"Heh at comparing a loose collection of posters on a message board to “all political parties”"
Eh? It's just the principle, which is a universal one. People who agree on one big idea will not all agree on the detail of it.
The big idea, since you all seem to be struggling, is roughly that covid isn't that bad, the extent of the response has been an overreaction, other things are more important, life should go on.
Of course I don't agree with Clergs on the Lads thread. I agree with her on some things but not others.
I will admit I was skeptical about the vaccines being possible in such a short time, I was totally wrong about that and hugely relieved to have been proved wrong because realistically (in political terms) there is no other exit from this shit.
The point about the team sane thing, though, is that reducing the opposite to their most extreme views, and ignoring the existence of the more moderate stuff - its a classic social media approach and it's why the culture wars in our society are becoming so polarised and there is no middle ground.
Pretending you have spent the whole of lockdown arguing with Clergs and nobody else is an easy way to claim you have been right. But it's pretty dishonest.
I supported LD1 but the case for restrictions has become less and less convincing as time has gone on, especially now we have vaccines.
We cannot continue to cower behind the sofa and shut down our entire economy against something which, I believe, has not even been in the top 20 of UK causes of death in May and June (I've not seen the July figures).
The current IFR in under 70s is about 0.07% and most people will make a full recovery without medical intervention - many will not even realise they have had the virus.
Unless there is some vaccine-busting variant or a major 4th (or is it 5th) wave over Winter then Vu in the UK is totally done.
I have friends and family bouncing round the Greek Islands where they appear to have virtually no restrictions. They even bumped into Jack Grealish in Mykonos - who was totally happy to pose for a photo with no social distancing.
Amazing how quickly the Greeks have got things going - but there again I guess if there is fvck all financial support in your country the incentive to stay home / stay safe is somewhat less.
Pretending you have spent the whole of lockdown arguing with Clergs and nobody else is an easy way to claim you have been right. But it's pretty dishonest.
Er, wtf are you talking about? That’s not at all what I have pretended. Pretty dishonest to say so.
I did spend a lot of time arguing with her though and she was the board’s foremost complainer and doom-monger re: covid measures. You’re now saying you don’t agree with her - fine.
Wot the puppy said. The reason team sane get so much stick is not because they’re anti-restrictions now, but because they always were (no matter the cost) and have now transitioned to anti-vax, which presents the obvious and proven route out of this. Sad.
the core of team sane is pretending covid wasnt a serious disease (pre-vaccine)
you can argue the restrictions were disproportionate or an affront to civil liberties or lockdowns/masks are not effective enough to reduce the spread given their costs etc - people can have reasonable arguments about that on both sides
but the dividing line is whether you were (or are) in denial that a virus that has killed 4m people worldwide is “just a bad flu”
Nobody was obliged to eat takeaway. There was literally nothing stopping people from eating healthily and exercising, even at the height of lockdown. Do we have to have this debate again?
Are you going to pretend that exercising without gyms is impossible? That's always a crowd pleaser.
I guess Whitty and the entire world medical community is Team Sane then.
no barry whitty and the entire world medical community were pretty much united that covid was extremely serious and posed an imminent threat to healthcare systems across the globe
thats why (pretty much) every country has taken drastic measures to prevent its spread
Barry you are the berk. You like to make it sound technical with references to groups 1 to 9, but the fact is the vaccine doesn't have 100% efficacy, so if you are surrounding the protected group with a wall of infections you are still killing significant numbers of them. You are also full of shit as by 21st March only 8.5% of the extremely vulnerable had received a second dose. The govt was entirely justified in slow unlocking in the face of clowns like you asking to go to the pub as there were no global precedents for it and it took far longer to administer second doses to people. You are just a dogmatic "my rights" cab driver.
FC - you constantly deal in 20:20 hindsight and a zero covid mentality in my opinion. On balance, in my view, the govt handled it well. Perhaps not by design. Due to China's cover-up, shutting down the entire economy was a fraught decision for LD1. Yes there shouldn't have been a Christmas lifting, but you have to weigh public sentiment in enforcing lockdowns (though I think they would have tolerated highly restrictive shorter lockdowns that might have had a more pronounced "circuit breaker" effect). If you deduct care home deaths from the UK numbers, we are barely worse off than Germany. I have virtually zero respect for this govt, but whether by accident or design, they have come out of it no worse off than most genuinely free countries with comparative populations and population densities that are well integrated with neighbouring countries. I like to think of them as a bit like the BBC - if the extremes on either side are calling them idiots, they are probably doing a reasonable job of navigating the centre.
NHS medics sent people to care homes based on a govt edict of "clear the hospitals". At least in Sweden the govt has owned this massive error. Here they have just ignored it and the good news means nobody is asking what I think is the biggest cloud over what has happened.
I can count the number of take aways we had during lockdowns on one hand. On the contrary, during lockdown we ate significantly more healthily (and almost always at the table or in the garden) compared to normal.
"I did spend a lot of time arguing with her though and she was the board’s foremost complainer and doom-monger re: covid measures."
You also spent a lot of time arguing with far more moderate people like Canadian, with whom it was clear that far more team sane types agreed. They never seem to feature in your summary of the debate though.
It's clear from your summary though that you have no interest in a balanced view, all you want to do is present the other side as extreme as possible. Or maybe your brain just doesn't retain the more moderate stuff as it is less interesting?
The only ‘Team’ that has been proven right is the Team that said in Jan 2020 that the world was about to be hit by a vast shitstorm so we needed to hit the panic button and quarantine China, or, failing that, at least shut our own borders hard and early whilst we worked out what the fook was going on.
Would have saved 100K lives, and, on balance, we would bave retained more of our day to day lives and economy over the ensuing 18 months.
Still you lot crack on disucssing your various shades of Wrongness.
The only ‘Team’ that has been proven right is the Team that said in Jan 2020 that the world was about to be hit by a vast shitstorm so we needed to hit the panic button and quarantine China, or, failing that, at least shut our own borders hard and early whilst we worked out what the fook was going on.
You also spent a lot of time arguing with far more moderate people like Canadian, with whom it was clear that far more team sane types agreed. They never seem to feature in your summary of the debate though.
I do think that Canadian also erred on the “let’s do as little as possible” side. Happy to admit that he’s not an anti-vaxxer though.
Let’s distinguish between “people who thought lockdowns went too far” and “people who were frothingly pro-covid, anti-vaxxer death cultists”. Happy to acknowledge most people posting here weren’t the second. It’s a shame that one of the most vocal people here was.
"Would have saved 100K lives, and, on balance, we would bave retained more of our day to day lives and economy over the ensuing 18 months."
And would now be stuck in the same twilight zone now as Aus and NZ, with massive vaccine hesitancy (because there is very little covid so noone is scared of it) and indefinitely closed borders.
Thank fook this didn't happen.
It's the classic 20/20 hindsight perfect solution which in fact shows a complete lack of understanding of human nature.
Spurius - that makes zero sense. So we should let more people die in order to ensure we minimise vaccine hesitancy in order to increase vaccination levels in the hope that later reduces deaths? Nuts. Maybe we should have let more die in the initial waves so that we had better vaccine take up 18 months too late?
If Oz and NZ have a problem its because they havent done a good job with vaccine roll out and they have quite a strong right wing individualist culture that lends itself to vaccine skepticism. Thats totally separate from their initial policy to manage their borders properly. Tbh they are in a tricky position now - but their death rates are vastly lower and if they get a move on with their vaccines they will remain so.
But stopping the initial spread was clearly the right thing to do. In the UK it didnt happen because of inertia, a reluctance to take the dramatic decisions necessary and the defeatist ‘herd immunity’ strategy that would have probably left half a million dead.
Border management and quarantine are the 101 of epidemic management. The word quarantine goes back to the middle ages. Unfortunately our experts and leaders managed to forget 100s of years of basic human experience and common sense in a haze of political and bureaucratic inertia.
Its not widely discussed because the entire political and media establishment - along with most members of the public - went along with it.
Historians will look back in awe at how such a seemingly sophisticated society can make such an appalling error.
What would have happened had it turned out to be deadlier or had the Delta or a worse variant emerged before our vaccine roll out doesnt really bear thinking about.
Your plan is great on paper but is based on the assumption that human beings make rational decisions.
What is happening now in Aus and NZ was entirely predictable and is not predominantly down to government failures. Read the Australia thread from a few days ago. The majority there don't want the vaccine because they are quite happy living in a zero covid world and don't want to open borders. They feel no need for the vaccine and the risk it represents. This will not change, not for years anyway.
That would have been the UK, no good reason to think otherwise.
It's not "let people die to increase vaccination levels".
It's are we going to go nuts and introduce a massively over the top cure to this problem, which people will then get so comfortable with that it becomes politically impossible to row back from it?
Personally I'm very relieved that we did not do this.
What historians will look back in awe on, is how a disease which barely made the dial twitch in terms of the average annual death rate made us change our lives so significantly- in the case of Aus and NZ, all but shutting their borders for years - when all the while we were running blindly towards the precipice in terms of global overpopulation.
Bold claim - yes, I hope I'm wrong. I expect in a year's time, your lot will still be saying oh, I'm sure Aus and NZ will sort out their vax program in the next few months and then they'll open up. Not long now.
Unless they make it compulsory. That would sort it. But they would still have to take the pain of the first wave post-opening. That is a lot of brave and unpopular political decision making from a very difficult corner they have backed themselves into.
This was all predicted by team sane a year ago re Aus and NZ - that once you close the borders and shoot for zero covid there's no easy way out.
As for global overpopulation: well it wouldn't mean saying chill out man re a hyper-contagious ebola. I'm not saying half of us have to die.
But when we react like this over an infectious disease which, as I said, on the average annual death rate figures barely makes the dial twitch... yes, I would say we haven't got our priorities straight.
Overpopulation is the problem that people dare not speak about. They go for global warming or the environment instead because it's politically acceptable. But when you look at the global population graph and stop for a moment to consider the implications, it's a total fooking catastrophe. Since the 1920s it's doubled every 50 years.
At some point in our lifetimes we are going to have to accept that it needs to be discussed.
I’m not really sure why you brought up overpopulation at all tbh. None of the politically acceptable ways of reducing it involve letting lots of people die for want of healthcare, which was the risk with covid.
I expect in a year's time, your lot will still be saying oh, I'm sure Aus and NZ will sort out their vax program in the next few months and then they'll open up.
They probably will actually sort out their vax programme and then open up though. It’s long-term disastrous for them if they don’t.
It's not "let people die to increase vaccination levels".
This is called cakeism. Your whole premise is that vaccine uptake is low in countries that locked down super hard and therefore don't have high vax uptake. Unless you can put forward a proposal that raises vaccine uptake without letting covid spread and shitting people up due to megadeath?
I doubt you want to mandatory vax people.
Clever ad campaign? They tried that.
Ahh, I've got one. Debunk and ridicule the anti vaxers. See me, chimp or Tom for your membership card.
I’m not really sure why you brought up overpopulation at all tbh.
A poorly expressed criticism of global priorities as I understand it. e.g. lets rank the dangers to mankind and our response against them:
1. Global Overpopulation - almost inevitable war, mass starvation etc. as a result as well as it exacerbating 2. - not even talking about it
2. Environment - almost inevitable flooding of huge areas of the world, global devastation, refugee crises etc. - lip service paid but fvck all concrete action and certainly not the timeliness it deserves
3. Covid - 20-30% increase in annual deaths for a few years mostly affecting the elderly? - trillions spent, global restrictions on civil rights at a level I'd have laughed at you about if you'd suggested it happening outside of dictatorships a few years ago
Arbiter, of those problems by far the easiest to solve is covid. Which is saying something because covid is pretty hard to solve. But fixing “environment” is basically just not going to happen.
"They probably will actually sort out their vax programme and then open up though. It’s long-term disastrous for them if they don’t."
How? Its been clear for over half a year that they are fooked on vaccines and what has happened?
And how is it long-term disastrous, in a way that the majority will recognise and vote for? It's a total shit show for various minorities but the majority don't appear too concerned with closed borders. They aren't rushing to get vaxxed and open up, anyway. It's been a year and a half now and they're still alive eh?
I'm definitely pro-vaccine and hope everyone takes it. But i'm anti-mandatory anything.
And yes, I do think lockdowns were and are a mistake, even if we had no way of really knowing that last March and acting out of an abundance of caution was appropriate without knowing what we dealt with. The other lockdowns I don't think helped anyone and didn't achieve their aims and caused more harms than good, and also that even if they worked we need a serious conversation about tradeoffs between basic human freedoms and risk.
No one can convince me we shouldn't have unlocked after the vulnerable groups had been offered 2 vaccines + weeks though. That we waited until late May(!) to allow basic things like sleepovers is ridiculous and shouldn't be defended by anyone in my opinion.
But hey, that's old and boring to discuss now. Even Sturgeon seems to be letting Clergs out of the penalty box. If we could get travel going so I could see my family I'd be happy as a clam.
How? Its been clear for over half a year that they are fooked on vaccines and what has happened?
Well, I think the population will want to travel and it will become apparent that closed borders results in economic harm. I don’t foresee that Australians and NZers will want to remain cut-off from the world. But if they do genuinely prefer that to getting vaccinated then what’s to be said?
I mentioned overpopulation because Canary said how he thinks historians will look back at this in the years to come. So I responded with how I think historians will look back at it. Fiddling while Rome burns.
It's pretty obviously what arbiter said although I'm not sure why it's poorly expressed if you have half a brain. We have spent all of our available (and non available) money and time on this for the last year and a half. For as long as we are doing that, the real problems will continue to grow unchecked.
We are mostly all friends, aren't we? I think Linda has said she detests some people on here and who knows about clergs, but everyone else is having a chuckle no?
Please tell me this isn't serious for more than one or two people!
Also thinking mandatory lockdowns were/are a mistake doesn't mean "do nothing" or "let her rip" before someone fights that point - rather those hundreds of billion in resource could have been better spent on things like protecting vulnerable groups in care homes, giving vulnerable people income instead of asking them to go to work or stay home unpaid, and generally keeping health care running properly, which we collectively did an abysmal job on in the Western World (except furlough).
We have spent all of our available (and non available) money and time on this for the last year and a half. For as long as we are doing that, the real problems will continue to grow unchecked.
Yeah, I just don’t think that letting it rip - or “shielding the vulnerable” or whatever your preferred formulation of “don’t do much” - would have done much to help us fix “the real problems”.
rather those hundreds of billion in resource could have been better spent on things like protecting vulnerable groups in care homes, giving vulnerable people income instead of asking them to go to work or stay home unpaid, and generally keeping health care running properly,
This has been done to death. There is no feasible way to limit covid spread to part of society while keeping the rest shielded.
You forgot to respond to the rest of my comment. I don’t think just airily saying that ^ is much of a response at all tbh. What are you saying - “no they won’t”?
Ps "20-30% increase in annual deaths for a few years"
This is just totally wrong. It's nothing like that.
I don't know where the most reliable statistics are but the only website I can find showing global deaths has a steady increase year on year of about 2% (resulting from population increase). 2020 is no different.
I don't know if this reliable and would appreciate any pointers but no way did deaths increase by 20-30% in 2020.
I thought the whole post was a failure of the imagination, hth.
What I am saying is that they have had a lot of time to realise it's logically a good idea to get vaccinated. And the vast majority haven't done so. Why is the status quo going to change?
The reasons you have given are woefully unconvincing. I would rather be wrong about this. I really hope it happens. I don't think it will though unless they make it compulsory.
Well, the alternative you’re proposing is that they will voluntarily remain closed off from the world indefinitely without regard to the allegedly “woefully unconvincing” reasons to think otherwise like travel or the economy I have suggested. Can I suggest that this perhaps represents a slightly overactive imagination?
You really want to think that Australia and NZ will be long-term fvcked by this because, as you said above, you predicted it a year ago before there were vaccines. Now you want to say you’re still right because the population will just never want to get vaccinated? I know you like to regard yourself as some kind of evenhanded rationalist but come on.
If we'd suggested in March 2020 that Aus and NZ would still have basically closed borders in mid 2021 you'd have said I had an overactive imagination. Yet there they are.
It's not remaining "voluntarily closed off". The Aussie people don't wake up every morning and say "let's stay closed off mates". Your analysis relies on them behaving in a rational way, and the most basic analysis of the last six months makes clear that they haven't behaved in a rational way. At all. The aussie roffers on here were lamenting how nuts it is only yesterday. Why do you expect them to start behaving rationally tomorrow morning?
I was delighted to be wrong about the speed vaccines were developed.
As I said above, I'll be delighted if I'm wrong about Aus and NZ.
I just can't see any evidence at this stage to be confident that the current vaccine hesitancy is just going to evaporate. Your confidence that it will happen seems to be based on naivety and nothing else.
Well, your claim that people will never change their mind about the vaccine, or not “for years” seems to be based on a powerful wish to be right about whether or not it was a good idea for Aus/NZ to pursue lockdowns and border closures. So, you know, shut up.
i think spurius is underplaying the covid threat but i can kind of see the point that in a hundred years (if we get there) when the effects of environmental catastrophe are clearly felt and climate migration is a gigantic problem for the north, covid will be looked at as rich western countries not realising how good they had it with their ability to lockdown/furlough/produce incredibly effective vaccines in short order
i’ve said this before but covid was the absolute prime test case for a global crisis that needed to be solved across countries with charity, equity and social responsibility and pretty much every country blew it completely and instead it seems to be exaggerating all our worst tendencies to selfishness, corruption, conspiracy theories, parochialism/nationalism and the deliberate exclusion of developing nations
it does not make me confident we will face the upcoming threat of climate change without basically shrugging at a bunch of climate genocide and erecting armed borders at dover
then clergs really will have some fascism to complain about
Spurius - overpopulation is a weird one to be getting wound up about at this point in history (at least in isolation there is lots of feedback with climate).
We are better able to provide for the basic needs of everyone on this planet than we have been, well ever in history and there are loads of major technological advancements around crop yields etc in the pipeline. Global birth rates are plummeting as well.
Climate is the big one. I remain hopeful that we will find technological solutions that ameliorate the worst effects of climate change but there is definitely a possibility that we are out of time and some massive feedback loop in effects is about to kick off over the next decade.
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"Heh at comparing a loose collection of posters on a message board to “all political parties”"
Eh? It's just the principle, which is a universal one. People who agree on one big idea will not all agree on the detail of it.
The big idea, since you all seem to be struggling, is roughly that covid isn't that bad, the extent of the response has been an overreaction, other things are more important, life should go on.
Of course I don't agree with Clergs on the Lads thread. I agree with her on some things but not others.
I will admit I was skeptical about the vaccines being possible in such a short time, I was totally wrong about that and hugely relieved to have been proved wrong because realistically (in political terms) there is no other exit from this shit.
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The point about the team sane thing, though, is that reducing the opposite to their most extreme views, and ignoring the existence of the more moderate stuff - its a classic social media approach and it's why the culture wars in our society are becoming so polarised and there is no middle ground.
Pretending you have spent the whole of lockdown arguing with Clergs and nobody else is an easy way to claim you have been right. But it's pretty dishonest.
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I'm pretty much aligned with Crypto.
I supported LD1 but the case for restrictions has become less and less convincing as time has gone on, especially now we have vaccines.
We cannot continue to cower behind the sofa and shut down our entire economy against something which, I believe, has not even been in the top 20 of UK causes of death in May and June (I've not seen the July figures).
The current IFR in under 70s is about 0.07% and most people will make a full recovery without medical intervention - many will not even realise they have had the virus.
Unless there is some vaccine-busting variant or a major 4th (or is it 5th) wave over Winter then Vu in the UK is totally done.
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Quite a few teAm sAneRs🤪🤪🤪 hard agreeing with clergs on that thread tbf
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Young man, I've argued with everyone about everything. Are you new to rof? It's kind of what it's about.
Good job ignoring me btw. Went well.
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🤡 to the left of me, risky yo the right.
Here I am, stuck in the middle of ROF.
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I have friends and family bouncing round the Greek Islands where they appear to have virtually no restrictions. They even bumped into Jack Grealish in Mykonos - who was totally happy to pose for a photo with no social distancing.
Amazing how quickly the Greeks have got things going - but there again I guess if there is fvck all financial support in your country the incentive to stay home / stay safe is somewhat less.
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“They even bumped into Jack Grealish in Mykonos”
Hes now out for six weeks with a dead leg
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Heh at Davos
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Er, wtf are you talking about? That’s not at all what I have pretended. Pretty dishonest to say so.
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I did spend a lot of time arguing with her though and she was the board’s foremost complainer and doom-monger re: covid measures. You’re now saying you don’t agree with her - fine.
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Hoolie has flounced off RoF and come back a couple of days later as if nothing happened more times than I've had hot dinners.
And I've had a lot of hot dinners...
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er what i definitely definitely can
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“keir starmer wants to cancel christmas”
”i should have been like the mayor in jaws”
”let the bodies pile high!”
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Wot the puppy said. The reason team sane get so much stick is not because they’re anti-restrictions now, but because they always were (no matter the cost) and have now transitioned to anti-vax, which presents the obvious and proven route out of this. Sad.
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Jethro try to stop thinking about me
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tbf, Keir Starmer *did* want to cancel Christmas.
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And while we all argue about who was right or wrong, no-one is focusing on what the government got wrong (or, to be fair to them, right).
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Heh at Jethers
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And back to lawbla for high fives they go
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the core of team sane is pretending covid wasnt a serious disease (pre-vaccine)
you can argue the restrictions were disproportionate or an affront to civil liberties or lockdowns/masks are not effective enough to reduce the spread given their costs etc - people can have reasonable arguments about that on both sides
but the dividing line is whether you were (or are) in denial that a virus that has killed 4m people worldwide is “just a bad flu”
that is also why “team sane” are so dangerous
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It wasn't a serious disease for many, even pre-vaccine. hth.
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☝️team sane
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Rather, infection with Sars-Cov-2 didn't lead to serious outcomes in many. If you want to be pedantic.
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Wtf is a lawbla?
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I guess Whitty and the entire world medical community is Team Sane then.
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https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-d…
70% of global deaths are non communicable disease. Number 1 - ischaemic heart disease. Let's all stay home and eat take away tho
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Nobody was obliged to eat takeaway. There was literally nothing stopping people from eating healthily and exercising, even at the height of lockdown. Do we have to have this debate again?
Are you going to pretend that exercising without gyms is impossible? That's always a crowd pleaser.
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Still determinedly missing the point.
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When people don't agree with you they aren't "missing the point" chimp. Try to get to grips with this idea, it will improve your life
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no barry whitty and the entire world medical community were pretty much united that covid was extremely serious and posed an imminent threat to healthcare systems across the globe
thats why (pretty much) every country has taken drastic measures to prevent its spread
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Thanks but I already know that.
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Barry you are the berk. You like to make it sound technical with references to groups 1 to 9, but the fact is the vaccine doesn't have 100% efficacy, so if you are surrounding the protected group with a wall of infections you are still killing significant numbers of them. You are also full of shit as by 21st March only 8.5% of the extremely vulnerable had received a second dose. The govt was entirely justified in slow unlocking in the face of clowns like you asking to go to the pub as there were no global precedents for it and it took far longer to administer second doses to people. You are just a dogmatic "my rights" cab driver.
FC - you constantly deal in 20:20 hindsight and a zero covid mentality in my opinion. On balance, in my view, the govt handled it well. Perhaps not by design. Due to China's cover-up, shutting down the entire economy was a fraught decision for LD1. Yes there shouldn't have been a Christmas lifting, but you have to weigh public sentiment in enforcing lockdowns (though I think they would have tolerated highly restrictive shorter lockdowns that might have had a more pronounced "circuit breaker" effect). If you deduct care home deaths from the UK numbers, we are barely worse off than Germany. I have virtually zero respect for this govt, but whether by accident or design, they have come out of it no worse off than most genuinely free countries with comparative populations and population densities that are well integrated with neighbouring countries. I like to think of them as a bit like the BBC - if the extremes on either side are calling them idiots, they are probably doing a reasonable job of navigating the centre.
NHS medics sent people to care homes based on a govt edict of "clear the hospitals". At least in Sweden the govt has owned this massive error. Here they have just ignored it and the good news means nobody is asking what I think is the biggest cloud over what has happened.
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What about IHD!? is actually missing the point though.
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I can count the number of take aways we had during lockdowns on one hand. On the contrary, during lockdown we ate significantly more healthily (and almost always at the table or in the garden) compared to normal.
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"I did spend a lot of time arguing with her though and she was the board’s foremost complainer and doom-monger re: covid measures."
You also spent a lot of time arguing with far more moderate people like Canadian, with whom it was clear that far more team sane types agreed. They never seem to feature in your summary of the debate though.
It's clear from your summary though that you have no interest in a balanced view, all you want to do is present the other side as extreme as possible. Or maybe your brain just doesn't retain the more moderate stuff as it is less interesting?
Anyway, what I said at 10.57.
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The only ‘Team’ that has been proven right is the Team that said in Jan 2020 that the world was about to be hit by a vast shitstorm so we needed to hit the panic button and quarantine China, or, failing that, at least shut our own borders hard and early whilst we worked out what the fook was going on.
Would have saved 100K lives, and, on balance, we would bave retained more of our day to day lives and economy over the ensuing 18 months.
Still you lot crack on disucssing your various shades of Wrongness.
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agree with this
this was not team “50 deaths” though
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And don’t forget to sing happy birthday while washing your hands.
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I do think that Canadian also erred on the “let’s do as little as possible” side. Happy to admit that he’s not an anti-vaxxer though.
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Not sure what you want from me Spurius. I agree that not everyone on your side of the argument was an anti-vaxxer.
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However, all the anti-vaxxers are on your side of the argument.
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Sorry, vaccine sceptics.
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Just to note Spurius I said this at 10:05
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Seems like you just don’t like being thought of as on the same side as weirdo conspiracists.
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that's 5.7 x 10^-4% of the world population.
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assuming world pop is 7 billion
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How many people died of cancer last year? How many people from heart disease? What about viral driven cancer? Or deaths from medical accidents?
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Sing it twice
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Just leave early and get a pint m7 it’s more fun.
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Fair enough Chimp, I did see your 10.05.
I think I've made it pretty clear what I "want" ie what I am saying, but if you can't work it out let's just leave it.
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No, I can’t work it out. I think I’ve explained exactly what I mean and who I’m talking about.
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Canary Worf @ 12.09
"Would have saved 100K lives, and, on balance, we would bave retained more of our day to day lives and economy over the ensuing 18 months."
And would now be stuck in the same twilight zone now as Aus and NZ, with massive vaccine hesitancy (because there is very little covid so noone is scared of it) and indefinitely closed borders.
Thank fook this didn't happen.
It's the classic 20/20 hindsight perfect solution which in fact shows a complete lack of understanding of human nature.
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Heh @ let the virus rip and thousands perish to encourage vaccine take-up. Now that's some critical thinking.
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Spurius - that makes zero sense. So we should let more people die in order to ensure we minimise vaccine hesitancy in order to increase vaccination levels in the hope that later reduces deaths? Nuts. Maybe we should have let more die in the initial waves so that we had better vaccine take up 18 months too late?
If Oz and NZ have a problem its because they havent done a good job with vaccine roll out and they have quite a strong right wing individualist culture that lends itself to vaccine skepticism. Thats totally separate from their initial policy to manage their borders properly. Tbh they are in a tricky position now - but their death rates are vastly lower and if they get a move on with their vaccines they will remain so.
But stopping the initial spread was clearly the right thing to do. In the UK it didnt happen because of inertia, a reluctance to take the dramatic decisions necessary and the defeatist ‘herd immunity’ strategy that would have probably left half a million dead.
Border management and quarantine are the 101 of epidemic management. The word quarantine goes back to the middle ages. Unfortunately our experts and leaders managed to forget 100s of years of basic human experience and common sense in a haze of political and bureaucratic inertia.
Its not widely discussed because the entire political and media establishment - along with most members of the public - went along with it.
Historians will look back in awe at how such a seemingly sophisticated society can make such an appalling error.
What would have happened had it turned out to be deadlier or had the Delta or a worse variant emerged before our vaccine roll out doesnt really bear thinking about.
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Bollocks.
Your plan is great on paper but is based on the assumption that human beings make rational decisions.
What is happening now in Aus and NZ was entirely predictable and is not predominantly down to government failures. Read the Australia thread from a few days ago. The majority there don't want the vaccine because they are quite happy living in a zero covid world and don't want to open borders. They feel no need for the vaccine and the risk it represents. This will not change, not for years anyway.
That would have been the UK, no good reason to think otherwise.
It's not "let people die to increase vaccination levels".
It's are we going to go nuts and introduce a massively over the top cure to this problem, which people will then get so comfortable with that it becomes politically impossible to row back from it?
Personally I'm very relieved that we did not do this.
What historians will look back in awe on, is how a disease which barely made the dial twitch in terms of the average annual death rate made us change our lives so significantly- in the case of Aus and NZ, all but shutting their borders for years - when all the while we were running blindly towards the precipice in terms of global overpopulation.
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Bold claim.
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Heh at the idea that global overpopulation means we should have been like “chill out man” re: covid.
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Bold claim - yes, I hope I'm wrong. I expect in a year's time, your lot will still be saying oh, I'm sure Aus and NZ will sort out their vax program in the next few months and then they'll open up. Not long now.
Unless they make it compulsory. That would sort it. But they would still have to take the pain of the first wave post-opening. That is a lot of brave and unpopular political decision making from a very difficult corner they have backed themselves into.
This was all predicted by team sane a year ago re Aus and NZ - that once you close the borders and shoot for zero covid there's no easy way out.
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As for global overpopulation: well it wouldn't mean saying chill out man re a hyper-contagious ebola. I'm not saying half of us have to die.
But when we react like this over an infectious disease which, as I said, on the average annual death rate figures barely makes the dial twitch... yes, I would say we haven't got our priorities straight.
Overpopulation is the problem that people dare not speak about. They go for global warming or the environment instead because it's politically acceptable. But when you look at the global population graph and stop for a moment to consider the implications, it's a total fooking catastrophe. Since the 1920s it's doubled every 50 years.
At some point in our lifetimes we are going to have to accept that it needs to be discussed.
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I’m not really sure why you brought up overpopulation at all tbh. None of the politically acceptable ways of reducing it involve letting lots of people die for want of healthcare, which was the risk with covid.
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They probably will actually sort out their vax programme and then open up though. It’s long-term disastrous for them if they don’t.
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This is called cakeism. Your whole premise is that vaccine uptake is low in countries that locked down super hard and therefore don't have high vax uptake. Unless you can put forward a proposal that raises vaccine uptake without letting covid spread and shitting people up due to megadeath?
I doubt you want to mandatory vax people.
Clever ad campaign? They tried that.
Ahh, I've got one. Debunk and ridicule the anti vaxers. See me, chimp or Tom for your membership card.
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I’m not really sure why you brought up overpopulation at all tbh.
A poorly expressed criticism of global priorities as I understand it. e.g. lets rank the dangers to mankind and our response against them:
1. Global Overpopulation - almost inevitable war, mass starvation etc. as a result as well as it exacerbating 2. - not even talking about it
2. Environment - almost inevitable flooding of huge areas of the world, global devastation, refugee crises etc. - lip service paid but fvck all concrete action and certainly not the timeliness it deserves
3. Covid - 20-30% increase in annual deaths for a few years mostly affecting the elderly? - trillions spent, global restrictions on civil rights at a level I'd have laughed at you about if you'd suggested it happening outside of dictatorships a few years ago
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Arbiter, of those problems by far the easiest to solve is covid. Which is saying something because covid is pretty hard to solve. But fixing “environment” is basically just not going to happen.
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"They probably will actually sort out their vax programme and then open up though. It’s long-term disastrous for them if they don’t."
How? Its been clear for over half a year that they are fooked on vaccines and what has happened?
And how is it long-term disastrous, in a way that the majority will recognise and vote for? It's a total shit show for various minorities but the majority don't appear too concerned with closed borders. They aren't rushing to get vaxxed and open up, anyway. It's been a year and a half now and they're still alive eh?
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I'm definitely pro-vaccine and hope everyone takes it. But i'm anti-mandatory anything.
And yes, I do think lockdowns were and are a mistake, even if we had no way of really knowing that last March and acting out of an abundance of caution was appropriate without knowing what we dealt with. The other lockdowns I don't think helped anyone and didn't achieve their aims and caused more harms than good, and also that even if they worked we need a serious conversation about tradeoffs between basic human freedoms and risk.
No one can convince me we shouldn't have unlocked after the vulnerable groups had been offered 2 vaccines + weeks though. That we waited until late May(!) to allow basic things like sleepovers is ridiculous and shouldn't be defended by anyone in my opinion.
But hey, that's old and boring to discuss now. Even Sturgeon seems to be letting Clergs out of the penalty box. If we could get travel going so I could see my family I'd be happy as a clam.
Can't we all be friends? :)
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Well, I think the population will want to travel and it will become apparent that closed borders results in economic harm. I don’t foresee that Australians and NZers will want to remain cut-off from the world. But if they do genuinely prefer that to getting vaccinated then what’s to be said?
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I mentioned overpopulation because Canary said how he thinks historians will look back at this in the years to come. So I responded with how I think historians will look back at it. Fiddling while Rome burns.
It's pretty obviously what arbiter said although I'm not sure why it's poorly expressed if you have half a brain. We have spent all of our available (and non available) money and time on this for the last year and a half. For as long as we are doing that, the real problems will continue to grow unchecked.
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We are mostly all friends, aren't we? I think Linda has said she detests some people on here and who knows about clergs, but everyone else is having a chuckle no?
Please tell me this isn't serious for more than one or two people!
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Also thinking mandatory lockdowns were/are a mistake doesn't mean "do nothing" or "let her rip" before someone fights that point - rather those hundreds of billion in resource could have been better spent on things like protecting vulnerable groups in care homes, giving vulnerable people income instead of asking them to go to work or stay home unpaid, and generally keeping health care running properly, which we collectively did an abysmal job on in the Western World (except furlough).
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Heh. Covid was a real problem silly.
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Yeah, I just don’t think that letting it rip - or “shielding the vulnerable” or whatever your preferred formulation of “don’t do much” - would have done much to help us fix “the real problems”.
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"Well, I think the population will want to travel"
Heh! This is a total failure of the imagination.
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always happy to be friends with canadian he is the most sensible team saner on the board
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This has been done to death. There is no feasible way to limit covid spread to part of society while keeping the rest shielded.
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You forgot to respond to the rest of my comment. I don’t think just airily saying that ^ is much of a response at all tbh. What are you saying - “no they won’t”?
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Attacking one selective part of someone's point, out of context, is classic team sane when losing tactics. Seen it all before.
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Ps "20-30% increase in annual deaths for a few years"
This is just totally wrong. It's nothing like that.
I don't know where the most reliable statistics are but the only website I can find showing global deaths has a steady increase year on year of about 2% (resulting from population increase). 2020 is no different.
I don't know if this reliable and would appreciate any pointers but no way did deaths increase by 20-30% in 2020.
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A year in which most of the world locked down to a greater or lesser extent...
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I thought the whole post was a failure of the imagination, hth.
What I am saying is that they have had a lot of time to realise it's logically a good idea to get vaccinated. And the vast majority haven't done so. Why is the status quo going to change?
The reasons you have given are woefully unconvincing. I would rather be wrong about this. I really hope it happens. I don't think it will though unless they make it compulsory.
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Saying it in a cynical snide way doesn't make it more true lad.
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Well, the alternative you’re proposing is that they will voluntarily remain closed off from the world indefinitely without regard to the allegedly “woefully unconvincing” reasons to think otherwise like travel or the economy I have suggested. Can I suggest that this perhaps represents a slightly overactive imagination?
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You really want to think that Australia and NZ will be long-term fvcked by this because, as you said above, you predicted it a year ago before there were vaccines. Now you want to say you’re still right because the population will just never want to get vaccinated? I know you like to regard yourself as some kind of evenhanded rationalist but come on.
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If we'd suggested in March 2020 that Aus and NZ would still have basically closed borders in mid 2021 you'd have said I had an overactive imagination. Yet there they are.
It's not remaining "voluntarily closed off". The Aussie people don't wake up every morning and say "let's stay closed off mates". Your analysis relies on them behaving in a rational way, and the most basic analysis of the last six months makes clear that they haven't behaved in a rational way. At all. The aussie roffers on here were lamenting how nuts it is only yesterday. Why do you expect them to start behaving rationally tomorrow morning?
Well, we'll see.
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I don’t think it will happen tomorrow morning. I do think your suggestion that it “won’t happen, not for years anyway” is wrong. Yes, we will see.
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@ your 18.05 - absolutely not.
I was delighted to be wrong about the speed vaccines were developed.
As I said above, I'll be delighted if I'm wrong about Aus and NZ.
I just can't see any evidence at this stage to be confident that the current vaccine hesitancy is just going to evaporate. Your confidence that it will happen seems to be based on naivety and nothing else.
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Well, your claim that people will never change their mind about the vaccine, or not “for years” seems to be based on a powerful wish to be right about whether or not it was a good idea for Aus/NZ to pursue lockdowns and border closures. So, you know, shut up.
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You are an odd bloke. OK yeah I'll definitely shut up now.
Based on this thread I'm a lot more relaxed about saying I was wrong than you are.
I'm not "claiming" anything. I just can't see it happening any time soon, thats all.
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OK, well I can. So there.
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Suggest further disagreement should be settled by seeing who can down a pint the fastest in the post-vaccine Chingri-La.
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My competitive wish to be right has bounced right back. You're on.
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i think spurius is underplaying the covid threat but i can kind of see the point that in a hundred years (if we get there) when the effects of environmental catastrophe are clearly felt and climate migration is a gigantic problem for the north, covid will be looked at as rich western countries not realising how good they had it with their ability to lockdown/furlough/produce incredibly effective vaccines in short order
i’ve said this before but covid was the absolute prime test case for a global crisis that needed to be solved across countries with charity, equity and social responsibility and pretty much every country blew it completely and instead it seems to be exaggerating all our worst tendencies to selfishness, corruption, conspiracy theories, parochialism/nationalism and the deliberate exclusion of developing nations
it does not make me confident we will face the upcoming threat of climate change without basically shrugging at a bunch of climate genocide and erecting armed borders at dover
then clergs really will have some fascism to complain about
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Agree. And kicked off while trump and Bodger in situ ofc. People are still breeding tho, ffs.
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"Suggest further disagreement should be settled by seeing who can down a pint the fastest in the post-vaccine Chingri-La."
This would be such an easier way to have discussions tbh.
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Agreed, as long as you need to prove vax status to get in.
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Agreed, chill. Although I think overpopulation will bite before the environment does.
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"Agreed, as long as you need to prove vax status to get in."
Megaheh
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Spurius - overpopulation is a weird one to be getting wound up about at this point in history (at least in isolation there is lots of feedback with climate).
We are better able to provide for the basic needs of everyone on this planet than we have been, well ever in history and there are loads of major technological advancements around crop yields etc in the pipeline. Global birth rates are plummeting as well.
Climate is the big one. I remain hopeful that we will find technological solutions that ameliorate the worst effects of climate change but there is definitely a possibility that we are out of time and some massive feedback loop in effects is about to kick off over the next decade.
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Dat dubtun tho
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