Coronavirus Thread

[dsr-burnley]

4 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

We should not have the option to book holidays in the current situation until the government given their approval for summer holidays. Simple as. Hurts businesses. Raises expectations....

 

Is raising expectations such a bad thing?  you have a lot of depressed people, totally fed up, not seen family for all but a year, stuck indoors, sick of the sight of their four walls and the street outside, desperate to get away.  Is it really the best thing to tell them "life is miserable, it won't get any better, deal with it" rather than giving them hope?  Especially when the hope is genuine?

[Super_horns]

Stuff like this won’t help ease people’s doubts about the vaccine .

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1359638587378180096

 

Not very helpful spreading “maybe” rumours

[leicsmac]

6 hours ago, Line-X said:

No expertise. This isn't my background. Honestly - neither do I. 

Don't sell yourself short, man - if you're not an expert you are explaining the points of those who are most clearly here.

 

Keep cutting through the BS - sometimes on this thread it's sorely needed.

Edited 11 February 2021 by leicsmac

[Innovindil]

4 hours ago, bovril said:

Bloody hell, they live amongst us. 

 

So where do you fall in those categories? Don't really point out who they are. 

[UpTheLeagueFox]

49 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

Is raising expectations such a bad thing?  you have a lot of depressed people, totally fed up, not seen family for all but a year, stuck indoors, sick of the sight of their four walls and the street outside, desperate to get away.  Is it really the best thing to tell them "life is miserable, it won't get any better, deal with it" rather than giving them hope?  Especially when the hope is genuine?

Some people revel in a state of misery - mood hoovers, life vampires, fun sponges - everything is shiit, and everyone around them should share in their negativity. (Plenty on this forum too.)

Boris, for example, for all his faults, is popular partly because he generally displays a positive 'can do' attitude, even if he can't back up words with actions.

I genuinely feel sorry for people who are 'glass half empty' types. Their life is worse for it.

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

Some people revel in a state of misery - mood hoovers, life vampires, fun sponges - everything is shiit, and everyone around them should share in their negativity. (Plenty on this forum too.)

Boris, for example, for all his faults, is popular partly because he generally displays a positive 'can do' attitude, even if he can't back up words with actions.

I genuinely feel sorry for people who are 'glass half empty' types. Their life is worse for it.

As most often, I think this depends on the situation.

 

There's a place for idealism/optimism and cynicism/pessimism, and too much of either can be a bad thing.

[UpTheLeagueFox]

41 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

As most often, I think this depends on the situation.

There's a place for idealism/optimism and cynicism/pessimism, and too much of either can be a bad thing.

Of course extremes of anything can be dangerous.

However, I keep my occasional bouts of gentle cynicism/pessimism very much under control because I know it's not healthy or helpful.

I also surround myself with generally upbeat, positive people and, I would argue, my life is a lot happier because of it.

Getting older (and hopefully wiser) has played a big part in my thought processes which have moved to being generally optimistic and a lot more chilled out than, say, a decade ago.

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

Of course extremes of anything can be dangerous.

However, I keep my occasional bouts of gentle cynicism/pessimism very much under control because I know it's not healthy or helpful.

I also surround myself with generally upbeat, positive people and, I would argue, my life is a lot happier because of it.

Getting older (and hopefully wiser) has played a big part in my thought processes which have moved to being generally optimistic and a lot more chilled out than, say, a decade ago.

Positivity can be just as toxic as negativity depending on the circumstances, that's the point here.

 

Of course, positivity is likely required more often, but what is important is being able to recognise what is required in what situation (for instance, knowing when to fold 'em), IMO.

[UpTheLeagueFox]

8 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Positivity can be just as toxic as negativity depending on the circumstances, that's the point here.

Of course, positivity is likely required more often, but what is important is being able to recognise what is required in what situation (for instance, knowing when to fold 'em), IMO.

I can't think of many cases where positivity can be toxic, unless it's an extreme example.

[leicsmac]

13 minutes ago, UpTheLeagueFox said:

I can't think of many cases where positivity can be toxic, unless it's an extreme example.

The high male suicide rate partly due to the "man up" attitude and not seeking help (an example of proactive positivity being pushed) is one that immediately comes to mind, and I don't believe that to be extreme. There are others, too.

 

I'm not saying that being on a downer is best most often, but people "revelling in misery" often need more than instruction on positive thinking, and sadly there's a great deal of lost causes that prove this.

[Dahnsouff]

2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

The high male suicide rate partly due to the "man up" attitude and not seeking help (an example of proactive positivity being pushed) is one that immediately comes to mind, and I don't believe that to be extreme. There are others, too.

 

I'm not saying that being on a downer is best most often, but people "revelling in misery" often need more than instruction on positive thinking, and sadly there's a great deal of lost causes that prove this.

Steady on there, that is not a positive outlook even slightly. Repression of ones emotions and fears to confirm to perceived societal expectations is just plain unhealthy. 
The negatives of being overly positive is probably it can be wearing in the extreme for people who tend to be on a more even (or negative) keel.

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Steady on there, that is not a positive outlook even slightly. Repression of ones emotions and fears to confirm to perceived societal expectations is just plain unhealthy. 
The negatives of being overly positive is probably it can be wearing in the extreme for people who tend to be on a more even (or negative) keel.

I'm reasonably sure that the people who purport it believe it to be a "positive" thinking mindset - to be rugged, stoic and indifferent to problems in the mind is positive thought in their minds. I certainly agree with you that it's unhealthy, but our perception isn't the important one here.

 

Do agree with the second sentence.

[CosbehFox]

7 hours ago, dsr-burnley said:

Is raising expectations such a bad thing?  you have a lot of depressed people, totally fed up, not seen family for all but a year, stuck indoors, sick of the sight of their four walls and the street outside, desperate to get away.  Is it really the best thing to tell them "life is miserable, it won't get any better, deal with it" rather than giving them hope?  Especially when the hope is genuine?

We had a situation at Christmas where expectations were raised for a five day break of restrictions which was then reduced to an one day break. With the plans and expectation, people across the country broke that one day break spending multiple days with their family. 
 

Manage expectations - and anything better than the worst case scenario is great. It’s a crisis, time for this nation to stick their big boy pants and face up to the realities. Maybe then we might start showing the kind of behaviour which finally gets rid of this thing. 
 

Call it misery all you want - it’s cold hard realism. 
 

My other issue with the holiday thing is I have real concerns about businesses who have to service refunds and holidays going back longer than a year and what it does to their cash flow. I see Gary Neville has picked up on the holiday thing this morning and says that very indecision gives his restaurant(S) and hotels a real concern about the roadmap. 

Edited 11 February 2021 by Cardiff_Fox

[Bellend Sebastian]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

As most often, I think this depends on the situation.

 

There's a place for idealism/optimism and cynicism/pessimism, and too much of either can be a bad thing.

Most definitely. I worked for years with someone with a relentlessly positive, 'nothing is a problem' attitude. It led to them taking ridiculous, unnecessary risks, being a genuinely terrible judge of character (a total inability to question people's motives made them repeatedly open to be exploited) and soured relations with colleagues that were trying to do the right thing in the face of things like evidence. Whilst there were undoubtedly some circumstances where this approach worked, over the two decades I worked with them, these were FAR outnumbered by the instances where it led them perilously close to disaster

[filbertway]

9 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Stuff like this won’t help ease people’s doubts about the vaccine .

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1359638587378180096

 

Not very helpful spreading “maybe” rumours

I swear all you do is come into this thread spreading potential bad news

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

[dsr-burnley]

2 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

We had a situation at Christmas where expectations were raised for a five day break of restrictions which was then reduced to an one day break. With the plans and expectation, people across the country broke that one day break spending multiple days with their family. 
 

Manage expectations - and anything better than the worst case scenario is great. It’s a crisis, time for this nation to stick their big boy pants and face up to the realities. Maybe then we might start showing the kind of behaviour which finally gets rid of this thing. 
 

Call it misery all you want - it’s cold hard realism. 
 

My other issue with the holiday thing is I have real concerns about businesses who have to service refunds and holidays going back longer than a year and what it does to their cash flow. I see Gary Neville has picked up on the holiday thing this morning and says that very indecision gives his restaurant(S) and hotels a real concern about the roadmap. 

The problem is that there are (oversimplification alert) two types of people - those getting by in the pandemic because even with the restrictions their life isn't so bad as all that, and those not getting by and having an awful time because their life is rotten.  This may be partly a state of mind rather than actual financial/social position, but that's not the issue.

 

Thepowers that be are far too concerned about reining in the optimists who think life isn't so bad.  They want to depress them. to rein them in, to make them believe the situation is worse.  But they can only do that by telling everyone that the situation is worse and it isn't getting better in any significant degree - and so obviously that's what they are telling the already depressed.  When you tell a young man with few cares to put on his big boy pants and face up to realities, you are saying the same thing to the pensioner with depression.

 

Covid is a problem for now.  But depression, dementia, loneliness are problems for now as well.  If government policy is that we should give up hope, then it will lead to problems, and I don't think those problems are being considered.

Edited 11 February 2021 by dsr-burnley

[The Quick Brown Fox]

47 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

[ealingfox]

10 minutes ago, browniefox said:

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

 

Behave.

[Robo61]

37 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

 

4 minutes ago, browniefox said:

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

Please could you advise where you got the number dying from dementia from,  I can only find data on the internet that indicates the complete opposite. 

 

However Covid deaths are reported there are going to be built in innaccuaries,  there will also be people who have died of Covid-19,  but were never tested before their death and therefore they don't appear in the daily figures.  The three ways the Government is using to monitor the number of deaths caused by the Covid Virus are all tracking around the same ball park number,  so there is no reason to believe that any of them are widely inaccurate. 

[Sampson]

It's funny how up until mid-December we'd heard nothing about variants and now they're everywhere.

 

Earlier in the pandemic it was said that the virus mutated way less than flu so the variations won't make much of a difference.

 

Now each one is a massive headline which will render the vaccine useless? Obviously it's important that Scientists study them and keep on top of them, but the way these variants feel a little sensationalist to me.

Edited 11 February 2021 by Sampson

[Houdini Logic]

1 hour ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

This is something I also find particularly interesting. Just this weekend I decided to try and find an accurate figure for myself and I'll tell you, it was hard! I had to pull together individual weekly deaths rates for 2020 and then compare them to the 5 year average. I also found using the 5 year average in itself was fairly misleading because it has been naturally trending upwards since 2011. Anyway... the short and long is that by my calculations there were around 60-65,000 extra deaths in 2020, around half of what the government are reporting. 

 

I can understand to an extent why the government are overplaying this, because in their view it's a necessary form of crowd control (or that's my take on it). It helps you get buy-in from the masses, which is ultimately what they want to stop a more significant spike, people dying on hospital floors and the tabloids running riot. I kind of get that. 

Edited 11 February 2021 by Houdini Logic

[Dunge]

56 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

Right now I’d say it would be for consistency. There’s a value in viewing our position compared to last week, last month, last season, etc. and then presenting this in a way the public can understand. If we altered the definition and started presenting different graphs, that in itself causes confusion, while also adding nothing to the data in a relational sense (eg last week’s death rate is still around x% higher than this week’s death rate regardless of definition).

 

I appreciate the frustration in this and that it creates a somewhat inaccurate picture; but there will always be some manner of inaccuracy if you want answers with any kind of speed, so it’s a trade-off. Considering the main aim right now is to drive down the number of cases and how public trust tends to drop whenever the goalposts get moved (see summer holidays), they likely feel that any kind of redefinition is more trouble than it’s worth.

[The Quick Brown Fox]

10 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

 

Behave.

I know! That's my thought. I was hoping someone would be able to let me know who the "they" was. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

14 hours ago, bovril said:

Bloody hell, they live amongst us. 

 

Paedos get less. Brainwashed nation.