Dio wrote:So you're proposing for everyone to test for covid every day, for all eternity, with some super-accurate test?
No, of course not. That's blatantly a strawman.
I mean, we also can't 100% cure cancer. Therefore, fuck it, no more cancer treatment. No more cancer research. Even perfectly operable cancers that have been discovered early... nope, if we can't save 100% of absolutely everyone, then we're going to do nothing whatsoever.
Furthermore, as we have an economy to think about, then let's not waste a penny of money or a second of time in promoting breast cancer screenings, or getting men to check for testicular cancer. Let's not discourage people from sunbathing without sun cream, as we don't care if they get skin cancer. Let's not have "quit smoking" campaigns or health warnings on fags.
That is "letting perfection be the enemy of the good" to a rather insane level.
Basically, we can't cure death. Therefore, close all the hospitals. Fire all the doctors and nurses. Let's not bother with hygiene. Let's throw out all safety measures.
Because we're going balls to the wall, baby. Full-on fatalism. Not just absolute surrender, but some perverse underlying "blood sacrifice", as if those who die from Covid are paying off some cosmic debt. Except, of course, they aren't. Because there are no angry gods and this is not a "punishment", so you gain no mercy nor favour from surrendering to a string of RNA inside a protein shell. It's not even technically alive. There is absolutely nothing there to appeal to.
Bollocks.
Not just bollocks, but very erroneous bollocks. In that folks compare it to other endemic disease like the 'flu.
But, actually, we don't just "accept" the 'flu at all. Every single year, year after year, there's an effort to develop the annual 'flu jab (and, thanks to Covid, we've all watched on to see how this is no small effort - and, for the 'flu jab, that happens every single year. They start work on next year's, before this year's jabs have made it to arms. They have to predict - unfortunately, not always perfectly - what strains will be dominant ahead of time, so that we have the most appropriate vaccine by the time it's available).
Earlier, you compared it to accidental deaths. Yes, exactly.
Accidental deaths. Unintended and unexpected deaths. But we absolutely do legally require seat belts in cars, we require cyclists to wear helmets, workers to wear protective gear and high vis jackets. Even with accidental deaths, we take as much precautionary measures as we sensibly can. Dangerous driving and driving under the influence, etc. are crimes. Manslaughter is a crime. Indeed, even suicide is a crime.
But against all precedent, against all our values, this one's an exception where we're not just going to let people get sick and die, we're going to remove all the protections entirely, to speed it along. Hurry up and die already, bed blockers!!
And we're going to just flatly ignore that there's blatantly obvious political motivation for a PM under pressure to be pandering to his libertarian Tory backbenchers, upon whom he very much needs their votes and to discourage them from filing "no confidence" motions against him. He needs the distraction and populist appeal amongst the public, in the hopes we might forget. There's also the simple concept of removing all the Covid laws to try to make the fact that he broke them earlier not seem so bad.
This is absolutely the wrong time to be doing it. As cases are actually rising - by both ONS and Covid app figures - and "BA.2", a new sub-variant that amplifies Omicron's ability for transmission and "vaccine escape" (i.e. vaccines less effective against it, more "breakthrough infections" happening with it, etc.).
Boris intends to blind us, just as the graphs are turning for the worst (literally, by the Covid app graphs, we're only barely below the peak of all peaks, so it won't take much to reach, quite literally, the worst it's ever been on cases).
And you may ask "but what should we do?". Let's not throw everything on the bonfire in one go. Like, you know, every other nation on planet Earth. Including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who're doing this within the UK. England is a bizarre outlier. This is NOT normal behaviour. Yes, plenty of governments are relaxing restrictions - including the regions, as Wales is now dropping its "Covid passes", for example - but none are putting logic itself on the ideological bonfire.
As I say, how the hell do you justify ending self-isolation for those who're definitely positive? If we don't know - lack of testing - then that's one thing, but if it's absolutely known that this person has a contagious disease, then why the fuck are we removing the requirement for quarantine?
Is this universal? Like, if I caught Ebola, then am I also encouraged to go around spreading it? If I'm bit by a rabid dog, then are we also removing the law that says I can't go around biting people, as that might get in the way of me spreading it far and wide?
Sorry, but there is no other case where we adopt this policy of fatalistic surrender. This is NOT normal. This is weird and illogical, and this is why I was convinced that people had been swallowing "the narrative" simply because I can't believe otherwise perfectly intelligent and sensible people haven't noticed that this makes no fucking sense whatsoever and contradicts every precedent and value we've ever set ourselves for anything and everything else.
You're all fucking mad.
We can't cure death. Therefore, please jump off a cliff immediately. Please ignore the fact that no-one else on planet Earth is doing that - just jump off the cliff and think of England.
Dio wrote:Yes, we should keep mask mandates on public transport for now, possibly forever.
Forever? Forever ever?
Geez Louise, that's way more extreme than anything I've ever said. I'm only arguing for nuance - that we don't have to "all or nothing" it, but can gradually relax things, as the actual figures suggest.
I absolutely do see masks and social distancing and all that fading away, gradually, as this thing really does become endemic in the population.
But this is a slow process of cumulative immunity. We don't just get jabbed three times and, right, now we're done. It doesn't work like that.
Indeed, we've seen that it doesn't work like that. We all got two jabs and then, there we go, job done. A booster or two for the vulnerable. Sorted.
But then Omicron rode in, rode all over us and our "immunity wall" as if it wasn't even there. And, yes, we scrambled in a panic to get every third jabbed - it was never originally intended that everyone get a booster, but Omicron gave few fucks for being double jabbed and the antibodies waned, so we rushed to triple jab the whole adult population.
And, as I say, the saving grace was that Omicron wasn't interested in killing people. We did not win or succeed, Omicron spared us.
This sudden declaration of "victory" after the worst surge so far - by a country mile, as it's over three times worse than ever before - which mandated a scramble to get a third jab that we weren't originally supposed to need (because it turns out that two jabs don't magically end it all instantly), just as the numbers are getting worse, because the "sub-variant" is kicking in?
This is just madness, sorry. Utter, utter madness.
Boris is trying to save his own skin. At whatever cost.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
