The UK needs to close its borders to China while thier cases are soring. But of course, the UK government is too weak (stupid) to do that.

I can see the argument that screening arrivals won’t do much to reduce current infection rates. I’m assuming the experts who say that are better qualified than me, and I’m not hearing much noise from experts saying we should be testing.

I’m still willing to listen to experts, must be my age

Yeah I tend to put my trust in those with expertise, and no axe to grind.

What I find worrying though is whether the current PM is:

Rishi Sunak says scientists should never have been ’empowered’ during pandemic

I’m pretty sure the negative side effects of lockdowns were thoroughly discussed by the cabinet and experts on all sides.

I’m gonna take a wild guess thst he’s trying to distance himself to appease the headbanger wing of his party.

The current variants in China spread very fast, and very easily. You’d have to create sealed umbilical channels off planes into heretical quarantine centres to ensure it didn’t get off the planes and into the country. You’d have to spray down all baggage and incoming containers. And it’ll still get through due to human error.

When we’re talking 90% of occupants of cities in China is sick, even with the housing, eating out culture, and high speed rail links, discussions of closing borders, locking up traveller’s from specific countries. Is simply going to become good for political infighting. Not practical actions.

In other news we’re all testing today chez Sandwich. The Boy has caught it again (4th time for him) from a nursing home in Suffolk whilst working. I wasn’t planning on going out for New Year.

Spain now testing Chinese arrivals.

https://news.sky.com/story/spain-becomes-second-european-country-to-announce-covid-restrictions-for-travellers-from-china-12776773

Testing and quarantining isn’t going to stop all Chinese variants entering the UK, but it will slow the spread and give our dither and delay overlords a better chance of reacting to any increased severity.

From the above ^^ link :

But Professor Andrew Pollard, the chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said the imposition of travel restrictions was unlikely to prove effective in stopping variants reaching the country.

“Trying to ban a virus by adjusting what we do with travel has already been shown not to work very well. We have seen that with the bans on travel from various countries during the pandemic,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Just banning arrivals for eight weeks while it burns itself out in China would do the job. UK government exactly as incompetent as it was in early 2020.

Which country has banned arrivals for eight weeks?

Just banning arrivals for eight weeks while it burns itself out in China would do the job.

China has/had been in a state of strict rolling lockdowns and total border control for a couple of years now. Why do you think eight weeks would make a difference?

‘Banning’ travel and testing travellers, giving the opportunity to look for the entry of new variants, are a world apart. Jumping straight to a ban is probably unnecessary now we have vaccinations (which we’re probably not making the most of, but, hey, that’s a whole other discussion). But, whatever, any measures need to be taken while this flares up in China, not afterwards. Not taking short term interventions early can result in long term and expensive problems… you’d have thought that would have been learnt by now. It feels like a “if you don’t look, you won’t find” approach to new variants… but knowledge is strength, not weakness… we should be trying to get ahead of what is likely to come from this huge wave in China… not waiting to respond to it once it’s taken hold worldwide.

We don’t really have a functioning government anymore so I’m really, really hoping that luck is on our side in dealing with any new covid nastiness.

It shouldn’t be down to luck but look at the government we have.😐

China has/had been in a state of strict rolling lockdowns and total border control for a couple of years now.

Isn’t it obvious? China is no longer in a strict lockdown so Covid is surging.

Wait until the wave is over so that flights out of there aren’t importing massive numbers of infected and/or unvaccinated tourists who will infect everyone around them and take up hospital beds when it turns out that snorting ground-up rhinoceros penis is not an effective vaccine.

Huge numbers of elderly Chinese are unvaccinated and the rest are with a vaccine of limited efficacy.

uturn

Given the prevalence of covid on incoming flights, some monitoring would be prudent. China has a BA.5 variant and subvariant explosion, and I don’t think we’ll see significant new variants. Their vaccination history will push the virus in broadly the same direction as our own has. They do at least have access to paxlovid, but this seems income and status dependent. They’ve also started to upload data to GISAID. That’s a significant advance. I imagine every test from incoming tourists would be genotyped (currently about 25% of all tests are typed in the UK).

As for scientists. They advise. Ministers decide(d). In fact they were there to advise on the potential for decisions the ministers were considering in advance of implementation.

uturn

Wise.

Today is the day I decided was compliant with guidance for testing (symptoms started Sunday, but only tested 1st thing Tuesday after a shit night and after trying to throw up bile…) in the hope that as it seems to have been fairly mild for me (at least so far) and manageable by the power of lemsip and the occasional locket in the hope I’d be able to do a bit of re-stock on supplies my test strip turned red (bold!) before it hit the control strip (<90s).

Guess I’m not fit to re-enter human society for another 5 days then🙃

I don’t like the phrase U-turn. It has such negative connotations as if they are to be avoided at all costs. What I want is that folk can realise an error, and rather than dogmatically defend and stick on that path, admit they were wrong or that new information has come to light to cause a change in direction.

That’s not weak, admitting mistakes is strong. But if press and public vilify whenever someone does change their mind then that leads to what we now have in most cases.

Brexit should have been reversed once it became clear what implications were. I sense no-one with a log burner can admit they aren’t comfortable with their choice. And many more……no-one is immune to it, but we should all be better at it.

(that’s not the same as saying flip flop decision making is right either, before someone says)

I’m so glad the UK have done a deal with Covid to not let any positives in from China until 5th Jan… There’s not much point to a delayed testing policy!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655

I’m so glad the UK have done a deal with Covid to not let any positives in from China until 5th Jan… There’s not much point to a delayed testing policy!

Pragmatically, trying to get a testing programme up and running over an extended public holiday period was never going to be easy.

I agree with jonv that U turn is the wrong phrase if new information makes the original position no longer correct, as opposed to blowing in the breeze of public opinion. It’s just so hard to tell with this government and this virus.

I don’t like the phrase U-turn. It has such negative connotations….

Well that is obviously why it is used.

It is clearly not a U-turn, it is a change of policy. According to the headlines it went like this – the government say they have no plans to introduce testing for arrivals from China, the government say they are reviewing the situation concerning testing for arrivals from China, and finally, the government announce that arrivals from China will now all need to test negative.

I have no idea how they came to that decision, whether it was based on clear expert scientific advice or whether as a government which will almost certainly see their sorry arse spanked in 18 months time they panicked and thought “we better be seen to be doing something”.

I obviously very much hope it was the former but I sadly have no confidence in the government not to put political expediency before everything else.

I don’t like the phrase U-turn. It has such negative connotations as if they are to be avoided at all costs. What I want is that folk can realise an error, and rather than dogmatically defend and stick on that path, admit they were wrong or that new information has come to light to cause a change in direction.

That’s not weak, admitting mistakes is strong. But if press and public vilify whenever someone does change their mind then that leads to what we now have in most cases.

Absolutely spot on.

Not seen any “vilifying”… it’s the right move. Uturns can we welcomed. Ruling things out that are likely to happen has become a political default though. Consideration has become a dirty word.

Not in this case, but a u-turn in politics in general is almost always leapt on by opposition / opposition press

https://news.sky.com/story/u-turns-are-seldom-fatal-but-can-be-a-symptom-of-overconfident-governments-12714405

Interestingly, the public is split on it, but slightly in favour compared to against

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/when-the-government-does-a-u-turn

Don’t confusing dropping policies that are clearly daft from the outset for changes of direction led by new events and knowledge. Politicians are often criticised for uturns after they have been out defending a daft policy and belittling those pointing out how daft it is… only to later drop it… and make all those who they have sent out to defend it knowing that it was daft look like fools. If they genuinely change policy to fit a changing world, that is often welcomed.

Don’t confusing dropping policies that are clearly daft from the outset

Oh, for sure. More than a few cases of those recently!! The issue is that they all seem to be categorised as u-turns; u-turns are seen as weak / a reason to hammer the opponent; ergo even sensible changes are sometimes avoided for fear they become a stick to be beaten with.

Worrying study published in Nature regarding the immune system damage that comes with covid infection, probably explains why my mates gf is dealing with so many patients in her ward with blood clotting/sepsis/haematology issues

Covid is training your innate immune system to trigger blood clots rather than attacking covid and other infections before they can infect the cells of your organs

Finally caught me too – symptoms appeared toward the end of Christmas Day…

… so just in time to infect FiL, MiL and SiL.

Kin ell – all in the story up to date with boosters ‘n’ such, so no horror stories as of yet.

It was a bit shit, dreadful headache, but i’ve had a lot worse. I rolled up my sleeve for the Flu jab earlier this year for the first time, because i’ve had it and it was awful.

I don’t know whether this will work, but @TiRed s favourite charlatan, Mike Yeadon is putting himself front and forward –

BREAKING NEWS: 17,000 Physicians and Scientists declare that Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca, and their enablers, withheld and willfully omitted safety information from patients and physicians which led to toxic death and should be immediately indicted for fraud. pic.twitter.com/qqvydb5Kd5

— Truth Justice ™ (@SpartaJustice) December 31, 2022

– would love to hear a response.

I’m reliably informed that one of the 17,000 scientists is one Dr. Sciency McScienceface, who hails from Syria.

Jeez. Don’t whatever you do read the replies to that tweet. So much toxic stupidity, I despair for the human race. Where’s a nice big asteroid when you need one?

Worrying study published in Nature regarding the immune system damage that comes with covid infection, probably explains why my mates gf is dealing with so many patients in her ward with blood clotting/sepsis/haematology issues

It’s an interesting study, and this is certainly a known feature of acute Covid infections – but there appears to be a crossover between inflammation and clotting with other infections too. It’s just that the virulence of covid may be particularly efficient at exploiting/triggering these harmful pathways.

While stimulation with other viruses and bacterial products led to similar altered immune phenotypes in COVID-19 monocytes (Fig. 4), it seems likely that these processes occur with other moderate respiratory viral infections, as has been shown in seasonal Influenza vaccination66.

I’d be interested to see future studies on the persistence of these effects, the potential for longer-term inflammatory risks in post-covid patients is something that must be concerning a lot of people.

Have we done swivel eyed-brexiteer Bridgens sudden conversion to swivel-eyed covid conspiracy theorist?

how on earth does a sitting MP get away with this kind of nonsense?
A basic understanding of science should be requirement for MP?

The definition of vaccine was changed to allow the mRNA treatments to be called vaccines. They are actually a new type of drug called Gene Therapies. https://t.co/zzAmJHrZBR

— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) January 2, 2023

Bridgen has a good knowledge of some things. Mostly how to be a crooked **** and get away with it.

A quick read of his Wikipedia entry should make anyone of sound mind vow never to buy a second hand kettle from him, let alone elect him to parliament. But, blue passports.

would love to hear a response.

Oh dear. All interventions are a balance of benefit and risk. It is tragic that some subjects may have died from vaccination, but the population benefit risk for prevention of deaths from COVID19 infection is evident and incredibly positive. Whilst it took a while to approve a spike protein based vaccine, I see little difference between administering mRNA to code for production of spike protein (which is not incorporated into the DNA and hence not gene therapy), and administration of spike protein itself. The spike protein induces myocarditis and this may be due to vaccine derived protein, but also from infection (something I am only too aware of) at much higher incidence.

As for the label for safety, called the prescribing information, this is a regulatory agreed product summary. These documents are gone over with a fine tooth comb – I’ve helped write them and edit them with updates as new information appears. The regulators (FDA, EMA, MHRA) have overall editorial control. They say how high you can jump.

Here is Moderna’s prescribing information from the FDA. It is worth a read https://www.fda.gov/media/155675/download

Every approved medicine and vaccine has one, and they are worthwhile summaries of a product which I recommend reading for any drug.

Interesting that Bridgen has stopped hiding behind Parliamentary Privilege to make his defamatory statements. Perhaps Fauci should sue him for accusing him of ‘developing a bioweapon’ (I won’t link the tweet, because Bridgen is a proven liar who doesn’t deserve the promotion)

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/leicestershire-mp-lied-court-over-6969502

My oh’s housemate lost her father yesterday 8 days after contracting covid.

Don’t get me wrong, he was elderly and pretty frail but he went from being pretty stable to multiple organs basically shutting down within 8 days of testing positive.

We’ll never know for sure but he likely contracted it from his son who didn’t bother testing himself for covid even though his girlfriend had tested positive before he visited his dad in the care home.

He was in A & E for much of his time in hospital, it’s a terrible time to go into hospital at the moment, not that, that’s news to most of you.

So according to a very through study from Cleveland, Ohio, the more vaccines and boosters you have, the greater your chances of catching Covid.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1.full

with an explanation here:

From a novel vaccine with little long term safety data when it was coerced on us. Who would have thought?

I don’t watch Campbell’s videos any more…. he’s been shown many times to jump to conclusions that bring in the views, but don’t stand up to scrutiny. But taking your short synopsis… there were also studies showing that drivers wearing seatbelts results in more crashes… but also fewer injuries and deaths.

I don’t watch Campbell’s videos any more…. he’s been shown many times to jump to conclusions that bring in the views, but don’t stand up to scrutiny.

I also posted the link to the scientific study here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1.full

I assume you will be interested in reading the scientific study?