Corona Virus

[paddyor]

Travel ban lifted in the UK.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/busines ... ravel-ban/

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly conceded that the Omicron variant has spread so widely that the travel bans serve no purpose.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Travel ban lifted in the UK.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/busines ... ravel-ban/

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly conceded that the Omicron variant has spread so widely that the travel bans serve no purpose.

do you think they should have tried in the first place Paddy?

[ronk]

Covid is all around. Premier League and NFL are at highest ever levels of positive tests. It's not just here.

[Oldschool]

Travel ban lifted in the UK.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/busines ... ravel-ban/

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly conceded that the Omicron variant has spread so widely that the travel bans serve no purpose.

do you think they should have tried in the first place Paddy?

That depends.
If you are the government, yes because the opposition will say you're incompetent if you don't.
If you are the CMO yes because you have to do what can be referred to as the prudent thing to do and you have to make it abundantly clear that you are being cautious.
If you are........
Bet you didn't know my real name is Paddy.

[Oldschoolsocks]

Travel ban lifted in the UK.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/busines ... ravel-ban/

do you think they should have tried in the first place Paddy?

That depends.
If you are the government, yes because the opposition will say you're incompetent if you don't.
If you are the CMO yes because you have to do what can be referred to as the prudent thing to do and you have to make it abundantly clear that you are being cautious.
If you are........
Bet you didn't know my real name is Paddy.

I did not know your real name was Paddy, I had always assumed your first name was Dunning for some reason...

[paddyor]

Travel ban lifted in the UK.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/busines ... ravel-ban/

UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly conceded that the Omicron variant has spread so widely that the travel bans serve no purpose.

do you think they should have tried in the first place Paddy?

Tried? I think they massively over reacted and events bore that out. They didn't do anything. It was known it was already here when they "swung into action".

[Oldschoolsocks]

Ok, so is there a non Twitter source that states that they knew at the time of putting the travel ban in place that “it was known that it was here”?

Also the article “South Africa was slapped with a travel ban” is one of the most tabloid journaly way of twisting the language I have seen in ages. I’m glad that the ppl who wrote that article aren’t in charge of health policy

[Oldschool]

do you think they should have tried in the first place Paddy?

That depends.
If you are the government, yes because the opposition will say you're incompetent if you don't.
If you are the CMO yes because you have to do what can be referred to as the prudent thing to do and you have to make it abundantly clear that you are being cautious.
If you are........
Bet you didn't know my real name is Paddy.

I did not know your real name was Paddy, I had always assumed your first name was Dunning for some reason...

Yeah it's a strange name alright.

[Oldschool]

Gerry Buttimer calls for primary schools to close early.
He's a FG senater and also a secondary school teacher.

[paddyor]

Ok, so is there a non Twitter source that states that they knew at the time of putting the travel ban in place that “it was known that it was here”?

Also the article “South Africa was slapped with a travel ban” is one of the most tabloid journaly way of twisting the language I have seen in ages. I’m glad that the ppl who wrote that article aren’t in charge of health policy

If you scroll back thru this thread you'll find an article or two saying there were cases in Israel, Belgium and IIRC a few in the UK. The Variant was date to around the start of November so it basically had a month to circulate unchecked. The ban was theatre and the Africans have every reason to feel aggrieved at "Operation lockout the diseased darkies". Why ban them and not like Belgium and Israel? And I'm glad Javid has had the guts to admit it the ban was useless. From an Irish perspective what exactly is the point in banning travel from SA and not you know the UK where it also was? Thats where it came here from btw. Unless you go full NZ travel restrictions won't stop the spread or even slow it. Thats been proven time and again. Once it's here it's conditions on the ground that determine R0.

WRT the bolded, this was a politcal decision. And FYI the WHO advice on travel restrictions at the start of this was against travel restrictions as they disproportionately affected poorer countries(e.g. Ebola). It's interesting that "folow the experts" now means do what the govt says even when they come out and admit they were wrong 2 weeks later.

[Ruckedtobits]

Not an expert, but an interested onlooker.

The UK (and EU) travel bans were initially intended to " buy time" for National health systems by reducing the rate of importing the new variant. Both UK & EU Health authorities acknowledged in late November that ' if the mutation proved very transmissible, there would be no way of preventing its arrival in various countries, but the travel ban might delay arrival of large numbers' and allow preparations to deal with it and gather more informations as to its characteristics'.(I'm parphrasing)

That's pretty much what has happened. We now 'know' the following:

* the variant is highly transmissible;
* the variant is less virulent to younger (< aged 45 approx) patients;
* even double vaccinations are not a total barrier to infection;
* a double vaccination is a good protection against severe illness from this mutation;
* only a very small proportion of UK infections to date have received a "booster".

Those five pieces of information, coupled with the core data about the rates of infection by this mutation in the UK have allowed scientific & medical experts to advise UK politicians that the logic of a travel ban has served its purpose at this point.

For once, I believe the UK Government have got this response right for a change.

[The Doc]

The problem is that it seems the R number for this strain is over 5. Which (assuming no mitigations) means that each case you allow in causes 15k cases within a week. So atthe very start of this, slowing even single digit numbers of cases coming into the country buys time (and judging by the vaccine centre I was at, people are getting jabbed). So even the cases in the Munster camp might have justified travel bans - for a period of time. At this stage the UK are probably right - any time bought has probably happened.

UK just announced 78k cases - that's the highest daily number since the pandemic began. And even though less % end up in hospital with this strain, a small % of a very large number is still a large number

[Oldschoolsocks]

Ok, so is there a non Twitter source that states that they knew at the time of putting the travel ban in place that “it was known that it was here”?

Also the article “South Africa was slapped with a travel ban” is one of the most tabloid journaly way of twisting the language I have seen in ages. I’m glad that the ppl who wrote that article aren’t in charge of health policy

If you scroll back thru this thread you'll find an article or two saying there were cases in Israel, Belgium and IIRC a few in the UK. The Variant was date to around the start of November so it basically had a month to circulate unchecked. The ban was theatre and the Africans have every reason to feel aggrieved at "Operation lockout the diseased darkies". Why ban them and not like Belgium and Israel? And I'm glad Javid has had the guts to admit it the ban was useless. From an Irish perspective what exactly is the point in banning travel from SA and not you know the UK where it also was? Thats where it came here from btw. Unless you go full NZ travel restrictions won't stop the spread or even slow it. Thats been proven time and again. Once it's here it's conditions on the ground that determine R0.

WRT the bolded, this was a politcal decision. And FYI the WHO advice on travel restrictions at the start of this was against travel restrictions as they disproportionately affected poorer countries(e.g. Ebola). It's interesting that "folow the experts" now means do what the govt says even when they come out and admit they were wrong 2 weeks later.

1: admission of fault is a strength not a weakness
2: this is a rapidly changing landscape
3: hindsight is 20:20
4: nobody or no country was “slapped with a travel ban”, that in itself is politically loaded language. Also, the WHO did not use this language to my knowledge.
5: the goal of the travel ban was to buy some time and slow down the number of cases, this did not work because of the much increased transmission rate if the new variant
6: it is a new variant, it even has a new name Omicron
7: initial reports indicate that this may be a milder variant but it is too early to say
8: apparently studies say you should consider increasing your vitamin D3 levels and get more sleep and exercise

[paddyor]

Except the model and actual data show the restrictions made no difference at all. You can take the difference between the model and the data is them not catching all the cases. And you can see Denmark in there too which was ahead of UK cases had no travel restrictions.



They got it wrong again. 2 weeks for restrictions to take effect and when they realised they were already too late and piecemeal they dropped it.

[paddyor]

1: admission of fault is a strength not a weakness
2: this is a rapidly changing landscape
3: hindsight is 20:20
4: nobody or no country was “slapped with a travel ban”, that in itself is politically loaded language. Also, the WHO did not use this language to my knowledge.
5: the goal of the travel ban was to buy some time and slow down the number of cases, this did not work because of the much increased transmission rate if the new variant
6: it is a new variant, it even has a new name Omicron
7: initial reports indicate that this may be a milder variant but it is too early to say
8: apparently studies say you should consider increasing your vitamin D3 levels and get more sleep and exercise

You didn't need hindsight to see this was piecemeal theatre and would fail. *raises hand*

The WHO advise has generally been against lockdowns until this pandemic(that's why we didn't restrict travel in anyway until......when did we start to restrict travel?).

[Oldschoolsocks]

1: admission of fault is a strength not a weakness
2: this is a rapidly changing landscape
3: hindsight is 20:20
4: nobody or no country was “slapped with a travel ban”, that in itself is politically loaded language. Also, the WHO did not use this language to my knowledge.
5: the goal of the travel ban was to buy some time and slow down the number of cases, this did not work because of the much increased transmission rate if the new variant
6: it is a new variant, it even has a new name Omicron
7: initial reports indicate that this may be a milder variant but it is too early to say
8: apparently studies say you should consider increasing your vitamin D3 levels and get more sleep and exercise

You didn't need hindsight to see this was piecemeal theatre and would fail. *raises hand*

The WHO advise has generally been against lockdowns until this pandemic(that's why we didn't restrict travel in anyway until......when did we start to restrict travel?).

so there haven't been multipe lockdowns where we had to stay within 5 km radius of our house and had to work from home ?

jaysis - that's some bridge you're trying to sell me there Paddy

[Oldschool]

What, from day one, has been sadly missing is real information that can actually help the public.
For example, don't wear masks, they'll make no difference and even when that was obviously patent nonsense there was a reluctance to change the message.
Even still, wash your hands gets equal air time even tho' the number one thing anyone can do to protect themselves is wear a mask (assuming they aren't going isolate themselves from the rest of humanity).
Ah f^ck no, he's on about it again.
Well yes, I walked into my local pharmacy yesterday.
Not only was the pharmacist wearing what looked like an N95 mask but he was wearing a disposable mask over it.
The pharmacist is a young man and is in tune with what is going on in the community.
So why the two masks.
Three reasons, he's giving vaccinations and he's of the opinion that Omicron is more infectious and it's virus season (what used to be called the flu season).
Bottom line I'll listen to what my pharmacist has to say over what the CMO would have to say any day of the week.
So wear your mask and if you can fit it wear two if you regard the situation warrants it.
Right now aside from COVID but in addition to it, the authorities should be driving home the message about wearing makes because not only does it protect against COVID it will reduce the incidence of Flu and other respiratory illness this winter.
Get the message out there and give over the nuancing.

[paddyor]

1: admission of fault is a strength not a weakness
2: this is a rapidly changing landscape
3: hindsight is 20:20
4: nobody or no country was “slapped with a travel ban”, that in itself is politically loaded language. Also, the WHO did not use this language to my knowledge.
5: the goal of the travel ban was to buy some time and slow down the number of cases, this did not work because of the much increased transmission rate if the new variant
6: it is a new variant, it even has a new name Omicron
7: initial reports indicate that this may be a milder variant but it is too early to say
8: apparently studies say you should consider increasing your vitamin D3 levels and get more sleep and exercise

You didn't need hindsight to see this was piecemeal theatre and would fail. *raises hand*

The WHO advise has generally been against lockdowns until this pandemic(that's why we didn't restrict travel in anyway until......when did we start to restrict travel?).

so there haven't been multipe lockdowns where we had to stay within 5 km radius of our house and had to work from home ?

jaysis - that's some bridge you're trying to sell me there Paddy

Highlighted the important part. Go back to the start of 2020 and th WHO were arguing against travel restrictions on China. And we didn't actually restrict international travel after Christmas 2020 which ended up a bit of a farce(and made no difference to the declining case rates. And yes we had some really dumb rules like the 2km and 5km rule which people ignored to suit themselves at regular intervals.

[paddyor]

What, from day one, has been sadly missing is real information that can actually help the public.
For example, don't wear masks, they'll make no difference and even when that was obviously patent nonsense there was a reluctance to change the message.
Even still, wash your hands gets equal air time even tho' the number one thing anyone can do to protect themselves is wear a mask (assuming they aren't going isolate themselves from the rest of humanity).
Ah f^ck no, he's on about it again.
Well yes, I walked into my local pharmacy yesterday.
Not only was the pharmacist wearing what looked like an N95 mask but he was wearing a disposable mask over it.
The pharmacist is a young man and is in tune with what is going on in the community.
So why the two masks.
Three reasons, he's giving vaccinations and he's of the opinion that Omicron is more infectious and it's virus season (what used to be called the flu season).
Bottom line I'll listen to what my pharmacist has to say over what the CMO would have to say any day of the week.
So wear your mask and if you can fit it wear two if you regard the situation warrants it.
Right now aside from COVID but in addition to it, the authorities should be driving home the message about wearing makes because not only does it protect against COVID it will reduce the incidence of Flu and other respiratory illness this winter.
Get the message out there and give over the nuancing.

Ironically, I had some sympathy with Colm McHenry on the masks thing. I think he was right it would make people feel safe but I don't think at the time he realised back in April 2020 we'd be in this for 2 years. Like people would need some way to go about things and feel safe. that Hand washing is pure theatre. Think it was estimated as 5% of infections which is meaningless, though again it probably does help people feel safer.

[Oldschoolsocks]

You didn't need hindsight to see this was piecemeal theatre and would fail. *raises hand*

The WHO advise has generally been against lockdowns until this pandemic(that's why we didn't restrict travel in anyway until......when did we start to restrict travel?).

so there haven't been multipe lockdowns where we had to stay within 5 km radius of our house and had to work from home ?

jaysis - that's some bridge you're trying to sell me there Paddy

Highlighted the important part. Go back to the start of 2020 and the WHO were arguing against travel restrictions on China. And we didn't actually restrict international travel after Christmas 2020 which ended up a bit of a farce(and made no difference to the declining case rates. And yes we had some really dumb rules like the 2km and 5km rule which some really f%~king selfish aresholes ignored to suit themselves at regular intervals.

fixed that one for you.

so there were travel restrictions good.

IIRC WHO advised people against travelling to the epicentres of the SARS1 virus and of the MERS virus?
they did not take the same approach with H1N1

https://news.un.org/en/story/2003/04/63 ... -guangdong
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... e-reported