# Covid variant found in India may delay lifting of England restrictions, minister admits



## Northerner (May 13, 2021)

Concerns over the spread of the coronavirus variant first detected in India could affect the final lifting of restrictions in England, a UK minister has conceded.

The government plans to press ahead with the final stage of its lifting of lockdown on 21 June, when most restrictions will be lifted, including all legal limits on social contact.

Foreign Office minister James Cleverly told Sky News that any decisions to delay easing restrictions would be “driven by the data” on infection rates and hospitalisations in the run-up to the next phase of the reopening.

He said: “Scientists on Sage will make their assessments, they will report that to government, and we will make decisions based on the data and the evidence that they provide.









						Call for ‘surge vaccinations’ as UK cases of India variant double
					

Sources say government poised to approve jab for over-16s in worst-affected areas




					www.theguardian.com


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## pm133 (May 13, 2021)

I'm not aware of any evidence which suggests that this variant is any more capable of bypassing our vaccines than all the other variants.

In fact, I'm pretty sure our vaccine has been shown to smoke this variant as well but I might be wrong.

Restrictions are being removed at the moment. It's not surprising to find the authorities issuing statements like this which stop us getting too carried away when they relax things. They've been using behavioural "nudge" tactics like this for years now. I have to say, it is all getting a little tedious now and I hate this constant fear-mongering but if it works then they'll keep doing it I suppose.

There's no reason to overly worry about this variant yet.


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## Sally71 (May 13, 2021)

Possibly not, but I don’t think we can be too complacent either.  Last week one of the secondary schools near here had to close because they had over 100 positive cases within the space of a couple of days, and all primary schools in the area were told to send home all children who have siblings there.  School concerned was deep cleaned and reopened this week.  No idea which variant it was,  but I’d rather be overcautious and stay as we are for a bit longer, than risk a third wave just because people are getting fed up with restrictions.  Yes we are doing well with vaccinations and there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but it could so easily all go wrong again.


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## Blue flash (May 16, 2021)

Is lifting of restrictions going to change many peoples, current lifestyles?

This seems like a pretty common sense group of people, just wondering your thoughts.

Hear a lot that people can't wait for end restrictions, to go out for meal or drink.

Have I just become a grumpy old hermit, can't see myself going out and mixing anytime soon.


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## Ljc (May 16, 2021)

Snip 


Blue flash said:


> can't see myself going out and mixing anytime soon.



Me neither


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## nonethewiser (May 16, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I'm not aware of any evidence which suggests that this variant is any more capable of bypassing our vaccines than all the other variants.



Govn seem confident current vaccines does protect us, hope so anyway.


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## pm133 (May 17, 2021)

Blue flash said:


> Is lifting of restrictions going to change many peoples, current lifestyles?
> 
> This seems like a pretty common sense group of people, just wondering your thoughts.
> 
> ...


For me, the issue isn't about whether I go out for a meal or not. It's being told I can't.
I'm not in the habit of allowing people to control my life to that degree and I resent anyone exercising that power for a second longer than need be. Right now though, I'd happily settle for them just dropping the ridiculous legal requirement to wear masks in public.

There still seems to be an obsession with numbers of cases rather than hospitalisations and deaths, an unwillingness to acknowledge that we've vaccinated almost every vulnerable person in the country, an unwillingness to accept that serious illness and deaths in those categories have been almost eliminated by those vaccines and a seemingly endless fear that it's only a matter of time before a variant finds a way round those vaccines, an unwillingness to accept that IF a variant evades these vaccines then we are finished anyway and an unwillingness to accept that we simply cannot continue to live like this.

A very significant number of people are sick to death of being led on all of this by people who are driven by fear. We don't speak out because we don't want to be associated with the "the whole thing is a hoax" nutters but we are a very sizeable group indeed.
If the government doesn't remove all of these restrictions in the next few months, the public will make that decision for them through acts of civil disobedience regarding ignoring mask wearing, social distancing etc. One way or another, I think this will be coming to an end sometime this summer. Those who feel unsafe will be welcome to continue wearing masks and avoiding crowded places but I don't think most people will tolerate this for much longer.

I think the only thing keeping the public onside is furlough. The second that is removed, the job losses begin in earnest and people start receiving demands for bills to be paid, you'll see public opinion shift dramatically. If I remember correctly, that is due to happen in September.


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## pm133 (May 17, 2021)

nonethewiser said:


> Govn seem confident current vaccines does protect us, hope so anyway.


I think scientists have known for a while that the Indian variant doesn't evade the vaccine so I'm really not sure what is driving all this panic.

My suspicion is that this is more of this tedious behavioural "nudge" stuff. Every time they remove restrictions they always find a new variant to panic everyone over or issue dire warnings about something to make sure people don't go mental as soon as restrictions are lifted. It insults the intelligence, it really does.

I always fall back on what I call the "smell test". Cases are starting to rise again, supposedly because of this Indian variant. If the government were really that concerned about the Indian variant and really thought there was the slightest chance our vaccines wouldn't work against it, there isn't the slightest chance they would continue rapidly opening up again. They would, at the absolute minimum, delay things for a couple of weeks to see. So this panic-mongering fails the smell test for me. Personally, I think that we're seeing cases rise because that is to be expected when restrictions are lifted. As long as deaths and hospitalisation don't increase, we're good to go. If a variant miraculously evades the vaccine we'll deal with that then. We can't stay in lockdown forever over panic about this possibility.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 17, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I think scientists have known for a while that the Indian variant doesn't evade the vaccine so I'm really not sure what is driving all this panic.


Seems clear enough to me. It spreads more quickly. While only a smallish proportion of younger people will get sick enough to end up in hospital, a smallish proportion of a very large number can be pretty large. And the vaccines (while amazing) aren't perfect, so some vaccinated people will also get sick. (And some people can't benefit from the vaccines and would be safer with lower prevalence.)

And evading the vaccines is really a matter of degree. I think it's still possible that the vaccines work a bit less well against this variant. (There seems not enough evidence to be sure.)



pm133 said:


> They would, at the absolute minimum, delay things for a couple of weeks to see.


But they've made exactly this mistake (if it is one) over and over again. I think it's completely possible they'd do this even if they think it's fairly likely they'll be blamed for it later. And they'll defend it in exactly the same ways: they weren't sure, they had to take a balanced view, etc. (Even if it turns out they have to act in a more damaging way later as a result.)


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## pm133 (May 17, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> Seems clear enough to me. It spreads more quickly. While only a smallish proportion of younger people will get sick enough to end up in hospital, a smallish proportion of a very large number can be pretty large. And the vaccines (while amazing) aren't perfect, so some vaccinated people will also get sick. (And some people can't benefit from the vaccines and would be safer with lower prevalence.)
> 
> And evading the vaccines is really a matter of degree. I think it's still possible that the vaccines work a bit less well against this variant. (There seems not enough evidence to be sure.)
> 
> ...



In what way is it clear Bruce?
How many of those increased cases are down to the Indian variant?
Where is the research to confirm that it spreads more quickly?
How many are in hospital with this variant?
How many have died from it?
How many people require hospital treatment from this variant who have had one or two vaccination doses?
If it is conjecture regarding vaccinated people getting ill or dying, what are the projected numbers from this one variant?
There's anything but clarity at this stage because none of those questions have definitive answers yet.

And none of this explains why they are still re-opening.

You say they are making the same mistake but they aren't. We have vaccines now. It is an entirely different scenario. Not a single person is saying vaccines are 100% but what is the end goal here? Zero deaths? Zero cases? At what point do we just burn our entire way of life and stay cowering at home? In  Scotland, we have virtually nobody in hospital and we've had almost zero deaths for weeks now and yet we still can't attend a football match. This is completely over the top for the size of risk faced. England and Wales are not much further ahead.

Another interesting thing I spotted is that people are now deliberately spreading lies about the Indian variant. Someone has been reporting that 5 people are in ICU in Glasgow alone with this variant and that all of them have been double vaccinated. The problem is that there are only 3 covid cases in ICU across the entirety of Scotland and zero confirmed cases of the Indian variant. You have to wonder what on earth is going on here.


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## Amity Island (May 17, 2021)

pm133 said:


> In what way is it clear Bruce?
> How many of those increased cases are down to the Indian variant?
> Where is the research to confirm that it spreads more quickly?
> How many are in hospital with this variant?
> ...


Also PM133,

Vaccines don't stop people catching sarscov2, vaccines only work at reducing covid19. So, why (as the government are proposing in Bolton) would a surge in vaccinations have any impact on reducing case/infection numbers? Vaccinated or not, people are going to catch sarscov2 no matter what the strain.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 17, 2021)

pm133 said:


> In what way is it clear Bruce?
> How many of those increased cases are down to the Indian variant?
> Where is the research to confirm that it spreads more quickly?


It seems to be the consensus that it's spreading faster than B1.1.7 and that's probably because it has some advantage to that variant. Though the numbers are small so there's lots of uncertainty (as there was for B1.1.7 early on); fast increases can just be coincidence.

The relevant Sage paper seems to be the first link here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201

My point is that what's spooking the government advisors is surely clear: in a few places cases are rising quickly and that's correlated with increases in this variant. And people are ending up in hospital (though again the numbers are small, and they're mostly people who've not been vaccinated). While numbers are as yet small that's what happens with exponential growth, especially with measures (like hospitalisation) which have significant delays: they're really small until you see they're uncomfortably large.


pm133 said:


> You say they are making the same mistake but they aren't.


I'm not saying that. I'm saying that even if they have really good reasons to think what they're doing is a mistake, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they still did it.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 17, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Vaccines don't stop people catching sarscov2, vaccines only work at reducing covid19. So, why (as the government are proposing in Bolton) would a surge in vaccinations have any impact on reducing case/infection numbers? Vaccinated or not, people are going to catch sarscov2 no matter what the strain.


This idea of surge vaccination makes complete sense to me if they also use a time machine so they can increase vaccinations in the relevant areas a month or two ago. Even now, making it easier for people to get vaccinated seems obviously a good thing to do though I think nobody thinks it'll help for a few weeks.

Yes, vaccinated people can still become infected. As I understand it it's less likely and their immune systems will be more effective against the virus so reducing the quantity of virus they'll shed, so reducing the chance of infecting other people.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 17, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> It seems to be the consensus that it's spreading faster than B1.1.7 and that's probably because it has some advantage to that variant.


An alternative view: there wasn't that much virus in Bolton before, so it's possible the rising numbers of this new variant isn't really competing with anything so its success doesn't mean anything:


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1394359535754698755


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## pm133 (May 18, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> It seems to be the consensus that it's spreading faster than B1.1.7 and that's probably because it has some advantage to that variant. Though the numbers are small so there's lots of uncertainty (as there was for B1.1.7 early on); fast increases can just be coincidence.
> 
> The relevant Sage paper seems to be the first link here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201
> 
> ...


The situation in Bolton will focus a few minds amongst those who won't take the vaccine.
Personally, I am with the government for the time being until it either starts swamping hospitals or it starts resulting in very large numbers of fully vaccinated people ending in hospital or dying. Other than that, life has to go on I'm afraid. There's not much you can do to force unvaccinated people to take the vaccine but we certainly should not be shutting down the rest of society to protect them. We can protect them to the greatest extent possible with a range of vaccines. Take it or don't take it. They know the risks and the consequences.

On your last point, the last year has been mentally exhausting enough without me expending further energy second guessing what the government would or would not do under certain circumstances.


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## pm133 (May 18, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Also PM133,
> 
> Vaccines don't stop people catching sarscov2, vaccines only work at reducing covid19. So, why (as the government are proposing in Bolton) would a surge in vaccinations have any impact on reducing case/infection numbers? Vaccinated or not, people are going to catch sarscov2 no matter what the strain.



I think you are misunderstanding where I am coming from.

I am not an anti-vaxxer and I am not of the "it's all a hoax" sector.
I am an anti-masker because I have enough of a scientific background to know for certain that they don't work in the way that they are claiming. The "it protects from coughing or sneezing" argument is just an insult to everyone's intelligence. Arguing against masks is a completely different thing to what you are describing and I wanted to clarify that.

The vaccine clearly works. In those demographics which have taken it in very large numbers, deaths and hospitalisations have dropped away to virtually zero. So nobody is going to convince me that they don't work. I am well aware they are not 100% effective but that is neither here nor there. Nobody is making that claim.
In Bolton, it is almost exclusively unvaccinated people who are in hospital with this (and in fact I don't think a single doubly vaccinated person has been confirmed to have caught it and ended up in hospital).
So yes, clearly vaccinating in that area would help. I don't see how any reasonable person could come to another conclusion.


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## Amity Island (May 18, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I think you are misunderstanding where I am coming from.
> 
> I am not an anti-vaxxer and I am not of the "it's all a hoax" sector.
> I am an anti-masker because I have enough of a scientific background to know for certain that they don't work in the way that they are claiming. The "it protects from coughing or sneezing" argument is just an insult to everyone's intelligence. Arguing against masks is a completely different thing to what you are describing and I wanted to clarify that.
> ...


Hi Pm133,

I wasn't questioning what you were saying. I'm in full agreement with many of your posts. You've got lots of valid and sensible points to make on the forum.

I was just making an additional comment that, because the tests don't test for covid, they test for sarscov2, which means surge vaccines wont stop these positive test results happening. They will however help reduce hospital admissions.

You see all these covid19 test centres all over the place, but they aren't testing for covid19.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 18, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> I was just making an additional comment that, because the tests don't test for covid, they test for sarscov2, which means surge vaccines wont stop these positive test results happening.


They will (after a while) reduce test numbers, because the vaccines (once they become effective) reduce infections.

At least, that's what seems to be happening in Israel: lots of tests but not many cases any more.


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## pm133 (May 18, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Hi Pm133,
> 
> I wasn't questioning what you were saying. I'm in full agreement with many of your posts. You've got lots of valid and sensible points to make on the forum.
> 
> ...



Ah OK. Then I misunderstood you and now I feel like a complete plum. 

I'm afraid I don't know about the tests so can't comment.

The bigger picture here is for government to stop fear-mongering and get vaccines into arms as fast as humanly possible. Everything they are saying puts people off vaccination. When they say "vaccines alone won't save us" that will be interpreted as "well what's the bloody point then?"

It's clear to me that they are going to take some time to be persuaded that the link between rising cases and hospitalisations/deaths has been broken.
I reckon they won't fully accept it until we get through next winter and I can understand that.

In the meantime, they need to continue relaxing restrictions unless evidence emerges that vaccinated people are being hospitalised in huge numbers.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 18, 2021)

pm133 said:


> It's clear to me that they are going to take some time to be persuaded that the link between rising cases and hospitalisations/deaths has been broken.


Or maybe cases will also fall as vaccinations increase (as they seem to be in Israel) in which case we can also not worry so much about more variants (home grown ones, anyway) long covid, people having to take work/school off when they're infected, etc.


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## mikeyB (May 19, 2021)

Children are currently a Petre dish, a hotbed for brewing up new variants, even as they are only mildly affected by the virus. As long as the government avoids vaccinating children, schools will be awash with infections. Not worried about home grown variants, @Bruce Stephens ?


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## Bruce Stephens (May 19, 2021)

mikeyB said:


> As long as the government avoids vaccinating children, schools will be awash with infections.


I'm fine with vaccinating children (though the government and advisors seem against it at present). My hunch is that as we vaccinate adults and get into summer, case numbers will fall in all ages including children. But there are a lot of children so perhaps I'm wrong and they'll provide a large enough population to keep infections going for months yet.

I presume modellers are looking at possible strategies (including vaccinating children in order (mostly) to protect adults). 

It might depend on vaccine availability as much as anything. And as other countries start vaccinating children perhaps that'll push us to too.


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## mikeyB (May 19, 2021)

Whatever the government does, it will be weeks too late if previous decisions are anything to rely on. The only strategy at the moment is how far loosening of lockdown can go before too many bodies pile up. Won’t matter to this government if they only pile up possible Labour voters or immigrants.


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## Sally71 (May 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Also PM133,
> 
> Vaccines don't stop people catching sarscov2, vaccines only work at reducing covid19. So, why (as the government are proposing in Bolton) would a surge in vaccinations have any impact on reducing case/infection numbers? Vaccinated or not, people are going to catch sarscov2 no matter what the strain.


Forgive me if I’m being ignorant here - I thought sarscov2 was covid-19, what’s the difference please?

Also, does anyone know how the lateral flow tests work?  My daughter’s friend spilled a drink on the test strip, having not put her sample on it yet, and got a positive result!  What’s it testing for, if it can find it in orange juice?!  
Makes me wonder if it’s really worth all the effort of doing the darn things twice a week...


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## Robin (May 21, 2021)

Sally71 said:


> Forgive me if I’m being ignorant here - I thought sarscov2 was covid-19, what’s the difference please?


I thought the same. I even googled it, and found that the two terms were used interchangeably.


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## Bruce Stephens (May 21, 2021)

Robin said:


> I thought the same. I even googled it, and found that the two terms were used interchangeably.


They are used somewhat interchangeably, but SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and COVID-19 is the disease caused by it.

(Something like HIV and AIDS.)


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## Robin (May 21, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> They are used somewhat interchangeably, but SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and COVID-19 is the disease caused by it.
> 
> (Something like HIV and AIDS.)


Thank you. So I assume @Amity Island is saying that you will encounter the actual microbes whether you are vaccinated or not, but you won’t develop the disease if you’ve been vaccinated (or are less likely to). I would assume, though, that if you have been vaccinated, if you do meet up with an infected person, the viral load you will then carry will be negligible because your body will kill it off before it replicates too much, so you are much less likely to pass it on.


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## Amity Island (May 21, 2021)

Robin said:


> I thought the same. I even googled it, and found that the two terms were used interchangeably.


Robin,

We've got millions of people worldwide thinking people are getting tested for covid19 (at these "covid19" test centres) when this is just not the case.

There is no test for covid19.

It's fine when lay people get mixed up between the two (as @Bruce Stephens said they are used interchangeably), but when medical people, governments and doctors are missunderstanding the fundamental difference and basing entire public awareness campaigns and testing on the wrong terms you have to question what is happening?

There is rarely any mention of the clear distinction between the virus and the disease.

Many people catch sarscov2 but that doesn't automatically mean you will develop covid19, it doesn't necessarily cause covid19.

The pcr tests themselves are hardly much use. They don't tell you if you are infectious, currently have it or had it, they don't tell you if you are ill. They are known to give false positives, even more so when mass testing those with no symptoms, false negatives and as @Sally71 said, many people have reported getting positve results from all sorts of other substances they have swabbed like drinks, fruit etc


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## Amity Island (May 21, 2021)

This is a good watch. Some good questions raised on why the variant arrived in Britain. Seems the answer is because we have adopted the strategy that many people are vaccinated so no need to stop incoming flights from India.

Also interesting point about how the laws were lifted on the 17th May, now the red, amber green light system is just guidance.


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## Robin (May 21, 2021)

On the other hand, it’s general that we talk about getting the measles vaccine, and catching measles, and suffering from measles in the same breath.


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## Amity Island (May 21, 2021)

Robin said:


> On the other hand, it’s general that we talk about getting the measles vaccine, and catching measles, and suffering from measles in the same breath.


Yes, but you have to admit, all those people waiting for a "covid19" test don't know that there isn't a covid19 test. I think this is an important point, particularly when medically speaking about viruses etc by your own admission, you weren't aware of the difference.


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## Robin (May 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Yes, but you have to admit, all those people waiting for a "covid19" test don't know that there isn't a covid19 test. I think this is an important point, particularly when medically speaking about viruses etc by your own admission, you weren't aware of the difference.


I think you’re splitting hairs on a question of semantics, and I'm not sure people need to know the difference. I am perfectly aware that if you are exposed to a virus, you may or may not develop the disease. If my children had been in contact with someone with chickenpox, I knew they might come out in spots, or not. I didn’t think, Oh dear, they have been exposed to the varicella-zoster virus, I wonder if they will develop chicken pox. 
Having a 'covid test' tells you that if you’ve incubated enough of the virus for the test to pick it up, you may pass it on. Having a 'sarscov2' test is meaningless, because the test isn’t sensitive enough to pick up very low levels of the virus, so it doesn’t tell you if you have a small amount of sarscov2 virus in your system that your body is dealing with (whether by natural or vaccine acquired immunity). No test is accurate enough to tell you if you can definitively pass it on or not, but population wide, it picks up more concentrated levels in the body and gives as good an indication as we can get.( I agree, the lateral flow seems less reliable).


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## pm133 (May 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Robin,
> 
> We've got millions of people worldwide thinking people are getting tested for covid19 (at these "covid19" test centres) when this is just not the case.
> 
> ...



I'm not sure this is anything more than a bit of hair-splitting and I'm not really sure what your point is.

For example, governments go on constantly about reducing "carbon emission" but of course we all understand that it is not carbon but carbon dioxide.

When you are dealing with the public, who will largely not have any scientific background at all, you keep things simple or you risk losing the core message in a fog of needless detail.

The big problem right now which is keeping restrictions in place is that we have way too many people refusing to take a vaccine because they are believing a herd of liars out there deliberately spreading utter bullshit about this thing, whether it be Bill Gates, 5G, or any of a long line of other nonsense. I already posted about someone deliberately lying about Glasgow having 5 people in ICU with the Indian variant who were already double vaccinated. There are 4 people in ICU in the entirety of Scotland right now so that story is just malicious crap and the people who engage in it should face prosecution in my opinion. 
Just like AIDS and HIV, people are dying needlessly through ignorance.


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## pm133 (May 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> This is a good watch. Some good questions raised on why the variant arrived in Britain. Seems the answer is because we have adopted the strategy that many people are vaccinated so no need to stop incoming flights from India.
> 
> Also interesting point about how the laws were lifted on the 17th May, now the red, amber green light system is just guidance.



What makes you think it came directly from India?
That variant could have travelled through any number of countries before arriving here.
And that travel could easily have been a trade thing.
Sadly, we don't live in the 18th century.
The UK simply MUST trade regardless of the pandemic, if only for food, or we'd all be starving in the streets within a week or two.


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## Amity Island (May 22, 2021)

pm133 said:


> What makes you think it came directly from India?
> That variant could have travelled through any number of countries before arriving here.
> And that travel could easily have been a trade thing.
> Sadly, we don't live in the 18th century.
> The UK simply MUST trade regardless of the pandemic, if only for food, or we'd all be starving in the streets within a week or two.


I have absolutely no idea where it came from. In the interview they seem to be pushing that idea and the answer was about not stopping flights because our country is well vaccinated.


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## Amity Island (May 22, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I'm not sure this is anything more than a bit of hair-splitting and I'm not really sure what your point is.


I don't think it is splitting hairs. Having covid19 (coronavirus disease) compared to just testing postive for sarsvoc2 can have two very different outcomes. Anyone who is or has suffered from covid19 will confirm. 

My point is, people are queueing for something that doesn't exist.


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## Gyles77 (May 22, 2021)

India is passing a very hard time right now. Lots of people already died for Covid-19. Not sure when the pandemic is over and we all will be safe.


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## pm133 (May 22, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> I don't think it is splitting hairs. Having covid19 (coronavirus disease) compared to just testing postive for sarsvoc2 can have two very different outcomes. Anyone who is or has suffered from covid19 will confirm.
> 
> My point is, people are queueing for something that doesn't exist.


So people think they are being tested for one thing but it's actually another.
What of it?
I'm struggling to see the relevance to be fair.
It sounds to me like you are itching to say something but won't come out with it directly.
I think you just need to come straight out and say exactly what it is that you are thinking.
That'll save a bit of time here.


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## pm133 (May 22, 2021)

Gyles77 said:


> India is passing a very hard time right now. Lots of people already died for Covid-19. Not sure when the pandemic is over and we all will be safe.


That depends on what you mean by safe.


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## Amity Island (May 23, 2021)

pm133 said:


> So people think they are being tested for one thing but it's actually another.
> What of it?
> I'm struggling to see the relevance to be fair.
> It sounds to me like you are itching to say something but won't come out with it directly.
> ...


Pm133,

I have said exactly what I mean, that's about as concise as I can make it.

There is a huge difference between being tested positive for sarscov2 (a virus) and people coming away from the covid19 testing centres thinking they have covid19. If they had a bad dose of covid19 they probably wouldn't even make it to the test centre.

As I said, ask anyone who has suffered with covid19 if they think it's the same as just getting a positive pcr test result.

Anyone who works as a professional in any field will know how important it is to use the correct terminology. Specific words mean very specific things, very definite and unarguable definitions. I don't think one could argue with their peers about it, one certainly couldn't use the argument "you are just splitting hairs" as an argument for using the wrong terminology when it comes to viruses and diseases.


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## Eddy Edson (May 23, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Pm133,
> 
> I have said exactly what I mean, that's about as concise as I can make it.
> 
> ...


This looks like an offshoot of the "casedemic" myth which was being promoted late last year by denialists and quacks like Joe Mercola: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-covid-19-casedemic/


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## pm133 (May 23, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Pm133,
> 
> I have said exactly what I mean, that's about as concise as I can make it.
> 
> ...


Sorry bud. I am obviously missing the point you are making.
Are you claiming people shouldn't get tested?
Are you claiming not enough people are being tested?
Or something else?


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## Amity Island (May 23, 2021)

pm133 said:


> Sorry bud. I am obviously missing the point you are making.
> Are you claiming people shouldn't get tested?
> Are you claiming not enough people are being tested?
> Or something else?


Hi Pm133,

I'm just saying they need to get their terminology right. When countrywide test centres are established to carry out testing, they should at least be accurately named. They are not testing for a disease named covid19, as the name covid19 test centre infers. They are testing for a virus named sarscov2. I think many people will not understand that and may come away thinking they "have" covid19 instead of only having a positive sarscov2 test.

Having a positive test does not mean you have covid19. Not everyone goes on to develop covid19 and not everyone of those who do develop covid19 end up in hospital or intensive care.

I just think it's a bit of a leap from a positive to test to covid19 to ICU.


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## Amity Island (May 23, 2021)

Eddy Edson said:


> This looks like an offshoot of the "casedemic" myth which was being promoted late last year by denialists and quacks like Joe Mercola: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-covid-19-casedemic/


Hi Eddy,

I am not denying anything, just have an issue with the test centres called "covid19 test centres" when this just isn't the case. Sarscov2 and covid19 are are just 2 different things. To use an analagy like mother and daughter, yes they are related but they are not the same thing. It's usually quite clear who the mother is and who the daughter is.

I'm not denying either.


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## pm133 (May 23, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> not everyone of those who do develop covid19 end up in hospital or intensive care.
> 
> I just think it's a bit of a leap from a positive to test to covid19 to ICU.



I'm not aware of anyone who is disputing any of that. Is anyone doing that?


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## Bruce Stephens (May 23, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Having a positive test does not mean you have covid19. Not everyone goes on to develop covid19 and not everyone of those who do develop covid19 end up in hospital or intensive care.


Everyone knows that, don't they?

Is anyone at all visiting a test centre which says "covid19" going to be confused? Would they be less or more confused if it said "SARS-CoV-2", without mentioning covid19 anywhere?


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## Robin (May 23, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> Everyone knows that, don't they?
> 
> Is anyone at all visiting a test centre which says "covid19" going to be confused? Would they be less or more confused if it said "SARS-CoV-2", without mentioning covid19 anywhere?


I think the right thing to call it is a Covid 19 test. People might feel that if someone said 'you’ve got sars-cov-2 virus present, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got Covid19', they’d be less likely to isolate, if they felt they may not actually have got the disease. And we need them to isolate in case they have got enough of the virus to be able to spread it.


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## Amity Island (May 23, 2021)

Robin said:


> I think the right thing to call it is a Covid 19 test. People might feel that if someone said 'you’ve got sars-cov-2 virus present, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got Covid19', they’d be less likely to isolate, if they felt they may not actually have got the disease. And we need them to isolate in case they have got enough of the virus to be able to spread it.


Hi Robin

You are entitled to your opinion and I wouldn't expect you to change it.


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