Covid & Face Masks at VP

which it always has been because that seems to be the easiest to track and is done worldwide

 

Sorry to hear that.

 

I'm totally unconvinced that the whole world has adopted this. Do you honestly believe Pakistan has had only 25,000 deaths ? Plenty of other examples of densely populated countries with low death rates. There is no way in the world they are using the same formula as us

 

I'm just finishing my self isolation period having shown symptoms and had a positive test 10 days ago. Freedom awaits tomorrow. Hasn't been too bad, bit of a cold for the first few days. I'm double vaccinated, and it is impossible to know if it would have been worse if I hadn't been.

I don't think I caught it at City, because it would have been a bit quick for symptoms to show. I was a close contact of someone who later tested positive a few days earlier, and I think that's the most likely cause.

My position on masks is that I am basically a sheep - I will follow the consensus of the crowd in most situations. That means I'm not wearing at City or in pubs. I don't think masks protect the wearer particularly, but do have an impact in preventing the infection of others. But there isn't much point if you're the only person wearing one. The one exception is in shops - I don't think it's fair to expose shop workers who have to be there for their employment to my breath. So I will wear one in a shop or supermarket even if I'm the only person doing so.

At this point I am living life more or less as pre-pandemic. I don't think that is without risk, but I also don't see any long term way of life that is without risk. This is about as good as it gets with a population that is largely vaccinated. We have to learn to live with this one way or another, and there is no good solution. It's about choosing the least worst, and doing that without any massive degree of certainty.

I'm not sure that restrictions that rely on people making their own choices are going to have a massive impact moving forwards. The scenes at Valley Parade and football grounds and concerts etc up and down the country show this. The way for government to manage this is through vaccine passports or something similar. The vaccines might not be perfect, but they are the most effective thing we have and the best hope for returning to normality.

At the moment they appear to be working, but we are in the middle of summer and last year there was a similar decline in cases during the summer months. The true test comes when we go through winter again 3 or 4 months from now.

In my opinion the biggest metric that counts as to whether we get restrictions is how many people are being admitted to hospital. That is where the bottleneck is. If we are looking like we will get to a point where people who desperately need it for whatever reason, not just COVID, will be unable to get a hospital bed (not talkiing about waiting list stuff, actual emergencies) then the government will have no choice but to impose lockdowns and further restrictions. They could try the Nightingale hospital route, but the limiting factor seems to be the number of staff required not the number of beds.

 

Are those the countries with very low testing?

 

I've said from the start we should have tested everyone on entry to hospital and isolated them until the test came back, then transferred all covid positive people to special hospitals.

I guess that's a perfect world scenario and we don't live in a perfect world.

 

How do you isolate people who are being treated? Surely they'd be in contact with doctors and other members of staff?

 

isolate them too?

 

So you basically need three of every possible staff member available. One to work with the isolated, one to work with the positives and one to work with the negatives with no interaction at all between them. Suppose but it ain't simple.

 

think that is why they said in an perfect world

 

Exactly !

 

Fair point.

In an ideal world we probably wouldn't need to bother with hospitals. Let's just zap it with a Ray gun and bit worry about the virus at all
.

 

Maybe the police issue tazer would cure it ?

 

Every home should have one...!!

 

Perfect to stop my next door neighbours four cats crapping in my garden !!

 

Not as bad as that German Shepherd that shits in ours...............oh, and sometimes he brings his dog..!!

 

Only 4?... my feckin neighbour has 8 of the feckin little shit machines.

 

If god forbid there was a significant outbreak that stemmed from a City game, how would people react to this? Carry on going maskless and in a big crowd, or stay away? Or go but take extra precaution?

I'm just being hypothetical to gain a sense of people's thoughts on that as it's pretty inevitable that it will happen with vaccines waning and cases rising.