I heard 67 tested positive out of 2 hundred and something passengers on a plane from S Africa to Amsterdam. Exaggerated maybe!. But I did hear a more positive view from a S.African doctor who had been treating patients with this new variant who thought the variant had been there some time and thought while it spread exceptionally fast, the symptoms were all very mild.
But impacting the speed of the spread is what we need now Stan. The Black Death did actually take some time to reach Europe, and further to spread inland from the ports. Nowadays it is perfectly possible to restrict the spread of diseases from one region to another - we have had Tuberculosis in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia for quite some time now without it spreading. They also still have the plague (same strain as the black Death) in one part of China but every time they get a few cases of it they seal off the area completely. This was how they stopped this present virus from decimating other towns and cities in China - by sealing off whole areas so that nothing was coming in or going out. We didn't do the same which is why it travelled from Wuhan to Europe quicker than making the trip to other towns in China. The assumption that 'they will spread whatever' is false - the World has always been full of epidemics and most of them have remained localized.
Having checked up I think your figures are the correct ones Oslo - Germany is so full of doom and gloom at the moment that the more optimistic figures may have been more palatable - or maybe it was just another flight. Germany is really a depressing place to be at the moment - the rate of non vaccinated being higher here, and in Austria and Switzerland, than in other Western European countries. Not that the vaccines aren't there - they are, it's just that the anti vacc brigade is bigger, which is placing us all in greater danger.
£69 a pop for PCR tests. Cheeky earner in there for someone who happens to have links to the government.
Wouldn’t you just make an appointment at a testing station when you get back? Shouldn’t be paying for them.
According to MacMillan Cancer Trust there are some 47,000 fewer cancer diagnoses than there should have been by this stage had we not had the pandemic. Never mind, eh? A mask should sort it.
Got to be booked and paid for prior to travel. My trip to lanzarote has just been quashed as my 16 year old isnt fully vaccinated.
So my trip is off ! As now my son has to be double jabbed. Not that theres even a system in place to say he had the 1st jab anyway, which is causing uproar amongst some parents. Then i see a well tanned woman in greggs who laughed when i asked her about doing the returning to the uk lateral flow test (soon to be PCR to make someone a load of money). She says all you have to do is order them, not even do them as nobody checks. Am i sensing dejavu this christmas time? Science and the medical world saying to try limit contact like unnecessary xmas parties and the like, our PM telling us to crack on and not change anything?!?! WTF is going on?
Sorry to hear about your trip, Bob. Probably not very helpful as prices at Xmas are silly but I think UAE only need a PCR to enter if not vaccinated. Vote Conservative.
Sorry to hear that Bob. Boris is proving to be ****ing hopeless, but this never ending **** storm does feel like a continuous arrempt to square a circle. I'm not sure any of our politicians could do much better and maybe we're reaching the stage where most people are thinking '**** it, what will be will be'?
It’s amazingly frustrating at the moment, we know we have a new version of this **** but we really don’t know how serious it is, and won’t for a couple of weeks. On the one hand we have the World Health Organisation (which has hardly covered itself in glory the last couple of years) spouting doom and gloom and on the other essentially ‘no change’ from Johnson. As always, likely to end up in between. For what it’s worth I think tightening of mask wearing rules (though not including pubs and restaurants is bizarre) is about right for now. If the new variant bypasses the existing vaccines it will be months before a new vaccine can be rolled out, I can’t believe we will go back into full lockdown, shops closed, furloughs etc etc unless it leads to more hospitalisations and deaths than we are used to. If more people, even the double & triple jabbed, end up catching COVID but they get a mild disease, either because the existing vaccines help them fight it or because the virus has evolved to transmit easier but be milder, surely we just live with it. As it stands I’ll be masking up for the train for the match on Sunday, and possibly this time in the stadium as well…….
Sorry to hear it, Bob. May I suggest setting a room aside over Christmas with a sun lounger, infra red lamp, Ray Bans, tin of pina colada and a couple of coconuts. Get the Mrs to throw saltwater over you ever half hour and you'll barely know you haven't been away!
This is a lot easier to say than to actually go through with. Austria is bringing in mandatory vaccination at the beginning of February (because they know they need until then to plan the logistics), Germany is thinking about it and will start debating the subject sometime next year (and then take a bit longer to find out if it's compatible with the constitution). Apparently the disease is going to rest up until then !