Seems to me that sometimes people can say some valid things but because the person reading it or watching it doesn't like them, they form an opinion before they've even seen what they have to say. Now not Katie Hopkins biggest fan, I doubt many people are but I watched a video of hers recently and agreed with her, it was to do with Djokovic. Same could be said for people like Fox, he's a bit of a pleb really but sometimes he makes some sense. Surely the fact that what he is saying about how mild omicron is and the fact that now he's caught it, it will play into his hands so he can spout more stuff about anti mandate, Pro choice etc..surely that is because he has a point and although he is a knob, he can still have some valid points? A stopped clock is right twice a day after all!
Of course it is. What I really object to though, is the amount of people (Fox, Right Said Fred etc etc) who are weaponising the pandemic to enhance their personal brand and to make themselves ‘relevant’ again. It’s a very see-through tactic that sticks in the craw.
As have other celebs who come out to say take the vaccine, the anti vax are idiots, punish those who don't take it, kids should have the vaccine etc. Loads of celebs, minor and major are saying things all the time, not just the ones saying it should be a choice.
But it's the previously irrelevant celebs that have taken up the mantle of the more broadly thought controversial choice, because it will provide them with more column inches than the more broadly accepted version. It's the people who had their five minutes of fame previously, that see this as an opportunity to regain notoriety. That's the point. It's a cynical land-grab by people who otherwise would have (and have previously) fallen by the wayside. I suspect that their views aren't in reality as radical as they're making them out to be, for precisely this reason. And that is potentially dangerous, and playing with people's lives for the sake of newly regained status.
Their views are really not that radical, honestly I don't understand. Maybe I'm missing something but I see nothing radical or controversial about wanting people to have a choice, to not be coerced into things, for our bloody children to not have to wear masks and homeschool, for them to not have to stay off school if they test positive but feel fine, for them to not have weeks off at a time just because 1 kid tested positive for COVID!
Totally agree. New variant of covid is mild, majority are vaccinated. Wanting to go back to normal is not an extreme view. It should be the standard view.
The thing is, vaccines help prevent the need for masks and homeschool. More protection = Less need for restrictions. Vaccines take 5 minutes and helps things go back to normal... It gets radical when people say the vaccine is fake and doesn't work at all, start conspiracy theories, or promote drugs/treatment methods that can be actively harmful to people who follow them.
The idea that it's mild is most definitely not borne out in what is happening. More people have died of COVID in the past two weeks in the US than have died of influenza in the past three years.
If that’s was all that the likes of Right Said Fred and Laurence Fox were saying, then I’d agree. It’s not though. Fox even now is talking about Ivermectin, and how he’s taking it for his current dose of Covid, and as for RSF, well…
I can 100% confirm that it is mild, as I’m currently testing positive and at home in isolation, and I feel ok. Slight blocked up nose and coughed a couple of times, but apart from that I’m ok. I wonder if the deaths in America are still the older variant or something. I’m also taking their figures with a pinch of salt, as they’ve admitted now that people were being incorrectly counted when passing away with co-morbidities. It’s actually difficult to know the truth about any of this
"It's mild in me, therefore it's mild in everyone" is the exact opposite of data. And no, the cases in the US are not older variants. They're 99.5%+ Omicron.
Yes but the reality that I am living is that Covid is mild. I’m not going to pretend that it’s worse than it is. I accept it may be worse for others though. I am struggling to understand how the US has 80% more deaths when the UK has 29% more reported cases. Maybe it’s obesity? Co-morbidities? The us numbers seem exaggerated to me
You have to test or end up in hospital to be a reported case. The actual number of cases in the US is severalfold higher than the reported numbers, but tests became difficult to come by. Especially as some state governments effectively pulled funding for mobile testing and clinics because they wanted fewer reported cases. Not only are the numbers in the US not exaggerated, they're very likely significant undercounts. Remember, many of the states that have had the highest rate of COVID deaths over the past year are run by Republicans, and the states do the counting, not the federal government. The Economist estimates that the actual number is about a quarter of a million deaths higher than the reported number over the course of the pandemic.
True, just like the covid restrictions are worse for the thousands of people committing suicide due to lockdowns and the hundreds of thousands that have had their important medical procedures halted. So there has to be a lot of thought out into which measures are actually sensible.
Absolutely. The thing is though, at the end of the day, it is the Covid pandemic that has caused all those things, not some vast conspiracy dreamt up on the dark net, and people were trying to manage the situation for the benefit of the majority. There have been mistakes, of course, and somewhere down the line it will all have to be unpicked. But just making sweeping statements like “it’s mild” doesn’t really help.
I have listened to precisely zero Joe Rogan podcasts, but lots of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell songs. I conclude from this, that I have missed nothing by being completely oblivious to Joe Rogan. Not very scientific, I know.
