P.K.

Make sure you get boosted folks - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/02/covid-booster-shots-significantly-strengthen-immunity-trial-finds

I happen to mostly agree with you. His expecting immediate results from mitigations and the back to square one etc etc just showed how out of touch he is. However you only need to see how many unvaccinated are filling up the wards to realise that you can't scare these people into being sensible. They're already beyond that...

@offshoremanxman What genuine and balanced concerns? "....all else has failed" to do what exactly? Personally I think Watterson thought he had to be seen to be doing something about Covid. Sure on MF he comes across as being misinformed but there's a lot of that about. No such thing as bad publicity and has been shown just spout off any old bollox and you'll probably get re-elected...

The population of South Africa is relatively young. So it's still wait and see mode.

I thought this was an excellent synopsis of where we are with Omiwhatever. Worth a watch to understand why this variant has folks spouting nonsense. https://youtu.be/LKT7fGL_Uh0

Had a long chat with a friend who is a paramed in London. They go and pick up yet another covid stricken patient who is unvaccinated and then have to drive through an anti-vaxxer demonstration taking place outside the hospital ! What is wrong with these people...???!!!

The problem is there are few "facts" to be had atm. Which naturally leads to lots of (probably misinformed) speculation... Watching that nice Andrew Marr it seems we won't get any useful data for about two weeks. Wait and see mode...

You could always give them a chinese burn...

I read it was to prevent a Chinese Leader taking offence...

With Thanks to The Mash: Six f**king obvious questions anti-maskers really need to ask IF wearing a mask is fascist government oppression, what is it meant to achieve? Here are the questions anti-maskers avoid asking: What’s the overall point? Getting people to wear a mask means you’ve cleverly tricked them into wearing a thin face covering. They are now your obedient puppets who can be made to do anything, so long as it’s wearing a thin face covering. It’s not exactly The Manchurian Candidate. Are masks really oppression? Covering your face in Tesco isn’t a classic symptom of life under tyranny. O’Brien didn’t threaten to pop a lightweight cloth mask on Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s only useful as an instrument of terror if you can’t imagine anything worse than your glasses misting up. Cui bono? Who profits? Well, Tory cronies have cashed in on dodgy PPE, test-and-trace, and so on. Pretty disgusting, but worth the expense, hassle and unpopularity of a fake pandemic? No. It’s like faking your own death to avoid a 45-minute Skype chat with your in-laws. Is Covid really no worse than flu? If Covid doesn’t either exist or is no worse than ‘the Spanish flu’, as dickheads suggest, who’s killing so many people? Thanos? Why are 1.4 million NHS workers lying about it? Who’s orchestrating this global conspiracy, and why do you imagine you’re intelligent enough to see through it? Is the New World Order really involved? More to the point, is there any evidence the New World Order exists? Which world leaders are keen to give up power to a single world government? Boris Johnson? Jair Bolsonaro? Xi Jinping? None of them can even agree on bloody climate change. Why do anti-maskers keep getting Covid? Attending protests unmasked and unvaccinated seem to result in symptoms exactly like Covid. Perhaps Mossad are using low-frequency sound generators to replicate fake Covid. Or the government has engineered and released a real virus to cover up their fake virus. Yes. That makes sense. You should wear a mask.

They body-swerved "Xi" though. Wonder why...?

Finally a brexit benefit! Fewer HGV's clogging up UK roads. Yes please! Volumes of goods shipped directly from Ireland to the EU on new Brexit-busting ferry routes have rocketed by 50% in the past six months as exporters seek to avoid travelling across land through Great Britain, according to official data. Figures published by the Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) show significant traffic diverted away from the traditional routes between Dublin and Britain to some of 32 new ferry services direct to ports such as Le Havre, Cherbourg and Dunkirk in France and Zeebrugge in Belgium. On Saturday, Rosslare Europort said, it had its busiest day in its history. Its general manager, Glenn Carr, put the increased demand down to the desire to avoid the UK, but also a reduction in trade with Great Britain because of Brexit red tape and cost. “In particular industries, we’re definitely seeing where traditionally a lot of goods were sourced in the UK or exported to the UK, there’s been a switch to Europe,” he told journal.ie. “We definitely see it in the port in terms of the mix of goods that are there now – ingredients, food, dairy, pharmaceuticals.”

More piss-poor trolling. Like you don't know Priti Patel's Home Office and their "hostile environment" has everything to do with migrants...? Nobody is that thick surely...

This is her "vibe" which is an absolute discrace: Windrush: Home Office has compensated just 5% of victims in four years! Report from cross-party MPs calls for scheme to be taken away from Priti Patel’s department. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/24/windrush-home-office-has-compensated-just-5-of-victims-in-four-years

That may well be the future. Personally I worry about family and friends catching covid by stupidly ignoring the basic, simple things that help mitigation. After all, the hospitals are dealing with a lot of covid patients who stupidly didn't get vaccinated....