paedo Gary Glitter gets Covid vaccine while his victims and prison staff wait for theirs

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13978055/paedo-gary-glitter-covid-vaccine/

Well, yeah. If he diddled kids they'd be too young to have had the jab by now.
>> No. 30989 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 10:37 am
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>>30988
As a prisoner, he's high-risk and also for the 'rona.
>> No. 30990 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 12:07 pm
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>>30987
>And then there's the people who speed up to 80 and then slow down to 60 over and over again.
Fear of speed cameras.
>> No. 30991 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 12:10 pm
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>>30990
ACAB.
>> No. 30992 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 12:28 pm
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>>30988

Not wanting to defend paedos, but classic rage bait again from the Sun. A full-blown covid outbreak amongst prison inmates would be much more difficult to treat and manage, because prisons don't normally have ICU facilities to ventilate patients with acute severe respiratory illnesses. Prison infirmaries are equipped to handle minor illnesses or injuries, like a stomach flu or cuts and bruises, but for more substantial health problems, prisoners are usually transferred to NHS hospitals where they then have to have staff to make sure the prisoner doesn't escape. So then imagine you have to send 20 inmates to a nearby hospital for covid-related ICU treatment. It'd be mayhem, plus then you'd probably have tabloids complaining that prisoners are taking up all the local ICU beds.

It's not ideal that prison inmates are first in line to get vaccinated, but again, there really isn't much of an alternative at this point.
>> No. 30993 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 4:42 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/08/south-africa-scrambles-for-new-covid-strategy-after-astrazeneca-vaccine-news

>South Africa is scrambling to find a new strategy to fight Covid-19 after suspending vaccinations using the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab just one week after the country received its first 1m doses.

>Preliminary data indicated the jab had only 10% efficacy in preventing mild or moderate infections by the new variant now dominant in the country, which has suffered more than 46,000 Covid deaths so far according to official figures, and many more according to excess mortality data.


I guess we're now seeing what some have predicted. The virus is mutating into variants that are harder to fight with a given vaccine, and will probably keep evolving faster every time than you can throw a new round of vaccines at it.

And the problems don't stop there. The virus could end up behaving like the seasonal flu, in that it will keep mutating in such a way that your body will not recognise it as the same virus. So that even if you've survived one Sars-CoV-2 infection and are immune to that particular strain, you could be completely vulnerable to another strain again after just a little while.

We'll probably spend the next few years in lockdown on and off. Nice knowing you, lads.
>> No. 30994 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 4:46 pm
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Humanity extinct by 2025. Screenshot this.
>> No. 30995 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 5:20 pm
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>>30993

>We'll probably spend the next few years in lockdown on and off. Nice knowing you, lads.

We should be OK by summer of next year. The problem right now is really one of inconvenient timing. Knocking out fifteen or even thirty billion doses of vaccine a year isn't particularly hard in the grand scheme of things, it just takes time to ramp up. There are a finite number of experts in vaccine manufacturing, the factories that make manufacturing equipment have finite capacity and the most useful mRNA vaccines are a new technology with a steep learning curve.

For countries that have got their epidemic under control, that isn't a huge problem - it's almost business as usual in Australia or Vietnam. Vaccines are such an urgent issue here and in the US because we've totally botched everything else and obstinately refuse to learn from our mistakes.

Also, all that vaccine nationalism is looking pretty fucking stupid now that our Beautiful British Vaccine made by Brilliant British Boffins turns out to be shite. Still, I'm sure that the EU will bend over backwards to give us some of their vaccines.
>> No. 30996 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 5:24 pm
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>>30993

Well like I've been saying all along, if that does turn out to be the case our best option really is to just suck it up and let it run its course through the population. That way we're removing the selective pressure towards more virulent variants at very least, and we can focus on damage mitigation by vaccinating vulnerable groups seasonally, instead of total prevention, like we do with the flu.

I'm calling it, this whole thing will just turn out to have been an object lesson and warning to mankind, that we are but arrogant apes, who fancy ourselves the masters of our domain, in need of a swift and decisive humbling. It's going to be a real life morality fable that despite our best efforts, the best thing to have done was submit to nature.

We weren't willing to do what it takes to completely contain and eliminate the spread of the disease, so this is where we are left. There can be no half measures, no best of both worlds. Cat's out of the bag now.
>> No. 30997 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 6:34 pm
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>>30993
>will probably keep evolving faster every time than you can throw a new round of vaccines at it.

Why.

>The virus could end up behaving like the seasonal flu, in that it will keep mutating in such a way that your body will not recognise it as the same virus. So that even if you've survived one Sars-CoV-2 infection and are immune to that particular strain, you could be completely vulnerable to another strain again after just a little while.

That's exactly what was always planned and will lead to Covid becoming another strain of the common cold. The longer we have covid around the less lethal it gets and that is why the strategy has always been flattening the curve rather than exterminatus.

>>30995
>our Beautiful British Vaccine made by Brilliant British Boffins turns out to be shite.

It works against the other strains. We just need to contain the South African version until we get a viable mk2 in by the end of the year.

I'm getting tired of you women getting into a tizzy every time something happens. Just have a cup of tea and some biccies.
>> No. 30998 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 6:41 pm
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>>30997
A tizzy or wishful thinking?
>> No. 30999 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 6:46 pm
30999 spacer
Close the borders anytime soon? Lads? No? Okay.
>> No. 31000 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 6:48 pm
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>>30993
>I guess we're now seeing what some have predicted. The virus is mutating into variants that are harder to fight with a given vaccine, and will probably keep evolving faster every time than you can throw a new round of vaccines at it.
>And the problems don't stop there. The virus could end up behaving like the seasonal flu, in that it will keep mutating in such a way that your body will not recognise it as the same virus. So that even if you've survived one Sars-CoV-2 infection and are immune to that particular strain, you could be completely vulnerable to another strain again after just a little while.

The situation is nowhere near that grim, even if we're faced with a virus mutating into forms resistant to the immune response given by the vaccines, the best possible option is still to keep vaccinating as many people as possible with the vaccine we have.

Firstly, the more you drive down the transmission rate and the viral load in the population at large, the fewer opportunities the virus has to mutate further. (Which is why the flu is such a big problem, by only vaccinating something like 5-10% of the population yearly, we're actually driving the various flu viruses to mutate even faster.)

Secondly, even with the virus mutating the current vaccines still at least prompt enough of an immune response to greatly reduce the risk of life-threatening disease. The virus will mutate enough that we'll never be completely free of it, but by next winter a pessimistic outlook is that cases will be as high but only a manageable minority of people will end up in hospital on ventilators, and with luck even the common cold and flu seasons will be much milder for years to come if people continue to wear masks and follow good hygiene.

The virus only really has limited ways to mutate, there are a massive number of possible mutations that have a small effect on its virulence or immune response evasion, but for it to remain a threat to humans it has to retain the characteristic protein that targets the ACE2 receptor.
>> No. 31001 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 7:03 pm
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>>31000

I'd like to share your optimism, but you seem like one of those people who said last summer that it was nonsense that there would even be a second wave.

This virus is far from finished with us. It has shown that it can mutate in a short amount of time to the point that it's sending vaccine makers back to the drawing board. Who knows what else it can still do.

And we'll have nowhere near the capacity, not this year and not next year, to vaccinate enough people that we're making it less likely for the virus to mutate.


>but for it to remain a threat to humans it has to retain the characteristic protein that targets the ACE2 receptor

It seems to have passed that evolutionary hurdle firmly by now. The essence of evolution itsef is that yes, there will be mutations, and there will be mutations that aren't viable and will not spread, i.e. they aren't selected and retained. But the other side of the coin is that it can just as likely engender mutations that are far more dangerous than what we've seen so far. We're already a notch up from the original virus in that current mutants spread much faster. Just imagine if one of the next variants is not only going to spread even faster, but will kill three times as many people or put them in ICU.
>> No. 31002 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 7:10 pm
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The real problem is incompetent politicians and morons of the public. Even if covid is solved we're fucked with the next thing that comes along, or/and eventually climate change.
>> No. 31003 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 7:24 pm
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>>31001
>I'd like to share your optimism, but you seem like one of those people who said last summer that it was nonsense that there would even be a second wave.

Not him but if reality followed all the bollocks that gets posted in these threads we'd all be dead by now.
>> No. 31013 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 9:33 pm
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>>31003

Bit overdramatic, but next to the doomsayers, there were loads of people on here who were far too optimistic as we now know.

We are eventually going to get the upper hand, but it's going to be far more difficult than many people still believe.

For starters, don't get your hopes up that there will be a summer holiday season this year. And even if there is one, you'll probably be going to Blackpool and not Ibiza.
>> No. 31016 Anonymous
8th February 2021
Monday 9:55 pm
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I'm at a solid 4/10 mentally at the moment.

I've just accepted I'll never get another opportunity to see a lass's tits at this point.
>> No. 31020 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 12:22 am
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>>31016
>another

Count your blessings, lad.
>> No. 31022 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 12:52 am
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>>31016
>I've just accepted I'll never get another opportunity to see a lass's tits at this point.

I'm still holding out hope but they surely need to work something out. Whatever your opinion is on covid restrictions we do need to have people bonking, if for no other reason than people are healthier when they have a love life. Despite this basic fact I've spent the past year being cockblocked by the government introducing lockdowns the moment I get anywhere which is shit luck but also something of a national crisis.

I'm assuming the legal and safe method involves video dating, a walk and then you move in(!?) That doesn't seem right and I would've thought you lot would've been working on this conundrum like it was a poorly maintained shed in spring. Can we not have some 1-1 dating system where you both take a test beforehand before spending an hour or two talking? Maybe just semi-open a coffee shop with bookings and good ventilation, you have a latte and chat and if it goes anywhere then great you can bubble each other.

In London there's plenty of open train stations with lots of spare seating and takeaway places. You both get a Maccies to takeout and sit socially distanced from everyone else - the only leeway needed would be seating. Let me know if I'm crazy here.
>> No. 31024 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 1:49 am
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>>31022

>I'm assuming the legal and safe method involves video dating, a walk and then you move in

If you both live alone, the law allows you to form a support bubble with one other person who effectively counts as a member of your household.
>> No. 31031 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 11:42 am
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>>31024

I thought support bubbles were only meant so that you could look after frail and elderly family members. Not so you could go and have a shag with a fit lass.

I'm pretty sure a lot of dating happens illegally at the moment, as it were. When I think back to my younglad days, I don't think a pandemic would have kept me from chasing them.
>> No. 31034 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 1:13 pm
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The funniest, most humourous, part of the government response to COVID is that they keep announcing new measures and my immediate reaction is "these fuckers weren't doing this already?!" It's happened a few times now.
>> No. 31035 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 1:46 pm
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>>31022

Mate just invite them round, no one cares. I've never had as much sex as I have the past few months, the atmosphere of desperation and danger gets them going even an ugly bastard like me is in luck.
>> No. 31036 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 1:58 pm
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>>31035
This is why it's going to last for at least another year.
>> No. 31037 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:00 pm
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>>31035

Must be nice. I've met fuck all people for months. Doesn't help that I consider online dating absolute poison so I might just have myself to blame.
>> No. 31038 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:04 pm
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>>31031
>I thought support bubbles were only meant so that you could look after frail and elderly family members. Not so you could go and have a shag with a fit lass.

It's for that and for people living alone to socialise. Normal people aren't hardened to social isolation and have to survive on only most rudimentary knowledge of the internet which even I'd go out of my mind being limited to.

Of course you're supposed to limit it to one household with permeance both legally and because if you're both sleeping around then you're bound to get it. Find yourself a homely but pleasant lass and stick it out like you're married because it's all you're getting.
>> No. 31039 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:09 pm
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>>31038

So ideally, you want to meet a fit lass who's up for a shag and who is a bit mental.
>> No. 31040 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:21 pm
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>>31039

Nah m8, you want someone who is tolerably attractive and minimally annoying, because if you follow the spirit of the law then you're stuck with them for the duration. You don't want to waste your bubble on some BPD nightmare just because she's got big milkers.
>> No. 31041 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:22 pm
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>>31040
>tolerably attractive

You old romantic.
>> No. 31042 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 2:46 pm
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>>31041

Romance is for teenage girls. The secret to happiness is realistic expectations.
>> No. 31043 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 3:36 pm
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>>31042
My partner has an MA in neuroscience, aiming for PhD, decent job, good financial planning, fit, does everything in bed, takes an interest in literally everything I do (40k, fantasy football, retro gaming etc) and will try it with me, is better at coding than me, cute notes in random places, etc etc...and I still feel like I'm settling, emotionally, despite her being a much better person in many ways. Maudlin aside, there's a lot of romance and whatnot, but also some really terrible fights and some practical incompatibilities that mean we might simply be worse for each other in the long run.

If you find 'the one', that's great, just let it be known there are thousands of them and you might have found one of the worst potential candidates.

Can we play Fuck, Marry, Bubble, Kill?
>> No. 31046 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 3:55 pm
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>>31040

>because if you follow the spirit of the law then you're stuck with them for the duration

Your support bubble isn't set in stone. On the contrary, if you're enough of an arsehole, breaking up should be much easier, because you can legally tell somebody to stop seeing you because you've shifted your support bubble to another person who is more in need of it. You don't have to tell her that you've simply found somebody else who's less of a mental slag than her.
>> No. 31047 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 3:58 pm
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>>31042

>The secret to happiness is realistic expectations.

True enough.
>> No. 31048 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 4:09 pm
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>>31043
how fit is she though?
>> No. 31052 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 5:21 pm
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>>31042

Cold pragmatic decisions are for robots and Germans. Give me a time bomb of dysfunctional chemsex over your sustained diner party conversations about how you chose what colour of off-white to paint the walls together anyway.
>> No. 31053 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 5:39 pm
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>>31052

Most people have an idealised image of a partner and try to tick as many boxes as possible, but I think it's better to minimax for "I won't slowly grow to resent this person". I think that being good at resolving disputes is absolutely the most important trait in a partner and I'll compromise on basically everything else to get it.
>> No. 31062 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 6:32 pm
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>>31053

>Most people have an idealised image of a partner and try to tick as many boxes as possible, but I think it's better to minimax for "I won't slowly grow to resent this person".

I read an article a while ago that was sort of a philosophical take on idealised expectations you may have, but it did draw some poignant conclusions. One was that if your standards are too high, it may well be that you will miss the window where most people settle down with somebody, and you could spend the rest of your life alone, random occasional flings notwithstanding. Unless you're incredibly lucky, you will probably not find, and woo that one person who ticks all your boxes 100 percent. So then the choice is yours, either lower your expectations and be with somebody who - maybe - ticks half or two-thirds your boxes, or keep chasing that pie in the sky. And from a certain age, your odds will look increasingly bad, because all the best women and men will be off the market.
>> No. 31066 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 8:03 pm
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>>31048
7 or 8 out of 10 with massive eyes and fantastic bum.
>> No. 31068 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 8:39 pm
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>>31062
>And from a certain age, your odds will look increasingly bad, because all the best women and men will be off the market.

I opened Hinge again today and this post has mortified me.

Although being a bloke in my early 30s I still have plenty of choice and if that it doesn't work out I can just pick a wife from a catalogue. Still it's noticeable that women my age all have a reason if they haven't settled down.
>> No. 31073 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 9:16 pm
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>>31068

It's easier for blokes compared to women when they enter middle age, but it comes with a catch. You're going to have to be professionally successful and financially stable with money to spend, and ideally still physically attractive as well. You can pull a surprising number of relatively young women, but not just young women that way who are ready to settle down and who don't necessarily fall in the "damaged goods" category.

But if you're just some bald, overweight, out of shape loser with no career and no social status, then that option tends to not be open to you. Your best days will be behind you.
>> No. 31076 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 9:50 pm
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/who-s-covid-mission-china-give-first-report-n1257105
>It is “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged, according to the head of a team of experts that on Tuesday released the first details of its fact-finding mission into the virus's origins.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_u8ELCWujg
>> No. 31077 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 9:53 pm
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>>31076

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja1lL_f846o

This shit was all so easily avoidable with minimal action last year.

It's like, if a chip pan catches fire in your house and you cover it with a wet cloth immediately it is easy to solve the problem. But if you wait til the kitchen, your flat, the terrace catches fire; that wet cloth will do nothing and there isn't really a hell of a whole lot that can be done to fix the situation.
>> No. 31078 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 9:58 pm
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>>31077


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50gk7vz7UHU

lol, of the four hypothesis being investigated all they learned was that 'it definitely didn't escape from a lab because there is not evidence of it being in that lab'
>> No. 31079 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 10:00 pm
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>>31076
Have a word, lad.
>> No. 31081 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 10:07 pm
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>>31077

That ship sailed when authorities in China decided to sweep under the rug the whole business of that one GP who first alerted them that there was a new virus knocking about.

Of course you then had governments around the world cocking it up even more, but China is still where it started.
>> No. 31082 Anonymous
9th February 2021
Tuesday 10:10 pm
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>>31079

Rough day. It seems like nobody in any position with any ability to influence anything significant has a single iota of integrity or spine.
>> No. 31092 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 1:59 am
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>>31073

Can confirm, I'm bald and overweight and hit 30 a week ago. Grim times. I'm engaged but feel deep down it was a mistake and I wish I a wiser choice six years ago. But, this choice of misery is probably wiser than the inevitability of being alone if we broke up.
>> No. 31094 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 2:08 am
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>>31082

Better to be a spineless stooge than the filling in a 叉烧包.

Obviously the Chinese government wouldn't actually do a Sweeney Todd on some troublesome health inspectors. At least not until their organs had been removed for transplant.
>> No. 31095 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 10:23 am
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>>31094
A man who never eats a pork bun,

Is never a whole man.

-- Confucius
>> No. 31117 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 6:38 pm
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>>31078
>lol, of the four hypothesis being investigated all they learned was that 'it definitely didn't escape from a lab because there is not evidence of it being in that lab'

It's mental.

They've said it wasn't circulating in Wuhan or anywhere else in China before the first confirmed cases. The virus didn't make the jump from bats to humans in or around Wuhan but we don't know where it came from. But it definitely wasn't from that lab because Winnie promised.
>> No. 31118 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 7:32 pm
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>>31117
If they said it was definitely a lab breach, they'd end up dying of a mysterious ailment before leaving China or locked up for spying.
>> No. 31119 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 7:38 pm
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I guess it doesn't matter what you say when everyone's stopped listening. Sort of how I approach my posts on here, actually.
>> No. 31121 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 8:31 pm
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>>31119

The Sun's vaccine passport claim was made two days before Zawahi's no vaccine passport statement, so I'd listen to the newest information from a primary source over a trash tier tabloid.
>> No. 31122 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 8:53 pm
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CAP'N TOM CAKE.
>> No. 31123 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 9:05 pm
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>>31121
Whilst the sun is obviously a pile of shit, so if the guardian, so are all of our politicians, so is every organ of power and information dissemination. That's the problem innit.

Why should anyone care of give a shit when the torrent of information we are drowned in is so often contradictory and overwhelming. I don't even really know what point I'm trying to make other that the idea that we listen to and believe

>the newest information from a primary source over a trash tier tabloid

is really useful anymore. Our government are just as if not more unreliable than the fucking sun newspaper, which is utterly fucked.

Sage for beers.
>> No. 31124 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 9:14 pm
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>>31121>>31123
I wasn't talking about the papers, I was talking about the ministers.
>> No. 31125 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 9:52 pm
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>>31119

Bloke ws on the radio talking about this this morning, it's a bit pedantic but it's essentially just a distinction in terminology between something like the documentation you need for something like yellow fever vaccination, which some countries don't let you enter without. We don't call that a vaccine passport, because it's just to meet that country's rules whereas a passport would be universal. The government are working on implementing documentation like that, in case other countries are going to ask for it in future, but they have no plans to make a passport, i.e the concept that you can travel freely by flashing a card that says "I have had a covid vaccine".
>> No. 31127 Anonymous
10th February 2021
Wednesday 9:56 pm
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>>31123

"Everything is permitted. Nothing is true."
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀- Latest Gov't Advice Regarding COVID-19 probably.
>> No. 31135 Anonymous
11th February 2021
Thursday 12:42 am
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>UK housing market boom loses steam - RICS

>The boom in Britain’s housing market cooled sharply in January as the country went back into coronavirus lockdown and a tax break for buyers neared its expiry, a survey showed on Thursday. House price growth slowed more than expected by economists polled by Reuters and prices in London fell for the first time since July, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

>A measure of properties hitting the market was the second-weakest on record, excluding a slump during the first lockdown last year when the sector was closed along with much of the ret of the economy. Near-term sales expectations were close to a pre-pandemic record low. New buyer enquires and agreed sales also fell.

>Britain’s housing market unexpectedly took off in the late spring of 2020 as people who had been stuck in their houses during the first lockdown sought bigger homes. A tax break for buyers also spurred demand. The stamp duty tax exemption is due to expire at the end of next month although media have said finance minister Rishi Sunak might extend it in his March 3 budget statement. Other gauges of the housing market have also suggested recently that last year’s boom has run its course, including the first month-on-month falls since mid-2020 in house prices as measured by mortgage lenders Nationwide and Halifax. A Reuters poll of analysts published last week showed prices were expected to flat-line this year before rising by 2.7% in 2022.

>RICS Chief Economist Simon Rubinsohn said despite attempts to keep the housing market open in the latest lockdown that began in January, there had been an impact on activity. “The appeal of properties with more room and outside space is, meanwhile, a theme that continues to be strongly evident in the responses to the survey,” he said.

>In the rental market, concerns about a slow flow of properties coming on to the market - reflecting regulatory and tax changes - were pushing rents higher. The exception, again, was London where private rents were viewed as remaining under pressure over the coming months.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-houseprices/uk-housing-market-boom-loses-steam-rics-idUSKBN2AB00O

I look forward to seeing the full might of the state being flexed to protect house prices. And the cost of subsequent tax raids we can expect on landlord income being passed on to renters.
>> No. 31141 Anonymous
11th February 2021
Thursday 12:32 pm
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>>31135

>I look forward to seeing the full might of the state being flexed to protect house prices.

It's going to be pandemonium for everybody who is mortgaged to the hilt with one-percent loans. They will have bought into an overheating market, often with ridiculous loan-to-value ratios, because at 1.5 percent interest, almost any git with a mid-level full-time job and a modest amount of savings can afford to buy a house. But if there's going to be anything more than a temporary dip in house prices, then it could set off an avalanche of homeowners going into negative equity and banks pulling loans, and it will set off a downward spiral.

The driving force behind property prices in this cycle has been historically low mortgage rates, unprecedented low cash interest rates, and the ever-growing volatility of equity markets. For real estate property prices to keep rising or to at least stay near the present level, mortgage and interest rates would have to stay low almost indefinitely. Which they probably won't.

And then you also have the psychological factor. Markets go up because fundamentally, people have faith that a market will keep going up. Otherwise, there will be no increase in value, because if you don't believe that you will be able to sell an asset for more than you bought it for, you will not buy. And the dangerous thing about market bubbles has always been that the masses didn't believe there even was a bubble. Even when price levels are greatly overheated, you will still believe that your investment will appreciate in value. But at some point, markets always run out of the last idiot who wants to buy, and that's when bubbles burst. Because that last idiot buyer isn't going to find somebody who is an even bigger idiot than him.

On the other hand, you don't normally buy a house just as an investment, but as a place to live for yourself. And people who do buy property as an investment do so with a long-term view, i.e. short-term declines in value don't normally worry them. But as a homeowner with a mortgage, you could still find yourself wedged in from two sides when mortgage rates start rising again and property prices drop.
>> No. 31145 Anonymous
11th February 2021
Thursday 9:21 pm
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>>31141

>But if there's going to be anything more than a temporary dip in house prices, then it could set off an avalanche of homeowners going into negative equity and banks pulling loans, and it will set off a downward spiral.

Good. Let them all burn.

>On the other hand, you don't normally buy a house just as an investment, but as a place to live for yourself.

And that's all it should be. If I was King, house prices would be capped at £100,000, with maybe an additional twenty per bedroom; and that's already a very generous price. How much does it cost in materials and labour to throw up a shitty plasterboard three bed semi? Can't be more than £30,000 I'm certain.

Personally I'm hoping for the market to collapse so I can buy in at the bottom, which is karma I deserve for missing the boat on bitcoin.
>> No. 31146 Anonymous
11th February 2021
Thursday 10:20 pm
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>>31145

Will house prices ever drop?

I just figured that everything will keep getting more expensive, and QE will keep going disproportionately to the wealthy until we find ourselves in a similar situation to what Britain was in yon medieval times.

'The Highland clearances' incoming for all major metropolitan areas unless one consent's to living in a Downtown Abbey type situation, poor doors and all.
>> No. 31147 Anonymous
11th February 2021
Thursday 11:33 pm
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>>31145

>How much does it cost in materials and labour to throw up a shitty plasterboard three bed semi? Can't be more than £30,000 I'm certain.

How long is a piece of string. That said, £30K should not be possible. Even a prefab garage these days including a brick or paved driveway and labour will already run you the thick end of £15K.

I think I saw an ad for prefab houses a while ago that were starting from somewhere around £60K. But that's probably going to be piss poor quality in the long run. You'll probably have rain coming through your roof after less than 15 years. And all-in, your prefab house is probably still going to cost you upwards of £80K.
>> No. 31148 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 1:52 am
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>>31147
>I think I saw an ad for prefab houses a while ago that were starting from somewhere around £60K. But that's probably going to be piss poor quality in the long run. You'll probably have rain coming through your roof after less than 15 years. And all-in, your prefab house is probably still going to cost you upwards of £80K.

This is something that pisses me off about new builds, they're just rush jobs built on some floodplain complete with substandard materials and illogical design. The idea of equity loans under help to buy is that young people get their first home and maybe start a family but I've not seen a single one with a suitable entrance for a pushchair and by that I mean they have a substantial step to get in the door and a tight hallway. That's not something young people look for when they buy but they will soon notice it.

The way I see it, you're best off buying a proper house from back when we made those in this country. Even a terraced house. Then you rip out the plumbing.
>> No. 31149 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 5:51 am
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>>31145

Building a three-bedroom house of reasonable quality and size costs at least £130,000. Spend any less and you're going to cut corners that shouldn't be cut.

>>31148

Aside from the obvious fit-and-finish issues that plague new builds, commercial housebuilders are grossly under-sizing houses to bump up the bedroom count. The show home might look alright, but once you move in you realise that there's nowhere to keep your hoover. The third bedroom looks fine with a cot in it, but put in a full-size single bed and the door doesn't open all the way. The housebuilder finds an extra ten grand in profit at the cost of your mental health.
>> No. 31153 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 9:42 am
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>>31149

>Building a three-bedroom house of reasonable quality and size costs at least £130,000. Spend any less and you're going to cut corners that shouldn't be cut.

Even including the economies of scale when they're building an entire estate full of shit plasterboard 3-bed semis at once?

I admit I've absolutely fuck all knowledge about the subject but I've always assumed there must be some pretty big profit margins involved when you see those copy-paste new build estates of identical cube houses. If it really costs that much per unit then they're wasting the money somewhere, surely. How was it possible for my mam and dad's house to cost them £60,000 which was a new build in the mid 90s? And that was when new-builds could still be reasonably good quality as well, it's got solid walls and everything instead of just plasterboard.

Inflation hasn't been THAT quick.
>> No. 31154 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 10:20 am
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>>31153

>Even including the economies of scale when they're building an entire estate full of shit plasterboard 3-bed semis at once?

There are going to be economies of scale, yes. That's why land development is such big business, although you still won't be able to erect a turnkey new build for £30K. But you as a home buyer will still have to pay the market value of your new build. Which can be twice of what your house cost to make, in this market.
>> No. 31155 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 11:29 am
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>>31153

>Even including the economies of scale when they're building an entire estate full of shit plasterboard 3-bed semis at once?

There aren't particularly big economies of scale with traditional construction - pretty much everything is done by hand. You can save a lot of money with system-building, but there's a huge stigma in this country against "prefabs" because of shoddy post-war construction.

>How was it possible for my mam and dad's house to cost them £60,000 which was a new build in the mid 90s?

£60,000 in 1995 is equivalent to £118,000 in today's money. 25 years at an average of 2.7% inflation compounds pretty quickly. Their house probably doesn't meet modern energy-efficiency standards, which adds to the construction costs but pays for itself several times over the life of the property.
>> No. 31156 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 12:23 pm
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>>31155

>£60,000 in 1995 is equivalent to £118,000 in today's money. 25 years at an average of 2.7% inflation compounds pretty quickly.

It's the chicken and the egg though. Rising house prices in turn contribute to rising inflation. It's really just a number, and your income has probably nominally increased in a similar way since then. Well, unless you earned a low income and were affected by all the job market "reforms" that came into being from the late 1990s.
>> No. 31158 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 12:52 pm
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>>31156
We cheat the inflationary impact of house prices by using CPI instead of RPI to measure inflation, nominal income growth has been below inflation since 2008 while house prices have continued to grow apace.
>> No. 31159 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 1:32 pm
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>>31158

It's indeed dishonest, in that housing and accomodation prices have one of the biggest impacts on the cost of living overall.
>> No. 31160 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 3:22 pm
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>>31154

>Which can be twice of what your house cost to make, in this market.

Which is why I was originally suggesting it be capped.

How much would you get back if you dismantled a house, sold off all the bricks, slate, and copper, and then the plot of land it's on? Then obviously there's labour on top, but my point was really just that the "market value" of a house is disgustingly inflated compared to its real value as a physical asset.

Is there some kind of alternative method we could use to return houses to their original function as homes, rather than financial golden geese?
>> No. 31161 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 3:26 pm
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>>31160
> Is there some kind of alternative method we could use to return houses to their original function as homes, rather than financial golden geese?
Build a fuck-load of them?
>> No. 31162 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 4:02 pm
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>>31160

>How much would you get back if you dismantled a house, sold off all the bricks, slate, and copper, and then the plot of land it's on

You would only be able to sell your bricks and pipes at scrap value.

>just that the "market value" of a house is disgustingly inflated compared to its real value as a physical asset.

I see your point, but then again, the most fundamental rule of any business at all is that you try to sell on whatever you produce at more than it cost you to make. And "market value" is simply what people are prepared to pay. Supply and demand. Of course you'll have some developers putting up outlandish asking prices, but they wouldn't do that if they believed that nobody would be there to actually buy at that price.

Capping house prices isn't the answer, because either developers will try to cut corners at the other end and then you end up with inferior build quality, or they will just withdraw from the family home market, build fewer of them, and invest in more profitable market segments.
>> No. 31163 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 4:03 pm
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>>31160
I still think the state should be able to set minimum interest rates for different types of lending. Take it out of the banks hands.
You want to build a house? Great. Have any interest rate you like. (perhaps, if necessary, rigged to always be at least 0.5% below the standard mortgage rate.)
You want to buy an existing house? Minimum CPI+3% rate, even if the bank would be happy to give you it at CPI+1% based on their own risk calculations etc.
As it stands, as a purely commercial decision, you get terrible incentives for credit creation because the risk of building a new house is obviously higher than the risk of buying an exising one (and bidding the price up in the process).

You'd probably still need to build a bunch of council houses as well, but if we really want the market to do it we should come up with something to deal with the fact it's clearly ballsing it up so far.
>> No. 31165 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 4:37 pm
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>>31162

>the most fundamental rule of any business at all is that you try to sell on whatever you produce at more than it cost you to make. And "market value" is simply what people are prepared to pay. Supply and demand

If only there were some other way. But sadly there isn't. That's literally the only way of doing anything.
>> No. 31179 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 7:28 pm
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The government could fix the housing market at a stroke by relaxing planning restrictions. They won't do this, because people who own a house and want it to go up in value greatly outnumber and out-vote people who can't afford to buy a house.

Democracy!

We should have let COVID clear the decks.
>> No. 31180 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 7:42 pm
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Property tax on houses and flats should increase exponentially the more of them a person owns. There is zero excuse for slumlords.

All MPs who profit from rentierism should have to abstain from voting on matters relating to landlords and tenants being that it is a clear conflict of interest.
>> No. 31182 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 7:45 pm
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>>31179
>The government could fix the housing market at a stroke by relaxing planning restrictions. They won't do this, because people who own a house and want it to go up in value greatly outnumber and out-vote people who can't afford to buy a house.

Everything you just said is completely arse fucking backwards lad.

House builders have no shortage of suitable land to build on with planning permission granted already. As has already been pointed out plenty of times in this thread it is just not in the interests of builders to increase supply, they compete with each other to buy up suitable land and then bank it
And secondly, you might have missed but last year Boris unveiled plans to completely overhaul planning permission which will take power away from local planning committees.

If you really wanted to increase the number of homes being built the answer is to just put a tax on unused land, which puts pressure on the builders to actually build house or sell it back to people who will.
>> No. 31184 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 8:18 pm
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>>31182

> they compete with each other to buy up suitable land and then bank it

Land banking only makes financial sense because of the artificial constraints on planning permission. In a functioning system, there would be negligible difference between the value of agricultural land and building plots and no speculative value in hoarding land.

The fact that homebuilders are now effectively land speculators is a symptom, not a cause. If planning permission was granted in a sensible manner, that business model would be broken because (as is the case now in many other countries) it'd be easy to buy a plot and commission a house to your own specifications at a reasonable cost.
>> No. 31186 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 9:01 pm
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>>31182

Banning LLCs and foreigners who aren't resident in the UK from owning UK residential properties would do a lot to ameliorate the situation.
>> No. 31187 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 9:03 pm
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>>31184
You have to also consider though that large housebuilders compete against each other for available land. Whether or not there is an issue with getting planning permission they will always pour as much capital as they can spare into buying more land than they can use, solely to deprive their competitors (and potential customers) of cheap land.

With regards to self-build, getting planning permission isn't the main obstacle, it's limited space. If you can get a suitable plot in an urban area it's fairly straightforward to get planning permission and build.
The main problem for self build in this country is provision for larger developments. It would be trivial and profitable for someone to get some land, divide it up into small plots and resell it, except for the problem of amenities and utilities, (drainage, roads etc). Those things cost a huge amount of capitol up front and are always the biggest obstacle to planning permission for good reason.
>> No. 31188 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 9:29 pm
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>>31187

>With regards to self-build, getting planning permission isn't the main obstacle, it's limited space. If you can get a suitable plot in an urban area it's fairly straightforward to get planning permission and build.

Two words: green belt. We effectively decided the maximum size of our urban areas in 1955. One of the main assets of homebuilders is that they're very good at securing planning permission (by fair means or foul) that other people wouldn't be able to get.

The whole system is utterly, blatantly crooked.

https://www.theplanner.co.uk/news/local-authorities-are-unable-to-prevent-corruption-in-planning-says-report
>> No. 31189 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 9:41 pm
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>>31186

>Banning LLCs and foreigners who aren't resident in the UK from owning UK residential properties would do a lot to ameliorate the situation.

If you actually implemented that one day, house prices would drop 10 to 20 percent the next day. While you may think that's a good thing, it really isn't, because not only would Igor from the Moscow mob with his weekend home in Chelsea lose one million quid off his net worth, but middle class homeowners, often with knife-edge mortgages, would be hurt as well. And that still isn't pondering what would happen to the market if commercial investors suddenly had to sell off all their residential homes into private hands.

It may suit you as a home buyer at that moment, but banks will probably be more reluctant to give you money for fear that property prices will go down even further.



It's DM reader logic, at the end of the day. It's a persuasive argument at first glance, but it's really not a good idea.
>> No. 31190 Anonymous
12th February 2021
Friday 10:46 pm
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>>31189
>but middle class homeowners, often with knife-edge mortgages, would be hurt as well
They really wouldn't. Just keep paying the mortgage, and they get to keep living there.
>> No. 31193 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 3:07 am
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>>31189
I think what you mean to say is...

The house I live in is identical as it was yesterday, and the mortgage is identical or less. And the additional cash required to buy a bigger house is less. But other people will get a better deal in future and I hate that.

Name one other thing that you buy and use and expect to predictably go up in value by quite possibly more money then you earn through working in that time, when you sell it on.
>> No. 31196 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 9:27 am
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>>31189
Nothing you've said makes me think it's a bad idea. Worst case scenario, it's interesting and slightly cathartic, best case scenario it marginally improves things for people I care about.
(But then, I never expect to own a house anyway.)
>> No. 31197 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 9:41 am
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>>31190
For bizarre and incomprehensible reasons, banks can and will reposes a property if the market value falls below the mortgage value.
>> No. 31198 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 9:59 am
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>>31188
Even if you open up the greenbelt, it doesn't solve the problem of the capital cost and design problems in building big new estates. What would happen if we just scrapped planning laws and let people build freely is that we would end up with sprawls of housing all the way along existing country lanes which would cut off access to land behind them and would lead to chaos with the roads being too small for the amount of traffic using them.

The years of back-and-forth arguments between developers and planning committees do at least force developers into designing a decent layout with new road junctions where needed, and putting some money into improving existing infrastructure.

Also, planning laws don't need to be made looser in order to speed up the process of building. A big part of the problem is that the actual laws are very vague and give a lot of discretion to local authorities. Instead the laws could be made tighter with more black and white requirements, and the role of local authorities being reduced to "is this to the letter of the law or not" - which would also reduce potential for corruption greatly.
>> No. 31200 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 12:29 pm
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>>31197

Negative equity doesn't mean your bank is going to pull your mortgage up from under your arse the next day. But what it does do from the view point of a bank is increase the overall default risk of your loan. Not so much in terms of actual probability from zero to 100 percent, but in terms of your weighted risk profile as a client, i.e. how much the bank is going to lose if you do default and it is forced to repossess and sell the property for less than your mortgage amount. They can't just terminate your mortgage because they have a bad feeling about you, and as long as you keep making the payments, they will largely leave you alone. But it could be that they will ask a higher interest rate of you for the next fixed-interest term. Or they might ask if you have additional collateral.

That said, house prices often go down in times of economic uncertainty*), during which the job market will probably also take a hit. So then if you do find yourself in a position where you can no longer afford the payments on your house and if you have a high-LTV mortgage of 80 percent or more, you could be forced to pay the difference between your residual loan and the house's sale price to your bank when the property gets repossessed. It's what is called a mortgage shortfall.



*) They're not really going down substantially at the moment, but just look at the 2007/08 Financial Crisis for an example of the property market taking a nose dive during grave economic uncertainty.
>> No. 31212 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 2:28 pm
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I've been dutifully saving for a mortgage deposit for the last several years like a good boy, but every time I read anything concerning mortgages my piss invariably starts to boil. The banks really do get to have their cake and eat it too.

Fuck it all, I might just buy a transit van and convert it into a camper like one of those youtube weirdos. Or a narrowboat. I could commute to work down the Calder and Hebble navigation.
>> No. 31216 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 2:42 pm
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>>31212

Not wanting to defend banks, those greedy bastards, but if you loaned somebody a six-figure sum, you would also want to make sure you'd get your money back.

Mortgages aren't charity. They're in it to make a profit. You're going to have to marry rich or win the lottery if you disagree with the concept.
>> No. 31217 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 2:44 pm
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>>31198

It's another issue in itself that we should have been putting far more money into expanding and improving the road network over the last fifty years, when it's basically gone nowhere since the motorways were finished. Even when we're all driving electric cars we will still need roads, and there are parts of the country basically stuck in the 1920s in terms of transport infrastructure.
>> No. 31218 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 2:47 pm
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>>31217

We don't have the carbon budget to all drive electric cars.
>> No. 31219 Anonymous
13th February 2021
Saturday 3:04 pm
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>>31212
>I could commute to work down the Calder and Hebble navigation.

Good luck with that. The Canal & River Trust are trying to kick everyone off near Navigation Inn but there's no moorings elsewhere around here they can go to instead.
>> No. 31286 Anonymous
15th February 2021
Monday 7:59 pm
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>>31135
>A Reuters poll of analysts published last week showed prices were expected to flat-line this year

This is the lowest figure I've seen but it seems to go all the way up to OBR predicting an 8% fall.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/21/house-prices-drop-2021-as-covid-impact-hits

That's quite a bit of money if you time it right. What do you reckon it will be?
>> No. 31287 Anonymous
15th February 2021
Monday 8:14 pm
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>>31286
Half past 3 on a windy autumn day.
>> No. 31337 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 12:41 pm
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I obviously understand the value of lockdown restrictions but I question their extension by 3 weeks in Wales.

The third most at risk part of the population has had their first shot meaning they have a 70% resistance to the virus. Today there was 16 deaths, yesterday it was 14.

What is the game plan of this additional 3 weeks of lockdown? To cure fucking death?
>> No. 31338 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 1:35 pm
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>>31337
>What is the game plan of this additional 3 weeks of lockdown? To cure fucking death?

Welsh Parliamentary elections are coming up and the debate over lifting lockdown is firmly one-sided in the public's mind.
>> No. 31339 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 1:35 pm
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>>31337
It's all about the Great reset, 5G mind control, and cold toast.
>> No. 31340 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 1:45 pm
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>>31337

Spread of virus through a population is exponential.

If we have learned one thing from 2020 it's that anything other than an elimination strategy for pandemic response is doomed to fail.

Long story short, mongs from England will head through to Wales to go to the pub the minute lockdown is over there, but not here.

Getting cases down throughout the population and having rigid border control is the only way to return to normality.

We are seeing the mutation of variants which vaccines are incapable of preventing, due to the failure to prevent community spread.

Also they need you inside so that they can replace the batteries in all the pigeons without you seeing #birdsarentreal
>> No. 31341 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 1:46 pm
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>>31337

There's a significant disconnect between deaths and hospitalisations. Most deaths are of very elderly people who tend to die before they make it to intensive care. The bulk of hospital bed days are taken up by younger people (mainly middle-aged men and obese women) who are vulnerable enough to get seriously ill but fit enough to stand a good chance of recovering on a ventilator. If we lift the restrictions now we wouldn't expect a huge surge in deaths, but there's a very real risk of hospitals being overwhelmed. If nothing else, hospital workers just need a break.

Nationally, the game plan is to get cases low enough that we're unlikely to see a major resurgence, because Boris has committed himself to this being the last lockdown. I think that's potentially over-optimistic, because the South African strain could potentially still do a lot of damage to a fully-vaccinated population. There are still a lot of unknowns in the modelling and it's not clear that tier restrictions will get us through to summer 2022 without another lockdown.

In Wales and Scotland, the strategy is clearly just to be seen as being a bit more careful than Westminster.
>> No. 31342 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 1:47 pm
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>>31340
Text window is too narrow
Now my formatting is shit
Haikus from now on.
>> No. 31343 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 2:16 pm
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>>31342
Well I hope that won't
stop you participating
in the next cunt off.
>> No. 31345 Anonymous
19th February 2021
Friday 3:50 pm
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>>31343

u wot u wot m8?
dinnae tell me how to post.
LMFAO
>> No. 31348 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 6:53 pm
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Is it over now?
>> No. 31349 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 7:15 pm
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>>31348
Not a chance in hell
lad, rather this than sonnets,
which are a bit shit.
>> No. 31350 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 7:28 pm
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>>31348
Remember last year when they said it would all be over by Christmas?

With lockdown's anniversary being next month I'm already getting distressed by posts asking what I achieved with a year to work on myself. Having not realised this was an exam I'd like some more time so I can tell people when they ask about something other than saving money and going down a masturbatory rabbit hole.
>> No. 31351 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 7:55 pm
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>>31350
Surely nobody thought it would actually be over by Christmas?
>> No. 31352 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 8:11 pm
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>>31351
>It is my strong and sincere hope that we will be able to review the outstanding restrictions and allow a more significant return to normality from November at the earliest - possibly in time for Christmas
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53441912
>> No. 31353 Anonymous
20th February 2021
Saturday 8:27 pm
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>>31352
Well there you go, having any faith in Boris was their mistake. People still trust this man?
>> No. 31354 Anonymous
21st February 2021
Sunday 12:25 am
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>>31352

What has two thumbs and is the worst Prime Minister since Neville Chamberlain?
>> No. 31355 Anonymous
21st February 2021
Sunday 10:28 am
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>>31352

November? That's really going to test people's patience. If it has to be, it has to be, but not everybody is prepared to spend the summer in lockdown.
>> No. 31356 Anonymous
21st February 2021
Sunday 11:01 am
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>>31355
Christ almighty, pay attention.
>> No. 31357 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:05 pm
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New strain any time now.
>> No. 31358 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:14 pm
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>>31357

Yup. Can't let people get on with their lives just yet, I think there's a bit of the field left over there where we haven't put the goalposts just yet.
>> No. 31359 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:19 pm
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>>31357
I won't be surprised and the government will completely botch the response yet again. The UK won't return to normal until there's a fully functioning vaccine, due to absolute failure of leadership.
>> No. 31360 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:24 pm
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>>31359
But the UK's vaccination rollout has been world class.
>> No. 31361 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:35 pm
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>>31360
Shh now. If Jezza had been in charge, none of this would've happened.
>> No. 31362 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:38 pm
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>>31361
No faith in Labour handling this well either, or anyone in the current political climate of the UK, but they'd at least be pocketing less money. Doesn't matter now anyway, we're fucked.
>> No. 31363 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 5:54 pm
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>>31357
>> No. 31364 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 9:46 pm
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Pack your johnnies, lads.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56158405

I will say that this is the first I'm hearing of sitting together outside being banned.
>> No. 31365 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 9:49 pm
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>>31364
I have never, and will never, have sex.
>> No. 31366 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 10:05 pm
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>>31364

I can't see any reason, either intuitive or historical, to doubt this plan.
>> No. 31367 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 10:25 pm
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Think I've had enough lads. Gonna go round to a mates next weekend and get absolutely blotto tbh.

Fuck it.
>> No. 31368 Anonymous
22nd February 2021
Monday 10:43 pm
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>>31365
Chin up, lad. It's England v Czech Republic on 22 June.
>> No. 31369 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 4:27 am
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>>31368
Well someone's going to get fucked then.
>> No. 31371 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 6:42 pm
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>>31370
Try not to rub the skin off, ladm8!
>> No. 31372 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 9:11 pm
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Fat people are being prioritised for the vaccine because they're deemed at risk. That doesn't seem right to me.
>> No. 31374 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 9:28 pm
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>>31372

Before we spiral into the same old argument about how much of a choice obesity really is, the consideration here isn't a moral one, it's a purely practical one - if you're more at risk of the virus then you're more at risk of taking up a bed/ventilator at a hospital. Yes, perhaps a better idea for society as a whole would be to focus on stopping the causes of obesity rather than dealing with the consequences of it, but we're in the middle of a pandemic, teaching kids to eat more apples is hardly going to be effective at reducing strain on hospitals in the next two months, and nor is deprioritising people who are more at risk just because you think they're at risk because of their own actions.

My aunt got the vaccine pretty early, but she was a heavy smoker for years, so her primary risk factor of COPD was self inflicted. Does this carry the same moral weight for you as someone who overeats?
>> No. 31375 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 9:35 pm
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>>31374
I'd just rather we prioritised teachers and other key workers over porkers.
>> No. 31376 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 10:07 pm
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>>31375
Well if it's any consolation I had plenty of fat teachers when I was at school.
>> No. 31377 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 10:15 pm
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>>31375

They're prioritising people who are more medically at risk. The only issue you have is that you want fat people to die.
>> No. 31379 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 10:58 pm
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>>31377

>They're prioritising people who are more medically at risk

Not him, but if they limit it to people who are really in bad health due to being morbidly obese, then I'm ok with it.

But being a 20-stone take away and fizzy drinks addict who can''t be arsed shouldn't mean you automatically get to go before somebody who's been looking after themselves.
>> No. 31380 Anonymous
23rd February 2021
Tuesday 11:25 pm
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Fatlad here. Obese, but not morbidly. I think the doctor has my weight down from a couple of years ago before I put it all back on again, but even so I'd not want to take it before people who need it more.

I find it impossible to value myself, and so I'm eating myself to death as a form of slow prolonged self-torture, so I'd happily volunteer to be right at the back of the queue.
>> No. 31384 Anonymous
24th February 2021
Wednesday 1:44 am
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>>31380>>31379

Again, it's not about whether fat people deserve earlier safety from the virus, it's that if they're safe earlier, they've less chance of taking up a hospital bed, which costs everyone a lot more in the long run, and the morbidly obese are more likely to need more intensive treatment during their fight with covid too. It's purely pragmatic, it should not have to be a debate about the moral value of vaccinating someone who eats more burgers than you.
>> No. 31385 Anonymous
24th February 2021
Wednesday 2:04 am
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>>31380

>I find it impossible to value myself, and so I'm eating myself to death as a form of slow prolonged self-torture

I feel for you lad, I've had several attempts at drinking myself to death in a similar fashion. I hope you find your inner peace and self worth like I did.
>> No. 31411 Anonymous
25th February 2021
Thursday 8:51 am
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Nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming, a survey has found.

In findings that will raise fears over inequalities in Britain, a study of attitudes by researchers at Kings College London showed a significant minority thought a widening post-Covid income gap between white people and BAME groups would not be a problem.

People care more about differences between geographical areas than races, genders and generations, found researchers in the study entitled Unequal Britain. The findings may suggest widespread support for the “levelling up” agenda espoused by the government as the country attempts to rebound after Covid, the authors said. But it will also raise questions about the popularity of anti-inequality policies focusing on ethnic minorities and women


https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2021/feb/25/job-losses-in-pandemic-due-to-performance-issues-say-nearly-half-of-britons

There we have it. People care more about tackling wealth inequality and poverty as a whole rather than breaking it down into identity politics.
>> No. 31436 Anonymous
26th February 2021
Friday 12:10 am
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>>31411

I've been saying that for years, but what do I know. I've got a knob and white skin, so I would say that.
>> No. 31510 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 9:36 am
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>>31436
Unfortunately they're still peddling nonsense.

>The coronavirus pandemic has held up a “mirror to the structural racism” in the UK’s labour market, the TUC has said, as a study reveals that jobless rates among black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups are now double the rate for white people. There are 1.74 million people out of work across the UK, the highest level in five years, and business shutdowns are disproportionately affecting women and ethnic minorities.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/27/covid-job-losses-show-structural-racism-uk-labour-market-tuc
>> No. 31521 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 12:52 pm
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>>31510

>Nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming, a survey has found.

In every economic crisis that ever was, companies tended to hold on to indispensable employees for as long as possible, and got rid of the deadweights first.

I'm not saying you can't just have a stroke of bad luck and your employer is no longer able to employ you although you were a pillar of their company, but yeah, an economic crisis means fewer customers, which means you can afford fewer resources as a commercial company. And people who spend most of the workday pissing about are then a waste of resources and funds.

So yeah, I think that assumption isn't entirely unfounded.
>> No. 31522 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 12:58 pm
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>>31521
Because companies love to waste money on useless staff in normal conditions.
>> No. 31523 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 1:32 pm
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>>31522

No, they do not. Except, under "normal" conditions, they will put up with you longer. As long as they generate enough revenue, you will to some extent be forgiven for your poor work performance. And it will be weighed against the effort and resources it would take to find a new employee and train them so they can replace you and contribute more in the near term than you would be able to.
>> No. 31524 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 1:51 pm
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>>31523

So you're saying the companies were perfectly prepared to face the pandemic by having exactly the right number of underperforming staff they needed to lay off, able to keep on all the ones who were doing their jobs well. I'll let the ex staff of Wetherspoons know it's actually their fault. They'll be over the moon to hear it.
>> No. 31525 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 1:51 pm
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>>31521
If you look at the question that was actually asked in the survey it's quite different from how the Groan chose to report on it.

>Some people have already lost their jobs as a result of the coronavirus crisis, and others are likely to in the coming months. How important do you think how well people are performing at their jobs is in determining whether people lose their jobs at this time?

https://www.ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/unequal-britain.pdf

Three people where I work were made redundant last year, in a company of about 60 people, and they were all deadweight.
>> No. 31526 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 2:28 pm
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>>31524

Christ, will you read what I actually said, including >>31521 .

Being a high-performing employee who's good at their job is no guarantee that you will keep that job in a global crisis like the ongoing pandemic. But any commercial company worth its salt will often try to hold on to employees that have proved themselves when money gets tight, and that company's first look when they have to let people go will be at employees who haven't been pulling their weight.

Which doesn't mean they won't also be looking at replacing senior employees with new junior candidates who will do 50 percent more work for half the pay. But that's a different story.

I also said they will tend to fire you sooner, or keep you for longer. It's not absolute.
>> No. 31527 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 2:37 pm
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>>31526

You're saying they'll generally lay off the least productive employees first, not that they're underperforming. There's a difference between not doing your job properly and being an overachiever.
>> No. 31529 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 2:50 pm
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>>31527

Semantics, semantics.

In the end, it doesn't matter all that much if your work performance is below a certain line of the minimum that they expect employees to do in a given position, or if your moderate but acceptable performance and productivity look bad because you've got a few overachievers who are doing much more than they would realistically have to. In any case, they will show HR and management what a dedicated employee is capable of in the given situation, and that will raise the bar for you as well.

Also, in everyday job situations, the difference between performance and productivity is marginal. I'm not saying they mean the same thing, but they're so closely connected that you're more or less forgiven for using them interchangeably.
>> No. 31530 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 3:05 pm
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>>31529

Bollocks is it just semantics.
>> No. 31531 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 3:11 pm
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>>31529
It's not semantics. The wording was literally:
>likely to have been underperforming
>> No. 31532 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 3:14 pm
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>>31531
That's The Guardian's wording, not what people were actually asked in the survey.
>> No. 31533 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 3:47 pm
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I can see what you're both saying but being a rational centrist market liberal it's obviously a something in-between.

There's absolutely no threat to my own job because of my industry, role and experience - little to do with productivity, they just couldn't get rid of me without causing severe problems. If an asteroid is about to wipe out life on Earth then me and NHS will probably just have a slow day in the office and my pay packet reflects that. Contrast that with someone in sales and it's more aligned to otherlad, contrast that again with things that don't turn immediate profit (or bullshit) and you're in dire straights no matter how good you are.

That's what the conclusion is whinging about I'd hazard, certain areas of the economy have been hit harder than others and those areas tended to be stuffed with bamers, women and academics for reasons. Probably also sub-regional divides exist where large employers/industries dominated the local economy. Those working in sales are absolutely more Darwinian at the moment but there's also productive workers whose area was just more of a luxury or otherwise depended on busy offices. Not that I'd want to fix any of that given 'equity' can fuck off but the more rational thing to do would be to call the unemployed stupid for having an insecure job with multiple recessions in living memory rather than lazy.
>> No. 31535 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 5:58 pm
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>>31533
>the more rational thing to do would be to call the unemployed stupid for having an insecure job with multiple recessions in living memory
This would only be rational in an economy run with the aim of ensuring that everyone who wants a job can get a job, something that went out of fashion with bell bottom trousers. Without that being a factor, you're always going to have people who took a shit insecure job because it was the only job they were going to get and if they didn't take it another member of the mass unemployed would've grabbed it while all they'd get was a sanction from their work coach at the JobCentre.
>> No. 31536 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:06 pm
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>>31533

>the more rational thing to do would be to call the unemployed stupid for having an insecure job with multiple recessions in living memory rather than lazy.

Working in a kitchen was a very secure job until nobody was allowed to eat at a restaurant. An MOT tester was a secure job except for that one year the government said MOTs don't matter. Pilot was a pretty secure job until planes were grounded.
>> No. 31537 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:27 pm
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>>31535
I'm obviously somewhat taking the piss but if you're hanging onto employment by the skin of your teeth then your position was never good to begin with. Most people aren't in that position.

>>31536
None of those jobs are recession proof even in normal conditions. On what planet are airlines not impacted by downturns?
>> No. 31538 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:30 pm
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>>31536

You can't judge your job security based on a one-time catastrophic event which is unlike anything anybody has seen in a hundred years. And even the Spanish Flu isn't a fair comparison, because at the time, the global economy was far less complex and interconnected.
>> No. 31539 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:31 pm
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>>31537

Pilots, not airlines.
>> No. 31540 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:31 pm
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>>31538

Yes, this was my point.
>> No. 31541 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:32 pm
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>>31538

Dunno mate, we seem to be having a lot of one-time catastrophic events which are unlike anything anybody has seen in a hundred years, lately.
>> No. 31542 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:44 pm
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>>31541

Right, so a ten-day highly unusual cold snap in Texas is on the same level as a global pandemic, by which Texas is equally affected, and which has lasted the best part of one year so far?
>> No. 31544 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 6:56 pm
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>>31542

Yes.
https://www.who.int/globalchange/publications/climatechangechap6.pdf
>> No. 31545 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 7:19 pm
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>>31544
Can we keep the climate preaching to the Greta thread? It's getting really tiresome seeing it rehashed all over the place.
>> No. 31546 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 7:22 pm
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>>31545

You want to pretend it's not relevant just to spare your attention span?
>> No. 31547 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 7:25 pm
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>>31546
No. It's just tedious watching the same debate happen in several threads, often derailing them, when there's already a thread around specifically for that purpose.
>> No. 31548 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 7:32 pm
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>>31547
What debate?
>> No. 31549 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 7:47 pm
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>>31548
The ones where you lads go in circles discussing climate change.
>> No. 31550 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 8:26 pm
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>>31549
Haven't seen it go around in circles on here as there's not much to debate anymore, it is an ever relevent global issue and it only keeps being brought up because it seems quite a few people don't have much of an understanding about its impact.
>> No. 31551 Anonymous
27th February 2021
Saturday 8:39 pm
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>>31550
Thank you.
>> No. 31553 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 1:21 am
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>Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine: FDA approves single-shot jab

>US regulators have formally approved the single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, the third jab to be authorised in the country. The vaccine is set to be a cost-effective alternative to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and can be stored in a refrigerator instead of a freezer.

>Trials found it prevented serious illness but was 66% effective overall when moderate cases were included. The company has agreed to provide the US with 100 million doses by the end of June. The UK, EU and Canada have also ordered doses, and 500 million doses have also been ordered through the Covax scheme to supply poorer nations.

>President Joe Biden hailed it as "exciting news for all Americans, and an encouraging development", but warned that the "fight is far from over". "Though we celebrate today's news, I urge all Americans - keep washing your hands, stay socially distanced, and keep wearing masks," he said in a statement. "As I have said many times, things are still likely to get worse again as new variants spread, and the current improvement could reverse."

>Results from trials conducted in the US, South Africa and Brazil showed it was more than 85% effective at preventing serious illness, and 66% effective overall when moderate cases were included. Notably, there were no deaths among participants who had received the vaccine and no hospital admissions after 28 days post-vaccine. Overall protection was lower in South Africa and Brazil, where virus variants have become dominant, but defence against severe or critical illness was "similarly high".

>South Africa began administering the Johnson & Johnson jab to healthcare workers earlier this month after early trials suggested the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offered "minimal protection" against mild disease from the variant dominant in large parts of the country. Johnson & Johnson says it plans to deliver 20 million doses in total by late March. Because the vaccine will require fewer doses than its two-shot Pfizer and Moderna counterparts, it will also require fewer vaccine appointments and medical staff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56226979

Big Prick isn't going to like this one bit.
>> No. 31555 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 7:44 am
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>>31553
That is good news.
>> No. 31556 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 9:15 am
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>> No. 31558 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 12:08 pm
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/california-covid-variant-11-times-23568823

>California Covid variant 11 times more deadly than South Africa strain, study suggests

>A new study from the University of California, San Francisco, suggests those who survive the California variant of coronavirus are left with two-fold less antibodies than other strains
>> No. 31559 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 12:48 pm
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>>31558

Imagine what the world might have been like now if we had shut international borders like a not doomed species would have.
>> No. 31560 Anonymous
28th February 2021
Sunday 1:04 pm
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>>31558
>The statistics suggesting that patients carrying B.1.427/B.1.429 variants were more likely to die was based on the charts of 69 patients who were admitted to the hospital in the first place because they had very severe Covid-19.

>“If you only look at the sickest people you’re gonna see something different than if you look at the population as a whole,” said DeRisi, who was not involved in his colleagues’ study. Neither study tells us exactly why transmission rates are higher. The virus could be becoming more common by some fluke, or because it is slightly more transmissible.

>“I don’t think there’s any question that this lineage is becoming more common in California,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “But I think the amount of sampling in California is not sufficient to fully define why. And I think that we should be wary, before we categorize every locally emerging hopeful monster as a ‘variant of concern’.” He noted that although the California variant has now become more common in the state, researchers think it has most likely been around since at least May. “You’ve got to ask yourself why it’s been around for so long and hasn’t taken the world by storm,” he said.

>“I am not panicked, and you shouldn’t be either,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UCSF. “It’s not unexpected that we’re seeing more variants,” she continued. “Viruses mutate, and often, these mutations will allow them to become more transmissible.” That’s the modus operandi of a pandemic-causing virus. And it’s scientists’ job to keep track of them, and test whether new variants can better evade our immune systems and vaccines.

>But for now, Gandhi said she was not particularly worried about B.1.427/B.1.429, or the variant that researchers this week flagged in New York. In both states daily deaths and hospitalizations are going down despite these new variants being in circulation, she noted. “So far, none of these variants have evolved to the point where they can completely get through masks, or they can overcome social distancing, or any of the other public health measures we’ve implemented.”

>“These emerging variants tell us we need to be vigilant, that maybe we shouldn’t be making summer vacation plans today,” said Waleed Javaid, an epidemiologist and the director of infection prevention and control at Mount Sinai hospital in New York. “But let’s wait and see before we worry too much.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/25/california-coronavirus-variant-covid-vaccine

We'll be able to get our haircut soon, lad.
>> No. 31563 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 12:19 pm
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>Health officials are trying to trace one person in England who has been infected with a concerning variant of coronavirus first found in Brazil. They are one of six cases of the P1 variant found in the UK in February. The person is understood to have used a home testing kit but did not complete a registration form - prompting an appeal for anyone without a result from a test on 12 or 13 February to come forward.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56234302

To be safe, the Met have already gunned down anyone using the underground.
>> No. 31564 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 3:20 pm
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>>31563

I think the fact that you have to register and send in your home testing kit is putting a lot of people off, because it means automatic mandatory quarantine if it comes back positive.

I'm not sure if it's technically possible, but why can't they just do it like a home pregnancy test, and then on a don't ask, don't tell basis, but at the same time urging people to come forward and do another test at a facility if the home covid test is positive. You could in some way argue that a positive pregnancy test is much more life changing than a positive covid test.
>> No. 31565 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 5:17 pm
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>>31564

>why can't they just do it like a home pregnancy test

I'm not aware of any covid test that simple that actually works, or even at all.

They all involve reagents that are potentially harmful, require refrigeration, and so on. The rapid tests they're getting in schools and airports and what have you come as self-contained kits where the chemicals are stored in little disposable capsules you load onto a machine, and even then it takes an at least semi-skilled person to pipette the right amount of buffer and viral medium into the sample container- when you're operating in microlitres you can't really just eyeball it. Also, the preparation really should be carried out under a negative airflow cabinet so the person doing the test isn't risking exposure.

If there was a test as simple as pissing on a bit of card and it actually gave accurate results, I doubt we'd still be going to all that trouble.
>> No. 31566 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 5:30 pm
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>>31564
The problem I see is if they find you have super-covid then they're going to want to detain you pretty sharpish if you're not compliant. It's not really that useful if they find you can singlehandedly undermine the British economy yet are unable to do anything about it.

How did Taiwan handle this conundrum?
>> No. 31567 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 5:45 pm
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>>31566

>How did Taiwan handle this conundrum?

Full pay to self-isolate, but breaching self-isolation results in a massive fine and possible prison time. If you are required to self-isolate, the location of your mobile phone will be tracked and you'll receive random visits to check that you're complying.

Crucially, their overall response was early and aggressive, so case numbers remained low enough for this resource-intensive regime to work.
>> No. 31568 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 9:13 pm
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>>31567

>Full pay to self-isolate, but breaching self-isolation results in a massive fine and possible prison time


I thought it said something on the gov.uk covid web site about possible jail sentences for quarantine breaches in the UK, but apparently the worst that can happen to you is a £10,000 fine as a repeat offender.

I guess it's not the worst idea to not want to add to the inmate population in times of a pandemic, given that the virus certainly doesn't stop at prison gates.
>> No. 31569 Anonymous
1st March 2021
Monday 9:37 pm
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>>31568

>I thought it said something on the gov.uk covid web site about possible jail sentences for quarantine breaches

It doesn't really matter what the punishment is, because we aren't trying to catch offenders. This footage is from China, but it's illustrative of what a serious system of enforcement looks like in action. The comments are well worth a read.


>> No. 31570 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 10:13 am
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Is it over now?
>> No. 31571 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 10:17 am
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>>31570
No, they'll invent some new strains.
>> No. 31572 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 11:24 am
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A woman in Sainsburies counted me off on an electronic device as i exited her shop, unmasked, today. It sounded like a stopwatch. What're they doing; just reccording the number of un-masked people passing through or taking a timestamp to compare against the CCTV? I can think of no reason why they'd need a stopwatch otherwise.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 31573 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 11:38 am
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>>31572
It'll just be keeping a count of number of people in the shop.
>> No. 31574 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 11:48 am
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>>31572

She'll just be counting the number of people going through the shop. The unmasked part is just your paranoia and shame at flouting the rules.
>> No. 31575 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 11:48 am
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>>31572
Why are you walking around without a mask this far in?
>> No. 31576 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:00 pm
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>>31572

City councils can impose a maximum number of customers per shop space. And even if they don't, shops have to calculate a reasonable number of customers that they can allow in at the same time so that distancing and other rules can be obeyed.

At the Lidl down the street here, I was told by a security guard the other day that I couldn't go in because there were too many customers in the shop at the moment, and he asked me to wait for a minute or two. He then apparently got an OK through his radio earpiece and let me in.
>> No. 31577 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:17 pm
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>>31572

I think it's just an 'in and out' tally to see how many people are in at once, I don't think it'll be a timer. I shop maskless at a Sainsbury's and they've never ticked me off or anything, so it'll just be that I'd imagine.
>> No. 31578 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:23 pm
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Amazed we're a year in and there's morons still not wearing masks. No wonder it's taken this long, and will take longer.
>> No. 31579 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:47 pm
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>>31578

I think masks should have been mandatory a long time ago. Many other European countries have imposed mask laws in public places and shops, like France, Spain, and Germany, and while it didn't mean they were able to dodge the Second Wave, I'm sure it did help in keeping the numbers from getting totally out of control.
>> No. 31580 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:49 pm
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>>31578
For whatever reason masks became a political issue in the eyes of some people. If you wear a muzzle then don't be surprised when they take away your other freedoms.
>> No. 31581 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:54 pm
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>>31578

I am going to say the random maskless is something of a red herring. Because really our problems come from systemic issues of willful incompetence from higher ups. The question you should be asking when you hear things like "Brazilian strain in the UK" is why the fuck when apparently we can't even trust me sitting in a outdoor space with a friend, why is there any sort of air travel at all for any but the most exceptional of reasons (the only logical conclusion for why it is allowed to happen is that the air industry is being subsidised at the expense of humanity itself) and if that free exchange is allowed to happen does someone in your local Tescos not wearing a mask even matter.
>> No. 31582 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 12:57 pm
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>>31580
And that's just fucking hilarious honestly, I'm glad these people are willing to broadcast the fact they don't understand primary school science, I just wish they didn't make it everybody elses problem.
>> No. 31583 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 1:50 pm
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>>31580

It's mainly the Alt-right who have been pushing the myth in the U.S. that being told to wear a mask is a violation of your constitutional rights, specifically freedom of speech and the right to liberty.

If you follow U.S. legal history, however, these rights aren't absolute. Nor are they (probably) in most other constitutional democracies with respect to the ongoing situation.

In a time of national crisis, government rule can very clearly and within reason supersede the U.S. Constitution, so that even if you may have a point that your Constitutional rights are temporarily infringed upon, there is a firm legal basis for the government to do so.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/20/no-there-isnt-constitutional-right-not-wear-masks/

>All constitutional rights are subject to the government’s authority to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community. This authority is called the “police power.” The Supreme Court has long held that protecting public health is sufficient reason to institute measures that might otherwise violate the First Amendment or other provisions in the Bill of Rights.

I'm not sure I agree with this use of the term "police power", but there is therefore no real room for any kind of slippery-slope argument that your government is priming you to give up your constitutional rights one by one from here on out.

Unfortunately, this is evidently completely ungraspable to the average inbred, flag-waving knucklehead somewhere down in Dixie.
>> No. 31584 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 1:55 pm
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>>31579

Masks are mandatory, we're just not enforcing the law.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/791/contents
>> No. 31585 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 1:58 pm
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>>31570

We're still on national lockdown. We fully expect cases to start climbing when we relax those restrictions, but we're hoping that hospital admissions and deaths will be kept down by the vaccine. If the P.1 variant gets a foothold then we're pretty much back to square one.
>> No. 31586 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 2:35 pm
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>>31585

>We fully expect cases to start climbing when we relax those restrictions

It shouldn't be. The overwhelming majority of at risk from covid, are from those groups who already have been microchipped by Bill Gates. You can't treat it like it represents only a third of a random sample of population for these purposes of death or risk of hospitalisation it is closer to 90%+ cover.
>> No. 31587 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 2:40 pm
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>>31585

>If the P.1 variant gets a foothold then we're pretty much back to square one.


Thing is, it's not limited to that one mutation. The virus has shown that it can mutate into much more severe forms completely at random without warning. Not even closing all borders will protect us against a deadly strain suddenly showing up endemically in Birmingham or Manchester.
>> No. 31589 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 3:13 pm
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>>31586

>We fully expect cases to start climbing when we relax those restrictions, but we're hoping that hospital admissions and deaths will be kept down by the vaccine.

Cases will go up (because the people most likely to catch and spread the disease aren't vaccinated) but we're hoping that hospital admissions and deaths won't go up (because the people most likely to get seriously ill or die have been vaccinated).

>>31587

Absolutely, but the P.1 variant is the most immediate risk because it's already in circulation. We're close to finding the missing case, but we may have left it too late to prevent community spread in the UK.

It's worth noting that P.1 wasn't identified until it spread to Japan, because Brazil has a pitifully poor testing and sequencing system; there may well be other variants of concern that haven't yet been identified. Any of those pricks in the queue at Heathrow could be carrying some yet-unknown strain that spreads via WhatsApp and makes you spunk out your kidneys.
>> No. 31590 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 4:03 pm
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>>31589

>It's worth noting that P.1 wasn't identified until it spread to Japan, because Brazil has a pitifully poor testing and sequencing system; there may well be other variants of concern that haven't yet been identified.

On the other hand, it doesn't change the fundamental approach to containing a pandemic.

The 1919 Spanish Flu happened before the concept of a genome was even fully known or understood, and there wasn't any kind of genetic sequencing like we have today either. Optical microscopes were the height of technology. So there were probably half a dozen variants knocking about which nobody knew about or was able to identify and label. And yet, at some point, people eventually managed to contain the pandemic so that it fizzled out and no new cases were recorded.

So I guess my point is, identifying and tracking all the different variants of the virus may be a feat of modern bioscience, but not all of the additional information we gain from it is useful. And even if you do manage to track down all the carriers of a specific strain, again, it doesn't mean an even more harmful strain can't emerge at the same time somewhere else.
>> No. 31591 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 4:53 pm
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>>31590

The fundamentals haven't changed, but there are a lot of new challenges - jet aviation being one of the biggest. The black death travelled at walking pace, the Spanish flu at the speed of a train, but a modern pandemic can go anywhere in the world overnight. The Spanish Flu "fizzled out" by killing most of the susceptible population, which I don't think is an acceptable outcome today.

The word "unprecedented" has been horribly over-used of late, but we've really never seen a virus like Covid-19. I can understand why the conspiracy theorists think that it's man-made, because it has a cluster of really vicious attributes that make it difficult to live with. It's more deadly and vastly more infectious than any strain of the flu and seems to be mutating faster than we expected.

We will eventually get back to normal, but "it'll all be over by Christmas" has been proven wrong once and I think it'll be proven wrong again. Vaccines and lateral-flow tests have given us better options for controlling the virus and we have good reason to be optimistic, but they don't solve the problem and we still need to be cautious. Boris' insistence that this will be the last lockdown could be undone by a single mutation.
>> No. 31592 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 5:11 pm
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>>31591

>I can understand why the conspiracy theorists think that it's man-made, because it has a cluster of really vicious attributes that make it difficult to live with. It's more deadly and vastly more infectious than any strain of the flu and seems to be mutating faster than we expected.

Just look around you at the astounding life forms that evolution all on its own has been able to create for billions of years. Including us. It's a bit like creationism which argues that humans can't have just evolved spontaneously because we're too complex. But we didn't, and neither did Sars-CoV-19. It's all the cumulation of an endlessly long evolution, with many tiny incremental steps of evolution's classic trifecta of mutation, selection, and retention.

The genetic traits of Sars-CoV-19 may look like somebody created a super bug in a lab which is just about difficult enough to bring down entire national economies, but which still leaves most people without serious long-term harm so that the whole lot of us get to suffer from all the ramifications of an ailing world economy for years. In that sense, it does almost sound like a world domination master plan by some 1970s Bond villain. Except it's really not that likely.
>> No. 31593 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 5:27 pm
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On facebook they're saying covid was just a practice virus and this year they're going to release the real deal.
>> No. 31594 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 5:30 pm
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>>31593
Do they not understand that the conditions the second bug would be released into are significantly different to the conditions covid was released into, making any sort of "practice" useless?
>> No. 31595 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 6:13 pm
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>>31594

Of course not they are magical thinking thick heads who are one step away from "if it rhymes it must be true". You could never talk them out of it rationally because they don't care about details like facts, it feels right to them and makes them smarter than everyone else. The only way of convincing them of something else is to get them to believe the first piece of conspiracy nonsense was merely something 'they' wanted you to believe.
>> No. 31596 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 6:33 pm
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>>31595

To a certain kind of mind, extraterrestrial lizard Jew overlords are a satisfactory replacement for the spiteful and capricious god of the Old Testament. Weird as it might seem, the idea that we're being tormented by a secret cabal who control everything is less scary to some people than the fact that we're just bald apes on a rock spinning through space.

Us poor sods have to deal with the fact that bad things happen all the time for no particular reason, but they get to believe that one day they'll conquer the extraterrestrial Jew lizards and nothing bad will ever happen again. We believe that sometimes kids get incurable cancer and there's nothing anyone can do except hope for a medical breakthrough that might never come, but they believe that if they just tear down all the 5G masts and get rid of vaccines then everyone will live in perfect health forever.
>> No. 31597 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 8:24 pm
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>>31595

>Of course not they are magical thinking thick heads who are one step away from "if it rhymes it must be true".

I remember one disturbing news report I saw on TV in the run-up to Obama's election win in 2008. They were talking to Republican voters at a McCain rally, and this rootin tootin y'all drawlin' Texas woman said to the reporter with not even a shred of doubt or irony, "Come on... Obama... Osama... they're the same thing!".

Things have only taken a turn for the worse since then, as we all know.
>> No. 31598 Anonymous
2nd March 2021
Tuesday 8:44 pm
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>>31596

You've taken the stance that it is about quenching existential dread, like my Mother who believes "God must be working mysteriously using the corona virus for good to bring us all closer together"

I disagree, I think it is an unearned arrogance of narcissism of having to one up smart people like my father who believes "Jesus and angles were spacemen that's the reason they are painted with "halos", look at them they are space helmets”.

Yes the NHS has considered my mental health a 'write-off'
>> No. 31607 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 1:53 pm
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>>31598

>"Jesus and angles were spacemen that's the reason they are painted with "halos"

Except the first images of haloes sometimes predate Christian iconography by centuries, and are even found in other cultures that had no contact with Christianity at the time, for example there are 2000-year-old Buddha statues from India.

So either all or most religions were founded by aliens, or something doesn't track.

Then again, if religions really were founded by aliens, it would explain many things. Even Jesus walking on water may actually have happened, and could have been made possible by some kind of alien anti-gravity device.
>> No. 31608 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 3:49 pm
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>>31607
>Even Jesus walking on water may actually have happened, and could have been made possible by some kind of alien anti-gravity device.
That's ludicrous science fiction, it would be much easier to have a device that just increases the surface tension of water.
>> No. 31609 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 4:00 pm
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>>31608

>it would be much easier to have a device that just increases the surface tension of water.

Not feasible, because you would have to increase the surface tension pretty much for the entire body of water you are walking on. Because if you only do it for the area where your feet touch it, you would still sink because of the lower surface tension beyond the edges of your footsteps.

Anti-gravity is still the way to go.
>> No. 31610 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 4:12 pm
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>>31609

Nonsense, if you just have something that increases the surface tension most of all where you're standing then incrementally less the further away it gets (maybe a metre or two) then your weight will be distributed in a large circle. It's far more practical than anti-gravity which would do all sorts of weird things to air pressure given that it's not within an enclosed space.
>> No. 31611 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 4:46 pm
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>>31610

Well anyway, alien Jesus had it figured out somehow. If he was able to part an entire marginal sea for his people to walk through on foot, then surely doing a spot of water walking was no challenge for him.
>> No. 31612 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 5:10 pm
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>>31611

That was Alien Moses who parted the Red Sea, not Alien Jesus you Alien Philistine!
>> No. 31613 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 5:17 pm
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>>31612

I guess my subtle irony was too subtle after all.
>> No. 31614 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 5:17 pm
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>>31608

Or it could have been a suitable non-Newtonian fluid.
>> No. 31615 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 6:18 pm
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>>31614
C'mon lad, don't be silly - Newton wasn't even born then!
>> No. 31616 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 6:23 pm
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>>31615
It mustn't have been one of his, then.
>> No. 31617 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 6:35 pm
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>>31614

How dare you blaspheme against our lord and saviour Jon Tickle!


>> No. 31619 Anonymous
3rd March 2021
Wednesday 11:43 pm
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>>31613

I'll subtle you a slap in the face!
>> No. 31635 Anonymous
5th March 2021
Friday 11:43 am
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https://www.If I post a link to this website again I will be executed by the proletariat along with the other bourgeoise.com/world/2021/mar/05/covid-uk-scientist-says-substantial-degree-of-mortality-inevitable-in-future

>Looking back on the beginning of the pandemic, Hayward, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at UCL, said: “I think one of the reasons that we’ve had so many deaths is that we left things far too late, in terms of taking more restrictive measures.

>“We should have been taking social distancing measures – if not a full lockdown then other measures that were trying to separate people – much earlier. At that time, of course, we also didn’t really have the same mechanisms to measure how much disease there was in the community, so we were largely only really seeing the tip of the iceberg of cases.


Bozza knew best, innit.
>> No. 31636 Anonymous
5th March 2021
Friday 11:59 am
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>>31617
Isn't he in the same office as one of you lads?
>> No. 31663 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 7:09 pm
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-organiser-nurses-pay-protest-23623460
The convergence of some of recent events in this article are pretty harrowing. A 61 year old nurse fined £10,000 for protesting the £3.50 per week pay rise, on the grounds that protest is a COVID-19 spreading risk -
>the size of the crowd here will be ten times bigger in hundreds and thousands of schools tomorrow morning.
This government's attitude toward dissent is... not going to end well for anyone.
>> No. 31664 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 7:51 pm
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>>31663
>This government's attitude toward dissent

What does this have to do with the government? The city police in London and Manchester went and enforced the law of which NHS workers should be very aware of why it exists. Both of which have devolution to Labour Mayors I'll add.

The 1% pay rise was deemed fair by an independent body within DHSC accounting for the fact that other public sector workers are seeing a real-term pay cut - having only just received the first pay rises in a decade - and the private sector being in some very hard times indeed. They can frankly fuck off with their call for a 12.5% pay rise.
>> No. 31665 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 7:53 pm
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>>31664

Oh no, you're retarded.
>> No. 31666 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 9:36 pm
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>>31663
This country's fucked mate, even in the midst of a global pandemic people still don't care about the people saving them. Fortunately health care's in demand elsewhere now thank fuck, this place can do one.
>> No. 31667 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 10:05 pm
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>>31664
Back in the bucket with you, crablad.
>> No. 31668 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 10:35 pm
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>>31664

The NHS has a crisis in recruitment, there are estimated to be anything from 100,000 to 250,000 vacancies unfilled. The fact you get paid reliably five to ten grand less than you would elsewhere, and have to work harder for it, is no small factor in that.

Doctors, nurses and the myriad of support staff who enable them to do their jobs won't run on goodwill forever.
>> No. 31670 Anonymous
7th March 2021
Sunday 10:41 pm
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>>31666

That is increasingly clear, I'm just struggling with the relative utility/morality/effort of sticking around versus leaving, knowing friends, family and innocents will still be here. We're not at a "cut your losses" point yet.
>> No. 31671 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 8:36 am
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>>31670
Sometimes the grass is greener, sometimes it isn't. I don't know where you can really "escape" to that is that much better really. Everywhere's shit.
>> No. 31672 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 10:16 am
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>>31668
Mate the unfilled vacancies is approximately 40,000, it's published on their website.
>> No. 31673 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:16 pm
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Right I'm calling bollocks on this. £3.50 a week is £182 a year, so if that's 1% that means a nurse is only earning £18,200 a year.

>As a student nurse or newly qualified nurse you might be wondering about pay in the UK? Let’s just get straight to the nursing salary question and get that answered: The current average starting salary for a Band 5 Nurse in the UK is £24,907 per year (minus tax and pensions). This is according to the Agenda for Change, as of April 2020. (That’s the minimum and does not include any allowances or location weighting.)

https://www.nurses.co.uk/nursing/blog/what-s-the-typical-starting-wage-for-a-nurse-in-the-uk-in-2021/

The average nurse is on about £33,400, so almost double what this poster is implying. Whilst people deserve proper pay rises I despise dishonest and manipulative shite like this.
>> No. 31674 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:29 pm
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>>31673
Maybe you should have looked up where that figure came from instead of getting angry about some figures you pulled out of your own arse?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56288237
>RCN general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair warned it would mean just £3.50 more per week in take-home pay for an experienced nurse.
>> No. 31675 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:30 pm
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>>31673
>Tory Scum
ffs, just say the Tory Party without implicating every spanner who votes for them.
>> No. 31676 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:34 pm
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>>31668
This is nursing pay negotiations (different contracting).

The NHS is in crisis because the working environment is fucked. No, UK nurses are not the lowest paid neither internationally or in comparison to the wages in the wider economy and by shifting resources into wages you don't fix underlying problems that make it an unpopular career or one where nurses in Europe don't come over.

Higher wages might address issues of unsafe staffing numbers over a period of years but it's a sledgehammer on a complex problem and one that doesn't account for why anyone gets out of bed in the morning or why NHS workers have chronic burnout.
>> No. 31677 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:40 pm
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>>31674
Since when does anyone use net pay when talking about pay rises? Instead of 1% are they going to deduct 0.2% for income tax, 0.12% for national insurance and 0.09% for the NHS pension scheme? Those Tory bastards have only given nurses a 0.59% pay rise, what rotters!
>> No. 31678 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 2:45 pm
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>>31674
Not him but that makes even less sense as she's qualifying it on 'experienced' nurses. While of course also being the very person arguing for a 12.5% pay rise so hardly an unbiased source.

>>31675
I'm more concerned that she seems to have engaged in a dirty protest.
>> No. 31679 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 3:13 pm
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>>31678
>>31677
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nadine-dorries-nurse-payrise-all-we-can-afford-37bn-test-and-trace-104125981.html
This one quotes it as being £6 a week. I'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of it or how the £3.50 take-home pay increase figure was reached but I suspect if there was no basis to it, the government would be pointing that out instead of making the "it's all we can afford" argument. I'm just hazarding a guess here that the nurses and the government both know better than whatever you lot's speculations are.
>> No. 31680 Anonymous
8th March 2021
Monday 3:36 pm
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>>31679
>the nurses and the government both know better

Whatever gave you that idea?
>> No. 31839 Anonymous
12th March 2021
Friday 11:49 pm
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>>31676

Nurses in the NHS get paid more than they deserve considering what fucking docile cunts the majority of them are. Bane of my fucking life I swear.

However to be less facetious, the NHS as a whole just needs a massive pay review. It's not just about pay but the way recruitment works- You could get away with paying nurses and doctors less if there were subsidised training courses and such, like there always have been going years and years back, until they got cancelled under May. There's also the question of support services and logistics- Much like the army, the front line medics are are only a tiny fraction of the workforce, and in a lot of ways they aren't even the most important. They'd be useless without everyone else backing them up, youd have entire hospitals capable of little more than first aid.

My dear old nan walked in off the street and put her name down for nurse training in 1956 or something like that. As a result of that she had a lifelong career. What kind of hoops does a person have to jump through today, before they're even qualified to be an arse-wiping HCA? Let alone a real nurse.
>> No. 31843 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 2:29 am
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>>31839
Degree in nursing and several years' experience to get a "senior nurse" position paying high-20s. Pay across the service is atrocious. If you've ever wondered why NHS IT is a shitshow, it's because their options are paying sub-market rates to people who will leave for something better if they're not shit at their jobs and hiring consulting firms who charge through the roof based on knowledge of what the alternative is.

People complaining about public sector pay can get in the fucking sea.

>"It's not fair that they get pay rises while we're losing money!"
These people were getting pay rises while NHS pay was as good as frozen.
>> No. 31845 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 3:08 am
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>>31843
>Degree in nursing and several years' experience to get a "senior nurse" position paying high-20s

And that nurse was none other than Albert Einstein.

Average salary is 33-35k without getting into perks like pension and holiday:
https://www.nurses.co.uk/nursing/blog/a-quick-overview-of-nurses--salaries-in-the-uk-in-2021/#starting

>"It's not fair that they get pay rises while we're losing money!"
>These people were getting pay rises while NHS pay was as good as frozen.

I'd say at least half of us are public sector workers of some description actually, we therefore didn't get any sort of raise during austerity and won't next year either even before inflation. That includes GCHQ lad and differs from nursing that did get band raises throughout austerity.

My impression of nursing is like otherlads in that they were already taking the piss, are generally feckless and that this opinion matches every other member of the medical profession I've spoken with from surgeons to oncologists. Whinge all your want about crabby buckets but the world is simply more complicated than throwing money at anyone who asks.
>> No. 31846 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 3:29 am
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>>31845

My mate works in the civil service and he's had quite a few raises.

But he probably has dirt on a load of ministers.
>> No. 31847 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 6:28 am
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>>31846
I know a few teachers who've managed to get around the public sector pay freeze by things like creative promotions, being awarded additional pay for having extra duties in their job descriptions when they were already doing those duties.
>> No. 31850 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 8:54 am
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>>31839
>>31843
>>31847
>>31846

Thing is for the NHS, you can't use dodgy tricks to get around these rules. The terms and conditions laid out under Agenda For Change are binding, and salary banding has strict criteria for roles and responsibilities.

Remember that payrise they made a big deal of a couple of years ago? They immediately followed up by raising the minimum wage, which literally eliminated the previous band 1 and 2 pay grades. But those grades, remained in place- Nobody gets paid band 1 any more because band 1 is below minimum wage. The lowest band you can be is band 2, and they didn't move any of the other grades up. So now you just have cleaners who don't even need to be able to speak English earning the same wages as pharmacy assistants, lab technicians, IT helpdesk operators, and so on, who all have to have at least A levels/BTECs. Everyone is effectively one grade below where they should be.

I don't begrudge the cleaners that money, you understand, but you can see how it's an absurd situation that gives the NHS great difficulty filling vacancies, and not just with doctors and nurses.
>> No. 31851 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 9:31 am
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How common are raises and bonuses meant to be?

I'm private sector and my pay is thr same asnit was 7 years ago and recently, we all lost two holiday days and our non-SSP got cut down to two weeks, to save money due to what we lost because of the lockdown.
>> No. 31855 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 11:56 am
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>>31845
I was in the NHS and the thing that finally got me to leave was getting two pay rises in the same year that actually left me worse off and my manager being a fucking chocolate teapot. I went up a point and crossed a pension band threshold, then the annual raise of 1% was wiped out by the NI increase at the end of contracted-out status.
>> No. 31857 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 12:35 pm
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>>31846
Only way I see it happening is he either got a promotion, temporary contract uplift for higher responsibility, moved to a better paying department (something they've cracked down on) or was jammy enough to get a specialist qualification.

There's a mythical story that you can argue for a pay rise on a business case but good luck getting any information on that. That's usually reserved for matching previous pay with a more generous employer and as far as I can tell but you're more likely to just not be hired.

>>31850
I don't know why you think this is any different across the public service. I believe it was MoJ where the employees based in London were getting pay rises as the national minimum wage rose and somehow were expected to live on it.
>> No. 31858 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 1:15 pm
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>>31857

>I don't know why you think this is any different across the public service

Because otherlad said other parts of the public service had found ways to wriggle round it.
>> No. 31859 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 1:30 pm
31859 spacer

Figure 13_ Mean private sector and public sector e.png
318593185931859
The average private sector salary is higher than the average public sector salary. However, the median public sector salary is higher than the median private sector salary; pay is, on average, higher in the private sector because the very top earners skew the figures. For the typical person you're better off in the public sector, particularly once the gold plated pensions are factored in.
>> No. 31863 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 1:43 pm
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>>31859
>gold plated pensions
I wish people would stop peddling this nonsense.

The public sector pension isn't what it used to be. It's just that the private sector has decided it can't be arsed to pay for pensions any more. I vaguely recall seeing numbers somewhere that suggested that the FTSE 100 companies frequently collectively paid out more in dividends than the deficits in their pension schemes. Those companies are evidently more than capable of providing decent pensions, they just choose to spend more on executive compensation and dividends.
>> No. 31864 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 1:53 pm
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>>31863
Not him but the fact that public sector pensions are government debt is more than enough to give it a gold plating. Only way a BHS scenario kicks off is if the entire country is in serious shit and even then you're likely to escape better than anywhere else.
>> No. 31866 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 2:07 pm
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>>31864
"Won't run off with your money" is an interesting definition of "gold plating".
>> No. 31898 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 9:34 pm
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Pensions seem like a scam when I read into how they work. (They're not magic, they can just disappear with your employer, you can run down your defined contribution pot before you die, etc.)
If they're not magic retirement insurance money-trees you're still lumped with the problem of saving for your own retirement. Setting aside preferential tax treatment etc, it seems like you might as well say bugger it, take the money now and put it in an index fund yourself.
>> No. 31899 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 9:39 pm
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>>31898
>you might as well say bugger it, take the money now and put it in an index fund yourself.

You can invest in an index fund with a pension.
>> No. 31901 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 10:03 pm
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>>31899
Fair enough, but I'm thinking less about the practical side and more about the way we think about pensions. Perhaps I'm just thick but for a good while I thought of a pension in the sort of terms you'd think of the state pension - a very strong and reliable guarantee of fair treatment in old age come what may.
It's something of a shock to realise a pension is just a special kind of savings, which are your responsibility, where you've got to deal with some fundamental uncertainty about how long you'll live (now that defined benefit is dead), and where even if you do everything right you could be buggered over by a market crash or inflation or somebody raiding the fund for dodgy purposes. Perhaps I went overboard a bit in saying "a scam", but it's still deeply uncomfortable to think about the gulf between the solid, reliable idea and the deeply uncertain reality. Let alone to know how many people must not be thinking about it because they've made similarly cozy assumptions to the ones I once made.
>> No. 31903 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 11:04 pm
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>>31901
>Let alone to know how many people must not be thinking about it because they've made similarly cozy assumptions to the ones I once made.

The so-called pension freedoms have only been in effect since 2015. If it leads to a mass crisis of people running out of money in retirement then it'll have been addressed by the time I can access my pension.
>> No. 31905 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 11:13 pm
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>>31903
What world are you living in where problems get addressed? There's a tenner in it for you if you sneak me in.
>> No. 31906 Anonymous
13th March 2021
Saturday 11:18 pm
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>>31905
If it's a problem affecting lots of pensioners then it becomes a vote winner.
>> No. 31916 Anonymous
14th March 2021
Sunday 2:30 am
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>>31915
Even by the standards of trite, right-wing, platitudes this one fails to impress.
>> No. 32033 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 2:15 pm
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It is almost exactly a year since everything closed down. Pubs closed 20th of March, lockdown 23rd March.

Let us take this time to reflect on what we've learned this past year and how we've grown spiritually etc. And how can we use the lessons learned to create a better world moving forward once everything goes fully back to normal on April 12th?
>> No. 32034 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 2:22 pm
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>>32033
The only thing I learned is that deleting your social media will make you happier.
>> No. 32036 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 2:27 pm
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>>32033
This Thursday will be a year exactly since I last had a haircut, self-trimming sessions not included.
>> No. 32038 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 2:37 pm
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>>32036

>self-trimming sessions not included.

I haven't had a haircut in months, but I would never cut my own hair. Granted, I've got full hair, if you're bald then it's probably easy to just trim it down the sides and back.
>> No. 32039 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 3:04 pm
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>>32033
I've learntbecome more entrenched in my view that politicians are useless cunts.
>> No. 32040 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 3:06 pm
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>>32038
I have thick lustrious hair, and have cut it myself twice in the last year. Not well mind you. It's suprising how hard it is even to just grade-6 it all over neatly.
>> No. 32043 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 3:34 pm
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I've been giving myself haircuts since last March, and it's not that difficult. 1/4" on the back and sides and just tidy it up on top with the scissors.

People haven't even noticed mostly, so that's a good sign.
>> No. 32044 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 3:38 pm
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Why does britfa hate the bald so much? We are the largest unrecognised global minority. Having nice hair is basically racism.
>> No. 32048 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 3:59 pm
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>>32044

I wore a gilet today and someone called me Jeff Bezos. If I was black and they had called me Samuel L Jackson just because I was wearing those little glasses he has sometimes, they would have been fired for a hate crime.

People go after the balds simply because it's a very publically visible trait, much like being fat or a woman. I think people assume it's a good way to hurt someone's feelings, but I put it to you that a man who shaves his head fully bald has more than come to terms with his ailment - the real fruitful insults would come by targeting balding men, not bald men. The ones still clinging on to it, pretending their thinning crown does not exist.
>> No. 32049 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 4:06 pm
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>>32044

>Why does britfa hate the bald so much?


Oh, there are plenty of delightful bald people.

Just make sure you're not Harry Hill.
>> No. 32052 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 4:16 pm
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>>32048

>The ones still clinging on to it, pretending their thinning crown does not exist.

But balding isn't always total. With most men, it stops at some point eventually.

I've got very minor hair loss, there is about a centimetre to a centimetre and a half missing above my forehead compared to pictures of me when I was a younglad. But it has been that way for well over ten years now and doesn't seem to progress and further. The rest of my hair is almost as dense as it was at 20.

I have kind of been looking around for a place that does hair follicle grafts, just to top up again a bit. It's around £100 to £200 per square centimetre, so in my case I would probably be looking at 2,000 to 2,500 quid. Personally, I think it's a much better investment than many other things middle-aged men spend money on to cling to their youth.
>> No. 32053 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 4:17 pm
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>>32048
>I wore a gilet today and someone called me Jeff Bezos.
Surely that's your own fault for dressing like a smug twat.
>> No. 32055 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 4:24 pm
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>>32053

I am long past dressing myself for any reason other than raw practicality. I only have a gilet because I'm too warm in a coat and too cold in just a shirt/polo most of the time. I might well be a smug twat (I am) but in no way did I dress that way on purpose. We're about two weeks away from my "wear two alternating pairs of identical camo cargo shorts for the next 7 months" phase.

I did have sunglasses on too, fuck.
>> No. 32097 Anonymous
15th March 2021
Monday 11:05 pm
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>>32055
Lend us a tennerJeff.
>> No. 32103 Anonymous
16th March 2021
Tuesday 2:14 am
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There is a very real and frightening prospect, that I will have been both ginger and bald in my lifetime.
>> No. 32106 Anonymous
16th March 2021
Tuesday 3:20 am
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I got the text from the NHS to say I'm eligible for the vaccine because of an underlying health condition.

Problem is, I have no fucking idea what that condition is. The only thing I've had wrong with me was a pretty nasty infection due to appendicitis, but that was in 2016 so I doubt it's that. I currently have a small abdominal hernia that I'm waiting for surgery for, but I can't imagine it's that.

I was fat about ten years ago, but I don't think I ever hit 40 BMI. The only thing I can think of is that it's because my mum's in healthcare and they think I live with her, but even that doesn't make much sense, does it?
>> No. 32107 Anonymous
16th March 2021
Tuesday 3:28 am
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>>32106

Are bald people at higher risk?
>> No. 32108 Anonymous
16th March 2021
Tuesday 4:39 am
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>>32106
COVID mortality has a strong link to obesity. It's probably your old weight diagnosis.
>> No. 32289 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 5:39 am
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A year exactly since my last professional haircut.
>> No. 32290 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 8:22 am
32290 spacer
>>32289

Barbers have been open since then, you know?
>> No. 32291 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 9:18 am
32291 spacer
>>32290
In a limited window, and the lad's clearly too lazy to make an appointment.
>> No. 32292 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 9:19 am
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>>32291
Or he doesn't fancy sitting in a closed space in close proximity to a stranger who's going to talk at him for twenty minutes.
>> No. 32293 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 9:36 am
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I personally have come to like my long covid hair. I am worried that if I went to a barber they might impose their own ideal of how my hair should look and fuck it up.
>> No. 32297 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 11:43 am
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>>32292

Just ignore them then, let them speak and nod and give them a yup now and again. You dont need to have a real conversation.
>> No. 32298 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 11:59 am
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>>32297

Being breathed on by someone who spends the whole day every day interacting with the general public is the issue, not social anxiety.
>> No. 32299 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 12:00 pm
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>>32291
> appointment
u wot m8?
>> No. 32300 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 12:12 pm
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>>32293

I luckily got a military-style flat top the last time I went, perhaps already with the assumption in mind that salons could close again, so my mane isn't as bad as some people's.

I wonder if that's going to be one of the things that people will remember about this whole covid quagmire once we're really past it. Probably that, and the fact that toilet paper was sold out across the globe. So yeah, history books in 100 years will probably say people had shaggy hair and clean bums. And they were hoarding copious quantities of dry pasta.
>> No. 32301 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 1:15 pm
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>>32300

I imagine this time period will mostly be looked upon for Trump and how he won and was demonstrably corrupt and several hundred thousand Americans died from a disease through negligence denial and spin, and he staged a coup and there was no backlash. And they will think 'god people of the past were really thick nothing like that would happen today'.
>> No. 32302 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 1:25 pm
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>>32301
Only by lefties.
>> No. 32303 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 1:30 pm
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>>32302
Either you're being facetious or septic. Most septic liberals, the insufferable "he's called DRUMFT yaass slay #girlboss" ones, are authoritarian right.
>> No. 32304 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 1:35 pm
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>>32302

I suppose all things are relative (what’s your food, what’s your pet, dictates views of animal cruelty etc.) but I don't imagine most people on the right in western democracies to be pro-coup.
>> No. 32305 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 2:56 pm
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>>32301

>I imagine this time period will mostly be looked upon for Trump and how he won and was demonstrably corrupt and several hundred thousand Americans died from a disease through negligence denial and spin

At least in the U.S., there will probably still be a conservative spin when those events enter history books in 20 years or so. Because a lot of what is printed in school books is determined by the biggest markets for private-sector publishers who print the school books, and one of the biggest domestic school book markets is Texas with a population of 29 million, which is traditionally archconservative. Publishers don't normally print separate editions for each state, so whatever is in the Texas edition of a high school history textbook will very likely also end up in textbooks in many other states across much of the South and Midwest. It would probably be very expensive for other state boards of education outside Texas to commission their own edition for Lousiana, Kansas, or Tennessee, so they will just go with what Texas wants printed.

This effect was felt especially in the early 2000s when Evangelicals not only gained control of the White House but also of many state legislatures, and high school biology books began emphasizing sexual abstinence across much of the South and other adjacent states, because, again, that's what Texas wanted taught.
>> No. 32306 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 3:51 pm
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>>32301
>>32305
One would hope that future history textbooks when talking about covid will actually talk about covid. Even if they do talk Trump it will be along general historical trends because people will be less bumsore in 100 years that's how you do dispassionate history and understand its course to the present.

My take is it is obviously going to be forgotten about just as the Spanish Flu was largely forgotten about until last year. 'That time we all stayed at home' isn't really an exciting topic compared to WWIII, The Event or even 9/11.
>> No. 32307 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 3:57 pm
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>>32306
It'll all happen again then, it always does.
>> No. 32308 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 4:40 pm
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>>32306

You have to remember though that the Spanish Flu came at a time when the world was far less globalised and interconnected than it is today. The economic effects since last March, and really since December 2019 if you count in China itself, are much more profound. And then if you take sectors like the travel, airline and tourism industries, they pretty much were almost non-existent in 1918. Leisure travel as such, or even a lot of business travel was the preserve of the well to do, at least so much so that you couldn't just fuck off to Magaluf once a year on a £500 all-inclusive package holiday as a factory worker (it probably still cost you £500 to go to Majorca, but in 1918 money). Being told not to leave the country because of a pandemic would have been a complete non-issue for the common 1918 factory worker.

I'm quite sure the covid pandemic will be remembered much more intensely in the next couple of decades. That said, I just read the other day that a lot of year 11 or 12 pupils today know fuck all about the Cold War, even though it was a decades-long conflict that almost wiped out our entire civilisation. But I guess if you were born 2003ish, it could as well have happened in the Stone Age as far as you're concerned.
>> No. 32310 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 6:46 pm
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>>32308
Lad, 50-100 million people died of Spanish flu. Not useless old gits but young people and its effects arguably contributed both to the end of the Great War and the hollowed-out generation that failed to defend France in the second. Not being able to go to Shagaluf over the summer is irrelevant in this context.
>> No. 32314 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 9:23 pm
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>>32310

>Not being able to go to Shagaluf over the summer is irrelevant in this context.

I wonder what that's really going to be like this summer. Or other destinations. Like many EU countries, Spain is far behind the UK or the U.S. with its vaccination campaign. And a friend who was considering going to Tenerife in spring just told me that the island has been moved to alert level 3 again by the Spanish government. That's one of their worst levels. For life to largely return to normal, you want your region to be on alert level 1, or at least level 2.
>> No. 32317 Anonymous
18th March 2021
Thursday 10:47 pm
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>>32314
>I wonder what that's really going to be like this summer

The Spanish authorities will be under pressure to suppress the true situation to support the local economy. Our tourists will come back with mutant sunburn-corona and we'll all be in lockdown again until Christmas.

Fortunately Canary-lad will smuggle in some cactus seeds and global warming will be such that they can grow in West Yorkshire. Same old, same old.
>> No. 32340 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 12:44 pm
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>> No. 32341 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 1:06 pm
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>>32317

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/mar/15/where-can-i-summer-holiday-abroad-when-uk-travel-bans-are-lifted

>Spain
>Until 30 March, only Spanish residents are allowed to travel from the UK to Spain. One of the busiest destinations for British holidaymakers, there is as yet no official word on when Spain may reopen travel more widely. The tourism minister, María Reyes Maroto, has said that when the country does, it will be looking to implement a digital vaccine passport.


So I guess they will not let you in without getting vaccinated first. Which is again going to be a gamble, because many young and fit people are a core demographic for the tourism industry and they cannot expect to be fully vaccinated until the end of summer.

I just randomly typed in an age of 25 with no underlying health conditions or other factors at https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk , and it gave me a date for a person who fits that description of "between 07/08/2021 and 01/09/2021" for the second dose. Much of the summer holiday season will be over by that point, so Majorca and Tenerife are probably going to be brimming with OAPs for the majority of the season.
>> No. 32345 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 2:20 pm
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>>32340

Looking back, on balance, I wish they'd have just stuck to their guns one this. I really do. I don't care how edgy it sounds, everything would have been better in the long run.
>> No. 32354 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 2:43 pm
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>>32345

Agreed.
>> No. 32357 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 2:50 pm
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>>32341

Give it a month or so into the season and the vaccination requirement will be out of the window. They need the money and the majority of people under 30 have no intention of getting vaccinated.
>> No. 32365 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 3:10 pm
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>>32357

It's a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't. Either you restrict entry into the country based on some sort of vaccination passport and risk tepid tourism revenues all year, or you drop that requirement, open up to full capacity for a month or two, but then have to go back into lockdown again for the rest of 2021.
>> No. 32367 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 3:18 pm
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>>32357
>the majority of people under 30 have no intention of getting vaccinated
Says who?
>> No. 32368 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 3:40 pm
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In the early days of the vaccine, the government said there would be no "vaccine passport" and the card the NHS would give you should not be treated as one. Now they're talking about implementing both of those.
>> No. 32369 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 4:39 pm
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>>32341
Just did it on 32 and it gave me the end of April. All the locals need to do is promise the whole island will be transported back to some time in the 00s and I'll happily give it a go just to watch the telly.
>> No. 32370 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 5:01 pm
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>>32368

Did anybody, including you, really believe that?

Of course nobody was going to admit to it that plainly back then, but I am not sure how you couldn't see it coming.

And I think it's quite reasonable, provided that the vaccination campaign will have progressed enough that people actually have a choice if they want to get the vaccine or not. There's no point for airlines to demand vaccination passports if only ten percent of their customer base have realistically been able to get both doses. But by the time it gets towards late summer/autumn of 2021, you will probably be able to make an entirely conscious decision if you want the jab or not.

And if you then still decide to play edgelad and don't want to have the wool pulled over your eyes by the Bill and Melinda Gates 5G conspiracy, then, well, no summer holiday for you. The price of freedom for your ilk.
>> No. 32371 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 5:07 pm
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>>32370

I can tell you with great certainty that no airline, or any country with tourist driven revenue, will be demanding vaccination passports for travel/entry unless they are compelled to by law.

Nobody I've spoken to in the government seem particularly willing to treat it as a viable option, either, but it's the government so it's not like everyone's on the same page. It'd be easy to do, like you say. ABTA already have a plan in place.
>> No. 32372 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 5:41 pm
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>>32371

You're obviously more clued into the airline and travel industry than the average person, but I think we can reasonably expect that there will be laws at some point that you have to have the jabs in order to do X or Y.

One single airline isn't going to go out on a limb like that, because people will just go to a different airline, but by and large, I'm pretty sure that eventually there is going to be consensus that you can only be permitted to travel if you're immune to the virus, either through the vaccine itself or through a past infection.
>> No. 32385 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 7:40 pm
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>>32372

I don't disagree, I can see it coming too. As I say, the transport ministers we talk to on the regular really do not seem to think it's in the pipeline, but that doesn't really change my view that it probably will. It's not even that I think they're lying, more that from what I've seen, the government has no problem at all blindsiding its own departments. I'd put good money on most airlines having a better plan drawn up for it than the DfT does.

When passenger locator forms were introduced (about six months too late), it was pretty clear it was a surprise to the people managing it, and so the implementation was a disaster - a shitty web form that didn't even have all the relevant options (it wouldn't let you pick any of the canaries, so a great many people will have incorrectly reported that they arrived from 'spain' instead). Apparently border force, the people tasked with verifying the form had been completed, and fining those who had not done it, didn't even know about it until two days before launch.

It's that sort of thing that worries me about suddenly requiring a vaccination passport. They will also, as usual, leave much of the responsibility to the carriers, making us look like the cunts and forcing us to spend valuable resources on notifying and helping customers through the process. I understand why it's a good idea, I just know it won't be done well.
>> No. 32396 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 9:16 pm
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>>32385

Personally, I think that 'Herd Immunity' is still the primary strategy but in a hybrid model that aims to minimize the level of outrage from both the anti-lockdown groups and the pro-public health groups. But then again, you should never attribute to maliciousness what can be explained by incompetence.

What you have described sounds very much like a 'kicking it into the long grass' approach which is very much the modus operandi of the upper echelons of government.
>> No. 32417 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 10:40 pm
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>>32385

We're still doing relatively well, if you look at countries like Germany which have completely cocked up their vaccination campaign so far.

Spain got it right quite early on, pretty much from the beginning of the summer holiday season last year. They require every person entering the country by land, sea, or air to install a mandatory track and trace app on their phone and fill out a web form to obtain a QR code which uniquely identifies you and will be checked when you get off the plane or ship, to make sure you are already in the database.
>> No. 32418 Anonymous
19th March 2021
Friday 11:11 pm
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>>32417

Our vaccination campaign is undoubtedly good, perhaps the best in the world as claimed by many. It is, however, the only thing we've done right in all of this, at least in my eyes. We should have, and could have, been screening people coming into the country in January 2020 or earlier, but I remember bringing in a 787 full of people who had been kicked out of italy early, at the end of February, and there was nothing. Someone from special branch asked me if they were "supposed to be doing anything", and promptly left before we opened the doors anyway. By the start of March, border force were finally handing out a paper locator form, which was so optional as to be a waste of paper - I bet nobody filled one of those things out. They were just given them and told to do them at home and send them off somewhere.

The government did not take the threat at all seriously until late march, and it really meant that plenty of people, and plenty of businesses and indeed government officials took that cue and ran with it. Indeed, one of my dispatchers got a report put in about him from an Easyjet cabin manager because she thought it wasn't appropriate for him to be on the plane wearing a mask, as it might unsettle the passengers. Again, this was late February, perhaps they could have done with some unsettling.
>> No. 32454 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 10:58 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q9Nbn7azzA
>> No. 32455 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 2:17 pm
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>>32454
>RT

Classic. You really have to support their goal of bringing back Darwinism, it's been too long.
>> No. 32456 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 2:29 pm
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>>32455
Well the ones that go out and meet people have more of a chance of procreating than those who stay at home wanking.
>> No. 32457 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 2:37 pm
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>>32456
Idiocracy incoming.
>> No. 32458 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 3:15 pm
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>>32456

You could stay in, have your wanks, and still frequent online dating sites. Your chances of meeting someone aren't necessarily greater offline.
>> No. 32459 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 4:41 pm
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>People may need to wear face coverings and socially distance for several years until we return to normality, a leading epidemiologist has predicted. Mary Ramsay, the head of immunisation at Public Health England, said basic measures could be in place until other countries successfully roll out jabs.

>Dr Ramsay said restrictions such as face coverings in crowded places and social distancing had become accepted by many and still allowed the economy to function. "People have got used to those lower-level restrictions now, and people can live with them, and the economy can still go on with those less severe restrictions in place. So I think certainly for a few years, at least until other parts of the world are as well vaccinated as we are, and the numbers have come down everywhere, that is when we may be able to go very gradually back to a more normal situation," she added. Warning it was "very important that we do not relax too quickly", Dr Ramsay said any circulating virus would inevitably pick on those who are vulnerable. "We have to look very carefully before any of these restrictions are lifted," she said.

>Prof Chris Whitty, the UK government's chief medical adviser, told MPs earlier this month that it was hoped "simple interventions like washing hands, face masks where appropriate, test-and-trace, and above all vaccines" would keep the virus controlled beyond the summer. Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, has also said face masks could be needed in certain situations if the number of infections rises in the winter, but that it was possible people will naturally behave in a way that promotes social distancing.

>A group of government scientific advisers said last month that "maintaining a baseline of policies which reduce transmission" will be necessary for some time to come. Those experts said these could include continuing test-and-trace, self-isolation, and public messaging that encourages "voluntary actions to reduce risks".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56475807

Fucks sake, I don't know if I can be arsed with years of this. It's going to be complete hell getting on a crowded commuter train in the summer with a mask on.

>>32456
Come to think about it you know that they're less inclined to use protection.

>>32458
Since when has frequenting dating sites gotten you any hole? Fucking 5 months talking online about her dog whatever followed by 'no, sorry I'm not in the right place for dating now' the night before you've arranged to meet for a socially distanced walk.

If I sound bitter then it's because I've not had sex in a year. Give me a cricket bat and tell me where Covid lives, we'll be out of all this within the hour.
>> No. 32460 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 5:34 pm
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>>32459
>like washing hands, face masks where appropriate

Don't worry, all of that will probably be skipped and we'll have another proper lockdown again, because it seems a good 50% of the country are already not doing those things. We need to stop relying on the common sense of the public, most seem absolutely feckless but then we're led by an equally feckless government so we're probably fucked regardless.
>> No. 32461 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 5:51 pm
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>>32459

>Fucking 5 months talking online about her dog whatever followed by 'no, sorry I'm not in the right place for dating now' the night before you've arranged to meet for a socially distanced walk.

It's your fault then for not cutting your losses sooner. If somebody is really interested in you, you will know soon enough. They won't leave you hanging for five months. If they still don't drop any hints that they want to meet you in person after about two or three weeks of banter between the two of you, not even under covid-compliant conditions, then you're the idiot.

I've done my share of online dating, sadly not since covid, but loads of it before that, and the ones that I did end up having sex and/or a bit of romance with rarely took more than two weeks to make up their mind that they wanted to meet in person. One lass one time even took two hours off work on a Friday afternoon and got on a train from 90 miles away just to be able to visit me. We'd only been in contact for about ten days before she said that she'd like to come up to see me.

I'm not going to lie, there were some women where all we really did was chat online and on the phone for a few weeks, or months even, but by that point, normally I'd already gotten the hint that it wasn't going to lead to anything, and begun to cast my net elsewhere.
>> No. 32462 Anonymous
21st March 2021
Sunday 7:08 pm
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>>32461

This. You've really got to be quite mercenary about the whole thing. If it's not going anywhere within the first couple of weeks to a month, it's never going to.

I'd go so far as to say you can tell from the first few messages. If they're into you, they'll show it from the start. You can't win someone over who isn't interested in the first place. It's all total lizard brain first impressions stuff, no matter how much people try and convince you, or themselves, otherwise. If you ever have to double message to revive a dead conversation, it's dead. Even if it was going perfectly up until then, they can go from hot to cold overnight. It's infuriating but it happens plenty.

Worth remembering as a lad not to beat yourself up over it if you're not massively successful though. On average I'd say women are actually quite a bit worse than men at the whole online dating thing, because they don't have to learn or adapt to the nature of the system like we do. It's all passive for them, where they get thousands of likes regardless; so they'll never come to the realisation their own boring profile and shit photos are letting them down.
>> No. 32474 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 1:10 pm
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>>32462

I agree. Women are surprisingly quick to make a decision that you tick their boxes and that they could imagine things going somewhere. I'm not sure the the three-second rule is really valid, but it's a safe bet that the initial impression you make is going to be the one that sticks, and which you probably won't come back from if it's not in your favour. And you can extrapolate that to meeting somebody online. Somebody who's (still) interested will take the time to text you back, call you, or even meet you offline.

That said, you're probably not the only fish in the pond as a lad at that moment in time. In the 18-30 age range in particular, it's a buyer's market for women, so there'll probably be three or four other guys in the running at the same time that you don't know about. I had it happen one time that a lass went on a date with me, and we seemed to click, but then I heard almost nothing from her for over a week, and then got a text message out of the blue asking if I'd be open to a second date with her. She then explained that the other two guys she went out with in the mean time were both pretty much duds, and that she really enjoyed herself the most with me.

So don't feel hurt when that happens. In the end, online dating has made finding a partner much more like a job interview. You're one of the candidates, there are others like you, and there's only one position to fill. So you give it your best shot, and if you don't get that position, you move on.
>> No. 32479 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 1:17 pm
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>>32460
>>32461
>>32462
>>32474
Lads, I was clearly being facetious.

>She then explained that the other two guys she went out with in the mean time were both pretty much duds, and that she really enjoyed herself the most with me.

I hope you told her to fuck off even if it's something we all do when opportunity arises.
>> No. 32483 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 1:26 pm
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>>32479

>I hope you told her to fuck off even if it's something we all do when opportunity arises.

I kind of felt like I was second choice, at least initially, but you have to really be sober about the whole thing. She was playing the field before she decided to give me a second look, and most lads probably would have no problem doing the same. If you go out on a date with somebody who's maybe 70 percent your type and then you meet two other people who seem more promising initially but both turn out to be a disappointment, then what are you going to do.

Anyway, we had a nice five or six months together before we parted ways again. It was fun for what it was and while it lasted, and I never regretted agreeing to that second date.
>> No. 32484 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 1:32 pm
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>>32483
>Anyway, we had a nice five or six months together before we parted ways again. It was fun for what it was and while it lasted, and I never regretted agreeing to that second date.

Good lad. Fuck the game playing and what other people think, if you had a good time then you had a good time.
>> No. 32490 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 2:17 pm
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>>32484

I don't know where some lads get the idea that a woman has to swear off all other men the moment she sees you for the first time. If that is your expectation, then you have a lot to learn, and it could go some way explaining why you are chronically single.

Most guys aren't their girlfriend's or wife's first choice, and probably never were. She picked you not because you were the best choice, but because you were a sensible choice. Somebody who was or is boyfriend or husband material.

I guess there's some misplaced male ego at play there, but the bottom line of it is, you will always compete against other men. If you still somehow manage to get with a lass, just be happy with what you've got, but don't infer from that that no other men exist for her.
>> No. 32494 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 4:38 pm
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>>32490

One of the harshest lessons I learned the hard way as a younglad was that just because a lass has slept with you doesn't mean that she isn't also seeing anyone else; you shouldn't expect monogamy until it's something you've discussed together. For a lot of people half the fun of being single is having their cake and fucking it too.

Now, if someone could have sat me down as a teenlad and explained this to me it might have saved me quite a bit of heartache in my early twenties.

Sage for blogrambling.
>> No. 32498 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 5:29 pm
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>>32483
>I kind of felt like I was second choice

That's what I meant and it's a bit silly to take it when there's plenty more starfish in the rockpool. You do you though, I'll also stop talking to a woman if she has terrible grammar but I bet none of you would call that strange.
>> No. 32500 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 5:46 pm
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>>32490

Women would do very well to learn that lesson too. I don't know where you get the idea it's an exclusively, or even especially male idea.

Most lads well know they're batting above their weight.
>> No. 32502 Anonymous
22nd March 2021
Monday 6:10 pm
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>>32498

At that time I just felt like she was a nice enough lass. Of the few that had written me back at that point in time, she was definitely the one that was the most attractive all around, as far as both looks and personality. I was in the mood for some fun, and I fancied being with somebody again. It didn't have to be something exceedingly serious.

Getting stood up for two other guys before she got back to me was definitely a bit of a downer, but again, if you're in the right frame of mind, it's up to you if you let that get in the way of getting to know somebody and having a shag.


>I'll also stop talking to a woman if she has terrible grammar but I bet none of you would call that strange.

It's a matter of degree. If somebody can't help dropping some ever so slightly dubious grammar or orthography here and there, that's ok. But if her command of the English language is that of a chip shop reject, then that's a problem.
>> No. 32555 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 12:54 pm
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3rd wave this autumn

screencap this
>> No. 32556 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 1:03 pm
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>>32555

When Boris "sunlit uplands" Johnson is warning of another wave (I think it'd technically be our fourth wave), it's all but inevitable.
>> No. 32558 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 1:18 pm
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>>32555

I don't understand how by now, we haven't learned the lesson and just locked the fucking airports up.
>> No. 32563 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 3:09 pm
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>>32558
Mate we're over a year in and there's still a decent percentage of people who don't understand basic science and still refuse to wear masks, get the vaccine or even keep washing their hands. I don't understand why about half the people of this country along with the government want to keep prolonging this pandemic, I can only imagine there's some sort of covid god cult I'm not aware of at this point, though the reality is this country's being lost to the slowest of our society.
>> No. 32577 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 5:10 pm
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>>32563

> there's still a decent percentage of people who don't understand basic science and still refuse to wear masks, get the vaccine or even keep washing their hands

I would actually support a bit of carefully-dosed government fascism with respect to dealing with those people.
>> No. 32579 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 6:03 pm
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>>32577
I can't see any other solution to be honest, this far on and these people have demonstrated they're absolute thickos who've only got this far from being handheld the entire way. They'll be our country's downfall.
>> No. 32580 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 6:23 pm
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thewall7-1.jpg
325803258032580
>>32579

I see we're in agreement then.
>> No. 32584 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 6:46 pm
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>>32577

We should just admit that the Chinese were right all along and ask them nicely to take charge. People seem willing to believe anything other than "we're morons with an obsolete model of government and a bizarre willingness to pander to the worst impulses of our worst citizens".
>> No. 32585 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 6:50 pm
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>>32558
>just locked the fucking airports up.

The airline industry is built on what is always euphemistically called 'credit', on a scale you probably wouldn't realize and can't comprehend. A cheap airliner costs more than a hundred million dollars, an expensive one closer to a billion. Yet somehow they can charge you only 50 quid to fly to Magaluf, this is because of an expectation that those planes will be in the air pretty constantly for the next 20 years, if a plane stops working permanently before that point people file for bankruptcy. If a large chunk of those planes in the world stops working, say because they have been completely unused for a year, then we aren't talking about a bankruptcy we are talking about a global depression that will smack nations back into the dark ages. Air travel is far to big to fail, (this is why the FAA was so reluctant to ground 737 Maxes even though they were Kamakazing because it would fucks America itself) no one is going to let some minor thing like the spread of a virus that will only kill a few million people, stop jet planes from flying.
>> No. 32586 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 7:13 pm
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>>32584

Having lived in China for two years I would say: No, you definitely don't want that.

It bears repeating that the current level of govt control in China comes off of the back of the Cultural Revolution which resulted in the deaths of millions, and the maintenance of the status quo today requires a labour market not far off slavery for swathes of the population, not to mention the largest most sustained genocide we've seen in a while in the case of the Uighurs. Anybody who suggests that the UK govt could adopt a similar mode of govt without having to implement all the other rigmarole that has resulted in modern China wants to have a word with themselves.

If you disagree I would strongly encourage you to emigrate to China at your earliest convenience.

I would however strongly welcome the availability of affordable jianbing and shengjian on our muddy shores.
>> No. 32587 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 7:17 pm
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>>32585
That does explain the response to the people flying drones near Heathrow in protest. Can't interrupt the flow of money.
>> No. 32589 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 7:56 pm
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>>32585

So what's the retail price for an average-specced 737 Max these days?

Would you say that the current crisis is just going to kill off the smaller no-frills airlines who've had precarious capital structures all along, or are the big names also going to take a hit that they'll struggle to recover from, government bailouts or no?

Also, will there be £200 round-trip tickets to Majorca in the future, or will that kind of ticket price model die as well?


We'll probably all have to go back to spending our summer holidays in a shit B&B in Blackpool, won't we.
>> No. 32590 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 8:14 pm
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>>32589
Free if you can collect
>> No. 32595 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 8:52 pm
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>>32589
>So what's the retail price for an average-specced 737 Max these days?

in theory RRP $120 million, (which was cheap as chips anyway given that Boeing has been building 737s for 50 years now so repurpose a lot of the specialist equipment and skilled workers) at this point you could probably get one new for less than $50 Million which is basically giving them away. They have taken massive losses on the project now, which was meant to be low hanging fruit and the price is dictated by the A320 neo which the 737 is basically a copy of, which is also 120 million, and has the USP that it doesn't fall out of the sky due to suicidal AI and inherent structural instability. 800+ orders of the 737 were cancelled this year so that’s got to be 40 billion+ wiped off the projections. Whereas the 320 got 200+ new orders despite the world falling apart.

>Would you say that the current crisis is just going to kill off the smaller no-frills airlines who've had precarious capital structures all along, or are the big names also going to take a hit that they'll struggle to recover from, government bailouts or no?
Not really qualified to answer that problem but in theory the no thrills are 'better protected', they are either leasing the jets (so in theory they could have lucked out if the music stopped in 2020 on the lease) or they have acquired them towards the end of their shelf life. Their potential losses are significantly less even if they shut down it is less likely to tear down the industry. I wouldn't bet on them not failing but I would bet on them not bringing down anywhere near as many with them.
Also, will there be £200 round-trip tickets to Majorca in the future, or will that kind of ticket price model die as well?
The airlines want people to travel as much as possible when they are hesitant to, to recover losses so if anything expect cheaper tickets. You can't rely on the people who 'need' to travel to prop them up.
>> No. 32596 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 8:56 pm
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>>32589

Even the big airlines run on precarious capital structures, for the most part. Even if they own their own aircraft (and a lot more planes are leased than you'd imagine) they are often bought with the previous year's profits on the expectation that they will recoup that investment next season. If there isn't a next season for two or three years, this rapidly becomes a problem. Everyone is taking a hit, and big names could potentially collapse, but as said by otherlad, there's too many banks and politicians with their fingers in this particular pie to let that happen without a fight.

The list price for a MAX 8 is about $120 million, though with the realities of buying a fleet of them, you'll end up paying about 80-100mil delivered. I think we'll still see plenty of them in the skies, from an airline's perspective they're an improvement in efficiency and you still get the passengers money if they see it's a MAX at the gate and leg it. The airline I work for is considering them, though we own a decent number of new 737-800s so it won't be any time soon, probably when we retire our 757 ETOPS airframes.

Covid won't kill cheap flights, if anything we'll see better deals targeted at getting everyone out there again for the next few years - don't forget a lot of airlines are also travel agents and hoteliers, the flight out there can be a loss leader if they need it to be. Increased pressure for carbon offsetting and so on will be what drive the ticket prices up, but again fat cats will do their best to delay this until we're all dead.
>> No. 32598 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 9:02 pm
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>>32596

I should say that if you don't already own 100+ Boeings like we do and have thousands of 73 and 75 type rated pilots and engineers, the MAX makes little sense. Airbus are really the logical choice for a euro short-mid haul carrier and have been for a while, even before the neo came along and made cost per seat significantly lower.
>> No. 32604 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 9:54 pm
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>>32598

Does it really ever make sense to own your own midsized jet aircraft as a person, like Donald Trump with his Boeing 727? Normally, maintenance costs per vehicle go down with the size of your fleet of cars, lorries, or indeed airplanes, I would imagine. How do you have a plane like that serviced, when the equivalent to a garage on every street corner that will take care of your car really doesn't exist for jet airplanes, and you can't just shop for a new fuel pump on eBay?
>> No. 32606 Anonymous
23rd March 2021
Tuesday 10:25 pm
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>>32604

Plenty of companies provide wet leasing or turnkey arrangements where they take care of everything. There's also a big industry for charter and air taxi services, which provide most of the benefits of leasing or ownership with no fixed costs.

It can make sense for a major multinational to have a few small business jets to deal with emergencies - sometimes you absolutely, positively have to move a senior executive or a team of engineers or a box of gubbins right now and it's worth spending seven figures a year to insure against the risk that a charter aircraft won't be available when you need it. Chartering often makes sense because it's not necessarily that much more expensive than first-class travel, you have more flexibility and there's almost no waiting around. Otherwise, it's just willy-waving for the super-rich.
>> No. 32618 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 1:47 am
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>Travellers from England will face 5,000 pound fines in new legislation designed to deter non-essential trips and barricade the nation against imported COVID-19 infections.

>The news was a disappointment to millions of people hoping for a summer holiday and sent travel stocks - including easyJet, British Airway-owner, Jet2 and TUI - down 2-4% in early trade on Tuesday. Travel shares had also fallen on Monday.

>Britain has had one of the worst COVID-19 tolls in the world, but deaths and infections are falling fast and a successful vaccination campaign is finally breathing confidence back into the population and the economy. However, as a gradual easing of lockdown is set to begin from this weekend, the government is warning that people may have to sacrifice long-desired holidays abroad. “We are seeing this third wave rising in some parts of Europe and we’re also seeing new variants and it is very important that we protect the progress that we’ve been able to make here in the UK,” Health Minister Matt Hancock told Sky News. Britain currently bans all foreign travel, except for work, education or health reasons. However, the government is to review that in April and possibly allow it from May 17.

>“We’ll be able to say more we hope in a few days’ time. I certainly hope to be saying some more by April the 5th,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a news conference on Tuesday. The new travel fines were included in legislation applying until the end of June in case the ban is not eased, Hancock said, adding to other comments by officials hinting at an extension of the prohibition. Hancock said it was too early to say for sure. The legislation, which went to parliament on Monday, would be voted on during Thursday’s session and, if approved as expected, come into force on March 29th, he said. It applies only to England, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may follow suit.

>The European travel sector, which usually benefits from the millions of Britons who take trips abroad, are now bracing for a second lost summer. Britain’s travel sector has lost more than 45,000 jobs and passenger numbers at the biggest airport, Heathrow, have fallen to their lowest since 1966 during the crisis. The government’s review on April 12 is expected to introduce a risk-based traffic light system where countries are classified as “green” or “red”.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-holidays/english-seeking-sunshine-abroad-face-hefty-new-fines-idUSKBN2BF0NL

I bet the seaside will be complete pandemonium this year.
>> No. 32642 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 10:53 am
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>>32618

>I bet the seaside will be complete pandemonium this year.

Blackpool it is, then.

I can't wait to shag a fat lass in a chip shop toilet.
>> No. 32681 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 4:19 pm
32681 spacer
>>32642
> I can't wait to shag a fat lass in a chip shop toilet.

After eighteen months of covid weight gain it's going to be a chubby chaser's paradise.

Better make it the disabled bog, lad.
>> No. 32682 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 4:28 pm
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>>32642
>>32681
Just imagine the beach, you escape your boiling hot room only to be squeezed in like a sardine between two fat lasses sweating profusely under the heatwave. Don't forget to bring enough sunscreen for everyone.
>> No. 32689 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 6:14 pm
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>>32682
> Don't forget to bring enough sunscreen for everyone.

Or just a bucket of soapy frogs and a wetsuit with the bottom cut out.
>> No. 32698 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 10:56 pm
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>> No. 32699 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:00 pm
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>>32698

How can it be getting worse now that we're vaccinating people?
>> No. 32701 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:04 pm
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>>32699
Only a few nations have got a serious amount of vaccination done yet. Remember there's two doses so we're aiming for 150 per 100 assuming 75% vaccine uptake.
>> No. 32703 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:21 pm
32703 spacer
>>32618
>Ignore ministers and book your holiday, Ryanair boss says

>British tourists should go ahead and book foreign holidays despite government warnings not to, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said on Wednesday, as the low-cost carrier announced plans to run 80% of its peak summer capacity. Vaccine rollouts will tame COVID-19 and reopen travel in time for beach holidays, O’Leary predicted during a news conference in which he also dismissed recent advice from UK ministers that foreign travel is likely to remain off-limits. “I don’t frankly pay too much attention to it,” he said, citing the UK’s “spectacularly successful vaccine programme” that aims to reach the entire adult population by late July.

>Britain’s lead on vaccinations has put UK tourists at the centre of the travel industry’s summer hopes - dented by recent setbacks to immunisation campaigns in mainland Europe and a recent surge in infection rates. O’Leary reported a surge in bookings from Britain and Germany, in comments that contrast with the gloom besetting the industry as it faces the risk of a second ruined peak season. Airline and travel shares have fallen this week since the UK toughened its stance, but regained some ground on Wednesday with TUI up 7.8%, British Airways owner IAG 5.5% higher, easyJet up 3% and Ryanair 0.6%.

>Ryanair staged separate online press briefings on its UK, Spain and Greek travel schedules in what O’Leary said was an attempt to encourage consumers to book. The Irish budget airline announced 26 new destinations in Greece, Portugal and Spain and plans to operate a total of 2,000 weekly flights on 400 summer routes. Vaccinations will have COVID-19 under control across the region by summer, O’Leary forecast, and Britain would then have no grounds to bar foreign trips.

>“If you’re fully vaccinated, I’d be very surprised if there was any legal basis for the UK government preventing people travelling on holidays to other European countries,” he said. “It is very difficult to persuade the UK population to sit at home, or holiday at home, when everybody’s been vaccinated.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-ryanair/ignore-ministers-and-book-your-holiday-ryanair-boss-says-idUSKBN2BG1CN

I'm sure this is going to end well.
>> No. 32704 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:27 pm
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>>32703

It will end in people not going on holiday and Ryanair keeping their money for at least as long as it takes to keep them afloat, if not forever, I haven't checked their policy recently but I assume "NO REFUNDS" is sewn into that thing pretty tightly.

Bookings haven't really let up since the roadmap was introduced, the direct warning not to book holidays has genuinely not dissuaded people. The industry has not been very successful in strong-arming the government during this whole thing, and it doesn't seem like we're going to get any better of it, so I'm predicting a dead summer yet again. But at least we can blame the government.
>> No. 32706 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:33 pm
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>>32699
>>32701
As well as that, now there's a vaccine people think it's over, so you don't need to wear masks or wash hands so vigorously anymore or distance. Basically it's fucking idiots once again making things worse for the rest of us. More covid for the covid god, down with humanity.
>> No. 32708 Anonymous
24th March 2021
Wednesday 11:47 pm
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>>32701

Also the situation is getting worse in Chile, despite them being neck-and-neck with us for vaccinations.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/chile/
>> No. 32709 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 12:27 am
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>>32706

As I said, we could do with a very careful, temporary dose of government-induced fascism right now. Not strip away democracy as such like in China, but take a few rigorous measures that absolutely leave no room for dicking about.

Disrespecting covid rules must be a financially costly mistake. I'm in full support of the £5,000 fine for people going on holiday right now. And people ignoring social distancing rules should have to pay £500 without exceptions on the first offence.
>> No. 32711 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 6:49 am
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>>32706
>now there's a vaccine people think it's over, so you don't need to wear masks or wash hands so vigorously anymore or distance

What's the point of the vaccine if we're just going to carry on as before?
>> No. 32715 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 9:22 am
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>>32711

You need to vaccinate more people first.
>> No. 32718 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 9:47 am
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How can I bid to ru(i)n the pub passport scheme?
I'd blow Boris for a couple of billion quid, if that helps?
Hell, I'll dress up as Dido Harding and take being spat at in public for five billion.
Just give me the contract. I know excel and I have an inkjet printer.
>> No. 32719 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 9:50 am
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>>32708
Isn't it autumn in Chile? Hemispheres and stuff.
>> No. 32720 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 10:02 am
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>>32719

Another factor in the rise in cases in Chile is the social unrest that's been ongoing there over the last couple of years. I lived there pre-Covid and there were riots in Santiago on a weekly basis that made the Bristol protests look like a picnic in the park by comparison, and from what I've seen in Chilean media mass protests are still ongoing despite Covid restrictions, the Women's March last month attracted thousands of people for example.
>> No. 32721 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 10:15 am
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>>32711
How the fuck do you not know the answer to this? Where have you been?
>> No. 32724 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 12:09 pm
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OI CAN I SEE YOUR VACCINE PASSPORT M8



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56517486
>> No. 32725 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 12:33 pm
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>>32724
I could've sworn they were absolutely guaranteeing this wouldn't happen a couple of weeks ago.
>> No. 32726 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 12:33 pm
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>>32724

worth mentioning that the old people have all been vacinated before the young people. If you want to make your accuations about institutional cryto-ageism now would be the time.

BURN THE BOOMERS
>> No. 32727 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 1:42 pm
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>>32724

It's just Boris dodging responsibility again. "We might have vaccine passports, or we might not, but ultimately it's up to someone else to actually decide".
>> No. 32728 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 4:17 pm
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>>32724

Haha... get fucked.

Other than the fact it's immoral, no pub is going to do this after next to no income for over a year.
>> No. 32730 Anonymous
25th March 2021
Thursday 4:35 pm
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>>32728
>Other than the fact it's immoral

Go on.
>> No. 32766 Anonymous
26th March 2021
Friday 6:51 pm
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>>32728

It depends on how many people of their core customer base have been vaccinated. The quaint old pubs where OAPs and over-50s get pissed at noon on a weekday would have an easy time with it. But some hip 20somethings place that plays lounge music and makes considerable turnover with jager bombs and cherry vodka shots on Ladies' Night isn't going to do itself any favours until all of those patrons have been vaccinated.

So I guess it's a good way to keep them pesky younguns out of your local Red Lion for the time being.
>> No. 32798 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 3:51 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPPmc0E83oQ
>> No. 32800 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 4:04 pm
32800 spacer
>>32798

I kept telling you, lads. Bows and arrows against the lightning. Mother nature will have her vengeance, and it is only through foolish hubris that mankind thinks it can resist. If you won't stop having kids, planet earth will take care of the matter for us.
>> No. 32801 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 4:32 pm
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>>32798
Bloody hell is Europe a complete shitshow at this. Is it time to refresh the old Gary Lineker idea of towing the British isles to somewhere else?

If money is the problem then we can just migrate to Oceania and democratically takeover the lot. We'll politely annex the French bits so we never have to speak to a European again - or get dragged into whatever bullshit is going on across the channel.
>> No. 32804 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 6:25 pm
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>>32798

Remarkable that the Third Wave is almost entirely absent so far in North America, at least compared to Europe and indeed South America. Murrikins are doing something right.

I invested in a Dow Jones ETF about a month ago because I think in terms of economic recovery, they're going to leave the rest of the world dead in the water this year and next year.
>> No. 32805 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 6:29 pm
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>>32804

>Murrikins are doing something right.

Most of them don't have passports, so the spread of new variants has been relatively slow. They will have a big and brutal third wave, it's just a matter of time.
>> No. 32806 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 7:19 pm
32806 spacer
>>32804

>Third Wave is almost entirely absent so far in North America, at least compared to Europe and indeed South America. Murrikins are doing something right.

Not altogether surprising if you think about it. They were so disastrous at handling it in the first place they've all already had it. Herd immunity comes through in the end, it just comes with its own price, obviously.

Weird that Europe has fallen apart so quickly though. They were handling it so much better than us for such a long time, and the steam seems to have just entirely run out.
>> No. 32814 Anonymous
28th March 2021
Sunday 9:07 pm
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>>32806

The EU has completely cocked up the sourcing of the vaccines and their supply chain management. That's the biggest problem. Most EU countries have not even half the percentages of vaccinated people that we do.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

(worth clicking on the "TABLE" tab at the bottom to see the country-by-country statistics)


I voted remain, but I have honestly been reconsidering my stance. Being an independent country is beginning to show its advantages. And who needs French cheese on supermarket shelves anyway.
>> No. 32834 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 2:09 pm
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>>32814
If they take my Brie I'll suicide bomb the Home Office.
>> No. 32835 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 3:15 pm
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>>32834

Brie comes from Cornwall, you bloody turncoat.
>> No. 32836 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 4:38 pm
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>>32814
As a remainer who has not been closely following how the EU has sourced and distributed vaccines maybe you can give me an informed response on this then. The questions are:

a) What that we are doing currently would we not be able to have done if we were still a member state?

b) Are we vaccinating ourselves at the expense of the EU / the global south and if so is that really a strategically or morally better situation to be in? Especially considering we wouldn't need to vaccinate ourselves so quickly if the government's half-baked mitigation strategies were working as effectively as they are in Asia and Oceania?

c) Isn't it fickle to reverse your support for membership on one cock-up? Is it indicative of fundamental problems with the bloc, or is it just governments making mistakes as all governments do?
>> No. 32837 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 4:58 pm
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>>32836
The UK has probably done more than any other nation to fund vaccines in poorer countries.

>The UK has helped to raise $1 billion for the coronavirus COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) through match-funding other donors, which combined with the £548 million of UK aid pledged will help distribute one billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to 92 developing countries this year.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-raises-1bn-so-vulnerable-countries-can-get-vaccine

The UK chose to fund vaccine research that other countries simply didn't. That's why Valneva ended up building a factory in Livingston rather than in their native France.

The EU chose to dither and then engage in increasingly desperate antics, like refusing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine because Tracy on Facebook said it causes blood clots, to try and save face. I know it might be hard for you, lad, but sometimes you have to give this country credit when it does something we'll.
>> No. 32838 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 5:08 pm
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>>32814>>32836

Lads it's done. We are far beyond who voted for what.
>> No. 32839 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 5:28 pm
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>>32838

Don''t count on it. This is the next roundheads and longhairs or whatever they called it. Mods and rockers. Chavs and moshers.

The clash of ages.
>> No. 32843 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 7:36 pm
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>>32837
>I know it might be hard for you, lad
I'm not not giving credit. But I think my questions are perfectly legitimate given there has been and continues to be a lot of misinformation about the EU, and that a lot of things people say should make us proud to be British are actually abhorrent.
>> No. 32844 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 7:41 pm
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Just had my jab boys. Bought a vanilla cream cake from Asda on the way back and I'm eating the full thing to myself as a treat for being brave.

Debating whether I phone it in to work tomorrow and blag it that the side effects have hit me hard. What would you do lads?
>> No. 32845 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 8:05 pm
32845 spacer
>>32844
I'd wait and see if the side effects do hit you hard tbh mate. But also yeah fuck it take the day off.
>> No. 32846 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 8:26 pm
32846 spacer
>>32844
Might as well take the rest of the week off really. I've heard the jab does make you rather lethargic.
>> No. 32847 Anonymous
29th March 2021
Monday 10:20 pm
32847 spacer
>>32846

Aye good shout. Best not over exert myself or I might die of a blood clot.
>> No. 32848 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 1:28 am
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>>32844

I had mine today too, I thought I had got away with any side effects, but I've woken up now feeling like I've got a hangover that's trying to take over my entire body. At least I know it's working, I suppose.

I don't need to do anything for work this week anyway, but I would almost certainly be telling people I'm taking it off if I had.
>> No. 32849 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 7:47 am
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Actually yeah I shouldn't have been so glib; woke up this morning and I feel like I've been hit by a bus. Mental.

Where's immunology lad, does having a stronger reaction to a vaccine indicate a better immune response or worse general health or what? I know some old codgers who have had ot with barely any side effects.
>> No. 32850 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 7:58 am
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>>32849
Getting wiped out means your immune system is having a full-on fire drill, so good news. Get some rest, stay hydrated and force down a good meal and you'll be fine by tomorrow.
>> No. 32857 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 1:54 pm
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>vaxhole
>A person who intentionally gloats or brags about their vaccination status in order to signal to others their moral superiority. Individuals who display this characteristic have a propensity to also display narcissism.
>"That customer came up to me and rambled on for five minutes about how they just got the covid vaccine and how important it is and how people who don't get it are evil. What a vaxhole."
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vaxhole

Well that's my summer plans ruined.
>> No. 32858 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 2:25 pm
32858 spacer
>>32857

Why rould you brag about having the vaccine? Surely it's the other way round?
>> No. 32868 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 4:49 pm
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>>32858

Yes but the people who don't "trust" the vaccine or don't "believe" in covid will take even very gentle polite reasoning about how it's probably a good idea to be vaccinated as aggressive leftist lecturing.
>> No. 32872 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 5:15 pm
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Where do Jedward fit into this?
>> No. 32877 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 5:26 pm
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>>32872

The possibility that Jedward could conceivably become the leaders of a democratic nation is surely the worst legacy of the Trump presidency.
>> No. 32878 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 5:29 pm
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>>32872
I'm not sure what the Irish are complaining about. With all the work that's gone into expanding their ports and ensuring customs free access to Europe they should be swimming in vaccines.

Perhaps they should look into how that European solidarity is playing out?

>Austria is threatening to block the European Commission from securing another 100 million BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine doses unless Vienna gets a bigger slice of the delivery, according to diplomats from three EU countries.

>The move is the latest escalatory tactic from Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who has been agitating for his country to receive a greater share of EU vaccines — even though data show Austria isn't among the countries in greatest need. And it's an ultimatum some fear could imperil a critically needed shipment of jabs as the EU desperately looks for ways to increase vaccine production and supplies.
https://www.politico.eu/article/sebastian-kurz-austria-threatens-to-block-eu-option-to-buy-100-million-coronavirus-vaccine-doses-in-fight-over-distribution/

You can be sure we'd never hear the end of the gloating from the EU if the shoe were on the other foot.
>> No. 32879 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 5:38 pm
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>>32877
Their Twatter account is delightfully batshit.
>> No. 32881 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 5:44 pm
32881 spacer
>>32879

Although less batshit than the last POTUS, which surely shows how far we've fallen as a species. Has their account been hacked, or am I in the uncomfortable position of thinking that Jedward might actually do a better job of running a country than BoJo or Micheál Martin?
>> No. 32882 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 7:26 pm
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>>32881

If tearing down statues of celebrated prime minsters because it has suddenly become the latest hot take to shit on him is your idea of running the country you could have a try at running the country tomorrow.
>> No. 32883 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 7:42 pm
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>>32879

They're really clutching at straws these days to remain even remotely relevant.

Must be tough being a whole decade past your fifteen minutes of fame.
>> No. 32886 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 9:43 pm
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Do you lot imagine it's actually the Jedwards themselves sat there tweeting?

It's probably the same bored millennial who tweets for every D-rate celeb as part of their agency package. Of course they have their plate full tweeting for all 50 Unilever brands too, and that's why we see them starting to take the piss sometimes, as though they're a real person struggling to get out.
>> No. 32890 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 11:30 pm
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>>32886

>Do you lot imagine it's actually the Jedwards themselves sat there tweeting?

I don't think their schedule is that busy these days, so it's probably them in person, being passive aggressive at the world while pretending to still be 18 years old. Their selling point throughout being little more than that they should be famous today because they were briefly famous circa 2009-2011.
>> No. 32891 Anonymous
30th March 2021
Tuesday 11:38 pm
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>>32886
I think they're trying to establish a brand as right-on entertainers. Not too right right-on of course but enough that it might get them on a talk show as the voice of the other side and a new generation of ITV watchers following them.

Not that I for a second believe they typed that but the brand did.
>> No. 32893 Anonymous
31st March 2021
Wednesday 1:08 am
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>>32891
Honestly, they're being woke but not sanctimonious. They're great. None of the usual, "Ugh, white people, I can't even", but rather, they stand for righteousness without being more obsessed about being seen to stand for righteousness. I applaud these clueless homosexual clones without irony.
>> No. 32894 Anonymous
31st March 2021
Wednesday 1:15 am
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>People are drawing 150,000 hearts on a wall in London to honour Covid victims
>Nearly 150,000 hearts are being hand-drawn onto a wall near parliament to represent all the victims of the UK’s Covid outbreak. Volunteers have been painting the memorial since Monday and it’s expected to stretch for more than a kilometre once complete.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/30/london-volunteers-draw-covid-heart-memorial-on-southbank-wall-14330177/

As you would expect from crudely drawn love hearts along a wall - it looks shite. They even have security guards posted along it. However I know that if I voiced this opinion anywhere but here people would make me a twitter account just so I can be banned and sent to prison for malicious communications.

Southbank went to shit the moment the London Eye was renamed again to the Lastminute.com London Eye and given pink lighting.
>> No. 32895 Anonymous
31st March 2021
Wednesday 1:31 am
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>>32894
Without trite amateurish memorials, how will we ever remember the coronavirus pandemic?

By the way, the OP says the last thread was over 1700 posts long, and this thread is now approaching 2500. Is anyone feeling incredibly brave?
>> No. 32896 Anonymous
31st March 2021
Wednesday 1:34 am
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>>32894
>he London Eye was renamed again to the Lastminute.com London Eye
I'm just disappointed that it's never been sponsored by Specsavers.
>> No. 32901 Anonymous
31st March 2021
Wednesday 9:21 am
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>>32894
So that's allowed but people drawing on the same walls with chalk paint on other occasions gets the public and courts whipped into a fury?
>> No. 32940 Anonymous
1st April 2021
Thursday 6:51 pm
32940 spacer
Just spoke to a good friend whose mum has long covid. It's really a fucking vicious virus. Up until she became infected around July/August, she was very active despite being in her mid-70s, still used to do all her own shopping in her own car, and loads of gardening.

The initial infection wasn't as serious as it can get at that age, but now she's in constant pain, her legs are swollen with oedema all the time, and she gets out of breath just walking fifty steps around the house. The NHS has a carer looking after her once or twice a day. She may even have to leave her house that she has lived in for almost 40 years.

She has now been entered into an NHS study on post-covid/long covid. Hopefully, they will be able to help other sufferers that way.


Just a flu, eh, edgelad?
>> No. 32941 Anonymous
2nd April 2021
Friday 9:14 pm
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>>32940

That happens with the flu all the time as well.
>> No. 32942 Anonymous
2nd April 2021
Friday 10:26 pm
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>>32941
A third of the people who have had the flu don't get readmitted to hospital though.
>> No. 32944 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 10:02 am
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Strange that the number of flu cases has dropped to zero... almost like they're classifying flu cases as corona

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 32946 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 10:29 am
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>>32944
And what would 'they' stand to gain from this? And who are 'they'?

Also, learn how to use punctuation properly. Cunt.
>> No. 32951 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 11:54 am
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>>32944

Flu is much less infectious than COVID-19. Most people have some level of immunity to flu from previous infections, COVID-19 can survive for longer in smaller droplets and COVID-19 has a longer incubation period and a higher frequency of asymptomatic infection.

Masks, social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective against all infectious respiratory diseases. Measures that are just barely sufficient to keep COVID-19 under control are enough to stop flu almost completely.

When the current pandemic is over, we really need a rethink about our attitudes to flu. We've accepted 10 to 20,000 flu deaths per year as a fact of life, but we could prevent most of them with relatively simple measures. We should wear masks if we've got the sniffles, we should wash our hands more during the winter and we definitely shouldn't be dragging ourselves into work when we're ill.
>> No. 32952 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 12:03 pm
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>>32944

Lab lad here. The simple fact of the matter is we just haven't been testing for it like normal, so there's no real way of knowing what has happened to the flu this year. Seems like a bit of an oversight to me but I suppose you have to prioritise.

Where I work, usually there's a point of care test medics and infection control can do directly in clinical environments, then get confirmation by PCR. By contrast I've only seen one come through my lab this winter, which I just assumed had been requested in error, and sure enough the doctor phoned up half and hour after it arrived saying "Sorry, that was meant to be a covid test."
>> No. 32953 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 12:26 pm
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>>32946
>Also, learn how to use punctuation properly.

They can't even grasp science, basic English is beyond them too. These are the people who've only got this far because society has held their hand their whole lives. We're over a year in now, there's no excuse for being this stupid still. To the mines with them.
>> No. 32955 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 12:38 pm
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>>32944

What the actual fuck, lad.

It's people like you who caused us the second lockdown.


>>32951

>When the current pandemic is over, we really need a rethink about our attitudes to flu. We've accepted 10 to 20,000 flu deaths per year as a fact of life, but we could prevent most of them with relatively simple measures.

I agree in principle, but I don't think most people will feel like being quarantined or having to wear masks for a disease that is turning out to be 20 times less likely to kill you than covid-19.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fatality_rates

What I could imagine is that once the corona situation is well and truly over, people will become germophobes much more generally. On the other hand, we could also see a period of optimism and hedonism where people will just want to get on with their lives and forget all about the last one and a half to two years. If you know what I mean.
>> No. 32957 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:00 pm
32957 spacer
>>32955

Nobody is going to want to go back on lockdown, but I don't think we'll be eager to tolerate people coughing and sneezing all over a crowded bus or busy office either. People in East Asia have been wearing surgical masks for many years, which is part of the reason why they handled Coronavirus so well.
>> No. 32958 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:09 pm
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>>32957

I had always thought that idea of wearing a mask when you're feeling ill was excellent, and that was one of my main thoughts when this all kicked off - maybe we'll adopt that courtesy, too. From the amount of people moaning that they're being forced to wear a mask by the new world order, though, I doubt it.
>> No. 32959 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:22 pm
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>>32958
>people moaning that they're being forced to wear a mask

Those people really shouldn't feel so confident in provoking a years worth of rage over the fact they're part responsible for prolonging all this. Can't see people tolerating these selfish thickos much.
>> No. 32960 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:46 pm
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>>32959

My mum's a care worker and has so far refused to get the vaccine because she "doesn't trust it", but it's more like she just doesn't like to be told she has to do something.

I love her and everything but I hope she loses her job. Or at the very least she has to cancel next years holiday because she doesn't have a vax passport - I told her the latter is likely and she said "well I'll just not go abroad then" I give her a month.
>> No. 32961 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:56 pm
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>>32960

It's a really weird situation. Of all the people I know who are refusing the vaccine, each one works in the health sector. Two OTs, a Physio and a Pharmacist.
>> No. 32962 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 1:56 pm
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>>32960

It's a really weird situation. Of all the people I know who are refusing the vaccine, each one works in the health sector. Two OTs, a Physio and a Pharmacist.
>> No. 32963 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 2:07 pm
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>>32961
You can pretty much guarantee they're on social media lapping up all the bullshit on there.
>> No. 32964 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 2:44 pm
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>>32963

I dunno, probably. They're all quite bright people though. One of the OTs is my mates wife. She has a Masters, speaks multiple languages and comes from a well off family from what he told me. Don't get it.
>> No. 32965 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 2:55 pm
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>>32964
Sometimes people are just selfish and unempathetic, regardless of intelligence. I've met highly educated people who've had some shocking gaps in general knowledge and seemingly little common sense too, but they're obviously very good within their field of expertise. As well, everybody is susceptible to propaganda.
>> No. 32966 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 2:59 pm
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>>32965
Or perhaps some of us are just more skeptical. I don't install major Windows 10 updates straight away. Let some other suckers find the bugs.
>> No. 32967 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 3:21 pm
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>>32966
There's skeptical and there's thinking the Earth is flat or that a pandemic isn't real.
>> No. 32970 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 4:08 pm
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>>32964
>>32965
I'm pro-vaccination, and I do believe that coronavirus is real, but I do have a couple of questions, and the widespread consensus that You Must Not Ask Questions is probably making me more entrenched. (I've already been vaccinated, though).

Fundamentally, I think everyone should get vaccinated, but we should absolutely be able to choose which vaccine we get. Part of this is just general mistrust of any multinational corporation that stands to become the richest company on the planet if I do what they say, but there have also been some suspicious gaps in media coverage. When coronavirus started, all the experts said, "We're going to need to vaccinate everyone as soon as we can." When will that be? "Not for ages yet. Probably the start of next year." So that's early 2021. In summer 2020, Russia announced it was ready to vaccinate people with its own special concoction, and everyone on the news over here said, "Don't trust them; they're lying. There's no way it could have been developed yet. Nobody's getting vaccinated till early 2021." Then, in the autumn, in November, Donald Trump said, "Re-elect me; under my presidency, we are just a couple of weeks away from announcing a coronavirus vaccine." All the journalists, and all the experts, said, "Bullshit; not a chance. There won't be a vaccine till early 2021."

And I believed all of that. No QAnon red pills here. People on social media were laughing at the conspiracy theorists for all their mental inventions, and I was fine with that, because I, we, trusted the experts. We listened to people who knew what they were doing.

Then, one Saturday in November, one more state called for Joe Biden and that meant he'd be president. The very following Monday, and it was Monday morning US time, the time that everyone at Pfizer is showing up for work immediately after Donald Trump was confirmed not to get a second term, and they IMMEDIATELY announced their coronavirus vaccine worked. Three months before the fastest and most optimistic estimate for when such a thing would be announced. It would be like watching the Olympic 100 metres and someone ran it in six and a half seconds. You'd ask questions too, wouldn't you? And when people started saying, "Oh, here we go, another kooky woo merchant with his paranoid and insane QUESTIONS again", wouldn't you start to think something was up? Shouldn't it be okay to ask if it's normal to run 100m three seconds faster than the world record?

I would once again like to stress that I do think everyone should get vaccinated. But those first couple, well, didn't they get announced a little quickly for anyone else?
>> No. 32971 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 5:01 pm
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>>32970
Authoritarian regimes greatly sped up the process by skipping safety checks and moving onto larger scale human trials before other countries would deem ethical.
Most companies were putting out very conservative estimates of the time frame for completion because there was every chance that the first trials wouldn't be successful meaning more rounds of development and testing, which has happened for some of the other manufacturers who still haven't had their vaccines approved.

More opportunity for the tin foil hats to come out when you look at the timing of the Pfizer announcement, it seems likely that they had good news ready before the election but made a deliberate decision to delay the announcement until after the election to avoid getting caught up in politics.
>> No. 32972 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 5:03 pm
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>>32970
I don't think anyone trusted anything coming out of Trump's mouth is the issue with the US one, I'm sure there were political reasons tied up around it due to the fact he supressed so much effort to address the issue, even going so far as to say he didn't listen to Fauci because he was doing the opposite of whatever he said, and didn't even have a plan at all for the pandemic. The Russian one was/is definitely a bit suspect but you can't really chalk that up to paranoia given their states ongoing reaction to the pandemic, and their historical treatment of their citizens/doctors. The whole "These vaccines were rushed" in the west has been bollocks though and it did get coverage, but nobody seemed to want to pay attention.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt8cEDd3tSc

Speaking on the first UK one, this bloke's been on it with his dissemination of the facts throughout this pandemic, and puts it a lot better than I ever could. He even mentions in this video that a much better word to use would have been "accelerated" rather than "rushed". The fact we've had working vaccines made this quickly, which continue to stand up to scrunity, is a testament to the scientists who create them and the technology we have available.

These are the reasonable questions to be asking though, and there are perfectly reasonable answers to them. I personally haven't seen anyone leapt on for inquiring more into these things, but then I'm not on any kind of social media.
>> No. 32973 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 5:42 pm
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>>32970

>We listened to people who knew what they were doing.

Not really, which is the problem - broadly speaking, our access to the experts is intermediated by journalists and pundits, who are almost without exception halfwits.

We weren't suspicious of the Sputnik V vaccine because they had developed it too quickly. Russia were claiming "victory in the vaccine race" by just asserting that their vaccine worked before they had the trial data to prove it. They guessed right and it turned out that Sputnik V works, but it's a fairly crude vaccine with some nasty side-effects, it's not all that easy to produce and they're now stuck with it for nationalistic reasons. They could have just as easily guessed wrong and ended up stuck with an ineffective or outright harmful vaccine because they'd bragged about it before they knew if it worked.

"When will we get a vaccine?" isn't really a meaningful question, because we're talking about multiple timelines - when will a vaccine pass through phase 3 clinical trials, when will it receive market authorisation, when will it reach the market, when will I get a dose and when will everyone be vaccinated.


The vaccine development process was massively accelerated because of the huge consequences of the virus, the development of a bunch of new technologies and sheer dumb luck. Everything that could have gone right did go right, the first doses were administered in the last weeks of 2020, but we didn't really start mass vaccinations until early 2021 and we hope to offer everyone a dose by the end of August. We worked incredibly hard, we were unbelievably lucky and we beat our best-case estimates by a couple of weeks; that's cause for celebration, not suspicion.

Pfizer announced efficacy data for their vaccine on the 9th of November, based on a trial that started on the 27th of July. It's a legal requirement to pre-register clinical trials before they start, so the fact that Pfizer would be announcing trial results around the date of the US election was a matter of public record when the trial was registered in late April. It's understandable that the timing looked fishy to the casual observer, but everything was completely above board and in the open. The fact that you haven't heard about it is the fault of journalists, not scientists.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728

It's fine to be sceptical, but most of your doubts can be answered with half an hour on Wikipedia. A lot of the people "asking questions" don't really care about the answer, they're just trying to seed doubt; on the internet, it's really hard to tell the difference. It's unfortunate that this has the effect of shutting down sincere enquiry, but if every question is taken at face value as sincere then the discussion inevitably becomes dominated by trolls.
>> No. 32974 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 7:03 pm
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I had a WTF moment in the comments section to a youtube video the other day when I tried to argue my point that the risk of severe side effects, including death, from any manufacturer's vaccine was lower by many orders of magnitude compared to the risk of a random person of dying from an actual covid-19 infection, and that therefore simply based on the most fundamental risk considerations, getting the vaccine was a no-brainer.

I thought the kind of endless ignorance that vaccine sceptics bask in was just the stuff of exaggerated memes, but no, there are actually droves of people who will tell you that maths and science are of the devil and are the reason that the conspirators were able to fool us all and get away with it, and even making the most basic probability calculations for them provoked some people to tell me I was an enabler for the Bill and Melinda Gates 5G conspiracy.

Even if it's really not a good idea, people like that, if they become ill from covid-19, should be denied any kind of treatment at all till their last torturous breath.
>> No. 32975 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 7:22 pm
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>>32974

>people like that, if they become ill from covid-19, should be denied any kind of treatment at all till their last torturous breath

Except for one, who should be kept on a ventilator in a glass case in Parliament Square, like an undead version of Stalin's corpse. Keep the ventilator switched on forever, until it's just blowing air through the ribcage of a dusty skeleton.
>> No. 32976 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 8:02 pm
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>>32975

And then charge admission and use the money to help covid victims who are being less of a fuckwit.

I have a friend in the Bible Belt in the U.S., and although he is what I would describe as a reasonable, enlightened person, he told me the other day that one of his neighbours said without a shred of doubt that he'd read online that the vaccines are made from aborted fetuses, and that therefore because he was against abortion, he could not in all good conscience go and get the jab. My friend then pretty much asked him how exactly the industrial process of making billions of doses from dead fetuses would work, and apparently that neighbour just shrugged and threw his hands in the air and replied, "I don't know, I'm not a scientist!"
>> No. 32977 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 8:14 pm
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>>32976
I had someone explain to me in Greenwich Park about how CO2 can't get out of your masks but the virus can get in, which is why you shouldn't wear one.
>> No. 32978 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 8:38 pm
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>>32977
Was it a tree you were talking to?
>> No. 32979 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 8:39 pm
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>>32978
It was a blonde woman accompanied by her Tim Martin lookalike husband.
>> No. 32980 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 8:59 pm
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You know I try and hold my tongue because passions are high around all this obviously. But I think the mask evangelism is getting a bit daft. Yes people should be wearing masks But they way people on social media, and you lot too, when I know you should know better- are acting is as though the mask is the silver bullet cure all. It's becoming a very single minded obsession.

It's really not. The mask is a slim improvement over nothing at all. The most effective prevention is still social distancing and always has been. Compared to social distancing, wearing masks makes only a tiny impact. If masks were really that good, we'd all be out in the pub right now, wouldn't we? It's not the handful of idiots refusing to wear a mask letting us down here.

So please, next time you're on one of your "let anyone die who isn't following the rules" rants, which are oh so morally superior to edgelad's "let anyone over 60 die because fuck 'em" rants, please at least make it about someone who was queuing up 1.5m away from you in Tesco instead, because they are by far the bigger villain. Or better yet, make it into a rant about the government's utter failure to address the situation from the start.
>> No. 32981 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 9:08 pm
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>>32980

The combination of the two is actually what works - you can still pretty effectively sneeze on someone from 2 metres away.
>> No. 32982 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 9:29 pm
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>>32980

The two metre rule also has a tiny impact in indoor environments, because aerosolised transmission is much more significant than we first thought. Maintaining social distance is really hard in a lot of environments and it's easy to get too close without really thinking, but mask-wearing is pretty much effortless if you're not a complete fuckwit. It is quite literally the least you can do; I very much doubt that the people not wearing masks (or wearing them around their chin or dangling off their ear) are making up for it by being scrupulous about social distancing.

Ventilation is probably slightly more important than either masks or distancing, but there's not really anything the general public can do about that.

Controlling COVID is very much a marginal gains thing of multiplying a lot of small improvements. The more carefully we stick to the rules, the faster we can get back to normal.

Of course, all of that is still negligible compared to vaccination, so it's overwhelmingly important to convince people to go and get the jab even if they don't believe in it.
>> No. 32983 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 9:32 pm
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>>32980

I've had this debate with "an expert", i.e. one of my friends is married to a lass with a degree in bioscience who now works in some lab somewhere. She said the problem aren't necessarily the masks, but people who aren't instructed properly on how to use them. Which sort of makes sense when you think about it, and when you then see how some people wear theirs in public, but the only solution would be to have a mask gestapo looking over your shoulder everytime you put one on. And that's not something we should actually consider.

A mask isn't going to be perfect in preventing the spread of covid, but by and large, it's not a bad idea to wear one. I wouldn't go all mask gestapo on somebody for not putting theirs on, but I guess one reason why you're better off wearing one is to protect yourself against other people's germs.
>> No. 32984 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 9:45 pm
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Yes, masks are better than nothing, as people have just said, and there have been multiple studies now showing that wearing masks as part of a multipronged infection reduction strategy reduces transmission rates, which is why it's become a law. The point is that masks on their own aren't the best, distancing on its own isn't the best, just washing hands on its own isn't the best, the entire point is to do multiple things at once to best protect yourself and those around you, and doing all of those things together increases protection for everybody.

>>32982
>Controlling COVID is very much a marginal gains thing of multiplying a lot of small improvements. The more carefully we stick to the rules, the faster we can get back to normal.

Exactly this, and as you also said, chances are if somebody's not wearing a mask at this point they're not doing anything else either. Nobody is saying it's a catch all, it's the best we can do to make this end quicker, and it's really not hard at all.
>> No. 32985 Anonymous
3rd April 2021
Saturday 9:50 pm
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>>32974
>in the comments section to a youtube video the other day when I tried to argue

I know .gs is a bit slow lately but I think you might need to admit that you have an addiction.
>> No. 32986 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 12:24 pm
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I found this on the other place. January 31st 2020 original post date.
Didn't post it here at the time because I didn't know whether it was codswallop or not but now I think this guy was telling "his truth".
Thoughts?
>> No. 32987 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 12:31 pm
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>>32986


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo
>> No. 32991 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 12:56 pm
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>>32986
There were lots of people saying things like this in January last year - with the benefit of hindsight, a few of them will be randomly right. Stopped clock/right twice a day etc.
>> No. 32992 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 1:19 pm
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>>32986

I could have told you all those things were going to happen 'if' the virus got bad. It's common sense.
>> No. 32993 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 1:31 pm
32993 spacer
>>32992
Yeah but what about Brazil?
>> No. 32997 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 1:47 pm
32997 spacer
>>32986

There were various pandemics announced over the years which never quite turned into global mayhem like covid-19, and which were usually confined to a few Asian countries where people sleep in huts next to their livestock.

Usually, containment was successful with those viruses, because 1) governments didn't cock it up as badly as China did in the beginning with Covid-19, and 2) most flu-like viruses are much less infectious than SARS-CoV-19 because as we now know, the latter can proliferate in cells in your throat and upper respiratory tract, while most flu viruses need deeper lung tissue cells for that.

Beyond a wild, unfounded guess, there was no way of anticipating the full extent of it all in late January last year. And if by chance you did, that makes you no more an authority than somebody who correctly predicts a stock market top or bottom on one occasion.
>> No. 33000 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 3:25 pm
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>>32997
>There were various pandemics announced over the years which never quite turned into global mayhem like covid-19

Such as the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001, which threatened to spread beyond northwest mainland Europe, but there appeared to be people in Government concerned enough about stopping it to actually do so (and through tough local lockdowns of all things), rather than using it as an excuse to make bank, thus it became a mere footnote in history. Not that the scandals of the current times will be remembered, mind.
>> No. 33001 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 3:35 pm
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>>33000
Elaborate on who has made bank?
>> No. 33002 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 3:46 pm
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This streamer looks like Reviewbrah and a ventriloquist dummy. Reviewbrah looks like a ventriloquist dummy too really.
>> No. 33003 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 3:53 pm
33003 spacer
>>33001

That bloke who ran Matt Hancock's local boozer who claimed to have never heard of him, Deloitte, Serco, anyone else who happens to be good mates with a cabinet minister (but not anyone from Cameron or May's cabinet, they can just piss in the wind).
>> No. 33004 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 3:59 pm
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>>33003
The virus is pandemic, not saying that there weren't ministers who made a lot of money and friends from the whole situation but to dismiss the whole thing as simply a means to make money seems a bit flippant.
>> No. 33005 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 4:03 pm
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>>33004
>to dismiss the whole thing as simply a means to make money

That's not what I'm doing, you muppet. Previous Governments handled theses crises much more efficiently without sidestepping an institution (NHS) best positioned to assist in favour of private solutions which stole your tazes and gave them to cunts who sat on their arses.

You want flippant, there you go.
>> No. 33007 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 4:29 pm
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>>33005
Yet we're effectively coming out of lockdown.
The Tories haven't handled everything well but you can't deny that the connections they have with the right people has aided the country enormously.
>> No. 33008 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 4:41 pm
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>>33002
Until now I had no idea I wanted to have sex with a female version of Reviewbrah.
>> No. 33010 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 4:46 pm
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>>32986
It's plausible enough that my first thought was that it's a fake, and I checked the post number on archived.moe, but it was indeed posted then. The thread is real. However, there are several predictions that were wrong, and most of the others are fairly obvious.
>> No. 33011 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 4:57 pm
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>>33005
Did they? Livestock outbreaks aren't uncommon at all and have the helpful solution that you can just kill every animal that had any chance of coming into contact. As British farmers would be quick to remind you. This is a terrible talking point if you want to attack the government, Keir.

At the very least had a Covid-19 pandemic started at the time of foot and mouth I really don't see how different an outcome we'd have. There's not a British illuminati at work for starters so our influence over China would be suspect.

>>33008
>female version

I see that this is your first time on the internet.
>> No. 33013 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:08 pm
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>>33007
>>33011

Could have been handled much better had they trusted and properly funded the NHS from the beginning, instead of getting a bunch of amateurs instead.
>> No. 33015 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:20 pm
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>>33013
European countries used your model. Look where they are.
Hungary decided to say "Nah, fuck this" and started modelling their response after ours. Now they're steaming ahead with vaccinations.
>> No. 33016 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:20 pm
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>>33011

>At the very least had a Covid-19 pandemic started at the time of foot and mouth I really don't see how different an outcome we'd have.

I think what everybody greatly underestimated when it first broke out is how contagious SARS-CoV-19 is. It can very literally be enough to breathe on somebody from two feet away. Most other similar viruses that were known up to that point really required actively coughing on somebody to pass it on.

That, but also, Chinese authorities more than dropped the ball. I guess you just have different attitudes to public health in authoritarian regimes, but the way they tried to pretend that it simply didn't exist is probably something they now wish they hadn't done.
>> No. 33017 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:24 pm
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>>33016
Not only did they drop the ball, they allowed international travel to continue whilst they suspended domestic flights.
Make no mistake: China wanted this disease to spread outside of their borders as much as possible before admitting there was a problem.
>> No. 33019 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:42 pm
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>>33007
>The Tories haven't handled everything well but you can't deny that the connections they have with the right people has aided the country enormously.

Lad they're massively corrupt at this point and funneled away hundreds of thousands, probably millions at this point, with bullshit contracts to friends during a pandemic. Haven't handled it well is an understatement, they don't give a shit.
>> No. 33020 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:44 pm
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>the connections they have with the right people has aided the country enormously.
That does explain how people excuse the corruption.
>> No. 33021 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:50 pm
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>>33019
Not true, the Tories have a political reason to keep their core voter base alive and well don't forget.

>>33020
If the Tories have to cut a few corners so the average person can get back in the local and have a pint, so be it.
>> No. 33022 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:55 pm
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>>33021
So the price to ignore corruption is a pint. Pathetic.
>> No. 33023 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:57 pm
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>>33021
What isn't true? They have given millions of pounds in contracts to companies belonging to their associates, which have no specialisation in PPE and none ever came of it. They also demonstrably handled it poorly while they did that, with hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths relative to other countries. I get that uninformed people will believe what you're saying but it's false.
>> No. 33024 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 5:57 pm
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>>33017

>Make no mistake: China wanted this disease to spread outside of their borders as much as possible before admitting there was a problem.

That sounds a bit too much like just another conspiracy theory.
>> No. 33025 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 6:02 pm
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>>33024
Didn't China claim they had evidence coronavirus originally came from Italy?
>> No. 33026 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 6:12 pm
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>>33022
The average voter doesn't give a shit about the means, only the ends and the ends end when they get back in the local. You might not like it but it's the truth.

>>33023
>What isn't true?
Saying the Tories don't give a shit. Millions of pounds on failed PPE contracts will be forgotten in the wake of the millions of pounds spent on securing the vaccine. They might genuinely not give a shit humanitarian-wise but keeping the older generation alive and well will score them big political points from the aging population.


>>33024
https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2020/04/09/Coronavirus-Critics-ask-why-China-allowed-flights-out-of-Hubei-during-outbreak

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how-china-locked-down-internally-for-covid-19-but-pushed-foreign-travel/
>> No. 33027 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 6:13 pm
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>>33015
European countries don't have the NHS; what are you talking about? All the EU countries decided they wanted to test vaccines a whole lot more than we did. We needed a win after one of the highest death rates on the planet, so we approved the vaccines much faster. Once we had approved them, we bought millions of doses. By the time the EU were confident they weren't about to inject all their people with willy-fall-off-juice, they had to wait months and months for their orders to be fulfilled, because everyone else was ordering millions of doses too and you can't make them fast enough. Give it a few more months, and for all anyone knows, the EU could surge ahead of us.
>> No. 33028 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 6:25 pm
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>>33027

>European countries don't have the NHS; what are you talking about?

The EU used their normal political mechanisms to procure vaccines. We created a vaccine taskforce that was fully independent from the NHS, had no parliamentary oversight and was led by a venture capitalist who is the daughter of a baron.

Dodgy backdoor deals 1 - transparent governance 0.
>> No. 33030 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 6:41 pm
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>>33028
>Dodgy backdoor deals 1 - transparent governance 0.

This is not going to be worth the price in the long run.
>> No. 33033 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 7:28 pm
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>>33030
Personally, my greatest fear is Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi being hailed as some sort of hero. He's such a prick.
>> No. 33034 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 7:39 pm
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Channel 4 News just had as its lead story that the MHRA is reviewing whether to keep giving young people the AstraZeneca vaccine. Here is a link reporting the same story in less alarmist terms: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/oxford-covid-vaccine-blood-clots-b1826896.html

Again, I fully support getting it. But the news has constantly been saying that it's absolutely, 100%, guaranteed totally safe, and everyone should get it. Now, it appears, they are reconsidering. I understand that new data is gathered every day, and there's new information being discovered constantly, but what I really do not appreciate is how the media have been aggressively downplaying this. They've been treating it as a done deal, with no more room for questions unless you're a tinfoil madman. Even though, on any day, the MHRA could suddenly say, "Whoops; we've been wrong." The media manipulation of the truth is obvious. And then they have the brazen audacity to complain when people don't trust the media.

Ignore the experts! They know nothing! Tell them to eat shit, and get vaccinated anyway!
>> No. 33035 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 8:41 pm
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>>33034

The difficulty is that there's a vast spread of risk. For a young healthy person, the chances of dying from a COVID infection are less than 1 in 50,000; for someone over 80, the risk is as high as 1 in 8. The facts are incredibly complicated and most people aren't paying that much attention.

No vaccine is 100% safe, but they're usually safe enough that the benefits outweigh the risks by a huge margin. For the COVID vaccines that's undoubtedly true for old people, but we're not totally sure for younger people due to the very low risk that COVID poses to them. We've never really had to deal with a disease like this before, which throws up a lot of fairly thorny ethical questions.

It's plausible (though fairly unlikely) that COVID vaccines could do slightly more harm than good in young people, because of the very low risk that COVID poses to them. If that were the case, there would still be an overall benefit by providing herd immunity and protecting older and immunosuppressed people who don't benefit from or can't take the vaccine. What's the ethical thing to do in that situation?

Is it OK to lie to young people and knowingly cause a couple of dozen deaths due to blood clots if it prevents thousands or tens of thousands of COVID deaths? How many lives would we be willing to sacrifice to avoid another lockdown? How do we balance deaths due to COVID against lost jobs and ruined lives due to lockdown? Fucked if I know.
>> No. 33038 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 9:42 pm
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>>33035
Can't we just give people anticoagulants with it? Or make them wear flight socks and do yoga like people used to do on plane flights when that panic happened.
>> No. 33039 Anonymous
5th April 2021
Monday 10:35 pm
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>>33035

>Is it OK to lie to young people and knowingly cause a couple of dozen deaths due to blood clots if it prevents thousands or tens of thousands of COVID deaths?

Yes.

I don't think young people particularly need that sort of coercion though, for some reason.
>> No. 33041 Anonymous
6th April 2021
Tuesday 12:51 pm
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>>33035

>It's plausible (though fairly unlikely) that COVID vaccines could do slightly more harm than good in young people, because of the very low risk that COVID poses to them.

No, not really. Because serious side effects from any covid vaccine are so rare, even in the 20-30 age group, your risk of death from the vaccine is still around four to six times lower than your overall risk of death in Britain if you become infected by the virus itself.

Ideally, you wouldn't have to come in contact with either the virus or a vaccine, but getting the jab is the lesser of two evils in the midst of a pandemic, and in pretty much every single age group you analyse.
>> No. 33051 Anonymous
9th April 2021
Friday 10:27 pm
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While the media have been obsessively ruminating about one dead pensioner, the minutes from the most recent SAGE meeting have been published. Key quotes:

>Updated modelling continues to suggest that an epidemic resurgence (third wave) is highly likely, though there remains uncertainty about the timing, scale and shape of this.

>Any resurgence in hospital admissions and deaths following Step 2 of the Roadmap alone is highly unlikely to put unsustainable pressure on the NHS

>The models continue to show that retaining a baseline set of measures to reduce transmission after other restrictions have been lifted would significantly reduce the scale of a resurgence and is therefore almost certain to reduce the burden on the NHS and save many lives

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/977097/S1179_SAGE_85_Meeting.pdf
>> No. 33052 Anonymous
9th April 2021
Friday 11:29 pm
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>>33051
So what we already knew. People will take easing of restrictions to mean going back to normal and will be less bothered about distancing etc, as usual the public can't be trusted and there is another spike coming.
>> No. 33056 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 7:27 pm
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3rd wave.jpg
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The 3rd wave begins.
>> No. 33057 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 8:16 pm
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I don't really want to have to go outside again.
>> No. 33058 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 9:47 pm
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>>33057
I went out today, there's just a bunch of bastards out there. Not worth it.
>> No. 33059 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 9:57 pm
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>>33057
I've grown quite attached to my shaggy hair if I'm honest. Let's hope a covid tsunami hits until at least September.
>> No. 33060 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 11:20 pm
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>>33057 >>33058

You brainwashed institutionalised fucks, you have had only a year of limited freedom in the name of a nebulous threat and you want to surrender to the security of a national curfew over the uncertainty of freedom.
>> No. 33061 Anonymous
10th April 2021
Saturday 11:26 pm
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>>33060

You're posting on a fucking imageboard, do you think we wanted to go out before this?
>> No. 33062 Anonymous
11th April 2021
Sunday 12:32 am
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>>33061
Not him, but as a contrarian I go out more under lockdown than not.
>> No. 33063 Anonymous
11th April 2021
Sunday 1:06 am
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>>33060
You absolute mentalist.
>> No. 33064 Anonymous
13th April 2021
Tuesday 12:36 pm
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EyxMBYUXIAA_BjU.jpg
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Chummy marketing.
>> No. 33065 Anonymous
13th April 2021
Tuesday 12:50 pm
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>>33064
Worthy of the /101/ thread. I'm not having Tesco tell me what to do and I'm sick of this kind of Starbucks moralism rather than giving me the best value for money.

And last night it was a bit too chilly and rammed with twats
>> No. 33070 Anonymous
13th April 2021
Tuesday 1:14 pm
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>>33065

They have started offering their discounts only to club card members in the one near me, and I've started shopping at a different supermarket, got to vote with your feet if you don't want it normalised that they build data on you, this action gave me a quantifiable number for how much my data is worth at least.
>> No. 33081 Anonymous
13th April 2021
Tuesday 8:26 pm
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>>33070
I've seen that; they were doing it a couple of months ago near me. I am very much of the opinion that this is hideous and monstrous that they would charge me more simply for not letting these Orwellian psychopaths tag my every breath, but at the same time, what if the prices don't go up and I'm actually saving money by getting a Clubcard? They take my data same as ever, but now I'm actually seeing a financial benefit from it. My anger has always been less that they take it, and more that they take it for free. If they've started paying me, then that's arguably okay. It's an intriguing philosophical point, right up until I save no money at all and they're literally charging me not to be monitored, which sounds inevitable, unfortunately.
>> No. 33090 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 8:15 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgvgKE0n8o


I'm really not sure what to make of Russell Brand these days. He's getting a bit paranoid in that video.
>> No. 33091 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 9:33 pm
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>>33090
I can't stand him, so I'm reluctant to watch, even though I get the impression I'd agree the fuck out of it (I'm assuming he's on about a descent into China-style social credit system, and totalatarian control where you can't even take a shit without an armitage shanks multi-factor authentication using your subcutaneous microchip.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 33092 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 9:38 pm
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>>33091

>I'm assuming he's on about a China-style social credit system, and totalatarian control where you can't even take a shit without an armitage shanks multi-factor authentication using your subcutaneous microchip

Some of that, yes.

I still liked him better when he was a flamboyant recovering cokehead. Middle age isn't kind to him.
>> No. 33093 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 10:19 pm
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>>33090
"Vaccine passports" are really not a good idea in the short term, not least because of how we've been distributing the vaccines.

We use vaccine records for some international travel, but in this particular instance my preferred solution is for people to stop being selfish cunts and not travel internationally while there's a fucking pandemic raging. That and zero-notice quarantine so we don't get a repeat of the shitshow that followed when requirements were imposed on travel from certain countries last summer.
>> No. 33094 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 10:24 pm
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>>33090
Strange to think that just over a year ago the very suggestion that carrying an app with your medical data should be effectively compulsory would make you sound mental. Even 6 months ago people might've said that any such app would be a disaster that would break, give incorrect readings, cost huge amounts of money, and ultimately lead to a backlash from the general public.

Well look at us now. The dangerous idiots are the people saying that maybe the government and big data shouldn't do this.
>> No. 33095 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 10:36 pm
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>>33093

I like the idea of vaccine passports better than having to do a comprehensive corona test everytime you enter or leave a country.

It does hinge on widespread vaccine availability though. So that people have an actual choice, and aren't screwed because their age group hasn't been given the go-ahead for the jab in their country.

Then again, the tourism industry will be fucked this year if it sees another summer like the last one, if we decide to wait until everybody has been vaccinated.
>> No. 33096 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 11:09 pm
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>>33095
>Then again, the tourism industry will be fucked this year if it sees another summer like the last one, if we decide to wait until everybody has been vaccinated.

The problem is we're just not there yet, a third wave could easily happen and it's still too soon to go completely back to normal. So unfortunately, vaccine passports are more of a neccessity because of the amount of idiots/selfish in this country, who literally just keep making this worse for everybody else. It's also clear how most people against them have literally just read the headline though. First off it's a trial, second it's a confirmation to show you're at a reduced risk of trasmitting covid, that's it. It literally just says your test/vaccination date, akin to the ones you have to show for yellow fever in certain countries. I'd be more worried about the bill regarding protesting really, and yeah it's not an ideal situation by any means but it's where we are. It's either this or everything has to stay shut, and the Tories very much want to reopen.
>> No. 33097 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 11:25 pm
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>>33096
>It literally just says your test/vaccination date, akin to the ones you have to show for yellow fever in certain countries.
Right, but you can just book a vaccine for yellow fever without having to wait for your local health body to make it available based on age, variant, risk, etc.

Just have Border Force do exit checks and deny access to airside for anyone without proof of essential travel.
>> No. 33098 Anonymous
14th April 2021
Wednesday 11:39 pm
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>>33097

>Just have Border Force do exit checks and deny access to airside for anyone without proof of essential travel.

How is this different to a vax passport?

(also border force are useless, I saw two of them get lost on an airfield with twelve stands)
>> No. 33099 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 12:53 am
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>>33096
>akin to the ones you have to show for yellow fever in certain countries
This is what I'm in favour of. If we already have a booklet of vaccinations we have had, which we use for yellow fever and assorted mad jungle shit, just stick coronavirus on there too. We don't need a totally separate document detailing our position on the spooky sickness du jour. Ideally, everyone would shut the fuck up about muh holidays to muh Spain (Brexit means Brexit, after all), but failing that, just get vaccinated and get a little rubber stamp on a piece of paper. You don't need a phone app that monitors everything; that's unnecessary. You don't need a phone app for yellow fever. Nobody's getting ankle-tagged to prove they don't have ebola or polio or rubella, because that isn't needed. Just tick a box, and the box will have no other information. In the future, it would be nice for every country to have completely eradicated Xi Jinping's mind-control sniffles anyway, and as each country eradicates it, that's another country you won't need the stamp for. But right now, every country needs the stamp, so just get it.
>> No. 33100 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 1:10 am
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>>33098
>How is this different to a vax passport?
They're checking for essential travel, not vaccination status. A major vector of transmission was selfish cunts going on foreign holidays and rushing back to beat the quarantine requirements. Stopping them leaving in the first place knocks that right on the head.
>> No. 33101 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 3:46 am
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>>33099

>>33099

Proof of vaccination isn't much use when one of the major risks right now is people bringing vaccine escape variants into the country.

Last time I checked about half the people vaccinated here are being given Oxford/AZ, which preliminary data seems to suggest doesn't provide much if any useful protection against at least one known variant.
The last thing we need right now is a load of people going on holiday, mixing with more tourists from all over the world, then coming back with all kinds of new and exciting covid variants faster than we can test and deploy updated vaccines.
>> No. 33102 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 3:52 am
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>>33098

Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are 60-70% effective in preventing infection. That's extremely useful in terms of lowering the R number and allowing for the relaxation of domestic restrictions, but it doesn't make much of a difference in preventing the importation of new strains.

Every flight coming into the country could bring in a new strain with greater infectiousness or vaccine resistance that could send us back to square one. At this stage in the pandemic, international travel is outrageously risky. The only sensible approach is a total ban on non-essential international travel with mandatory hotel quarantine for all arrivals.
>> No. 33103 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 1:31 pm
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>>33102

>but it doesn't make much of a difference in preventing the importation of new strains.

You won't be able to communicate to people though that they still can't go on holiday even though they've had both vaccine shots.
>> No. 33104 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 2:00 pm
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>>33103

I dunno, how about telling people "you can't go on holiday even if you've had both shots"? Anyone who would risk another three months of lockdown and another 50,000 deaths for two weeks in Benidorm is a fucking idiot and we should have no qualms about telling them to sit down and shut up.
>> No. 33105 Anonymous
15th April 2021
Thursday 11:28 pm
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>>33102
>Every flight coming into the country could bring in a new strain with greater infectiousness or vaccine resistance that could send us back to square one.

Given that Covid will not be eradicated, that will never not be true.
>> No. 33106 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 12:11 am
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The lad-controller makes an excellent point; panic sell all international travel stocks now before you get caught in the summer collapse. We had a short holiday season last year and look how that turned out.

That said there's more to vaccine passports than just airlines and it feels like a strawman to focus on that. I still think we'll arrive at herd immunity, if for no other reason than simple fatigue, and that's good because banning people from going inside venues feels a bit too close to coercing medical consent. We're not going to arrive at 100% inoculation anyway after all because certain people are exempt.
>> No. 33107 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 12:33 am
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>>33105

Absolutely, but the risk will greatly reduce over time as the vaccines are rolled out internationally. Most of the countries that people would want to fly to this summer still have low rates of vaccination and high rates of infection.

NHS waiting lists are at record highs, staff are exhausted and stockpiles are depleted. We're still a long way from ending lockdown and we expect to see another major wave this year. We're all fed up, we all want a break, but we just can't afford to take chances right now. We need time to emerge out of lockdown, we need time to finish the job of vaccinating everyone, we need time for the NHS to recover.

It's incredibly tempting to think that we've beaten COVID because the infection rates are low, but we've made that mistake twice already. If we want the path out of lockdown to be irreversible, we need to proceed with extreme caution.
>> No. 33108 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 1:03 am
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>>33106

>I still think we'll arrive at herd immunity, if for no other reason than simple fatigue

You've misunderstood the science. You can catch COVID twice, especially with the new variants in circulation; people who have been vaccinated have better protection than people who have previously been infected. In the early stages of the pandemic it was believed that herd immunity could be achieved because coronaviruses are usually slow to mutate, but we now know that to be false.

COVID-19 will keep mutating and keep killing people unless we bring it fully under control. We can achieve that control by vaccinating most of the world's population and maintain it by developing booster vaccines for new variants, but it'll take time. We may need to occasionally re-impose some level of temporary restrictions to allow us time to roll out boosters and we should probably keep the habit of wearing masks in winter.

Vaccine passports or immunity certificates are a bit of a red herring and won't make a significant difference to the trajectory of the pandemic either way. The immunity status of any particular individual is insignificant compared to the overall prevalence rate of the virus. Having 70% protection against the virus makes a huge difference on a national and international level, but it won't prevent a pub or concert from turning into a super-spreader event.

The equation slightly changes if you're using vaccine passports in tandem with rapid testing, but there's only a very narrow range of scenarios in which it makes a blind bit of difference and those scenarios are inherently temporary. Unless we use the tools at our disposal to really crush the virus, we'll inevitably end up back in lockdown or facing regular waves of disease that overwhelm the NHS.
>> No. 33109 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 1:33 am
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>>33108
>Unless we use the tools at our disposal to really crush the virus, we'll inevitably end up back in lockdown or facing regular waves of disease that overwhelm the NHS.

Bet it's going to happen under this government and with this feckless population. As tediouslad always says, screenshot this.
>> No. 33110 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 3:35 am
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>>33108
>unless we bring it fully under control.

Globally? Absolute insanity.
>> No. 33111 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 4:23 am
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>>33110

Vaccine doses cost about two quid each. The international community should manage to scrape together £16bn to buy doses for everyone - that's about the same cost as nine days of the UK lockdown. Get most of those doses into someone's arm and you're halfway there.

For the cost of three months of furlough, we can build out a global health surveillance system capable of giving us early warning of COVID variants (and non-COVID infectious disease threats). If the Yanks chip in the cost of a Ford-class aircraft carrier, we can provide basic healthcare to everyone in sub-Saharan Africa. Lob a few quid to the WHO so they don't have to rummage down the sofa for coppers and we're basically sorted.

It's not cheap cheap, but it's a hell of a lot less expensive than the alternative. It's one thing that we don't give a shit about malaria or XDR-TB, but it'd be poetic if we end up being ravaged by an infectious disease because we refuse to provide basic healthcare to the world's poorest people.
>> No. 33112 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 4:48 am
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>>33111

Is that two quid to make or to distribute?
>> No. 33113 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 6:22 am
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>>33111

It's not that I disagree with you, everything you say is correct. But my money's on covid.

I don't think we're eradicating this one. The will simply isn't there like it was with the eradication of smallpox. It's like the the moon landings- We did it once to wave our dicks at the Soviet Union and then stopped trying. It's going to become a feature of life, and the deaths it causes will be the first thing to make a dent in human population growth since the invention of antibiotics.
>> No. 33114 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 9:39 am
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>>33111
>The international community should manage to scrape together £16bn to buy doses for everyone - that's about the same cost as nine days of the UK lockdown.
At that price why aren't we just buying everyone a round? Bugger it, we've got a post-imperial reputation to rehabilitate and the odds it shaves 9 days off somewhere else are surely pretty good. When you're spending ~£928 billion a year, what's another 16?
(Okay, okay, so the deficit is £55 billion and another £16bn would be a pretty big chunk of that, but still.)
>> No. 33115 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 12:45 pm
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>>33111
>Vaccine doses cost about two quid each. The international community should manage to scrape together £16bn to buy doses for everyone - that's about the same cost as nine days of the UK lockdown. Get most of those doses into someone's arm and you're halfway there.

If you happen to know someone who has 15 billion spare covid vaccines (for we'll need two at a minimum) then I'm sure the everyone would love to hear about it. Just don't tip our new supplier off because they can effectively hold the world to ransom.

Anyway that's always the problem. It's all well and good saying we can just spend a bit of money but it's nowhere near that simple when getting covid vaccines into conflict zones is going to be nightmare for the same reason people can starve in 21st century.

>>33113
I think history shows you're misguided in your cynicism. We consistently get better at dealing with problems after every disaster and the institutions we're relying on now show this dating back to at least the International Sanitary Conferences.

In the immediate term pandemic monitoring is going to be the new black. The problem will be 10-20 years down the line and the inevitable US-China cunt-offs rendering us forgetful.
>> No. 33117 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 2:07 pm
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>>33111
>>33114
Do we know for sure if the AZ vaccine (the one that only costs a couple of quid and can be kept at regular fridge temperatures) is actually effective enough to provide herd immunity on it's own?
Depending on who you ask anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of the population need to be immune to hit the herd immunity threshold, but the AZ vaccine is only somewhere around 75% effective against regular covid and almost useless at preventing symptomatic infection (and therefore transmission) for at least one variant.

>>33113
We might not eradicate it completely but infection rates will drop as more people are vaccinated, which means less chances for it to mutate, which means more time to adjust vaccines and vaccinate more people before the next partial escape variant pops up.
Hopefully this should result in a positive feedback loop wich ends with covid being something like measles or polio, where it's not a significant problem in countries with developed healthcare even if we can't completely get rid of it.
>> No. 33119 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 4:00 pm
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>>33117

>Hopefully this should result in a positive feedback loop wich ends with covid being something like measles or polio, where it's not a significant problem in countries with developed healthcare even if we can't completely get rid of it.

It could end up being something you go through in infancy or childhood, when it's not very likely you'll develop severe symptoms, and then you're more or less immune.

The big unknown is still how long your immunisation will last, either from contact with the actual virus or from getting a vaccine. Most studies I'm aware of say that you'll have over five months of very good immunity against covid-19 either way, but it's not fully known or understood yet if your body will still be immune on its own on a more long-term timescale, or if we're all going to need another jab once every year or something.
>> No. 33120 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 4:24 pm
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>>33117

>We might not eradicate it completely but infection rates will drop as more people are vaccinated, which means less chances for it to mutate, which means more time to adjust vaccines and vaccinate more people before the next partial escape variant pops up.

This, plus the fact that small numbers of cases are much easier to track and isolate. Eradication isn't a realistic aim at this stage, but we can achieve a level of control that prevents major outbreaks without onerous lockdown measures.

>>33115

>If you happen to know someone who has 15 billion spare covid vaccines (for we'll need two at a minimum) then I'm sure the everyone would love to hear about it.

We can't do it overnight, but we can do it. AZ expect to produce 3bn doses this year. Sinopharm and Sinovac are targeting 1.5bn doses this year, plus another 700m from Bharat Biotech. Add the also-rans and we're expecting 6-7bn doses by the end of this year. The real gamechanger for the developing world is the J&J/Janssen vaccine, which only requires a single dose and can be stored at ordinary fridge temperatures; we should be chucking money at them to ramp up production.

If we really knuckle down, it's a realistic goal to have 70-80% of the global population vaccinated by next summer. That won't provide true herd immunity, but it will slow the spread of the virus enough to make it manageable.
>> No. 33121 Anonymous
16th April 2021
Friday 5:09 pm
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>>33111
>Vaccine doses cost about two quid each.
AZ doses cost about 2 quid each and are being sold at cost, and every man and his dog is arguing the toss first about whether it should be banned from use because it might only be 70% effective instead of 90% effective, next about whether the EU should get more doses first because the EU is more important, and now the EU still wants more doses even though they've decided to ban it from use again because of 1 in a million people having serious side effects.

The Chinese vaccines also cost a few quid each but it's starting to look like they're closer to 50% effective against the first variant and next to useless against the newer mutations.
The Russian vaccines are cheap but the only solid data that western scientists have had access to looks sort of tampered.
And then there's the US/German vaccines which are probably the most effective, but they're being sold at extortionate mark-ups because they can.
>> No. 33149 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 4:48 pm
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https://news.sky.com/story/sweden-faces-sperm-shortage-as-potential-donors-avoid-hospitals-during-pandemic-12275976

>Sweden is facing a shortage of sperm for assisted pregnancy as potential donors have avoided hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

>Men are being urged to come forward after inseminations were halted in large parts of the healthcare system and waiting times were driven up sharply.


Do people really have to have sprogs in the middle of a pandemic? Aren't there more pressing issues right now, especially considering that Sweden ist the worst-hit country in Europe at the moment.
>> No. 33150 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 5:23 pm
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>>33149
I think you're underestimating how long human pregnancy lasts even without IVF bullshit. It's not like your cats.

I'd happily donate my manbatter if only I didn't end up getting doxxed in 18 years time. Bad enough all the stuff I'd have to do to maximise my load.
>> No. 33151 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 6:13 pm
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>>33150

> if only I didn't end up getting doxxed in 18 years time

That, and a friend who is a barrister has told me that just because a child from a sperm donation that was performed at a licensed clinic has no inheritance rights today, doesn't mean that that is set in stone and can't be overturned in the future. A child has the right to know who their biological dad is, and just imagine you donate spunk today and you do very well financially in the next 18 years, or the biological mother falls on hard times and struggles to support her teenage child. Especially in cases where the mother chooses to have a child as a single parent and no legal father is named, there is at least a theoretical possibility that somebody when they reach 18 will attempt to challenge the law, if they stand to get financial security out of it if they succeed. In that sense, it could be a ticking time bomb, even if the law currently says that that's not possible.
>> No. 33152 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 8:52 pm
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>>33149

My sister lives in Sweden with her husband. The country is fine, don't believe the lies.
>> No. 33153 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 8:52 pm
33153 spacer
>>33149

My sister lives in Sweden with her husband. The country is fine, don't believe the lies.
>> No. 33154 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 9:21 pm
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>>33153

You're being weirdly defensive about Sweden's spunk shortage. Is your sister a big-time jizz dealer or something?
>> No. 33155 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 9:43 pm
33155 spacer
>>33153
And what lies would those be? Go on.
>> No. 33156 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 10:02 pm
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>>33154

Can't be too careful when dealing with Big Jizz.
>> No. 33157 Anonymous
18th April 2021
Sunday 11:38 pm
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>>33156
Seconding this, I know from experience that it takes some balls to have jizz on your hands.
>> No. 33158 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 9:02 am
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>Britons who have received their first vaccine dose have subsequently become infected by variants of Covid-19, NHS Track and Trace’s chief medical adviser has said. Dr Susan Hopkins told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that both the South African and Kent variant have been identified in people “who have had their first dose of vaccine”.

>“That’s to be expected, we know that these vaccines aren’t 100 per cent protecting you against infection and that’s why we ask people to take caution,” she said. “You can see that they’re not as good against the South African variant as they are against our own B117 at preventing infection and transmission.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/covid-vaccine-variant-infected-cases-b1833327.html
>> No. 33159 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 9:34 am
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>>33158
How is that news?
>> No. 33160 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:25 am
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>>33159
Not news, more a reminder that the plague is still lurking and to keep up at least some precautions?
Of course, people will mostly just do what they feel like, but it's a nudge.
>> No. 33161 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:52 am
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>>33159
A lot of people are under the impression that the vaccine means this will all go away and we can go back to normal in a matter of months.
>> No. 33162 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 11:07 am
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>>33161
The vaccine does mean this will eventually all go away, but if people are uninformed on the matter that they can still be infected after having one and even two doses, then that's the fault of the vaccination service not drumming it into them. I'm just saying that e.g. '10% of people have been infected after receiving vaccine providing 90% immunity' is not technically news.
>> No. 33163 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 12:17 pm
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>>33162
Isn't the issue more to do with the infections being the newer strains of the virus?
>> No. 33164 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 12:48 pm
33164 spacer
>>33162 the fault of the vaccination service not drumming it into them.

The vaccination service has to put out the clearest, most unambiguous 'get stabbed, is good' message, to get the most people possible covered.
Confusing the fence sitters with 'you might still get the plague' is not their mission.
>> No. 33165 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 1:14 pm
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>>33162
>then that's the fault of the vaccination service not drumming it into them.

No. What more could they be doing mate? It's been drummed in, the same information has been repeated for a year. The fault here lies in social media conspiracy theorists shouting bullshit over fact. If people still don't understand what's going on at this point they're either wilfully ignorant or properly thick.
>> No. 33166 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 3:50 pm
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>>33164

Politics has taken over from public health. Johnson and Vallance have been quite clear that we're going to have another wave of infections and we'll see an "acceptable number of deaths". The NHS will probably be able to cope and the government want to get the economy moving again. It's explicitly part of the plan, but they don't want to shout about it too loudly for obvious reasons.

That's why we're getting what seem like mixed messages - the government isn't lying, but it isn't being entirely honest either.
>> No. 33167 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 9:28 pm
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>>33165

It's not the sensible people putting us at risk, who have been obeying the lockdown, who are queueing up for the vaccine, and who will continue to act sensibly. It's the thick shitcunts who think telling them to wear a mask is a civil liberties matter and who think it's just a flu and that everybody will get it anyway. And who indeed get their world view from facebook and twitter shitposts and RT newscasts.
>> No. 33168 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:09 pm
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>>33167
UK Column is where it's at lad for "thick cunt" news. I watch it religiously.
>> No. 33169 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:17 pm
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I find it disappointing that after a year there still aren't any interesting face masks. The most adventurous seems to be animal patterns or tartan.

>>33167
>everybody will get it anyway

That's true though. We'll all get it multiple times in a best case scenario.
>> No. 33170 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:21 pm
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>>33169
>I find it disappointing that after a year there still aren't any interesting face masks. The most adventurous seems to be animal patterns or tartan.
>> No. 33171 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:33 pm
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>>33168

>UK Column

Fuckssake. Just read some of the headlines on their web site. I am equal parts appalled and fascinated.
>> No. 33172 Anonymous
19th April 2021
Monday 10:35 pm
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>>33169
I think the problem is that people don't really want to be wearing a very out-there fask mask all the time. It's just something you have to have on.
>> No. 33181 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 1:21 pm
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>>33170
Oh shit I scrolled past this thinking it was just a reaction image. That's pretty good.
>> No. 33182 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 1:23 pm
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>>33181
For some reason that specific one isn't on her website but there are other versions
https://maskalike.com/products/double-vision-face-mask
>> No. 33198 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 3:41 pm
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>>33170
Might actually be good at fooling basic facial recognition, though the advanced AI stuff is getting too good.
>> No. 33201 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 5:27 pm
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The vaccine-resistant strain is here, just as i predicted.
>> No. 33202 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 5:40 pm
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>>33201
How is that different to all the strains not being inoculated against by the vaccines for the others?
>> No. 33205 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:07 pm
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Two weeks ago the BBC were saying the AZ vaccine has a one in a million chance of offing you. Yesterday they said if you're 25 it's 11 in a million. That's almost double the risk of Covid death for someone in their early thirties with no risk factors.
>> No. 33206 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:12 pm
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>>33205
Significantly less than the chances of choking to death on your food.
>> No. 33207 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:41 pm
33207 spacer
my 90yo nan had the vaccine a few months ago and now she's fat and diabetic
>> No. 33208 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:46 pm
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>>33207

Was she already fat and diabetic?
>> No. 33209 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:46 pm
33209 spacer
>>33208

well yeah, but still
>> No. 33210 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 6:47 pm
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>>33205
>That's almost double the risk of Covid death for someone in their early thirties with no risk factors.

Our plan is working perfectly fellow 30-somethings. Soon all the study-drugs and confusing music videos will be ours!
>> No. 33213 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 8:37 pm
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>>33206

What are the chances of that, if you have them?

Just so I have a number to give to my mam when she inevitably texts me this to tell me not to get my second AZ dose.
>> No. 33214 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 8:42 pm
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>>33213
I looked it up and it said 1 in 300,000.
>> No. 33216 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 9:13 pm
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>>33213
He's full of shit. Once again it's just old people that can't chew their food without dying. They're bloody useless.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/009342chokingrelateddeathsregisteredinenglandandwales2014to2017

34 people in their thirties died from choking 2014-2017.
8.9 million people people are in their thirties.
1 in a million yearly chance of choking.

So eating food remains far safer than getting vaccinated.
>> No. 33217 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 9:14 pm
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>>33216

>Odds of dying from choking on food: 1 in 370, 035. Source: national safety council estimates based on data from national center for health statistics and U.S. Census bureau.
https://www.healthtap.com/questions/762555-what-are-the-odds-of-choking-death-from-food-the-death-of-the-cubs-fan-from-a-hot-dog-has-me-freak/
>> No. 33219 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 9:23 pm
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>>33217
I've just explained and posted proof from the ONS (i.e. not some shitty Q&A website) that choking doesn't happen uniformly across age groups. We're only talking about people in their thirties. Though the original choking claim is still wrong even if we grant your number so what point are you even trying to make?
>> No. 33220 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 9:27 pm
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>>33219
I honestly don't know where you got the idea this is a big deal from. Chill out dickhead.
>> No. 33221 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 10:01 pm
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Are we being serious right now lads?

Come on now.
>> No. 33223 Anonymous
20th April 2021
Tuesday 10:31 pm
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>>33216

But aren't the AZ death numbers also across all age groups?
>> No. 33503 Anonymous
3rd May 2021
Monday 9:33 pm
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Proud of them.
>> No. 33504 Anonymous
3rd May 2021
Monday 9:37 pm
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>>33503
This is just getting sad.
>> No. 33505 Anonymous
3rd May 2021
Monday 9:55 pm
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>>33504
I feel sorry for the pub, whose only option is to stick their customers out in the rain by a roundabout.
>> No. 33506 Anonymous
3rd May 2021
Monday 11:29 pm
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>>33505
There's plenty of pubs near me who have just shoved a load of benches into their car parks and pop up gazebos. Just so they can expand their outdoor seating, so the only view you get are other customer's cars and the back of the pub.
>> No. 33507 Anonymous
4th May 2021
Tuesday 7:46 am
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>>33503

Smokers have been putting up with this sort of shit since 2006.
>> No. 33508 Anonymous
4th May 2021
Tuesday 10:33 am
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>Working women are facing a significant risk in the labour market, with far greater numbers being made redundant as a result of the pandemic than during the 2007 financial crisis, according to analysis seen by the Guardian.

>Women are experiencing much higher levels of redundancies during the Covid pandemic than in previous recessions, according to the Trades Union Congress. Female redundancies in the UK hit 178,000 between September and November 2020, according to its analysis – 76% higher than the peak reached during the height of the financial crisis when female redundancy levels hit 100,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/04/women-jobs-risk-covid-pandemic-uk-analysis

MINDWORMS.
>> No. 33509 Anonymous
4th May 2021
Tuesday 10:53 am
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>>33508

You say mindworms, I say tactical reporting of what is essentially a "liberal" newspaper. It's far less controversial to say women than to advocate for unions that would ensure against redundancy during a pandemic. This is how The Guardian operates and you should not expect anything more from it than ever increasing attention to identity politics, and a curious complacency with violent foreign policy.

The only newspaper that might have taken a different viewpoint died in the 1960s.
>> No. 33510 Anonymous
4th May 2021
Tuesday 2:13 pm
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>>33506
They've actually turned a few roads near me into a one-way streets so the pubs and restaurants can expand outdoor space out front. Can't say I'd be comfortable sitting in the road with cars driving through but city pubs are effectively shut otherwise and hopefully van attacks are a thing of the past.
>> No. 33511 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 1:27 am
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>>33508
>>33509

I'm fairly sure the Guardian was compromised in the wake of the Snowden affair, their reporting quality has nosedived ever since then and increasingly focussed on this kind of provocative reporting, where the obvious real life contradiction to their wooly liberal editorial stance is self evident, but they play it totally straight. I used to like the Graun, even if it was a bit too much middle class hand-wringing at times, but it's pure dogshit now.

Somebody told me they were bought out or their parent group changed hands or something to that effect, which would really go a long way to explaining it, but upon googling it I can't find anything to indicate that being true.
>> No. 33512 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 2:07 am
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>>33511
I don't know if it's anything quite as shady as that. They had new management quite shortly after the Snowden leaks and physical newspaper sales have collapsed, which in addition to horrible top and bottom banner ads asking you to buy a car or a newspaper subscription, "paid content" about I don't know what because my eyes glaze over whenever I scroll by, also means a level of bullshit algorithmic and social media exploitation. Maybe Viner is with the security services and I'm just a mook, well, I am a mook, but that doesn't prove the other thing.
>> No. 33513 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 3:25 am
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>>33511

Alan Rusbridger was editor between 1995 and 2015. When he retired he was replaced with Katharine Viner, who is a bit shit.

The Graun is wholly owned by a trust, so it's not beholden to shareholders or commercial interests. It has been badly affected by the broader decline in newspaper circulation and ad revenues, losing enough money to threaten their long-term future. It's arguable that these financial pressures have caused them to pander to their core readership. They don't want to go behind a paywall, because being the only free broadsheet gives them disproportionate influence.
>> No. 33514 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 8:39 am
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>>33509

This kind of reporting does more to help 'the otherside' than a 100 paul Joseph Watsons ever could. The pandering is so transparently obvious it makes me wonder it makes me presume that there are plenty of other instances where it wasn't so immediately clear, and therefore question if the agenda or narrative they are pushing has any truth at all. When people talk about the marginalisation of men, or feminism doesn't care about equality only women's special interests they can reference this and it is evident that they have a point.
>> No. 33515 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 3:33 pm
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>>33514
You will read a news article that's about you. Women are 51% of everyone.That is a massive audience you can get for basically no effort. There's nothing weird about this reporting at all. And I wouldn't be surprised if women are overrepresented in the jobs that mostly got furloughed, so the story makes sense.
>> No. 33516 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 3:39 pm
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>>33515
But we're not just talking about this article, we're talking about a noticeable trend with the Grauniad. Unless you're saying you've not noticed anything change, in which case I'd disagree but wouldn't be arsed to argue.
>> No. 33517 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 10:45 pm
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>Covid: Britons fly via Turkey to avoid costly quarantine

>UK travellers returning from "red list" countries are flying home via Turkey to avoid hefty hotel quarantine fees. Passengers are breaking their journey in Istanbul, and staying in hotels there for a fraction of the cost they would have to pay in Britain.

>Travellers from countries on the red list would otherwise face bills of up to £1,750-per-person to isolate in a hotel if they flew to the UK directly. Those using the route must still quarantine at home once back in the UK.

>One hotel worker in Istanbul said he had seen British nationals flying in from laplanderstan, India and Bangladesh - which are all on the UK's red list. The BBC has also spoken to travellers returning from laplanderstan to the UK, many of whom were attending weddings or funerals and say they couldn't afford the cost of quarantining once the rules changed. As long as they isolate at home for 10 days after returning from a non-red list country, they are not breaking the UK government's Covid rules.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56984057

What could possibly go wrong?
>> No. 33518 Anonymous
5th May 2021
Wednesday 11:39 pm
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>>33516

>I'd disagree but wouldn't be arsed to argue

Not saying otherlad is one, but I've generally concluded it's best not to with Those Type Of People.

What you do is you just say "Well, you're wrong, and I won't let you motte and bailey your way out of this one" and then stop engaging.
>> No. 33556 Anonymous
14th May 2021
Friday 12:45 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-57100378

>If you've been feeling particularly overwhelmed after socialising and getting back to a relatively normal life since coronavirus restrictions started to ease, you're not alone.

>What some people call a 'social hangover' is the feeling of exhaustion after depleting all your energy.


Good thing .gs lad doesn't have any social life to go back to.
>> No. 33557 Anonymous
14th May 2021
Friday 2:22 pm
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>>33556

We're not even back properly but it has been utterly exhausting to talk to people in real life at work. I suppose a lot of that is having to have the same conversation a hundred times. I understand people mean well but how many people do I have to tell I spent my lockdown doing the garden and painting the house?

Mind you I have always found socialising tiring. I don't particularly think I want to go to the pub anymore.
>> No. 33558 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 12:28 pm
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>>33557

There's hope yet that we'll stay in lockdown a little longer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57119579


>England's full relaxation of rules in June is in jeopardy and there is the looming spectre of greater pressure on the NHS.

>The thorn in the plans is the variant of coronavirus that emerged in India - B.1.617.2 - and has started spreading around the world.

>Concerns have been mounting over the past week and, for the first time, the scientists advising the UK government are now confident it does spread more easily.
>> No. 33559 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 2:43 pm
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>>33558
It can't be called lockdown, though. Happy fun stay home time? I'm looking forward to the weaseling that's going to be needed.
>> No. 33560 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 3:10 pm
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I just ruined my weekend by calculating all the money I wasted living in London throughout this when I could've just moved to the North East. The entire time I thought to myself "oh but It'll only be a 2-3 more months before the government brings us back into the office. And then I might not be able to find a good flat. Plus there's moving costs."

Damn it all to hell.

>>33558
>>33559
It'll be locality lockdown like it always secretly was. We'll lockdown the entire country BUT if you live in Shetland you will still be able to go to the pub. Boris has talked about the potential for local lockdowns the entire time.
>> No. 33561 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 3:13 pm
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>>33559

>It can't be called lockdown, though. Happy fun stay home time?

Why not call a spade a spade.
>> No. 33562 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 6:47 pm
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>Hospital bosses in Bolton have told The Independent they have seen a rise in patients being admitted sick with coronavirus, some needing intensive care. The Bolton NHS Foundation Trust medical director said a majority of the sick patients had not been vaccinated but would have been eligible for the jabs.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-bolton-cases-coronavirus-vaccine-b1847653.html

It was nice knowing you, lads. Asians refusing the vaccine has doomed us all.
>> No. 33563 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 10:16 pm
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>>33562

I never understood how you can refuse the vaccine. It's a simple, safe procedure which massively improves your odds and those of your loved ones of making it through this pandemic unharmed.

I had some discomfort after my first dose for a few days, i.e. slight flulike symptoms, which I made sure weren't actually an acute underlying covid infection. But between feeling a bit under for a few days and being put on a ventilator, it was a no brainer really.
>> No. 33564 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 10:58 pm
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>>33563
My brother refused his vaccine as he's spent the entire pandemic pretending it's not happening. It's not like he refuses to wear a mask or anything and he does deal with the effects due to having children but on some level he won't recognise what has happened.

Everyone thinks he's a manchild but to an extent I get it, I'm going to get the jab but it's fantastical that we're all about to take the Not-Aschen vaccine. Think about it, all this sudden disclosure about UFOs and the boom in crop circles last year, vaccines inoculating the entire population with little testing or liability.
>> No. 33565 Anonymous
15th May 2021
Saturday 11:33 pm
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My dogtor texted me a code to book my vaccination with and I deleted it.

R8
>> No. 33566 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 12:07 am
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>>33565
19/10
>> No. 33567 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 1:26 am
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>>33565

If you're eligible you can just book it on the relevant .gov page. I think you need your medical record number.
>> No. 33568 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 2:03 am
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>>33563
There are cultural issues. If you're black, then it was people like you who got deliberately infected with syphilis and then left to die over many decades for "research" purposes, even after syphilis treatments had advanced to the point where you didn't need to suffer with it at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

And that's before you get to other things black people have been told historically which turned out not to be true, such as, "We'll be really grateful if you sail to England on this big Windrush ship", "The report confirmed that institutional racism does not exist", and even, "Hey, you're slaves now. Come with me to the Carribean; I promise it's not going to be horrible." I wouldn't trust whitey either if he started chasing me around the room with a syringe after everything else he'd done.

For eskimos, there are various concerns that the vaccine is not halal, or that it's made from pigs, or whatever. These are all conspiracy theories, but again, wypipo have not always been sympathetic to these concerns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bite_the_cartridge

Also, there are some immigrants who do not speak English, and others who won't allow their wives to go outside, and other similar bollocks. These are all reasons why non-whitey might wind up not being vaccinated.
>> No. 33569 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 2:33 am
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>>33568
Sounds like a load of bollocks to me conjured up by other people as an excuse. Just as when they talk about the issue being access to healthcare facilities as if they live in the fucking woods or that we don't have house calls and visits to retirement homes.

For example the Quran even makes specific exception on halal where one's life is concerned. Even if it was true, that we injected alcoholic bacon into your arm, is anyone really going to give a fuck? No. The real reason some communities have poor uptake is that they have a larger group of cowardly morons.
>> No. 33570 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 2:38 am
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>>33568
>There are cultural issues. If you're black, then it was people like you who got deliberately infected with syphilis and then left to die over many decades for "research" purposes, even after syphilis treatments had advanced to the point where you didn't need to suffer with it at all.

This is not a cultural issue, it's an excuse, considering fuck all people know about this.
>> No. 33571 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 9:14 am
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>>33568

I can't believe I need to say this, but there are more cultures than white and not white. And there are more countries in the world than the united states of America.

The worst cultural oppression indians ever got is we hung them when they kept burning women alive. What imperialist bastards the British were.
>> No. 33572 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 9:18 am
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>>33571
>The worst cultural oppression indians ever got is we hung them when they kept burning women alive.
...
>> No. 33573 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 9:50 am
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>>33572
Some Indians have a thing for gangraping women and setting them alight afterwards.
>> No. 33574 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 9:59 am
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>>33573
Apparently that's quite literally the only thing you know about British-Indian relations.
>> No. 33575 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 10:07 am
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>>33574
If you say so, lad.
>> No. 33576 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 10:21 am
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>>33575
Yes. You think we went around doing all sorts of heinous shit to all the other colonies but arbitrarily behaved really well in India? The Vellore Mutineers weren't murdered in cold blood after surrendering? The 1919 Amritsar massacre? In 1857 almost the entire city of Delhi wasn't wiped out? Native women weren't regularly abducted and raped with laws made to protect the British, Christian rapists? Taxes enforced in places of up to 90% of agricultural output, Churchill didn't knowingly leave over four million people to starve to death? The arbitrary British partitioning of India and laplanderstan didn't have as violent results there as the same attitude has demonstrably done in Africa?
If you say so, lad.
>> No. 33577 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 10:37 am
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>>33576
Oh, dear.
>> No. 33578 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 10:58 am
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>>33572
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

It was a sacred Hindu tradition to burn/ bury alive the widow on the husbands funeral pyre/ in his grave, and it only stopped because the British stopped them.

I don't know what this lad >>33573 is referring to.

>>33576
>Whatabout

you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the British empire operated and how the Indians were behaving to each other before the British came, none of what you have listed is oppression of the Indian culture, it was the Indian culture. But this statement is the most absurd of them all
>british partitioning of India and laplanderstan didn't have as violent results

If you think that the desire for and the need for religious segregation in india is purely a creation of british desire you need to pull your head out of your ignorant knowledge that only extends as far as your own back garden right now. You probably talked to an Indian about it and they acted indignant, now try seeing it from the other perspective. The creation of laplanderstan was a humanitarian action that has prevented genocide.
>> No. 33579 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 11:06 am
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>>33578
>none of what you have listed is oppression of the Indian culture, it was the Indian culture.
Weird that the British were doing it then and when they saw it, on multiple occasions entire swathes of Sikh soldiers in the British army promptly defected. Almost as though it wasn't normal to them.
>If you think that the desire for and the need for religious segregation
The failure to properly religiously segregate is exactly the problem.
>> No. 33580 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 11:09 am
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I love the ascribing of the famine Churchill caused to "Indian culture", by the way.
>> No. 33581 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 11:38 am
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>>33579

>The failure to properly religiously segregate is exactly the problem.

Be honest, do you really think under any circumstances ever they would ever be a division that they weren't complaining that the split was wrong. Being able to blame the British rather than each other is actually the healthiest religious relations they have ever had.
>> No. 33582 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 11:42 am
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>>33580
This has been thoroughly been debunked as BJP propaganda that spread to the west due to shared interests. To blame this entirely on Churchill is ridiculous and downplays the issues raised across Bengali society at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

Stop filling the thread up with bollocks.
>> No. 33583 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 1:12 pm
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>>33581
>>33582
No, you're right. Like I said, we definitely arbitrarily treated the Indians really well despite doing all sorts of heinous things to every single other colony, they were going to kill each other anyway so it's fine that we did it instead and it's also all just awful anti-British propaganda that never happened in the first place.
>> No. 33584 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 1:16 pm
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>>33583
>we
Fucks sake, I'm not that old.
>> No. 33585 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 1:47 pm
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It always amazes me how quickly .gs goes into cunt off mode.

So now a debate on why people don't want to get the jab has derailed into a condemnation of racism in the former Colonies.

Never change, .gs.
>> No. 33586 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 2:01 pm
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>>33585

I decided to sit this one out precisely because I already knew exactly the direction it was going to go in.

Regardless I think there's definitely some sort of horse shoe racism going on when people would rather excuse every single flaw in ethnic minority communities as the fault of what the British empire did generations ago, rather than allowing brown people the collective agency to be silly dickheads in their own right.

If you make fun of white anti-maskers and anti-vax conspiracy retards, you should have no issues condemning the elements of the Asian community that have been stubbornly ignoring the restrictions this whole time, and finding ways to somehow carry on visiting laplanderstan and India for the same reasons.

And ignorant dickhead is an ignorant dickhead regardless what colour his or her skin is.
>> No. 33587 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 2:38 pm
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>>33583
You're just engaging in a pathetic display of whataboutism where you can't even get the facts right. If you want to talk about British atrocities in India then there's no shortage but you should actually know what you're talking about first and not lap up the propaganda of a Hindu nationalist party.

To get back to the point, there's no excuse in any of this to not take the vaccine. It doesn't make a lick of sense.
>> No. 33588 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 4:35 pm
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>>33587
It's not "whataboutism" if the other lad started off with
>The worst cultural oppression indians ever got is we hung them when they kept burning women alive.
That's just responding to the topic.
>Wah wah wah you're wrong because I linked to wikipedia and said so
Did you not read the page? It says most people agree it was man-made and that a minority disagree. That's not the decisive, argument-ending evidence you think it is.
>Historians usually characterise the famine as anthropogenic (man-made), asserting that wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis. A minority view holds, however, that the famine was the result of natural causes.
>> No. 33589 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 4:45 pm
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>>33588
>Did you not read the page?

Did you? Anthropogenic means that it comes from a multitude of causes. This runs from Japan to the state of Bengali society before the war.
>> No. 33590 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 6:04 pm
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>>33589
I read the introduction, it's wikipedia so not exactly a primary resource.
>> No. 33591 Anonymous
16th May 2021
Sunday 7:15 pm
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>>33589
>Anthropogenic means that it comes from a multitude of causes
uwotm8?
Anthropo = people, as in anthropology
genic = it's the cause, as in carcinogenic
>> No. 33592 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 11:41 am
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>>33587

>To get back to the point

Thank you.

> there's no excuse in any of this to not take the vaccine.

I had a chat with the service station lad around the corner here the other day, and he's a conspiracy nut if I ever met one. He told me he "knows everything", and has "gathered all his information off the Internet from reliable sources". So the long and the short of it according to him is that the whole pandemic is a conspiracy to enslave mankind to reshape institutions and society in a way that suits members of the global elite. It's all part of a big plan, you see, and of course covid itself is nothing but just another flu virus and all the reports of loads of people dying from it are also fabricated. And it is the vaccine that is making people sick, because after all, nobody fully knows what's in it, and it was only tested on a handful of people before it was approved.

This is what we're up against.

You'll never hear me say that we need to censor the Internet, or parts of it anyway, but something needs to happen so that ever so slightly dim people like him don't fall victim to that kind of propaganda.
>> No. 33593 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 12:03 pm
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>>33592
What if he's right?
>> No. 33594 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 12:46 pm
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>>33592
So does he reckon they just abducting people who have "died" then if they're just making it up?
>> No. 33595 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 12:51 pm
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>>33592
I feel like this has all been a long time coming and something that we didn't properly confront 10 years ago. There has always been an undercurrent of conspiracy theories of course and sometimes it's just good fun/real but there's always one prone to disappearing down a rabbit hole of bollocks that crosses into harm. In fact, for the eskimo community I'd hazard a lot of this problem we now face started with the war on terror and the conspiracies real and imagined that came from it that festered for decades.

Anyway its pretty easy to spot that schizotypicals fall into this but there's also crossover with every other antisocial problems in people resentful over being let down by institutions or their lives being in general shit. It reminds me a lot of the analogy of the gangrenous finger that came out with Trump and the Brexit referendum, we have problems but they're inconvenient to address so we just ignore it until it becomes a crisis. Economic and social exclusion are bullshit that shouldn't happen.

I'm equally unsure on the solution beyond vaguely stopping people falling between the cracks but dread to think what that entails, censoring the internet because adults can't be trusted instead of addressing the underlying problem seems to be the go-to. Although maybe we're just not getting serious because by-and-large people are taking the vaccine at the moment and it's the minority that don't that scare us more than it perhaps should.
>> No. 33596 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 1:00 pm
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>>33594

No, if I understood him correctly, those who die have their cause of death intentionally mislabelled. He seemed to draw that conclusion from entirely anecdotal hearsay on the Internet.

So that in kind of a roundabout way, I guess what he was saying was that if you have covid and you get run over by a lorry, then your cause of death gets listed as covid-19 instead of a traffic accident.

The perfect crime. No, Inspector, I didn't kill my wife. Ignore her gunshot wound, she had covid.
>> No. 33597 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 1:25 pm
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>>33595

> there's also crossover with every other antisocial problems in people resentful over being let down by institutions or their lives being in general shit

True enough; I would guess that somebody like early-30s service station lad who has worked there full time for the best part of three or four years (I really can't remember how long ago I first saw him there) doesn't have much to aspire to. It's not the worst job in the world, but it's still a dead-end job with meagre pay that means you are part of the bottom 20 percent. Google says the average pay for a service station attendant is £8.30 an hour. I vaguely suspect that he's a former convict, as he has some remarkable tattoos on his arms that sort of look like a prison hackjob, and his overall demeanour kind of fits in with that.

Somebody like that will not have the biggest amount of trust in institutions and society as a whole. And these are then some of the people who will all too eagerly go down the fake news rabbit hole.
>> No. 33599 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 1:33 pm
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>>33595

It's almost as if spending decades creating an atomised society with strongly individualist social norms suddenly has its drawbacks if a situationarises wherein you need people to think and act collectively.

>>33596

In fairness there's a grain of truth to that, as with many conspiracy theories, that makes the whole thing stubbornly persistent. In this country at least, we've been very lenient with our reporting, ostensibly to err on the side of caution. Other countries have been more strict. There are plenty of deaths that will have been reported as covid deaths, that weren't deaths FROM covid.
>> No. 33600 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 1:33 pm
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>>33592

My mum doesn't so much think it's a conspiracy as she thinks the virus has been 'blown out of proportion', though she offers no explanation as to why this might be, or how. Because of this, she sees the vaccine as an unnecessarily risk, and though she's not babbling about it like a batshit internet person, she did tell me she doesn't want me to get the shot.

To me, her thinking represents what I see a lot in the community I grew up in (white but poor) - an inherent distrust of facts and figures, both from the media and the government. We know first hand both of these institutions lie to us, so if something new, novel, and slightly too big and serious to be easily digestible comes along that makes our lives strange and inconvenient, then it's the easiest thing in the world to write it off as political lies or media padding, in the vain hope that you're actually right, and as such you don't have to worry about it. For those with ethnic backgrounds that make them have even less trust in and aspect of the system telling them this, then it makes it even easier to believe whatever makes you feel safer.

That's my thought, anyway, though it's really just based on my own rationalising of how a very sensible and reasonably intelligent person like my mother can get like this.

But I get it, I really do, even the more extreme conspiracies - I know full well that governments, media outlets and intuitions are more than capable of lying, misdirecting, or committing atrocities to further their advancements. If someone described to you what MKULTRA was it'd sound like mad raving, unless you knew it really happened, and that's just one example. To my mind the globality and scale of Covid is the one thing that leaves no doubt that it's real. But if it ever came out that it was just a particularly successful joint operation for worldwide population control I honestly wouldn't be that shocked. We watched the american president openly lie for four years of service, why should we be so amazed that people don't believe politicians.
>> No. 33601 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 3:00 pm
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>>33600
When I visited Mexico, I was told that people customarily don't drink the tap water, even in areas where it's supposed to be clean and safe, because they don't trust the government when they say it is.
>> No. 33602 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 3:20 pm
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>>33601

Have you actually tasted the tap water in North- or Mesoamerica?

Public infrastructure in most parts of the entire continent is absolutely piss poor when it comes to things like water and electricity. And in the regions where the water is actually deemed "safe to drink", they often chlorinate the fuck out of it so that it almost tastes like swimming pool water.

Also, in much of Latin America, I wouldn't be surprised if communities bribe labs to vouch for their local water. From what a Guatemalan friend told me, practically all of public life there is based around bribery. Even your house extension will only be approved in a remotely reasonable amount of time if you give your local city employees a little extra under the table.
>> No. 33603 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 3:27 pm
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>>33602
>Mesoamerica
I knew some of you lads were getting on, but it still suprises me sometimes just how far back some of you go.
>> No. 33604 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 3:34 pm
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>>33603

Fine. Central America then, for lads like you who probably use the word "Acktchually" a lot.

Worth pointing out though that the word "Mésoamerica" is still used widely by many locals in the region today. Something you should have picked up while avoiding the local water there.
>> No. 33605 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 3:44 pm
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>>33604
It was a joke, I wasn't trying to "AKCHUALLY" anybody.
>> No. 33606 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 4:29 pm
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>>33600
>We watched the american president openly lie for four years of service, why should we be so amazed that people don't believe politicians.

The problem is people are mainly listening to politicians they don't trust about scientific issues. They should be listening to the scientists and medical professionals and if they have any doubts, endeavour to actually learn. But learning has proven to be too hard and people are just thick and/or mentally ill, and then they get duped into conspiracy theory bullshit and politicising science.
>> No. 33607 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 4:46 pm
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>>33606

I think the problem is also that from a certain level on the socioeconomic ladder downward, people don't have a frame of reference to check fake news against. It's all well and good when you and I who are likely well read and maybe even university educated spot a fib or even a more profound and lage-scale lie just by trusting our educated instincts or doing the simplest of google searches. But it doesn't work that way with many people who left school at 16 with or without their GCSEs and who struggle to string two sentences together, let alone express a complex rational thought.

They will always have that deep-rooted mistrust against anybody who is above them that they will get short changed by them again, and so even the most outrageous bold-faced lies uttered by populist politicians like Trump or to a lesser degree BoJo who seize on that will fall on fertile ground.
>> No. 33608 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 7:39 pm
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>>33606

I think people don't understand how science and medicine works, they think it's all linked to the state, particularly medicine. The government pays the NHS so therefore the NHS is just another branch of government.
>> No. 33609 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 8:37 pm
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>>33606
>and politicising science.
Of course. That's so easy to do. My own belief is that the Internet has provided so much information that you really can cherry-pick true facts to make any hypothesis you want. When coronavirus started, people asked if everyone should wear masks, and the experts said there was no need. Then they said they were wrong, and we actually should. And we have to trust them, because they are experts. They could, absolutely, be wrong again. They probably aren't, but there is no logical inconsistency whatsoever in acknowledging that possibility. Whether you want to wear a mask or not, you can absolutely find evidence, proper evidence from proper scientists, to support your decision. And you can do this with almost anything (depending on how proper you consider the "smoking is good for you" and "climate change is a hoax" scientists to be). So in the end, whatever you want to believe, there are facts that support it.

Stewart Lee did a routine about disagreeing with someone less intellectual than Stewart Lee, and they said, "You can prove anything with facts." This was meant to be a joke, but it's true. You really can. I don't know every fact in the world myself, so I can't challenge you to name an absurd position that I can then prove to be right, with facts, but don't underestimate the power of spin. That's what "post-truth politics" is.
>> No. 33610 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 9:23 pm
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>>33609

> My own belief is that the Internet has provided so much information that you really can cherry-pick true facts to make any hypothesis you want.

That, and there is also a lot of facts laundering, and statistics laundering going on.

It goes something like this: you make spurious claims about something on the Internet or via other media channels, and then you get an institution or, better yet, some news outlet, in any case somebody with even a tiny bit of authority or credibility, to report your spurious claims "as-is". And before long, half the Internet will be parrotting your claims, often blissfully unaware that they originated from an individual, an interest group or whoever else, who pulled them out of thin air.

Wikipedia has a page on that phaenomenon, as a lot of fact laundering unfortunately happens via them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fact_laundering
>> No. 33611 Anonymous
17th May 2021
Monday 9:46 pm
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>>33609

Of course, it's only further complicated by the fact science itself, and the concept of scientific fact, really isn't as concrete as we'd all like it to be, in the context of arguing with idiots online. We, the rationalists of the world, the liberal educated know it alls of the world, often over extend ourselves in treating science as though there is ever an official, unanimously agreed upon answer to any particular question.

There is no World Science Headquarters where all the Chiefs of Science gather around and cast their votes: Does the vaccine turn you into a gay zombie? And then the computer machine bleeps and bloops and prints out a little punch-code. The Science is in: The vaccine does not turn you into a gay zombie! Hot, fresh, science.

I'm being incredibly hyperbolic here of course, but the gist of my point is that peer review and it's pitfalls are a complex thing for actual scientists to navigate, let alone the uninformed layman. And that's not even getting into the very real problems within science to do with where the money goes and where it comes from. It's difficult to even talk about, because if you concede even an inch of science's reputation as infallible and impartial, you give these people the English Channel to sail a boatload of bollocks straight through.
>> No. 33612 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 3:42 am
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>> No. 33613 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 3:48 am
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>>33612
We'll know the actual truth in about twenty years. It doesn't matter now how it started; it's how it ends.
>> No. 33614 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 5:26 am
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>>33611
I've found it absolutely laughable how people wank off peer review the last couple of years. Like it means anything, people don't even read papers.
>> No. 33615 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 10:13 am
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>>33611

I've been doing an internship at the World Science Headquarters and would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that the vaccine has turned people into gay zombies only very occasionally.
>> No. 33616 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 10:22 am
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>>33615

I watched a porn once where a woman was hypnotising me to become a gay zombie. It's not really my thing but I'd had some MDMA so I got into it anyway. I don't think the hypnosis worked, mind. Just nobody say "mountain goat" to me anyway, just to be on the safe side.
>> No. 33617 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 11:24 am
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Just been to the chemist and they're unloading boxes of testing kits on anyone who walks in. Go and do your duty, lads. You know full well you're supposed to.

>>33613
>It doesn't matter now how it started; it's how it ends.

I think you'll find that it fucking does m8. Imagine if we had the data from this to make more effective vaccines.

Obviously it won't effect anything politically, China is engaged in the systemic destruction of the Uighur people and has rapidly stepped up pressure on Taiwan and its neighbours yet all our testing kits are still being made in the country and you'll have a job finding anything to buy that doesn't involve China.
>> No. 33618 Anonymous
18th May 2021
Tuesday 5:58 pm
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A fire engine went down my street earlier and all of the firemen had facemasks on.
>> No. 33619 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 12:43 am
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>>33618
Did they show you their hoses?
>> No. 33620 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 12:59 am
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>>33615

>would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that the vaccine has turned people into gay zombies only very occasionally.

Sounds like something a gay zombie would say.
>> No. 33621 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:52 am
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>>33618

like this?
>> No. 33622 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:55 am
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>>33617

It's honestly pretty funny that capitalists in days of yore took great care to ensure that there were no choke points in the factory where workers could control and demand better conditions/more pay, but modern day capitalists don't have any problems with choke points in global supply chain networks controlled by potentially rogue states...
>> No. 33623 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 10:51 am
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>>33622

As long as the "rogue state" is capitalist too, it doesn't matter, and everything is working as intended. The appearance of international rivalry is essentially a pantomime.
>> No. 33624 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:24 pm
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>> No. 33625 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:35 pm
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>>33617
Just realized I'd better save one of those antigen kits so I can bore the grandchildren with it one day. Make it sound more exciting than spending my weekend masturbating and gorging on sweets.
>> No. 33626 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:44 pm
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>>33625

I ordered one as a memento, but it's just a box full of fairly generic swabs and vials.
>> No. 33627 Anonymous
19th May 2021
Wednesday 9:59 pm
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>>33624

>ummmmmm

Can you stop doing that, please?
>> No. 33628 Anonymous
20th May 2021
Thursday 9:13 pm
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On Facebook they're saying it definitely came from a Chinese lab and it's being covered up to stop WW3 breaking out.
>> No. 33629 Anonymous
20th May 2021
Thursday 11:48 pm
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>>33628

Right. We should be glad that the truth finally comes out.

Facebook has never disappointed as an impartial news source.
>> No. 33651 Anonymous
22nd May 2021
Saturday 5:13 pm
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Covid: Investigation into 'Yorkshire' variant

Health officials are investigating a new Covid variant which has caused 49 cases of infection, mostly in Yorkshire and the Humber region.

Public Health England (PHE) has been monitoring the VUI-21MAY-01 or AV.1 variant since April. PHE said there was "currently no evidence that this variant causes more severe disease or renders the vaccines currently deployed any less effective".

The agency said additional testing and tracing was being carried out.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57199475
>> No. 33653 Anonymous
23rd May 2021
Sunday 1:51 am
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>>33651
>'Yorkshire' variant
The only proper variant, clearly.
>> No. 33654 Anonymous
23rd May 2021
Sunday 10:45 am
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>>33653

We'll have nowt of that poncy southern 'Kent' variant.
>> No. 33655 Anonymous
23rd May 2021
Sunday 11:00 am
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>>33654
Those arty-farty, namby-pamby, hoity-toity, wishy-washy, lardy-dardy, sun-dried tomato eating, decaffeinated southern variants. Eee by gum.
>> No. 33696 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 10:24 am
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1394245014440529921.html

The Cummings Tweet thread rant is getting wild.

What's he up to here?
>> No. 33697 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 10:31 am
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>>33696
Probably trying to sow confusion against the testimony he's currently giving.
>> No. 33698 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 10:50 am
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>>33696

He types exactly like my friend who works in Whitehall. I wonder if they all adopt this sort of shorthand brief style in their work, or if my mate is up to far shader things than I already assumed.
>> No. 33699 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 11:10 am
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>>33696>>33696
>> No. 33700 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 11:45 am
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>>33699
Beat me to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbLm--0Iudo
>> No. 33703 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 11:49 am
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I do find it funny that Cummings was simultaniously the Arch-Nexus of Number 10 and completely beyond reproach for all the stupid ideas and big mistakes.
>> No. 33705 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 11:53 am
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>simultaniously the Arch-Nexus of Number 10 and completely beyond reproach for all the stupid ideas and big mistakes.

Where have I heard this one before...
>> No. 33726 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 4:53 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/25/dominic-cummings-tosser-hand-grenades-hardman-privilege-power

>Dominic Cummings, tosser

Wow. The Grauniad really not pulling punches.
>> No. 33733 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 5:25 pm
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>>33726
>Men are wild, aren’t they? I mean, no offence or anything. But let’s face it. Even so, you’re going to have to settle an argument for me. Which are the biggest dickheads: guys in your workplace who like to think they’re in ‘Nam, or guys in your workplace who like to think they’re in the mafia? Because I need hardly tell you that there is also a wealth of mafia-related imagery currently clustering around Cummings, though if I reprinted even half of that too we wouldn’t have space here for anything else.

>Why in the name of their sagging trackie bottoms do all these chaps speak like this? It’s about as convincing as a Guy Ritchie movie. Or to put it into terms Cummings would reflexively understand: do you reckon they were all giving it this big talk on your precious Manhattan Project? I’m trying to imagine Robert Oppenheimer briefing a journalist that actually he was a lot like Al Capone and that his latest paper was going to be the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Cummings’s Twitter feed is topped with a photo of John von Neumann, Richard Feynman and Stanislaus Ulam in conversation at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Is she thick? He talks like this because he's a SpAd and men use masculine cultural touchstones in communication.
>> No. 33739 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 6:05 pm
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>>33696
I hate myself for saying this but I'm actually starting to like him.

None of the evidence he's giving seems in any way contradictory to how we the public saw events unfolding last year. Ultimately he's just a SpAd and Boris makes all the decisions, most of the power and influence attributed to him seems to come from the infighting in No.10 and the complete failure of anyone else to do something useful and stand up to the tasks.
We all know that Hancock is as useful as a chocolate teapot, that every lockdown has been late, that the borders should have been closed, that the whole thing has been a complete shambles due to the lack of any meaningful planning. The only real question about Cummings involvement is whether he's telling the truth when he says he was advising Boris to go with stricter measures sooner.
>> No. 33747 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 6:55 pm
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>> No. 33748 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 7:42 pm
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>>33739

>The only real question about Cummings involvement is whether he's telling the truth when he says he was advising Boris to go with stricter measures sooner.

I feel like this isn't much of a stretch, you didn't have to be a special advisor to look at italy collapsing and wonder why we weren't reacting.
>> No. 33749 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 9:09 pm
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>>33739
It shows how divisive Brexit really was that politics was filled with people who hate career politicians and want to fuck over London and self-absorbed navel-gazing metropolitan twats, and we all hated them anyway. Without Brexit, these people would surely be universally loved. They're exactly what we've always wanted, apart from aggressively positioning themselves as treacherous hypocrites who despise anybody who isn't a thick racist.
>> No. 33750 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 10:02 pm
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>>33747

https://twitter.com/i/status/1397501413438201857
>> No. 33752 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 10:52 pm
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Happy Birfday are Jezza
>> No. 33753 Anonymous
26th May 2021
Wednesday 11:34 pm
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So is Dominic Cummings this mysterious leader of the opposition I've been hearing so much about?
>> No. 33754 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 12:40 am
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>>33753
Unpopular opinion I know, but I thought he performed very well today and made a lot of sense. If only 10% of what he was saying is true, Hancock is fucked.
>> No. 33755 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 2:06 am
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>>33749

>Without Brexit, these people would surely be universally loved.

Speak for yourself mate. Brexit is the tip of the austerity iceberg.
>> No. 33756 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 11:30 am
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Is having every Tory MP give Hancock a blowjob live in the Houses of Commons really the best reaction to yesterday's news?
>> No. 33757 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 11:58 am
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>>33756

It's a party discipline thing. It's relatively easy for the whips to coerce MPs into supporting Hancock now, while the party is in crisis-management mode and the allegations are mostly unproven. Once they've supported Hancock on the record, it's harder for them to turn against him (and by extension Boris) later without appearing stupid or duplicitous.

The more savvy back-benchers will be trying to keep their heads down as much as possible, but there are plenty of toadies and arselicks who are just too dim to realise that they're being set up.
>> No. 33758 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 2:30 pm
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The Welsh, leading the world - who would have thought?
>> No. 33759 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 2:33 pm
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>>33758

Pretty easy to get the percentages up when the population is less than a middling Indian city
>> No. 33760 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 2:35 pm
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>>33759

Everywhere is comprised of populations less than a middling Indian city if you compartmentalise it right.
>> No. 33761 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 3:34 pm
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>>33755
>austerity
Sajid Javid got sacked as Chancellor because he refused to allow the country to spend beyond its means. We're all high rollers now. Rishi the odious bootlicker (I can't say brown-noser because das rayciss) waltzed in and now he just throws money at everyone, bribing us to forget what a slimy eel he was two years ago. They're nationalising trains, investing in the NHS and paying everyone 80% of their wages to sit home and buy the houses the rest of us want. It's a whole new Conservative party, and it's Labour in all but name and colour. What a shame their election victory was entirely predicated on ignorance and violently denouncing anyone who pays attention to politics as an out-of-touch elitist.
>> No. 33762 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 5:11 pm
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>>33761

Well. It's like a Labour from an alternate universe where all the money goes to business owners and the middle class instead of the working class and unemployed.

That's really all it amounts to. Calculated bribery of broadsheet reading fence sitters. Nevermind the fact that most of the people who really needed help the most throughout all of this were left squarely out in the cold.
>> No. 33763 Anonymous
27th May 2021
Thursday 5:15 pm
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>>33761

That's a great way to spin all the stuff they were forced to do because of a global pandemic.
>> No. 33765 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 8:17 am
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I wonder what ummmlad makes of this

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-was-man-made

>Facebook has lifted a ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made, following a resurgence of interest in the “lab leak” theory of the disease’s onset.

>The social network says its new policy comes “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/coronavirus-china.html

>Mr. Biden on Wednesday announced that he had ordered the intelligence community to undertake a renewed examination of where the coronavirus came from and said that some intelligence agencies believe it was most likely created naturally, while at least one other favored the theory that it leaked accidentally from a lab in China.
>> No. 33766 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 8:33 am
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>>33765
Everyone knows the Chingalings are behind this.
>> No. 33767 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 12:06 pm
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>>33765
I've always believed in the accidental leak theory, the best example of it happening is our own foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2007, which actually started because of a leaking pipe at the Pirbright Institute, which is also a BSL4 lab.

But, I don't think we'll ever find out - there will never be enough evidence either way.
>> No. 33768 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 12:36 pm
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>>33765

I think this has more to do with American media opportunism moving to suit the new agenda than it does anything about the origins of covid.

Back when it was Trump in charge, the story was spun so that Trump was a moronic bigot and so was anyone who even considered a viewpoint that might align with his. Now that he's dealt with, normal service (MERRIKER) can resume.
>> No. 33769 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 2:08 pm
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>>33768
>Back when it was Trump in charge, the story was spun so that Trump was a moronic bigot and so was anyone who even considered a viewpoint that might align with his.

I think this is true and it really says something that Facebook outright banned any such discussion. There's really no reason to discount the idea given China's reputation for lax standards and the fact that this is the same dictatorship trying to convince the world that they're sending Uighurs to Butlins.

It's probably also partly the same problem New Zealand has that China is too economically important to criticise. I'm sure only close US-allies are going to bring this up and as a result everyone is going to play this in the context of a cold war. Putin has already joined Chinese efforts to suggest this was a US biological weapon.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-china-team-peddle-insane-224247396.html
>> No. 33770 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 2:18 pm
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>>33767
I never knew about the Birmingham smallpox outbreak that happened in the late seventies. Also a leak, very interesting read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_United_Kingdom
>> No. 33771 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 3:22 pm
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>>33770

That is a good one. Mad to think how much more lax we were with things back in the old days. Some of the older chaps at work have told me jaw dropping stories about keeping their milk in the same fridge as blood samples, benches with cigarette burns in them because people smoked on the job, and so on. That said:

>Although there is general agreement that the source of Parker’s infection was the smallpox virus grown at the Medical School laboratory, how Parker contracted the disease remains unknown.

There's two types of visitors to my lab. Ones who are clearly bricking it because they think entering a microbiology lab is like a scene from the film Outbreak, and ones who are callous bordering on stupid and have to be persuaded to wear a white coat and wash their hands even though they're "only popping in for five minutes".

I bet she was one of the latter, or one of the other staff working there was. Even though things were less strict back then, they weren't totally daft; in the end it was probably just basic complacency and failing to follow procueedure.

Same is totally plausible for covid. I would still rule out the possibility of it being "man made" however.
>> No. 33772 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 4:11 pm
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>>33771
I thought we'd already decided that it was because someone bummed a bat.
>> No. 33773 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 5:32 pm
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>>33772

Don't be daft. They rimmed a pangolin.
>> No. 33775 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 10:07 pm
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And the SARS lab leaks post original SARS outbreak way back when
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137

And the 2015 Nat Medicine Paper doing gain-of-function research that was super controversial and resulted in the NIH revoking funding from that kind of research

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985

And the whole CRISPR baby scandal from 2018 showing that seriously beyond-the-pale research was occurring either with govt support or without its knowledge

It's pretty interesting to read about the cause of the
1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak in Russia and subsequent Communist Government's response. There are so many parallels, right down to the authorities claiming that the source of the illness was tainted meat.
>> No. 33777 Anonymous
28th May 2021
Friday 11:00 pm
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https://nypost.com/2021/05/28/scientists-at-wuhan-lab-filmed-being-bitten-by-bats-report/
>> No. 33782 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 5:55 am
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337823378233782
It's the Chinks wot dun it.
>> No. 33783 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 9:30 am
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>>33782
>rejected by major scientific journals
Sounds legit then. I'm sure the Daily Mail are asking the right questions about this paper.
>> No. 33784 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 9:34 am
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OH LOOK. From a YEAR AGO.

https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/
>> No. 33785 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 9:37 am
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>>33783>>33784
Everyone else is in the pocket of China, like the WHO.
>> No. 33786 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 9:37 am
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We won't get fooled again.
>> No. 33790 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 12:01 pm
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I like how the line of thought that concludes with the Chinese having creating COVID-19 somehow lets major Western governments off the hook for behaving like scoundrels and idiots for well over a year. Xi Jinping didn't send nana back to the care home with a respiratory tract full of SARS-Cov 2. I'm quite certain it's bollocks anyway, but the lengths conservatives here and in the USA will go to to avoid blaming their elected officials is quite amazing; Russian serfs demanded higher standards of governance than some of these people.
>> No. 33791 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 12:36 pm
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>>33790

It could be the case that the virus escaped from a lab and also that our elected officials utterly failed with regards to both pandemic preparedness before the fact and in its their subsequent response to the pandemic.

Both are not mutually exclusive events, like Chernobyl they are all are born of a moldy cocktail of hubris, corruption and incompetence.
>> No. 33792 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 1:08 pm
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>Taiwan accuses China of interfering with Covid vaccine deals

>Taiwan’s president has accused China of interfering in its vaccine acquisition programme, as the island continues to battle hundreds of daily new cases of Covid-19 with low supplies of vaccines. Taiwan has received about 700,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine so far, for a population of 24 million. While the island had been largely Covid-free since the pandemic began, an outbreak in late April has so far infected more than 5,000 people, and killed at least 47. Less than 2% of the population are vaccinated.

>The president, Tsai Ing-wen, said Taiwan had made successful deals with AstraZeneca from the UK and Moderna from the US, and was engaging with Germany’s BioNTech for the Pfizer vaccine. “We had almost completed the contract signing with the German manufacturer at one point, but it has been delayed till now because China has interfered,” Tsai told a party meeting on Wednesday, in the most explicit comments to date, after months of suggestions that Beijing had been getting in the way of Taiwan’s procurement process.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/27/taiwan-president-accuses-china-interfering-covid-vaccine-deals

And they were doing so well.

>>33782
>Top and bottom right

I blame a lack of PlayStation for this growing crisis. There's no room for confusing your left and right when you need to put the cheats in for GTA.

>>33784
Thank goodness we have someone to share with us a link to Full Fact. An organisation whose focus is telling morons not to drink bleach and failed multiple appeals for charity status as it could not sufficiently distance itself from political work.

>As we have written about before, it is widely agreed by scientists that the new coronavirus came from an animal source and could not have been engineered in a lab.

This is an appeal to authority. The flaw is that markers are circumstantial and the link improbable. Or to look at what the WHO is saying in the wider context of their analysis:

>The team also visited several laboratories in Wuhan and considered the possibility that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory incident. However, I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough. Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions. Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-remarks-at-the-member-state-briefing-on-the-report-of-the-international-team-studying-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2

China repeatedly obstructed the work of the WHO in this area and is unlikely to ever allow another investigation. In the next month we'll either have a smoking gun or we'll still be playing probabilities.

>>33790
Go to bed, Jackie Chan.
>> No. 33794 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 1:44 pm
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>>33790

"China attacked us with a bioweapon, our intelligence agencies didn't give us early warning, we were completely unprepared, we totally botched the response and we can't even prove that they did it" doesn't seem like a position of strength.

However you slice it, this pandemic has been a triumph for East Asia and a humiliation for the West.
>> No. 33798 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 4:48 pm
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>>33794
>a triumph for East Asia

OK?

Also given India (hardly 'the West') is being absolutely sundered by this virus, how is that supposed to improve their relationship with their Chinese neighbours?
>> No. 33799 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 5:18 pm
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So I went to have my first shot today but I didn't get there thanks to the crappy train service. Am I going to die?
>> No. 33800 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 5:24 pm
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>>33799
Couldn't you just turnup anyway? I don't think they're going to turn you away for being a bit late.
>> No. 33801 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 5:25 pm
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>>33798

Japan has double our population but 90% fewer covid deaths. The fact that they look bad by comparison with their neighbours just highlights the vast disparity in responses between East Asia and pretty much everyone else.

>how is that supposed to improve their relationship with their Chinese neighbours?

What the fuck are India going to do about it? China are selling missile technology to laplanderstan, for crying out loud. India might throw their weight around in Aksai Chin, but they're fully aware that they continue to exist only because of China's utter indifference.
>> No. 33802 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 5:53 pm
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>>33800

I would've been about 30 mins late, it felt like too much so I went home.
>> No. 33803 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:03 pm
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>>33802

It seems very much to me like they've got a policy not to turn people away. The appointments are more just to make sure everyone doesn't rush in at once first thing in the morning. Ring 111 and they'll likely re-book you without much fuss.
>> No. 33804 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:08 pm
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>>33802
I was an hour early for mine, and they saw me with no fuss. You should have carried on.
>> No. 33805 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:13 pm
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>>33801
>What the fuck are India going to do about it? China are selling missile technology to laplanderstan, for crying out loud. India might throw their weight around in Aksai Chin, but they're fully aware that they continue to exist only because of China's utter indifference.

I hate India more than most people but you're utterly wrong if you don't think India is a threat to China. The Andaman Islands could cut China's major artery and the border provocations are designed to push Indian military spending away from the navy.

Even in strictly economic terms the Indian market is huge and has a lot of potential to grow.
>> No. 33806 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:17 pm
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>>33782
They've put it in the headline so I can't get too upset (usually they bury it well down in the article), but it still pisses me off that this is structured "China created Covid, study claims" rather than "Study claims China created Covid".
I hate headline writers and their misleading use of the English language.

>>33791
I do wish people were more angry about this sort of thing. Let's say China created a bioweapon, let's even go further, let's say they unleashed it on purpose to cause chaos - very good, we knew pretty quickly we could counter it with lockdowns, travel restrictions, etc, and countries that did this competently have done alright. We completely fucked that up. If we're to compare to to the Blitz (another attack by a hostile power, albeit which killed less people despite requiring slightly more protection than a brief lockdown!) instead of building air raid shelters, setting up AA guns, evacuating kids to the countryside and so on, our current government would no doubt have been getting everyone to coat themselves in petrol and stand in their local aeroplane factory while the prime minister talks about having Arthur Harris level his house with a squadron of Lancasters to show that it's no worse than a bump on the head.

But the public consensus seems to be that everyone tried their best so it's perfectly fine that 128,000 people are dead. For being the sort of wankers who whine about how everyone gets a participation prize these days they seem incredibly willing to hand them out to government ministers.
>> No. 33808 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:23 pm
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>>33805

>Even in strictly economic terms the Indian market is huge and has a lot of potential to grow.

I can't help but feel that's wishful thinking. On paper India looks like it could become a superpower in the next 50 years, but in reality it's an illusion based on sheer population.

When you have a billion and a half people of course it's a big market, but they're all dirt poor peasants who wash their clothes in the same river they shit in, and the government is doing basically nothing to change that. That's not the kind of economy that can really leverage it's big on paper numbers into meaningful action.
>> No. 33810 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 6:34 pm
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>>33806

>But the public consensus seems to be that everyone tried their best so it's perfectly fine that 128,000 people are dead. For being the sort of wankers who whine about how everyone gets a participation prize these days they seem incredibly willing to hand them out to government ministers.

Well said.

Looking back to the start of all this, when we were first hearing the rumbles of all this in late December 2019, early January 2020, I was very much in the camp of "nothing serious, it'll all blow over and be out of the news by April in time for another stand-off with Russia or a big earthquake in Malaysia." Obviously I couldn't have been more wrong, but the reason I was inclined to think that way is that it beggars belief how nothing was done sooner; the fact nothing was being done at those early stages told me that the media were blowing it all out of proportion, and if it was anything serious the scientists would have told the government to go full Madagascar already and prevent it reaching us in the first place.

Obviously, in retrospect I should have been more cynical about it and realised the government would just wilfully ignore such advice, as appears to have been the case. But I really thought that regardless of your political affiliation and views, our government could at least be trusted to act in the case of a genuine fucking worldwide pandemic straight out of an airport thriller novel. Yeah they fiddle their expenses and they fuck it all up whenever they try procure a new IT system, but that stuff is all small fry, surely the country still has the capacity to act when the stakes are serious.

What this has all proven is that we do not. The bones have been hollowed out, and the government and administration we have today is basically a cargo cult.
>> No. 33815 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 8:05 pm
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>>33808
>When you have a billion and a half people of course it's a big market, but they're all dirt poor peasants who wash their clothes in the same river they shit in, and the government is doing basically nothing to change that. That's not the kind of economy that can really leverage it's big on paper numbers into meaningful action.

That's why it's a potential market and why before 2020 India had a higher growth-rate than China. Even today India is one of China's biggest trading partners despite all the negative perception in the Indian market. It's actually fairly easy to see where India could generate growth e.g. reforming its internal market to remove barriers to goods moving in-country so I don't see why you wouldn't see potential here.

I need to point out that the savage cyberbullying of Indians over their poo actually did seem to have an effect.

>>33810
I thought the same back then but for me it came down to all the similar scares we've had over my lifetime. The government action was late but I can get why when you first heard of it you wouldn't think much and that goes double given the poor information we had at the time. Taiwan is an exceptional case because they could afford to take no chances and they did and it worked out this time.

I was even dating a Malay-Chinese woman at the time and she went to the New Year festival in her homeland, asking her about it when she came back she didn't notice anything.
>> No. 33816 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 8:06 pm
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>>33810
I think the reason you were inclined to think that way was more that most recent pandemics have been more or less isolated and short-lived. Swine flu, bird flu, HxNx, SARS, MERS and so on - all caused serious international outbreaks but we saw nothing like we're seeing on the scale of COVID-19, so to have it take us by surprise is, I think, understandable.

But I agree with the rest of your post - threats to national security are supposed to be the government's bread and butter, and there was Johnson, boasting about how many COVID patient hands he had shaken in March '20 like it was all a big joke to him. Then even after being forced to lock down the country, the borders were open - I had family members returning from abroad who were leaving Heathrow and getting on the Tube no questions asked. And they are polling at 44%.
>> No. 33817 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 8:09 pm
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>>33816

Isn't the reason they do or don't last to do with how well the government responds to them?
>> No. 33818 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 8:27 pm
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I'm still trying to get over Cummings claim that the PM wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television. Imagine how many children would be scarred for life if he died from it.
>> No. 33819 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 8:57 pm
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>>33818
I feel ripped off that we didn't get to see that. Ordinarily that might be a nasty thing to wish on someone, but he went and got covid anyway so it's not even like wishing him harm - it's just wishing that harm he was going to bring on himself anyway had happened in the most absurd way possible.
>> No. 33820 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 9:44 pm
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>>33818

>I'm still trying to get over Cummings claim that the PM wanted to be injected with Covid-19 on television.

>>33816

>boasting about how many COVID patient hands he had shaken

It's all starting to make (slightly more) sense.
>> No. 33821 Anonymous
29th May 2021
Saturday 11:43 pm
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>>33818

I hear he has at least 6
>> No. 33822 Anonymous
30th May 2021
Sunday 12:43 am
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>>33806
> If we're to compare to to the Blitz
You can have a lot of fun with such comparisons; thank you for suggesting this. In my head, thousands of people would go and stand on the beach with pitchforks every weekend in 1940, to show the brave British spirit, and get shot to pieces by Messerschmitts every single time. The Daily Mail would write an article entitled, "WE WELCOME THE GREAT EXCELLENT VIRUS", and complaining about this would get you denounced as a nit-picking fusspot. We would all have big bonfires every night, and our cities would get bombed to shit in a gallant act of defiance. In the end, among the smouldering ruins of the heart of the British Empire, Alan Turing would invent the atom bomb all on his own, it would be named "the Great British Boris Banger", and we'd win the war anyway.

>>33815
>cyberbullying about poo
They still gang-rape women and throw acid on their daughters, though. It'll be a while before I consider India to be a nice place.
>> No. 33830 Anonymous
30th May 2021
Sunday 4:29 pm
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>>33825

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