Topic: Johnson to announce new Covid restrictions for England at 8pm tonight

[idunnosomename]

are brave boys

[shiftwork2]

Where does the idea come from that the Army are better at pharmaceutical logistics than, say, Pfizer or Astra-Zeneca?  Or that they have some special insight into setting up and managing Health Service clinics?  Extra pairs of hands are valuable but this looks like a pacifier to those waiting for their go with (understandably) some anxiety who like to imagine that all of the stops have been pulled out.

[jobotic]

They did a one day testing centre at my place of work, and they seemed to do it pretty well.

Asymptomatic testing is taking place here (I have my second at the weekend) - my partner went when it was run by the army although it was taken over by the council and volunteers by the time I went, but it seems to be a good set up too.

I'm no Are Brave Boys type but I suppose they set up field hospitals etc. It's not like they're doing the medical bit.

And maybe it'll keep the next Marine A busy for a bit.

[Zetetic]

At least with the test centres, I think it was that they were good at identifying sites that met certain constraints and good at setting up tents and power (and telecoms, if you told them what you needed).

Whether that translates to vaccination, eh.

[Huxleys Babkins]

The army are excellent at logistics and putting holes in people.

[idunnosomename]

Camoflage means that they avoid being spotted by predators

[mobias]

The army are excellent at logistics and putting holes in people.

They know how to shove a knife in someone so why not a needle? Come to think of it why doesn't the government harness of skills of the UK's junkie population? Thats an untapped source of
great intravenous administrative skill I should imagine. Certainly no shortage of potential workers up here in Scotland anyway.

[Huxleys Babkins]

They know how to shove a knife in someone so why not a needle? Come to think of it why doesn't the government harness of skills of the UK's junkie population? Thats an untapped source of
great intravenous administrative skill I should imagine. Certainly no shortage of potential workers up here in Scotland anyway.

They'll just end up repeatedly vaccinating themselves. This is also why we can't let pharmacists do it.

[shiftwork2]

Oh fuck yeah, the pharmacists.  I bet that wasn't factored into nobhead's '2 million a week' prediction.  We'll be lucky to get 2 a week.  They'll be trying out all the vaccines for themselves.

[Beagle 2]

BBC whinge incoming... while the other outlets put 'Sadiq Khan declares major incident in London as hospitals are overwhelmed' at the top of the news, the BBC go with this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

So what?! I know it's a bit silly but there are blanket rules in place to protect people and there will be one or two people getting caught out, perhaps unfairly. Take these two pissing and moaning women off the front page of a website about 100million people will see today, it's really not the bigger picture.

[Cuellar]

Got into a whatsapp argument with my brother and others over that story of the two women. They went full 'POLICE STATE' over it.

I liked the quote from one of them though

"I genuinely thought someone had been murdered

Haha, no, don't worry, just the 1k people dying every day, not to worry.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I agree it's not front page news, but it does seem somewhat problematic that it's up to the officer what someone's "local area" counts as. Other officers might have decided that driving a few miles to the local beauty spot doesn't breach the "local area" rule.

Are two people driving a few miles in separate cars for an outdoor walk holding drinks (not quite sure how having drinks counts as a picnic, given you can drink them while walking) that much of a COVID risk.

It does seem somewhat unfair to fine them £200 given how police aren't doing spot checks on the buses or in supermarkets of people with no masks. It also gives the anti-lockdown crowd ammunition. Focusing on outdoor exercise seems somewhat baffling to me.

There is an argument that they could have an accident while driving and need to go to already very busy hospitals I suppose. Still, there are far better ways for the police to stop the spread of COVID.

[Cuellar]

It does say that they'll not drive off to do their exercise in future though, so...if it works it works.

But I agree there should probably be some official definition of 'local area' in the guidance/law.

Why is everyone obsessed with being outside anyway. They're going to make you be outside soon enough, back to offices, back to Shop For Britain. Having to walk somewhere and then walk back home. Nightmare. Enjoy it while it lasts. Can't remember the last time I was outside.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Could they define local area as the first part of your postcode?

[Zetetic]

Postcode districts? No, fuck that.

I agree it's not front page news, but it does seem somewhat problematic that it's up to the officer what someone's "local area" counts as. Other officers might have decided that driving a few miles to the local beauty spot doesn't breach the "local area" rule.

Don't like it, take it to the magistrates.

[Beagle 2]

It also gives the anti-lockdown crowd ammunition.

Not so much if you don't put it on the most read web page in the country. We're looking at 2-3000 dead a day within a few weeks, I don't give a fuck about this coffee fine or any other isolated incident that might cause people to roll their eyes about the lockdown.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Postcode districts? No, fuck that.
Don't like it, take it to the magistrates.

Aren't magistrates' courts facing a massive backlog? I imagine they'd have to wait years for their case to be heard.

Limiting travel to exercise to postcode districts would give people more of a clear understanding of what they could or could not do than the current "whatever the police officer who stops you decides" guideline. If postcode district is too large, then some kind of guidance needs to be brought in. You can't have regulations where whether you have breached them or not depends on what the police officer thinks.

Just seems a massive waste of police time, I don't know what Derbyshire is like but where I am I see people without their masks in shops and on buses (the buses go past my house). Officers doing spot checks on buses of people without masks would seem a far better way to reduce transmission, unless outside transmission is more of a risk with this new variant.

I agree this shouldn't be on the BBC News site at all, but I do feel sorry for the two people involved.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Re being outside, getting out the house on a sunny day allows you to get more Vitamin D which I think helps your immune system. I'm just doing the same old walks over and over again so it's not very fun but at least it's physical exercise. You can watch the birds hopping around and look at the latest litter deposited by fuckwits. There's a canal 40 mins walk from me but no idea if that counts as being in my "local area".

There's only so much reading and wanking you can do.

[Zetetic]

You can't have regulations where whether you have breached them or not depends on what the police officer thinks.

Vast amounts of law depends on judgements of what a person might reasonably think.

If postcode district is too large, then some kind of guidance needs to be brought in.

It's not that they're too large, it's that they're simply not very suitable for this task - you'd cause people at edges of a district to travel further and to less suitable places, for fear of crossing a border that's irrelevant to the question at hand.

[Zetetic]

None of this is to defend Derbyshire Police, who appear to be being wankers.

[Chedney Honks]

Shoot em in the the back. Save a few quid and man hours on the paperwork. Shoot em in the fucking face for all I care. Only place they'll be walking now is along the River Styx.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

UK lockdown 'too lax', says government adviser
In the UK, there are calls for lockdown restrictions, currently at their most stringent level since last spring, to be tightened yet further. Susan Michie, a UK government adviser and professor of health psychology at University College London, has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

When you look at the data, it shows that almost 90% of people are overwhelmingly sticking to the rules, despite the fact we’re also seeing more people out and about.

I think one of the explanations for that is that, actually, this is quite a lax lockdown because we’ve still got a lot of household contact. People go in and out of each other’s houses.

If you’re a key nurse, a non-essential tradesperson, a nanny, you have mass gatherings in terms of religious events, nurseries being open and – really importantly – you have this wide definition of critical workers, so we have 30-50% of (school) classes full-up at the moment. And, therefore, you’ve got very busy public transport with people going to and from all these things.

It is definitely too lax because, if you think about it and compare ourselves with March, what do we have now?

We have the winter season and the virus survives longer in the cold, plus people spend more time indoors and we know aerosol transmission, which happens indoors, is a very big source of transmission for this virus.

And, secondly, we have this new variant which is 50-70% more infectious. You put those two things together, alongside the NHS being in crisis, we should have a stricter rather than less strict lockdown than we had back in March.

Makes sense

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Prof Robert West, a participant in the UK’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), said that, due to the more infectious variant the lockdown should be more strict than it is, in order to try to get the same result as the first shutdown achieved.

He said the current lockdown rules are “still allowing a lot of activity which is spreading the virus”. Asked if he thinks they should change, he told BBC News:

Yes, I do. Not just me. I think probably most of the people I talk to, epidemiologists, and medical scientists and virologists.

The professor of health psychology at University College London said more children are going to school than in the first lockdown and that schools are “a very important seed of community infection”.

Because we have the more infectious variant, which is somewhere around 50% more infectious than last time round in March, that means that if we were to achieve the same result as we got in March we would have to have a stricter lockdown, and it’s not stricter. It’s actually less strict.

Makes sense too

[Cuellar]

I hope in light of this that rather than back down on the £200 fines for those women they give em 10 years each.

[icehaven]

Is the issue that they drove? It's not unfeasible to have walked 5 miles from home and there's no time limit on exercise this time either is there? Still makes no sense as by walking you'd be more likely to come into contact with other people, but ambushing those driving to a beauty spot sends the message the police want to send, which is no doubt the main motivation. Didn't the same force get criticised for releasing drone footage of hikers during the first lockdown too? One of their bigwigs has seriously got it in for anyone daring to want some fresh air. I hope they've got the resources to deal with the fallout of over zealously enforcing the restrictions like this, managing a population cooped up for a month or so is potentially very different to managing a population cooped up for the best part of a year.