The media will print / broadcast what people will read or tune into it, and as much as everybody wants things back to normal nobody's picking up a paper because of the headline 'BREAKING NEWS - THINGS PROBABLY ALRIGHT, ACTUALLY.'
Not sure why you'd expect the media to start acting in the public interest now. It's simply not the nature of the thing.
I therefore find it odd that a paper like the Guardian (normally among the least susceptible to the above) is among the worst offenders here.
Like you say, the media are wankers when it comes to reporting science, almost deliberately deceptive. But this isn’t unique to the COVID era. The advent of Facebook and Twitter and the mongs that populate these platforms has rapidly accelerated the anti-medicine and anti-science movement.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Their headline yesterday of "OXFORD VACCINE ONLY 10% EFFECTIVE AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA VARIANT" while the subheading said people only got mild to moderate symptoms was ridiculous.
Not dystopian at all. No, no, no. Just protecting OUR KIDS and OUR NHS.NEW: Health Sec Matt Hancock announces TEN year jail sentence for passengers who lie over where they've been.
PLUS:
- 4,600 hotel rooms secured for quarantine (costs £1750)
- Up to £2k fine for failing to take a test in isolation
- £10k fine for escaping hotel isolation
Definitely carrying a knife: maximum four years
Possibly carrying a virus: TEN YEARS AND THROW AWAY THE KEY
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 09-02-2021 at 01:01 PM.
As I think I've said here before and definitely have elsewhere, there's something about all of this that isn't just as straightforward as keeping a virus at bay. The conspiracy theories are all useless, so the answer isn't in any of those, but there's something motivating the language, approach and deterrents used that no one has twigged yet.
And this. Why are the BBC reporting it like that? Mild and moderate instances of it clearly aren't pleasant, but if that's all it had ever caused we wouldn't be where we are now, or even anywhere close.
It's the fact that they've realised the Facebook mums are onside with any and all, allied to absolutely useless opposition, so they end up just 'following the science' (now, as a year ago, a terrible idea).
It's mental, but there's no chance anyone ever serves time over this shit (maybe a night or 2 in the cells).
Hopefully this ten year sentence is part of a general enough public safety/virus law to nail that insulting Captain Tom tweet.
If you can't ascertain how it spread from animals to humans, how is it escaping from a laboratory still 'extremely unlikely'?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55996728
What if this never ends. What if these variants become stronger, more transmissible and more deadly? What if we can't keep up with it?
We are all going to die.
Yevrah's decade-plus-long war on the WHO since the Margaret Chan days is worth about 5 regular e-victories.
I am quite cautious on this at the moment but maybe, only maybe, the first tentative signs of a vaccine effect are just starting to edge into the picture in the UK. Deaths are on the puzzlingly low side for a few days (relative to usual rate of decline) and over 80 deaths are sniffing closer to being a sign of what's driving it. Will need another 2-3 days to confirm or deny.
So far 0.0003036% of the population has been ended by this.
I think we may be ok.
Replying to yourself moments after posting. Is that a symptom? Enjoy being cleansed.
Why are you being a sarky cunt to yourself?
EDIT: It was sincerity, not sarkyness
Why are you being a sarky cunt to yourself?
"Yeah, yeah, nice one dickhead. Get a load of this guy, eh lads?"
Jack Torrance strikes back
"Yeah, yeah, nice one dickhead. Get a load of this guy, eh lads?"
The bigger deterrent is probably the hotel stay ballooning your costs. If anyone serves decent time over this, it'll be because they boarded a plane with symptoms, wound up positive and still tried to worm their way out of the quarantine.
They're a dangerous organisation that managed the breathtaking feat of both acting as a puppet for China and spreading manifest nonsense on how to deal with the virus. Their part in this has been nothing short of a shambles.
Not saying they haven’t made mistakes, but what has the WHO to gain by being China’s puppet?
They got it wrong at the start, but I’m not sure that equates to them being dangerous.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56005488
A French nun who is Europe's oldest person has survived Covid-19, just days before her 117th birthday.
Lucile Randon, who took the name of Sister Andre in 1944, tested positive for coronavirus on 16 January but didn't develop any symptoms.
She told local media she "didn't even realise I had it".
Are they sure she's not dead?
Terrifying.
Last edited by Queenslander; 10-02-2021 at 03:15 AM.
I think what it shows is how stupid the funding for it is. A properly funded WHO would remove reliance or bias towards a donor. They play an important role in world health, they should be treated as such.
Speaking of the WHO, lol at this:
They're really enjoying the power, aren't they?A Cabinet office spox told PA: "Playgrounds are primarily for use by children who do not have access to private outdoor space, and while parents, guardians or carers are allowed to take children to a playground for exercise, they must not socialise with other people while there."
I see Boris was steadfastly denying there is a visible vaccine effect in the data even though there clearly fucking is. These people are maniacs. Just tell the truth.
I was more worried about Wor Boris' hair. He's the last person in the world that would suit baldness anyway, and he clearly can't grow any sort of facial hair to balance it out like them quality bald/beard Trump mock-ups.
Is there any vaccine effect data? Are less over 70s picking it up?
Over 80s fatality rate is dipping compared to under 80s. In a few days it should be plain and obvious.
Every time I think maybe some kind of freedom is on the horizon, no, here come the Facebook mums again:
'Not harsh enough'Britons on facing up to ten years in jail for lying on a passenger locator form in order to avoid quarantine:
Too harsh: 30%
About right: 51%
Not harsh enough: 13%
This government are the most dangerous we've ever had. No doubt.
The NWA of governments.
His political career is finished once he's turned fully into Matt Lucas
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/sta...38587378180096
Why is this sort of absolutely irrelevant bullshit having a siren emoji and BREAKING put onto it in an alarmist tweet? All variants can reinfect vaccinated people, the point is that they don't get severe disease or die from it. All this does is discourage people from taking the vaccine.
Journalists at this point are quite ill, broken people, as indeed it appears are members of SAGE.
Airborne transmission is still big big news down here.
Interesting cast list in the replies.
They're all raging against the dying of the light, although you'd think some of them would know better.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56019995
'Woah-oh-oh, we've got the best virus in the world...'
And they said brexit would hamper our global influence.
It's a beautiful British virus what loves the Queen and will show them bloomin' foreigns what-for.
Rule Corona, Corona rule the waves, we shall never never never share our vaccines.
You can add this person to the list too. They fucking love the limelight, these people.
The news has just had one of their little "ask the public" bits on and we are absolutely fucked as a country. Half the cunts would have us spending 2 weeks in quarantine before and after leaving the fucking house.
Same as it's ever been. Same vox pops were falling to pieces over 100 pennies to a pound.
The base authoritarianism of the Facebook mums has been the biggest revelation to me during this. I probably should have known really. What you don't realise, when you try to lead a reasonably varied life and do stuff that interests you, is that most people don't do that. Most people sit in cold houses, eat frozen food, watch Coronation Street, lead the most mundane existences possible, and harbour immense hostility towards anyone who does anything else.
Yeah it's been a big thing on the other side of the pond with QAnon as well. Lots of mumsnet types self radicalising each other. I think it's why they're so terrified of trans people despite probably never having met one. Self radicalization.
So it turns out my 91 year old gran, who fell victim to the biggest transmission vector by far (the care environment) has beaten COVID. What a woman.
And Jim, tell more more about SAGE losing the plot/annoying you.
Great news yev!
Get her in the hot tub for a celebration.
I'm a twit
Well done Granny Yev.
Everyone seethed when a couple of weeks ago, Rishi Sunak accused SAGE (via leak/brief) of 'moving the goalposts'. People accused him and the government of having caused the second wave via Eat Out to Help Out (very little evidence for this), or the third wave via opening up for Christmas (absolutely zero evidence that Christmas had any effect, but it still gets trotted out), and that we are not learning lessons having allegedly opened up too early before (there is no evidence whatsoever that we have opened up too early at any stage. People just think there is, because it suits their childish a to b reasoning, much in the same way that busy beaches probably have almost no impact on Covid spread).
What SAGE, and their individual members, are currently doing is indeed moving the goalposts. In last spring's lockdown we locked down until pressure was off the NHS and then we gradually re-opened, to a large degree, with masks and social distancing measures etc. Everyone had a fairly acceptable couple of months of summer. Cases then began to pick up again at the back end of September, i.e. 2 months after the last re-opening stage and 3/4 months from the first re-opening. This was with no vaccine. It therefore follows that gradually opening up society, in and of itself, does not cause an instant case surge. It's possible that foreign holidays, school re-opening, seasonality, mutation or a combination of several led to the case surge from September (we have seen this in all other European nations too), but we know that re-opening society along the lines seen last summer did not cause it. We then did a mini-lockdown in November (schools still open) and cases dropped again, until the Kent variant saw them skyrocket in December.
Fast forward to now, and cases, hospitalisations and now deaths are dropping like a stone AND we have the vaccines, the effects of which are only just starting to filter into the outcomes data. As such, a reasonable position would be that - having protected Our NHS in a few weeks' time - a cautious re-opening should again occur. This was the basis on which Boris Johnson put us into lockdown. But no. SAGE have it differently, all of a sudden.
First of all there's the guy above spouting absolute nonsense about what a variant 'may' be able to do vs the vaccine (if he is right, this will cause asymptomatic/mild cases - which is what we want, right?)
Then, there's this clown, another SAGE member, and a knight of the realm no less:
I'm not sure where he gets the 725,000 figure from, but let's suppose he has access to some super secret data that is not publicly available (I don't see any reason why any covid data would not be made publicly available at this point, but there we are). In this tweet, and the thread above it, he is spaffing the same junk again as described above. Why has this moved from a situation where we have to protect the health service to a situation where transmission needs to be brought down to some arbitrary level he deems acceptable? Why will transmission matter to such a great extent in a country where the vulnerable will all have been vaccinated? Why are variants now such a red line, when variants are quite literally inevitable in the short, medium and long run? And why will 'opening too soon' make a difference when as seen last year we know that, if done gradually and sensibly, it will not? How, armed with a vaccine, can there possibly be a risk of a 'return to 2020'?
I seem to remember mandatory masks being brought in mid-last summer, so if anything, we were taking extra precautions at that time to keep transmission down whilst allowing life to go on.
I've racked my brains trying to work out why SAGE have become so hawkish all of a sudden, and why they have suddenly decided that the conditions for opening up are now not deaths/pressure on the NHS but transmission (even of asymptomatic/mild cases which is what it will be after the vaccines), and my only conclusion thus far is that they are collectively loving being at the centre of things and want it to go on a little longer yet.
Even if that isn't true, it's definitely the case that scientists shouldn't ever be put in the position of communicating directly with the press/general public, because they've repeatedly shown they are incapable of doing so without spreading unnecessary alarm. For what it's worth, the government are basically lying to us every day as well, but I think people build that into their assumptions.
And as if on cue, fucking Peston tweets this:
The entire British journalistic establishment needs to be hauled into the back of a truck and blown up when this is over, and replaced with new ones who actually think about what they are doing and saying.
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