Covid-19 Virus

Life is full of ‘bullying’ that’s not really bullying though.

It’s my personal choice when to wash yes? But if I decided it wasn’t for me, after a couple of months work would be having a word and eventually I would be off.

If you chose to tread the same smelly path, as a healthcare professional, not only would you soon be short of customers, but you would eventually have your fitness to practise restricted and if you didn’t abide by the conditions imposed, you’d be suspended, eventually erased.

These are the costs of existing as public citizens. Individuals who wish to remain wholly private and make nothing but individual choices can’t expect to take part in the social world.

It’s right we debate the limits of the impositions upon us, but there will always be some. And the bar for nightclubs and foreign travel is likely to be a vaccination against a disease potentially deadly for some.

 

"Rights" are a tricky thing.

Yes, an individual should have the right to determine what goes into their bodies.

But businesses should have the right to set their own terms of entry into their premises.

Also citizens should have the expectation that their government will do everything in their power to protect their safety and well-being.

So, in my view, people have the right to not have the vaccine. But the government and businesses also have the right to then limit their access to events if that access threatens the safety, and therefore the rights, of others.

 

Kerrist sounds like a 'discussion' with my teenage daughter who can't quite grasp the fact that along with "...rights..." you have "...responsibilities...".

 

I ride a motorbike and am nuts but my riding a motorcycle will not have any effect on the safety of the rest of the population.

 

The individual right at play in the legal case I was thinking of isn’t the right not to have the vaccine - at least not directly. It’s the right to attend PL matches, go to nightclubs etc as an aspect of how one chooses to live one’s life.

That would be balanced against public health and the rights of others but the infringement of the individual right must be proportionate to the collective gain.

I suspect a court would say it was - but I don’t think it’s totally clear-cut. One issue would be why it’s possible to attend nightclubs now without any passport, but (possibly) not in the autumn.

In any case, before all of this the government would have to make a declaration in Parliament that any vaccine passport scheme it chooses to introduce is human rights compliant.

 

5 days of infection reductions in a row ? Apparently first time this has happened outside of a lockdown ?
Good news but more importantly for the next 25 posts or so, does this mean the Tories got the release of restrictions in summer time right after all, or they are a bumbling collective of incapable morons ?

 

Isn't that covered the point that by whatever date the government expects to put that rule in place, the idea is everyone will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated plus 8 weeks will have elapsed to enable them to get their second jab? ie. the government can show it's already taken account of the procedural unfairness that would be caused by requiring people to need full vaccination before the point at which every adult could have done so.

 

It's too soon after 19th July for much to be read into that. I don't doubt they will plateau and go up again. The key thing for the government's gamble to pay off would be if cases have dropped to very small numbers in September when the children return to school.

 

Yes. But what if there is no evidence of a rise in COVID cases amongst those attending nightclubs or PL matches before then? It then becomes very difficult to justify this except as a means of “coercing” vaccination.

I’m speculating of course.

 

It has to be good news, but the buts are,

Are hospitalisations and serious illnesses also reducing?
Are people actually reporting their illness and getting tested? If people, especially the young, get mild Covid would they bother getting a test?
Summertime is not the crunch time for respiratory illnesses.

In saying that, at the moment, the Tories will feel their strategy is working. I can’t see it being a free ride and overall infections won’t be the judge of it.

 

I totally agree. The message that going to a night club now without a vaccine is ok but it won't be safe to do the same without a vaccine in a few weeks is garbled to say the least.

That has certainly left the government open to a human rights challenge if/when they legislate to ban unvaccinated people from attending events. However I imagine any challenge would be tide up in the courts for months, if not years, so would be purely academic exercise imo.

 

Yes, but if they are saying that people need to be vaccinated for the venue to be safe then you could argue that perhaps they shouldn't have allowed them to open until everyone had the opportunity to be vaccinated?

 

I don’t think it would be years, but yes - it would probably take long enough that the objectives of the policy could be achieved in the meantime.

It’s more doubtful it would get through Parliament in the first place.

 

I refer the honourable gentleman to my post #8788.

Covid-19 Virus

 

Not sure of your point. I'm just describing how the courts reason under the HRA. If that sounds like a teenage discussion - well, so be it.

 

I think they'd likely (try to) argue the rise they're trying to prevent won't have happened yet but is projected.

Anyway, if this ends up going through as primary legislation - and I agree it won't without Labour's support and I suspect it would have a rough ride in the HoL too - there's little the courts can do to touch it. Even if they declare it incompatible with the ECHR the courts can't prevent the law still having force. I'm sure a long and winding road to Strasbourg would then begin but for a government with short-term aims to suppress a virus, the 'threat' of losing a legal action in probably 5 years time that they can also ignore probably won't worry them too much.

The counter-argument to that is they'd probably say the risks of the virus increase as we head into autumn/winter and so more stringent measures are justified. Plus this isn't just a safety/epidemiological decision and so becomes one about legitimate public policy aims (in this case reaching a high enough percentage of people vaccinated) and the way to achieve them.

 

Opening night clubs, but only with vaccine passports, in the autumn is because everyone would have had sufficient time to get a vaccine.

No festival, night club, or mass event is safe or not safe as a binary choice, they are all on a safety spectrum dependent on what measures are taken.

It is because the HR's is being taken into consideration by the government that is partly causing the delay and what some refer to as a garbled message.

The whole argument on here seems to be an extension of the "people should not have to make their own decisions" argument versus the "government should remove choice and force us to restrict via legislation" argument.

The same arguments are being pitched across most other major nations.

 

The inconsistency is that the Government went ahead with the opening up on July 19th (mainly because they didn't want to put it off again) before all adults could be vaccinated, but the restrictions they now feel the need to impose involving 'vaccine passports' (mainly to encourage greater vaccine take-up) are not happening until after all adults have had the chance to be fully vaccinated.

 

By then well over 80% of adults had had their first, and over 60% their second. For those not fully vaccinated at the time 19th July was not an invitation for a free-for-all. Boris said that responsibility for being safe has shifted firmly to the individual. I get the end of September requirement as by then it allows all adults to have the chance of both vaccines + a few weeks. Also by then vulnerable children and those within 3 months of their 18th birthday would have had the chance to be vaccinated too.

Why should society and jobs be held back further? Now we are reaching 90% having the first jab, the pertinent question should be why would those people who came forward to take the jab face restrictions because of the selfish 1 in 10 who refuse it?

 

Charming. Former Nurse (she was struck off) under investigation for comments at the anti-vaccine ‘Freedom Rally’ on Saturday. She apparently likened health care workers to Nazi war criminals.

http://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...-at-anti-vax-and-anti-lockdown-rally-12364442

 

That isn't a consistency that cannot be explained, it is a consistency easily explained by circumstances. Opening up will never be totally safe, so open up now, and then as it becomes OK to use a vaccine passport without being unfair on young adults that cannot get the vaccination, look to implement it.

 

Is there any evidence that the Track and Trace app has been a success in any way at all? Or has it just scared people for no reason and led to the kind of chaos and disruption that should have been obvious from the outset had somebody applied a little forethought before flushing billions of pounds of taxpayers' money down the lavatory to acquire this technology.

 

Absolute loon . Doesn't want to put stuff in her if she doesn't know what is in it literally has face full of lip filler and BoTox (yep, botulism toxin). Imagine if she was your mum. Actually, you don't have to, her son can tell you (v.sad)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszvsf

 

The problem with this approach is that we’ve gone into 2021 with unnecessarily high levels of the virus.

That decision lies with Johnson and his unwillingness to act decisively in the autumn as he caved into backbencher pressure and enjoyed backslapping ‘Xmas is saved!’ headlines. We never got on top of it.

Had the virus been under control, what you explain would have been fine, a reasonable risk. As it is, it must be a recipe for much more infection somewhere down the line.

 

It’s a roaring success right now. Has tracked and traced most of the Country.

 

I've probably missed some fundamental point, but if the vaccines don't actually stop a person contracting Covid but lessen its impact, what is the current mania for insisting that young people (who very rarely seem to suffer serious Covid problems) get jabbed all about? Isn't a jabbed person walking around with mild symptoms just as likely/more likely to pass on the germs than an unjabbed?

 

Lower chance of catching it, and if you do, as there are less(fewer) likely to be symptoms, less(fewer) likely to cough or sneeze on someone so less(fewer) chance of passing it on ?

 

I don’t think the medical fraternity are 100% on this yet, but the evidence is that transmissibility is lessened for those who are vaccinated. Apart from that, the “current mania” for trying to get the young jabbed is to avoid the minority of them getting seriously ill with long or full-blown Covid. Statistically, that is certain to happen to a few, but many fewer if they are vaccinated.

If anyone, of whatever age, refuses the vaccine then so be it. That’s their choice and risk, but we owe it to everyone to give them the opportunity to have it and to encourage them to do so as far as possible.

 

This may help with the why, rare as it is,

In the week ending 4 July, there were just 17 people over 85 years old admitted to hospital with Covid in England, compared with 478 aged between 25 and 44.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57840825

 

Interesting feedback. Thanks.

 

But there isn't a lower chance of catching it once vaccinated. The benefit is if you do catch it you're much less likely to end up in an ICU with a tube down your throat. I think

 

I completely agree. But should people who choose - for whatever reason - not to be vaccinated be excluded from football stadiums, nightclubs, university lecture theatres etc? So far as I can see nobody seems able to give a solid medical reason why they should be.

 

I think it's both. Much lower chance of catching it. Much lower chance of hospitalisation if you do catch it. If I had time I'd google and produce some stats to back that up....

 

Almost word for word what was said to me when I had my first jab.