England drops all covid restrictions this week

[jamiefairlie]

Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from respiratory illness due to air pollution (30,000 each year in the uk directly attributed to diesel fumes alone) but none of you wore masks before 2020 and no one stopped driving diesel cars.
And when covid ends, the above will still kill more people than covid ever will.

We do two reckless things, so what's the point of stopping just one of those reckless things?

What's the point of stopping smoking if you continue to eat fast food?

[Fambo Number Mive]

Hundreds of thousands of people die each year from respiratory illness due to air pollution (30,000 each year in the uk directly attributed to diesel fumes alone) but none of you wore masks before 2020 and no one stopped driving diesel cars.
And when covid ends, the above will still kill more people than covid ever will.

Masks weren't very easy to get hold of pre summer 2020. I've never driven a car in my life. There seems to have been the beginnings of a switch to electric cars in the past few years. Also, aren't most cars petrol not diesel.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Also, it is a lot easier to avoid air pollution than covid and you can't spread air pollution between people.

[Dr Rock]

Nobody drives diesel cars

[jamiefairlie]

Also, it is a lot easier to avoid air pollution than covid and you can't spread air pollution between people.

Exactly. Some people don't seem to think of their responsibility to others when it comes to being sick. You should avoid getting sick for your own sake and to help other people. If you get sick you should minimize the effect you have on others. As a society we should do our utmost to minimize spreading of disease.

[stonkers]

We don't have immunity. We still get infected but suffer less symptoms but are still as infectious so that vulnerable are being placed at greater risk by our 'back to normal' attitude. It's I'm alright Jack in the extreme.

Saying "we don't have immunity" is just straight antivax talk at this point.

Yes, we are all going to get it sooner or later but in a heavily vaccinated population the overwhelming majority of people are going to experience COVID as a bad cold at worst.

[Lordofthefiles]

Saying "we don't have immunity" is just straight antivax talk at this point.

"Antivax talk" from the poor bastads that have had 4 vaccinations? - Chinny Reckon?

Yes, we are all going to get it sooner or later but in a heavily vaccinated population the overwhelming majority of people are going to experience COVID as a bad cold at worst.

There's simply nothing to be done, the Clinically Vulnerable must say their goodbyes to friends and lovers, pull themselves together, and get out of the way.

[Mr_Rich]

"Antivax talk" from the poor bastads that have had 4 vaccinations? - Chinny Reckon?

There's simply nothing to be done, the Clinically Vulnerable must say their goodbyes to friends and lovers, pull themselves together, and get out of the way.

But until when? That risk is never going to go away so you either say mask up and socially distance forever or you accept that's not going to happen in the long term and adapt accordingly.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Javid refusing to give any advice to people who might not be able to isolate for financial reasons on GMB, just going on about financial responsibility.

[Pinball]

This is what happens when you make a banker health minister.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I thought this was a good article on covid, although they don't mention masks:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/29/herd-immunity-covid-minimisers-sabotaging-pandemic-progress

And we should not forget other effective measures that we have known about for ages. A century and a half ago, we started to think seriously about cleaning the water we drank, after repeated cholera epidemics that killed Queen Victoria's Prince Albert, alongside many others, mostly poor and without a gaudy memorial on the south side of Hyde Park. We could do the same for the air we breathe now with better ventilation. What about improved sick pay? It enables people who are infectious with Covid or anything else to not infect people in the workplace, by staying at home.

These interventions would blunt future pandemics of respiratory infections. And they would help in the autumn and winter of this year, when Covid and influenza will be tussling for pole position. Hell, you don't need to talk about future pandemics to advocate for the benefits of such structural change, it's clear right now.

After almost all interventions were removed, the UK has been predictably buffeted by a wave of BA.2 infections. For now, it appears that the disease is comfortingly similar to BA.1, by which I mean readily handled by the great majority of vaccinated folks. But to insist that future variants will be similar is a gamble, not a policy. Rather than maintaining its world-beating scientific effort to understand the properties of the variants as they emerge, the UK is scaling back funding. It doesn't end because you want it to. Every time you've heard a voice state it's time to "live with the virus" remember that doesn't mean doing nothing about it.

[Fambo Number Mive]

So the government advises people in England who were classed as CEV to ask their friends and family to take an LFT before visiting, but won't make LFTs free for friends and family of CEV people, thereby basically financially penalising the friends and family of CEV people who want to visit safely.

This should be a national scandal but people in England are more concerned with the ploughman's lunch being renamed.

[Huxleys Babkins]

God created pickle and cheese, he didn't create pickle and Steve.

[Fambo Number Mive]

NHS Conferedation critises England's approach to covid.

Ministers should reconsider England's "living with Covid" plans, health leaders have said, while accusing the government of ignoring the ongoing threat for ideological reasons.

The NHS Confederation, which represents organisations across the healthcare sector, has accused No 10 of having "abandoned any interest" in the pandemic, despite a new Omicron surge putting pressure on an already overstretched NHS.

"The brutal reality for staff and patients is that this Easter in the NHS is as bad as any winter," said Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

"But instead of the understanding and support NHS staff received during 2020 and 2021, we have a government that seems to want to wash its hands of responsibility for what is occurring in plain sight in local services up and down the country. No 10 has seemingly abandoned any interest in Covid whatsoever.

"NHS leaders and their teams feel abandoned by the government and they deserve better."

Taylor later told BBC Breakfast: "In our view, we do not have a living-with-Covid plan, we have a living-without-restrictions ideology, which is different. We need to put in place the measures that are necessary to try to alleviate the pressures on our health service while this virus continues to affect [it]."

He said ministers should restate advice promoting mask-wearing on public transport to try to cut the number of infections and, consequently, the demand on the NHS.

"We need to renew the call for people to have vaccinations and booster vaccinations – there are still a lot of people out there who are not up to date with the vaccinations that they could have," he said.

"We need to resource the health service. At the moment, for example, the health service is providing free tests for its staff, which it needs to do because staff absences are really high in the NHS because of Covid. But the NHS has to pay for those tests. So, we need to put the resource in. Because we're behaving as if this pandemic is over, but it is not over in relation to the challenges facing the health service."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/11/covid-threat-being-ignored-england-ideological-reasons-nhs-leaders

[flotemysost]

God created pickle and cheese, he didn't create pickle and Steve.

Of course you have blue cheese and Branston's

I was at least semi-heartened to learn from a few NHS staff pals recently that they're still able to order unlimited free lateral flows (for now, anyway). I mean you'd fucking hope so, but I wouldn't put anything past the government at this point. Not much use to anyone else caring for vulnerable individuals, though.