Button Down . China is a Hot Mess

[Wolverine]

Compliance from the public isn't going to be the same. The EU haven't even acknowledged they implemented a vaccine passport system without any testing in relation to transmission.

People are pissed off about that still.

[Palatine]

Compliance from the public isn't going to be the same. The EU haven't even acknowledged they implemented a vaccine passport system without any testing in relation to transmission.

People are pissed off about that still.

I think this will be seen as a huge mistake when we look back in 10 years time. I speak as someone who has been vaccinated every year for flu and have as many boosters for covid as I'm allowed. There was simply no transmissibility argument. It was clearly an overreach against civil liberties with little or no scientific basis. In the short term maybe more people were vaccinated, but I think you're right that in the long term it fundamentally altered the trust the population has that public health was following any kind of science. The behaviour of NPHET here had as much do with personality and public sector politics as it did about science.

[TommyH123]

Sieve on a leak. I mean, by the time any new variant is detected in China it will already be outside of China. With the way supply chains work in the world, it's simply not possible to keep it inside China and even if you could, how long do you keep those restrictions in place? What criteria do you use to un-isolate 1.4 billion people?

A lot of this stuff sounds sensible and works in theory. The reality is that it's completely ineffective.

I would hope doing something in any situation would be more effective than doing nothing, doing nothing worked out great for us last time when we let plane loads of Italian rugby fans swan into the country to kick start the whole thing, if we decide to do zero then we’d better not hear any crying about the overrun health service that our government did nothing to shore up despite pissing away billions,

[Palatine]

I would hope doing something in any situation would be more effective than doing nothing, doing nothing worked out great for us last time when we let plane loads of Italian rugby fans swan into the country to kick start the whole thing, if we decide to do zero then we’d better not hear any crying about the overrun health service that our government did nothing to shore up despite pissing away billions,

This "something must be done and this is something" argument isn't very scientific. It's basically religion - if we have faith and prostrate ourselves before the gods of disease they will be kind and spare us. It's medieval, comforting thinking, but makes feck all difference.

[Wolverine]

This "something must be done and this is something" argument isn't very scientific. It's basically religion - if we have faith and prostrate ourselves before the gods of disease they will be kind and spare us. It's medieval, comforting thinking, but makes feck all difference.

Sweden and Israel taught us much.

[TommyH123]

I think this will be seen as a huge mistake when we look back in 10 years time. I speak as someone who has been vaccinated every year for flu and have as many boosters for covid as I'm allowed. There was simply no transmissibility argument. It was clearly an overreach against civil liberties with little or no scientific basis. In the short term maybe more people were vaccinated, but I think you're right that in the long term it fundamentally altered the trust the population has that public health was following any kind of science. The behaviour of NPHET here had as much do with personality and public sector politics as it did about science.

Can’t see anybody getting onboard with another round of hysteria, had one shot at the height of the “all in this together” bs but nothing since, had it twice with no symptoms or Ill effects, wasn’t worried about it then and if we as a nation make zero effort to curb another bout I’ll not lose any sleep this time either

[TommyH123]

This "something must be done and this is something" argument isn't very scientific. It's basically religion - if we have faith and prostrate ourselves before the gods of disease they will be kind and spare us. It's medieval, comforting thinking, but makes feck all difference.

I’ve no issue with doing nothing as long as we ride it out until the end, my point was if that’s the path we choose then stick to our guns, it wasn’t much worse than a glorified cold last time and we went totally OTT to bail out a totally unfit for purpose health service, one that is still unfit for purpose, fail to prepare, prepare to fail is lost on our “leaders”

[Palatine]

Sweden and Israel taught us much.

Maybe. I'm as slow to join the "look at Sweden" crew as I am to join the "look at China" zero covid crowd. The data is very very messy with an interplay of climate, culture, demographics, timing, variants as well as public health policy. Early in the pandemic I spent a large amount of time having to analyse the data coming in, and frankly it was next to impossible to trust it all or make any clear conclusions from it. But in general, if something similar happened in the future, outside of maybe a short time-limited emergency period, I'd be looking for hard data to back up any temporary rollback on civil liberties again. Never again should we go 2 years with a policy of closing schools because we need evidence to open them. That was batshit crazy.

[Palatine]

I’ve no issue with doing nothing as long as we ride it out until the end, my point was if that’s the path we choose then stick to our guns, it wasn’t much worse than a glorified cold last time and we went totally OTT to bail out a totally unfit for purpose health service, one that is still unfit for purpose, fail to prepare, prepare to fail is lost on our “leaders”

Fair enough. I think the better response to Italy would have been to prep oir health service. I'd love to know what the next emergency plan looks like. Every business should have a continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. We need one of those for our health service.

[TommyH123]

Fair enough. I think the better response to Italy would have been to prep oir health service. I'd love to know what the next emergency plan looks like. Every business should have a continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan. We need one of those for our health service.

Same plan as last time, no plan, wing it, go whichever way the wind of public opinion blows 🙄