Off Topic Coronavirus and NOTHING to do with football thread

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One month on and M&S at Porte Maillot in Paris still largely cut off from the UK. A great British success story in France looks likely to be destroyed by Brexit. There are many, many other less visible victims.

 

Last June the government was told that if they wanted the transition period extended the EU would be happy to allow for a period to help. Not needed, we can manage without it said Johnson. A month in and Gove has written to the EU requesting a "grace" period of two years now they realize they have a big problem over NI. Looks like a "grace" period is another word for "transition".

 

Slightly worrying news from North Wales. The sister-in-law of my daughter is the manager of a care home there that looks after around thirty five elderly residents. From early on last year she imposed very strict restrictions on all people working or living there, and they have had no cases in the home. In December everyone of those people had a vaccination, among the first in Wales. Since then they have continued with the regular tests, and now it has shown that she has tested positive for the virus five weeks after having the first dose of the vaccine. Quite what the meaning is no one is sure at the moment. There are a number of possible scenarios, but she is the only one so far, and they hope that the next tests do not show any more cases.

 

I know it can still be transmitted after the first jab but the level of seriousness in its affect on someone is supposed to be much reduced compared to before .

Hopefully she is ok .

 

Grant Shapps: "The UK cannot “close” its border like Australia has because the UK is an island and Australia is a continent."

I'm tempted to ask where he received such a poor education, but already know the answer - Watford Boys Grammar School.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/grant-shapps-uk-border-australia_uk_601a78c0c5b668b8db3d3a74

 

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This is a page from a school textbook for 7 year olds. Dido Harding says, “mutations are something we were not able to predict”

 

While some of us tried to explain the problems with Brexit there were a lot of heads being put into the sand, including some from Scotland who didn't believe that they would be stitched up. It is only now that it has happened, and what was described as project fear has become project reality, that voices are being raised, as shown in this thread from a select committee in Westminster.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1357292569512837121.html

These sort of problems are just the same for English and Welsh exporters, and for the government to try and explain away what they have done as "teething problems" is beyond belief.

 

More "teething problems" explained here in some detail.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55887043

 

Never fear - the Tory MP for that well-known centre of the fishing industry, Wokingham, has come up with what he thinks is a cunning plan.

I'm not quite sure he's done the Maths though - unless he expects the whole population to eat shellfish for breakfast, lunch and dinner for evermore.

 

There is an interesting debate going on about issuing vaccination passports. Some of the newspapers are talking them up as a means to allow people to go on foreign holidays, but they could also be required if a person wanted to take out insurance, or even apply for a job. The countries in the EU have said they will try and produce a common one rather than have a selection of them from each country that maybe couldn't be read at borders as people moved around. The UK seems unlikely to come up with a scheme, saying that people can get a doctors letter, but that might not be acceptable if they wanted to enter Spain for example. The argument that people in the UK are not compelled to take the vaccine seems odd as they certainly are not in France and I haven't seen other countries in the EU taking the compulsion approach. Could it be that the UK government is afraid to join with a scheme that is for the common good?

 

I don't understand why there is any debate about this one Frenchie. We all have vaccination cards already and you cannot enter certain countries without some innoculations against a number of existing tropical diseases. So if you want to go to eg. Uganda then you take your vaccination card with you. It's just that this is the first time this has come home to roost and could exist between European countries as well. There are already a number of professions which demand vaccination against a range of diseases - as a teacher in Germany you have to have one for measles, and any military profession is closed without vaccinations against a range of diseases. The debate is to whether compulsion should come in for those working in care homes, hospitals, and teaching - the sooner we end the debate and just do it the better.

 

I have no vaccination card of any sort cologne. Yes I have had tetanus, polio injections, etc., but have no evidence to prove it. Maybe because I have not needed something to protect me against yellow fever I haven't collected them. Certainly if I had been brought up here I would need something to prove that it was safe for me to go to school.
My post came about when I read the official EU statement followed by the news report in the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/55970801
As we are not dealing with a national virus but a worldwide one it needs a common approach otherwise people will start popping off on a holiday to a country that values income rather more than health.

 

In my youth, when I travelled to various dubious countries, I had the WHO vaccination certificate booklet. It was required to get into some countries and to be able to get home relatively easily. Insurance companies also required them. (Didn't prevent me from getting hepatitis, though! That was diagnosed by the person in front of me in the queue at passport control at Heathrow.)

I wouldn't be surprised if something similar is reintroduced.

 

Interesting debate going on about which groups should be vaccinated first. Sean Dyche has suggested that footballers should be high up on the list so that the current costs of testing them twice per week can be reinvested in the NHS. Karl Heinz Rummenigge has also said that footballers receiving the vaccination would act as role models for those who are still sceptical about possible side effects. Other studies have suggested that it would make more sense to vaccinate the young working population first because they are the group most active in spreading the disease. Up until now the concentration has been on the old and the vulnerable - and with a lack of vaccines in the EU this probably makes sense. At any rate the vaccine programme in Germany is faltering with only 3.28 million jabs having been done to date (a quarter of those done in the UK). It is also discriminatory against those dependent on public transport - in order to get the jab twice we would have to travel by bus to Gummersbach (the closest centre to us) which is an hours bus ride (train is also possible but involves changing). So four hours bus journey to get our jabs. Unfortunately car drivers are highly advantaged during this crisis.

 

Yesterday both of us received letters telling us that we could get our vaccinations. The local hospital has a website that the letter directed us to where you can book the day and time that is suitable for you. I have been looking at it for two weeks with the intention of getting it done, but there has never been an available slot due to heavy demand it says. I suspect that it has as much to do with supply as demand, as the numbers of completed vaccinations doesn't seem to increase very much. There is an alternative of going to your doctor the letter says, but we haven't explored that option yet.

 

For my pre investigation in hospital tests.... I had to drive to an indiustrial estate on the outskirts of leeds..... no buses....crazy

 

Some things leave me speechless - and this is one of them. With all the troubles facing the country right now, a Tory wants a debate on Weetabix...

 

No quarantine hotel rooms are available on Monday - when the new rules come into force - at seven out of the eight airports which have signed up to the scheme.

The government's new booking portal for all "high-risk" arrivals appears to have been launched on Thursday with a number of technical problems.


New rules for UK arrivals, meaning they must stay in quarantine hotels, come into effect on Monday 15 February.

However, only one airport - Edinburgh - seems to have any rooms available from that date.

A hotel industry source reportedly told ITV: “Complete farce for hotels involved and travellers trying to get home. Shambles.”

 

Surprise, surprise - property developers who built flats covered in dangerous cladding have donated £2.5 million to the Conservative Party since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...FxfQoIbAkvAoeISutvVv1S-RXYrGmSifW2jKKE0PAwtfw

 

Today is a weird day here ! Normally it would be 'Rosenmontag' (not sure if there is a translation of that) - which is the last, and the most important, day of the carnival period. Normally there would be processions and good natured anarchy - but this year there is nothing. Difficult to understand everywhere else but this is a more important day in Cologne and the Rhineland than Christmas would be. Yet this year all gatherings are forbidden so people are making the most of it in small family groups. The last time that Rosenmontag was cancelled was in 1962 because of an outbreak of Smallpox in the town of Monschau (In the Eifel). Yet the older people here don't remember that (or any of the other epidemics doing the rounds then) - the media then played such things down, and there were no websites counting the dead on a daily basis. Yet Smallpox killed every third untreated victim but, like so many other things, it has slipped from the collective memory.