IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Pipsqueak]

3 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

A gravity-laden release from DBC.....

 

the bottle banks seem to be overflowing as well most places,  ramsey shoprite is a good/bad example

[Debbie]

On 12/29/2020 at 7:27 PM, Happier diner said:

I reckon you have misunderstood the vaccine. Vaccines work by teaching the body an immune response. Whether or not it prevents transmission is NOT KNOWN. It is not true that we know it does not prevent transmission, just that the medics are not sure that it does just yet. All other vaccines in history did so chance is it will but we will see.

When we are vaccinated, virus still invade our system. However they do not establish themselves because our immune system attacks them and kills them off.

I am sorry, it depends on the virus and the the vaccine.

For illnesses such as smallpox and measles is easily to achieve "sterilising immunity", meaning that once vaccinated you neither catch it nor can possibly transmit to others, indefinitely.

However, for respiratory illnesses typically sterilising immunity is much more difficult to achieve. As concerns corona, realistically it can be achieved only partially and not for a very long period of time (a goal of reducing transmission by 2/3 over a couple of years would seem achievable, with current vaccines, but not much better than that).

[Pipsqueak]

2 minutes ago, Debbie said:

I am sorry, it depends on the virus and the the vaccine.

For illnesses such as smallpox and measles is easily to achieve "sterilising immunity", meaning that once vaccinated you neither catch it nor can possibly transmit to others, indefinitely.

However, for respiratory illnesses typically sterilising immunity is much more difficult to achieve. As concerns corona, realistically it can be achieved only partially and not for a very long period of time (a goal of reducing transmission by 2/3 over a couple of years would seem achievable, with current vaccines, but not much better than that).

just like the flu then.

[Escape Artist]

3 minutes ago, Pipsqueak said:

just like the flu then.

It is better than the flu, because the virus is intrinsically more stable and easier to vaccinate. However, the goal of sterilising immunity is a chimera with ordinary vaccines. We will achieve nothing like measles.

[Escape Artist]

My concern is that having inculcated enormous fear into the population for the supposedly noble purpose of limiting fatalities, our government(s) will be tempted in extracting political capital by pursuing an absurd policy of complete eradication.

That would push us into frequent re-vaccinations with experimental vaccines that haven't been around for long enough to understand their overall effects; things like gene therapy. Absurd for limiting an illness with such a low fatality rate.

What do you expect a populist buffoon such as Boris Johnson to do? Would you trust him with your health and wellbeing?

[Filippo]

On 2/28/2021 at 5:39 PM, John Wright said:

Ignorantia juris haud excusat

Ignorantia juris non excusat

Ignorantia juris neminem excusat

I am back in the isle; running in the glens and windy moorlands of its landscape. Not much else to do in my free time, thanks to… you know. The return journey was much less adventurous than the outbound odyssey of early January; an evening flight from Vienna to Heathrow (rescheduled two times), an overnight bus to Lancaster, a bus to Heysham, and the afternoon boat. – I had lost touch with this thread; and thus I skimmed a bit through the last few months to see what I have missed.

Here I have got some legal cookies for John Wright. And useful information for anyone who might be planning a journey to foreign lands in the current circumstances. UK government web pages (1st pic below) state that all international arrivals have to quarantine and pre-book two Covid tests to be released later. The BBC web-page (2nd pic) was much on the same tune. Realising that the UK locator form mainly reflects the rules of England and it is not mutually consistent with the rules of the devolved administrations and other jurisdictions of the British isles, I poured through the details of "The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations" in force since last June as a "statutory instrument" (meaning that it was passed with no effective parliament supervision). The text of that "law" (wanting to dignify it with that epithet) is 94 pages long (some relevant excerpts are shown in 3rd and 4th pics below). My conclusion had been that as a transit traveller my UK locator form did not need to specify a UK quarantine address nor the pre-booking (and pre-payment) of the Covid tests.

Unfortunately, when my paperwork was checked at Heathrow, the woman police officer 
going through it, after asking for passport, pre-travel Covid test etc, started going through my UK locator form (which I had on my laptop) much more carefully than I had expected and took the position that I still had to to take the two Covid tests: “every traveller to the UK needs them”. When the argument started, she said "show me the law" in a challenging tone and thus, imagine me holding in front of her face a laptop and scrolling down all of the above mentioned documents and legal stuff while trying to convince her.

Unable to either accept or refute my legal arguments and other justifications, she went first to fetch a colleague at a nearby desk and then a supervisor; the whole argument going on for about a quarter of an hour with the three of them. The supervisor said that the mentioned law was from last June; now superseded by the January instrument requiring the two Covid tests. No I said: the January instrument introduced the requirement of having two Covid tests for all inbound travellers quarantining in England; but it DID NOT abrogate the June legislation, which still stands. Finally, the three of them found a book of police internal guidance on these matters; after a bit of skimming through it, the same police woman started saying "I think he is right…" and her two colleagues nodded it through tacitly. The whole argument with them had not been animose or unpleasant. Before I departed, I had though what a nut I am for spending time on the details of the damn Covid legislation (which I hate and despise all of it). I am capable to prepare my recklessness; the fundamental difference between me and the jet-skier.

Now, to your regret perhaps, I decided to omit all the bit about my dealing with the authorities of this island on my returning here. My reporting of the January trip (cf. my posting to this thread on the 21st of January) had also to be sanitised after some reflection (it omits all the bits of when I had to cut trough the woods to cross an international border). But it was all worth; I had a truly fab month in the Swiss alps and my yearly reboot, like every other winter.

 

On 3/2/2021 at 11:56 AM, GD4ELI said:

Still of the same opinion?

 

On 3/8/2021 at 8:57 AM, CowMan said:

Thomas uses the words Bunker Mentality and he’s right. Right from the start I’m left with the impression that we have some massive covid nut job with a warped God complex running everything in the Cabinet Office. From almost day one of border controls we had the sirens wailing transporting returnees into what was basically a prison for two weeks. It was straight out of a Hollywood doom movie. Then we had the police and the courts breaking people’s heads if they dare to set foot outdoors and setting what must be, per head of population, some sort of record tor public imprisonment. An unneeded all Island speed limit brought in for very spurious reasons. Then they’ve denied people the right to see family and friends and countless people have been turned down for compassionate visits etc. They’ve not listened to science (in terms of relying on more active border control like testing and other methods of controlling movement and infection) they only seem to listen to some total crack pot who seems to think is WW2 and the Island need to be run like some Soviet Gulag in order to ward off covid and that testing is a waste of money. That’s why they’re in this mess now and they still won’t listen.

 

On 3/4/2021 at 6:29 PM, CowMan said:

And the best way to protect these vulnerable obese people apparently is to lock them inside their houses, limit further their exercise, and put them in a mental state where many will resort to over drinking alcohol or over eating to cope. It makes a so much sense! 

 

On 3/5/2021 at 7:22 AM, reptar said:

This situation is making me very angry indeed this time.

It is entirely the fault of the government that we are in this situation. They are incompetent and negligent and, to be quite honest, stupid individuals. Quayle,  in particular, has such low intelligence that he can barely speak. His sentences sound like they have been smashed together with a mallet by a non native English speaker.

The three of them are a disgrace and I would not let them look after my dog. I think there would be a good chance you would get home, the dog would be in pieces all over the floor and the three of them would be looking at you shrugging and saying 'not me but lessons have been learnt.

Isn't it time to be calling for resignations? I think the situation warrants it, they are an utter fucking shambles.

 

On 3/2/2021 at 1:37 PM, Utah 01 said:

This has now tipped over into the absurd.  Mr Toad and Ashworth cannot be allowed to abuse the people of this Island's social and economic fabric without an unarguably valid reason and this isn't it. This Shangri La mentality has to stop.

I am being asked by GD4ELI if I have changed my mind in respect to my first posting to this thread on 22 April 2020. Obviously we know so much more after one year and my arguments have evolved. Also, I have first hand experience from my winter journeys across Europe.

I spent a full month in the Swiss canton of Valais during their second wave and I have seen a different approach than both the UK and this isle. The federal Swiss authorities made clear that their aim is mitigation rather than elimination; and only to the extent of keeping hospital occupancy within capacity. Switzerland shut down the most hedonistic and risky part of their leisure industry for a length of time which is less than the UK and no more than the Isle of Man. Most importantly, it never had the disproportionate restrictions on personal freedoms that have been imposed on us. Practically there have been no restrictions on travel and no restrictions on meeting whom you want to meet. There has been a limit on public gathering above 15, that’s it. The few restrictions on what people can do, mostly coming from the federal government, have not been enforced by the cantonal authorities (or to a minimum extent and reluctantly); only restrictions on business have. The border has always been open. It is the only European country in which I have been able to come and go without checks or any question asked. I never saw the demented "stay at home message" drummed incessantly into people ears as if the recipient were too retarded to understand it. Obviously, the ski resorts would have not been open otherwise; I was there doing winter sports...

You would then expect Switzerland to have had higher Covid mortality than the kind of countries that tried to keep people prisoners of their homes. But Switzerland has had less fatalities on a per-capita basis than both the UK and three of its four neighbouring countries. Only Austria had less fatalities, but not by much. Germany, France, Italy and Austria all had strict limitations on what people can do analogous to the UK, and they have nothing to show for it. It is my opinion that those restriction have been imposed on us in part for political reasons, in part for ignorance and stupidity; but they achieved little or nothing. There are academic studies from the time of the first wave that support this point of view quantitatively.

The Isle of Man, within the context of being an island, had less fatalities than Switzerland on a per capita basis, at the cost of the border closure and the degradation of people lives to which you have been submitted. Making the population-size proportion, IOMG appears to have saved about 50 lives with the border closure and the punishing lockdown (more people jailed than any other jurisdiction). However, half of those 50 souls are now dead anyway; because it is the nature of coronavirus that half of its victims have less than one year to live; thus IOMG lockdown accomplishment so far is more in the ballpark of 25 lives saved. Please raise your hands those who think that the border closure and the other lockdown consequences, which include the depletion of government coffers, won’t cause many more than 25 premature deaths over time.

When I left the island with the ERJ-145, the back of the cabin had a group of elderly travelling exclusively for medical reasons. I overheard them complaining about the many difficulties they had repeatedly experienced with trying to obtain medical tests and treatments; their inconveniences and deprivations from having to isolate after ever return journey from vising an UK hospital. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have to send their patients overseas for routine treatments; this little island is not remotely self-sufficient as concerns its health care needs. It is also devoid of any private hospital where tests for suspected conditions could be carried out when the NHS is not available. There are so many illnesses other than Covid. One in 7 women will fall ill with breast cancer, one in 8 men with prostate cancer, at a certain point of their lives. Even in the blinkered balance sheet that assigns zero value to individuality and personal choice (not my balance sheet) if the only purpose is keeping us living for longer, the focus should be on the preemptive diagnosis and treatment of those unfortunate illnesses that have a statistical chance to kill us soon or later. Try to get an MRI on this island for anything rather than the urgent diagnosis an illness whose symptoms have already progressed to the stage where they can’t be ignored anymore. Each MRI machine has a starting price of one million USD; absolute peanuts for a government that can afford to spend hundreds of millions on lockdown.

The British Isles have the lowest healthy-life expectancy than the whole of Western Europe (68 years to be precise; the number of years that one can expect to live a life free of crippling illnesses in these islands). The actions of our government are making sure that these isles will stay that way: a middling income country with inhabitants having unhealthy lifestyles and prone to precocious illnesses. It is naive to trust the government with our own health and general wellbeing. Boris Johnson, Howard Quayle, David Ashford are such a poor example of healthy lifestyle that it is a joke having them mandating health activities to anyone.

Switzerland is by no means the only example of country respectful of civil liberties. From mid March wide swathes of America have reopened and are now almost back to business as usual. Texas governor has bragged that his state is now "open 100 per cent" (Texas never really enforced Covid restrictions on people; no one there ever got fined for not wearing a stupid mask). In Florida, students have been packing on beaches for the past month and families are have been entertaining themselves in Disney World. This laissez faire doesn’t appear to have made much difference as concerns the overall severity of the pandemic in respect to those other US states such as California and New York that have had some stringent restrictions and enforcement (although, no US state has been as Covid fixated as the British).

The Isle of Man has jailed about 60 people for flouting its strict Covid restrictions. That is the per-capita equivalent of the UK jailing 47,000 or communist China jailing one million! When last January Howard Quayle was asked about Covid enforcement in the island during its ITV interview (the one that he was so keen to arrange) he just lied and said that 12 had been jailed (he actually availed himself of a circumlocution, but anyone who doesn’t regularly read IOMToday or this forum must have understood the figure of 12). He also stated brazenly (or delusionally) that his policies have 99% support on this island. That sickening ITV interview was uploaded on this forum; it is there for you to make up your own mind. Not the first time we hear open lies from him and Ashford anyway.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 5:26 PM, doc.fixit said:

I wonder why folk can't ease back on their exercise so that they can wear a mask or if they are too selfish then maybe just exercise in isolation somewhere.  I've never understood the fetish with extreme exercise. Just moderate exercise and useful, physical work have stood me in good stead for 74+ years so far.

 

On 3/7/2021 at 6:45 PM, horatiotheturd said:

I am an active outdoor type, my son regularly does 40 plus miles in plantations on his bike on a Sunday. They have asked us to stay home, so we have stayed home.

If the young fella came of his bike up in Cringleford somewhere that's coastguard, ambulance, nobles all being put out because he couldn't be arsed changing his plans for a few weeks.

When we did go for a walk today we deliberately avoided uneven, slippery places. Its not hard.

During the month I spent skiing I did not see anyone regulating their speed down the slopes due to some vague concern that if a rescue were to be needed a Covid spread event may occur. Berating a runner for taking care of himself by branding him as "selfish" says more about you than the runner. Why would you want to impose your lifestyle choices on others? Anyone with half brain understands your inner motivations. Actually, the imposition of pointless lifestyle limitations on others is too idiotic even for someone who is naturally mean. Only the very old, and afflicted by enough cognitive degeneration as to lack basic self-awareness, would make that kind of statements with the pretense of offering some kind of wisdom.

You know some of my long-term US health care investments have an exciting pipeline of new drugs targeting old age cognitive degeneration; for instance Biogen’s Aducanumab, Eli Lilly’s Donanemab and yet unnamed drugs under trial. Since your are heading to those conditions quite soon (if not already there), it may be of some comfort to know that there might be remedies. Unfortunately, the expected costs of any of those pills is in the region of USD 50,000 per year per patient; nothing that looks like an affordable expense for UK NHS or IOM NHS. The consequence of imposing lockdown on others who might have had better things to do.

 

 

 

 

[Pipsqueak]

15 minutes ago, Filippo said:

I am back in the isle; running in the glens and windy moorlands of its landscape. Not much else to do in my free time, thanks to… you know. The return journey was much less adventurous than the outbound odyssey of early January; an evening flight from Vienna to Heathrow (rescheduled two times), an overnight bus to Lancaster, a bus to Heysham, and the afternoon boat. – I had lost touch with this thread; and thus I skimmed a bit through the last few months to see what I have missed.

Here I have got some legal cookies for John Wright. And useful information for anyone who might be planning a journey to foreign lands in the current circumstances. UK government web pages (1st pic below) state that all international arrivals have to quarantine and pre-book two Covid tests to be released later. The BBC web-page (2nd pic) was much on the same tune. Realising that the UK locator form mainly reflects the rules of England and it is not mutually consistent with the rules of the devolved administrations and other jurisdictions of the British isles, I poured through the details of "The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations" in force since last June as a "statutory instrument" (meaning that it was passed with no effective parliament supervision). The text of that "law" (wanting to dignify it with that epithet) is 94 pages long (some relevant excerpts are shown in 3rd and 4th pics below). My conclusion had been that as a transit traveller my UK locator form did not need to specify a UK quarantine address nor the pre-booking (and pre-payment) of the Covid tests.

Unfortunately, when my paperwork was checked at Heathrow, the woman police officer 
going through it, after asking for passport, pre-travel Covid test etc, started going through my UK locator form (which I had on my laptop) much more carefully than I had expected and took the position that I still had to to take the two Covid tests: “every traveller to the UK needs them”. When the argument started, she said "show me the law" in a challenging tone and thus, imagine me holding in front of her face a laptop and scrolling down all of the above mentioned documents and legal stuff while trying to convince her.

Unable to either accept or refute my legal arguments and other justifications, she went first to fetch a colleague at a nearby desk and then a supervisor; the whole argument going on for about a quarter of an hour with the three of them. The supervisor said that the mentioned law was from last June; now superseded by the January instrument requiring the two Covid tests. No I said: the January instrument introduced the requirement of having two Covid tests for all inbound travellers quarantining in England; but it DID NOT abrogate the June legislation, which still stands. Finally, the three of them found a book of police internal guidance on these matters; after a bit of skimming through it, the same police woman started saying "I think he is right…" and her two colleagues nodded it through tacitly. The whole argument with them had not been animose or unpleasant. Before I departed, I had though what a nut I am for spending time on the details of the damn Covid legislation (which I hate and despise all of it). I am capable to prepare my recklessness; the fundamental difference between me and the jet-skier.

Now, to your regret perhaps, I decided to omit all the bit about my dealing with the authorities of this island on my returning here. My reporting of the January trip (cf. my posting to this thread on the 21st of January) had also to be sanitised after some reflection (it omits all the bits of when I had to cut trough the woods to cross an international border). But it was all worth; I had a truly fab month in the Swiss alps and my yearly reboot, like every other winter.

 

 

 

 

 

I am being asked by GD4ELI if I have changed my mind in respect to my first posting to this thread on 22 April 2020. Obviously we know so much more after one year and my arguments have evolved. Also, I have first hand experience from my winter journeys across Europe.

I spent a full month in the Swiss canton of Valais during their second wave and I have seen a different approach than both the UK and this isle. The federal Swiss authorities made clear that their aim is mitigation rather than elimination; and only to the extent of keeping hospital occupancy within capacity. Switzerland shut down the most hedonistic and risky part of their leisure industry for a length of time which is less than the UK and no more than the Isle of Man. Most importantly, it never had the disproportionate restrictions on personal freedoms that have been imposed on us. Practically there have been no restrictions on travel and no restrictions on meeting whom you want to meet. There has been a limit on public gathering above 15, that’s it. The few restrictions on what people can do, mostly coming from the federal government, have not been enforced by the cantonal authorities (or to a minimum extent and reluctantly); only restrictions on business have. The border has always been open. It is the only European country in which I have been able to come and go without checks or any question asked. I never saw the demented "stay at home message" drummed incessantly into people ears as if the recipient were too retarded to understand it. Obviously, the ski resorts would have not been open otherwise; I was there doing winter sports...

You would then expect Switzerland to have had higher Covid mortality than the kind of countries that tried to keep people prisoners of their homes. But Switzerland has had less fatalities on a per-capita basis than both the UK and three of its four neighbouring countries. Only Austria had less fatalities, but not by much. Germany, France, Italy and Austria all had strict limitations on what people can do analogous to the UK, and they have nothing to show for it. It is my opinion that those restriction have been imposed on us in part for political reasons, in part for ignorance and stupidity; but they achieved little or nothing. There are academic studies from the time of the first wave that support this point of view quantitatively.

The Isle of Man, within the context of being an island, had less fatalities than Switzerland on a per capita basis, at the cost of the border closure and the degradation of people lives to which you have been submitted. Making the population-size proportion, IOMG appears to have saved about 50 lives with the border closure and the punishing lockdown (more people jailed than any other jurisdiction). However, half of those 50 souls are now dead anyway; because it is the nature of coronavirus that half of its victims have less than one year to live; thus IOMG lockdown accomplishment so far is more in the ballpark of 25 lives saved. Please raise your hands those who think that the border closure and the other lockdown consequences, which include the depletion of government coffers, won’t cause many more than 25 premature deaths over time.

When I left the island with the ERJ-145, the back of the cabin had a group of elderly travelling exclusively for medical reasons. I overheard them complaining about the many difficulties they had repeatedly experienced with trying to obtain medical tests and treatments; their inconveniences and deprivations from having to isolate after ever return journey from vising an UK hospital. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have to send their patients overseas for routine treatments; this little island is not remotely self-sufficient as concerns its health care needs. It is also devoid of any private hospital where tests for suspected conditions could be carried out when the NHS is not available. There are so many illnesses other than Covid. One in 7 women will fall ill with breast cancer, one in 8 men with prostate cancer, at a certain point of their lives. Even in the blinkered balance sheet that assigns zero value to individuality and personal choice (not my balance sheet) if the only purpose is keeping us living for longer, the focus should be on the preemptive diagnosis and treatment of those unfortunate illnesses that have a statistical chance to kill us soon or later. Try to get an MRI on this island for anything rather than the urgent diagnosis an illness whose symptoms have already progressed to the stage where they can’t be ignored anymore. Each MRI machine has a starting price of one million USD; absolute peanuts for a government that can afford to spend hundreds of millions on lockdown.

The British Isles have the lowest healthy-life expectancy than the whole of Western Europe (68 years to be precise; the number of years that one can expect to live a life free of crippling illnesses in these islands). The actions of our government are making sure that these isles will stay that way: a middling income country with inhabitants having unhealthy lifestyles and prone to precocious illnesses. It is naive to trust the government with our own health and general wellbeing. Boris Johnson, Howard Quayle, David Ashford are such a poor example of healthy lifestyle that it is a joke having them mandating health activities to anyone.

Switzerland is by no means the only example of country respectful of civil liberties. From mid March wide swathes of America have reopened and are now almost back to business as usual. Texas governor has bragged that his state is now "open 100 per cent" (Texas never really enforced Covid restrictions on people; no one there ever got fined for not wearing a stupid mask). In Florida, students have been packing on beaches for the past month and families are have been entertaining themselves in Disney World. This laissez faire doesn’t appear to have made much difference as concerns the overall severity of the pandemic in respect to those other US states such as California and New York that have had some stringent restrictions and enforcement (although, no US state has been as Covid fixated as the British).

The Isle of Man has jailed about 60 people for flouting its strict Covid restrictions. That is the per-capita equivalent of the UK jailing 47,000 or communist China jailing one million! When last January Howard Quayle was asked about Covid enforcement in the island during its ITV interview (the one that he was so keen to arrange) he just lied and said that 12 had been jailed (he actually availed himself of a circumlocution, but anyone who doesn’t regularly read IOMToday or this forum must have understood the figure of 12). He also stated brazenly (or delusionally) that his policies have 99% support on this island. That sickening ITV interview was uploaded on this forum; it is there for you to make up your own mind. Not the first time we hear open lies from him and Ashford anyway.

 

 

During the month I spent skiing I did not see anyone regulating their speed down the slopes due to some vague concern that if a rescue were to be needed a Covid spread event may occur. Berating a runner for taking care of himself by branding him as "selfish" says more about you than the runner. Why would you want to impose your lifestyle choices on others? Anyone with half brain understands your inner motivations. Actually, the imposition of pointless lifestyle limitations on others is too idiotic even for someone who is naturally mean. Only the very old, and afflicted by enough cognitive degeneration as to lack basic self-awareness, would make that kind of statements with the pretense of offering some kind of wisdom.

You know some of my long-term US health care investments have an exciting pipeline of new drugs targeting old age cognitive degeneration; for instance Biogen’s Aducanumab, Eli Lilly’s Donanemab and yet unnamed drugs under trial. Since your are heading to those conditions quite soon (if not already there), it may be of some comfort to know that there might be remedies. Unfortunately, the expected costs of any of those pills is in the region of USD 50,000 per year per patient; nothing that looks like an affordable expense for UK NHS or IOM NHS. The consequence of imposing lockdown on others who might have had better things to do.

 

 

 

 

is this available in hard back ?

[piebaps]

14 minutes ago, Pipsqueak said:

is this available in hard back ?

No,but there is an audio book version with HQ reading - enjoy

[Pipsqueak]

26 minutes ago, piebaps said:

No,but there is an audio book version with HQ reading - enjoy

when did he start learning to read then ?

[Andy Onchan]

1 hour ago, piebaps said:

No,but there is an audio book version with HQ reading - enjoy

It starts with, "Good afternoon, Fastyr mie"....

Arghhhhhhh!

[AlanShimmin]

2 hours ago, Filippo said:

I am back in the isle; running in the glens and windy moorlands of its landscape. Not much else to do in my free time, thanks to… you know. The return journey was much less adventurous than the outbound odyssey of early January; an evening flight from Vienna to Heathrow (rescheduled two times), an overnight bus to Lancaster, a bus to Heysham, and the afternoon boat. – I had lost touch with this thread; and thus I skimmed a bit through the last few months to see what I have missed.

Here I have got some legal cookies for John Wright. And useful information for anyone who might be planning a journey to foreign lands in the current circumstances. UK government web pages (1st pic below) state that all international arrivals have to quarantine and pre-book two Covid tests to be released later. The BBC web-page (2nd pic) was much on the same tune. Realising that the UK locator form mainly reflects the rules of England and it is not mutually consistent with the rules of the devolved administrations and other jurisdictions of the British isles, I poured through the details of "The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations" in force since last June as a "statutory instrument" (meaning that it was passed with no effective parliament supervision). The text of that "law" (wanting to dignify it with that epithet) is 94 pages long (some relevant excerpts are shown in 3rd and 4th pics below). My conclusion had been that as a transit traveller my UK locator form did not need to specify a UK quarantine address nor the pre-booking (and pre-payment) of the Covid tests.

Unfortunately, when my paperwork was checked at Heathrow, the woman police officer 
going through it, after asking for passport, pre-travel Covid test etc, started going through my UK locator form (which I had on my laptop) much more carefully than I had expected and took the position that I still had to to take the two Covid tests: “every traveller to the UK needs them”. When the argument started, she said "show me the law" in a challenging tone and thus, imagine me holding in front of her face a laptop and scrolling down all of the above mentioned documents and legal stuff while trying to convince her.

Unable to either accept or refute my legal arguments and other justifications, she went first to fetch a colleague at a nearby desk and then a supervisor; the whole argument going on for about a quarter of an hour with the three of them. The supervisor said that the mentioned law was from last June; now superseded by the January instrument requiring the two Covid tests. No I said: the January instrument introduced the requirement of having two Covid tests for all inbound travellers quarantining in England; but it DID NOT abrogate the June legislation, which still stands. Finally, the three of them found a book of police internal guidance on these matters; after a bit of skimming through it, the same police woman started saying "I think he is right…" and her two colleagues nodded it through tacitly. The whole argument with them had not been animose or unpleasant. Before I departed, I had though what a nut I am for spending time on the details of the damn Covid legislation (which I hate and despise all of it). I am capable to prepare my recklessness; the fundamental difference between me and the jet-skier.

Now, to your regret perhaps, I decided to omit all the bit about my dealing with the authorities of this island on my returning here. My reporting of the January trip (cf. my posting to this thread on the 21st of January) had also to be sanitised after some reflection (it omits all the bits of when I had to cut trough the woods to cross an international border). But it was all worth; I had a truly fab month in the Swiss alps and my yearly reboot, like every other winter.

 

 

 

 

 

I am being asked by GD4ELI if I have changed my mind in respect to my first posting to this thread on 22 April 2020. Obviously we know so much more after one year and my arguments have evolved. Also, I have first hand experience from my winter journeys across Europe.

I spent a full month in the Swiss canton of Valais during their second wave and I have seen a different approach than both the UK and this isle. The federal Swiss authorities made clear that their aim is mitigation rather than elimination; and only to the extent of keeping hospital occupancy within capacity. Switzerland shut down the most hedonistic and risky part of their leisure industry for a length of time which is less than the UK and no more than the Isle of Man. Most importantly, it never had the disproportionate restrictions on personal freedoms that have been imposed on us. Practically there have been no restrictions on travel and no restrictions on meeting whom you want to meet. There has been a limit on public gathering above 15, that’s it. The few restrictions on what people can do, mostly coming from the federal government, have not been enforced by the cantonal authorities (or to a minimum extent and reluctantly); only restrictions on business have. The border has always been open. It is the only European country in which I have been able to come and go without checks or any question asked. I never saw the demented "stay at home message" drummed incessantly into people ears as if the recipient were too retarded to understand it. Obviously, the ski resorts would have not been open otherwise; I was there doing winter sports...

You would then expect Switzerland to have had higher Covid mortality than the kind of countries that tried to keep people prisoners of their homes. But Switzerland has had less fatalities on a per-capita basis than both the UK and three of its four neighbouring countries. Only Austria had less fatalities, but not by much. Germany, France, Italy and Austria all had strict limitations on what people can do analogous to the UK, and they have nothing to show for it. It is my opinion that those restriction have been imposed on us in part for political reasons, in part for ignorance and stupidity; but they achieved little or nothing. There are academic studies from the time of the first wave that support this point of view quantitatively.

The Isle of Man, within the context of being an island, had less fatalities than Switzerland on a per capita basis, at the cost of the border closure and the degradation of people lives to which you have been submitted. Making the population-size proportion, IOMG appears to have saved about 50 lives with the border closure and the punishing lockdown (more people jailed than any other jurisdiction). However, half of those 50 souls are now dead anyway; because it is the nature of coronavirus that half of its victims have less than one year to live; thus IOMG lockdown accomplishment so far is more in the ballpark of 25 lives saved. Please raise your hands those who think that the border closure and the other lockdown consequences, which include the depletion of government coffers, won’t cause many more than 25 premature deaths over time.

When I left the island with the ERJ-145, the back of the cabin had a group of elderly travelling exclusively for medical reasons. I overheard them complaining about the many difficulties they had repeatedly experienced with trying to obtain medical tests and treatments; their inconveniences and deprivations from having to isolate after ever return journey from vising an UK hospital. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have to send their patients overseas for routine treatments; this little island is not remotely self-sufficient as concerns its health care needs. It is also devoid of any private hospital where tests for suspected conditions could be carried out when the NHS is not available. There are so many illnesses other than Covid. One in 7 women will fall ill with breast cancer, one in 8 men with prostate cancer, at a certain point of their lives. Even in the blinkered balance sheet that assigns zero value to individuality and personal choice (not my balance sheet) if the only purpose is keeping us living for longer, the focus should be on the preemptive diagnosis and treatment of those unfortunate illnesses that have a statistical chance to kill us soon or later. Try to get an MRI on this island for anything rather than the urgent diagnosis an illness whose symptoms have already progressed to the stage where they can’t be ignored anymore. Each MRI machine has a starting price of one million USD; absolute peanuts for a government that can afford to spend hundreds of millions on lockdown.

The British Isles have the lowest healthy-life expectancy than the whole of Western Europe (68 years to be precise; the number of years that one can expect to live a life free of crippling illnesses in these islands). The actions of our government are making sure that these isles will stay that way: a middling income country with inhabitants having unhealthy lifestyles and prone to precocious illnesses. It is naive to trust the government with our own health and general wellbeing. Boris Johnson, Howard Quayle, David Ashford are such a poor example of healthy lifestyle that it is a joke having them mandating health activities to anyone.

Switzerland is by no means the only example of country respectful of civil liberties. From mid March wide swathes of America have reopened and are now almost back to business as usual. Texas governor has bragged that his state is now "open 100 per cent" (Texas never really enforced Covid restrictions on people; no one there ever got fined for not wearing a stupid mask). In Florida, students have been packing on beaches for the past month and families are have been entertaining themselves in Disney World. This laissez faire doesn’t appear to have made much difference as concerns the overall severity of the pandemic in respect to those other US states such as California and New York that have had some stringent restrictions and enforcement (although, no US state has been as Covid fixated as the British).

The Isle of Man has jailed about 60 people for flouting its strict Covid restrictions. That is the per-capita equivalent of the UK jailing 47,000 or communist China jailing one million! When last January Howard Quayle was asked about Covid enforcement in the island during its ITV interview (the one that he was so keen to arrange) he just lied and said that 12 had been jailed (he actually availed himself of a circumlocution, but anyone who doesn’t regularly read IOMToday or this forum must have understood the figure of 12). He also stated brazenly (or delusionally) that his policies have 99% support on this island. That sickening ITV interview was uploaded on this forum; it is there for you to make up your own mind. Not the first time we hear open lies from him and Ashford anyway.

 

 

During the month I spent skiing I did not see anyone regulating their speed down the slopes due to some vague concern that if a rescue were to be needed a Covid spread event may occur. Berating a runner for taking care of himself by branding him as "selfish" says more about you than the runner. Why would you want to impose your lifestyle choices on others? Anyone with half brain understands your inner motivations. Actually, the imposition of pointless lifestyle limitations on others is too idiotic even for someone who is naturally mean. Only the very old, and afflicted by enough cognitive degeneration as to lack basic self-awareness, would make that kind of statements with the pretense of offering some kind of wisdom.

You know some of my long-term US health care investments have an exciting pipeline of new drugs targeting old age cognitive degeneration; for instance Biogen’s Aducanumab, Eli Lilly’s Donanemab and yet unnamed drugs under trial. Since your are heading to those conditions quite soon (if not already there), it may be of some comfort to know that there might be remedies. Unfortunately, the expected costs of any of those pills is in the region of USD 50,000 per year per patient; nothing that looks like an affordable expense for UK NHS or IOM NHS. The consequence of imposing lockdown on others who might have had better things to do.

 

 

 

 

So what have you been up to?

[Barlow]

39 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

It starts with, "Good afternoon, Fastyr mie"....

 

"...at this moment in time".

I swigged two fingers of Bushy's each time he said it today. I was pi'eyed by half four.

[Barlow]

26 minutes ago, AlanShimmin said:

So what have you been up to?

It says it in Chapter 3.

Skiing.

Very nice. If you have the wonga why not. It's a good read though, and shows how your privileged (and no doubt worked hard for) view on the world away from the plebs can be skewed.

[2112]

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

It says it in Chapter 3.

Skiing.

Very nice. If you have the wonga why not. It's a good read though, and shows how your privileged (and no doubt worked hard for) view on the world away from the plebs can be skewed.

HRH The Chief Minister likes these types, the monied and gentrified, ahhh the trickle down economics ........

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

"...at this moment in time".

I swigged two fingers of Bushy's each time he said it today. I was pi'eyed by half four.

Any mention of the Chief Cuntstable?

[Marion Costel]

2 hours ago, Barlow said:

It says it in Chapter 3. Skiing.

Very nice. If you have the wonga why not. It's a good read though, and shows how your privileged (and no doubt worked hard for) view on the world away from the plebs can be skewed.

 

5 hours ago, Filippo said:

I am being asked by GD4ELI if I have changed my mind in respect to my first posting to this thread on 22 April 2020. Obviously we know so much more after one year and my arguments have evolved. Also, I have first hand experience from my winter journeys across Europe.

I spent a full month in the Swiss canton of Valais during their second wave and I have seen a different approach than both the UK and this isle. The federal Swiss authorities made clear that their aim is mitigation rather than elimination; and only to the extent of keeping hospital occupancy within capacity. Switzerland shut down the most hedonistic and risky part of their leisure industry for a length of time which is less than the UK and no more than the Isle of Man. Most importantly, it never had the disproportionate restrictions on personal freedoms that have been imposed on us. Practically there have been no restrictions on travel and no restrictions on meeting whom you want to meet. There has been a limit on public gathering above 15, that’s it. The few restrictions on what people can do, mostly coming from the federal government, have not been enforced by the cantonal authorities (or to a minimum extent and reluctantly); only restrictions on business have. The border has always been open. It is the only European country in which I have been able to come and go without checks or any question asked. I never saw the demented "stay at home message" drummed incessantly into people ears as if the recipient were too retarded to understand it. Obviously, the ski resorts would have not been open otherwise; I was there doing winter sports...

You would then expect Switzerland to have had higher Covid mortality than the kind of countries that tried to keep people prisoners of their homes. But Switzerland has had less fatalities on a per-capita basis than both the UK and three of its four neighbouring countries. Only Austria had less fatalities, but not by much. Germany, France, Italy and Austria all had strict limitations on what people can do analogous to the UK, and they have nothing to show for it. It is my opinion that those restriction have been imposed on us in part for political reasons, in part for ignorance and stupidity; but they achieved little or nothing. There are academic studies from the time of the first wave that support this point of view quantitatively.

The Isle of Man, within the context of being an island, had less fatalities than Switzerland on a per capita basis, at the cost of the border closure and the degradation of people lives to which you have been submitted. Making the population-size proportion, IOMG appears to have saved about 50 lives with the border closure and the punishing lockdown (more people jailed than any other jurisdiction). However, half of those 50 souls are now dead anyway; because it is the nature of coronavirus that half of its victims have less than one year to live; thus IOMG lockdown accomplishment so far is more in the ballpark of 25 lives saved. Please raise your hands those who think that the border closure and the other lockdown consequences, which include the depletion of government coffers, won’t cause many more than 25 premature deaths over time.

When I left the island with the ERJ-145, the back of the cabin had a group of elderly travelling exclusively for medical reasons. I overheard them complaining about the many difficulties they had repeatedly experienced with trying to obtain medical tests and treatments; their inconveniences and deprivations from having to isolate after ever return journey from vising an UK hospital. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have to send their patients overseas for routine treatments; this little island is not remotely self-sufficient as concerns its health care needs. It is also devoid of any private hospital where tests for suspected conditions could be carried out when the NHS is not available. There are so many illnesses other than Covid. One in 7 women will fall ill with breast cancer, one in 8 men with prostate cancer, at a certain point of their lives. Even in the blinkered balance sheet that assigns zero value to individuality and personal choice (not my balance sheet) if the only purpose is keeping us living for longer, the focus should be on the preemptive diagnosis and treatment of those unfortunate illnesses that have a statistical chance to kill us soon or later. Try to get an MRI on this island for anything rather than the urgent diagnosis an illness whose symptoms have already progressed to the stage where they can’t be ignored anymore. Each MRI machine has a starting price of one million USD; absolute peanuts for a government that can afford to spend hundreds of millions on lockdown.

The British Isles have the lowest healthy-life expectancy than the whole of Western Europe (68 years to be precise; the number of years that one can expect to live a life free of crippling illnesses in these islands). The actions of our government are making sure that these isles will stay that way: a middling income country with inhabitants having unhealthy lifestyles and prone to precocious illnesses. It is naive to trust the government with our own health and general wellbeing. Boris Johnson, Howard Quayle, David Ashford are such a poor example of healthy lifestyle that it is a joke having them mandating health activities to anyone.

Switzerland is by no means the only example of country respectful of civil liberties. From mid March wide swathes of America have reopened and are now almost back to business as usual. Texas governor has bragged that his state is now "open 100 per cent" (Texas never really enforced Covid restrictions on people; no one there ever got fined for not wearing a stupid mask). In Florida, students have been packing on beaches for the past month and families are have been entertaining themselves in Disney World. This laissez faire doesn’t appear to have made much difference as concerns the overall severity of the pandemic in respect to those other US states such as California and New York that have had some stringent restrictions and enforcement (although, no US state has been as Covid fixated as the British).

The Isle of Man has jailed about 60 people for flouting its strict Covid restrictions. That is the per-capita equivalent of the UK jailing 47,000 or communist China jailing one million! When last January Howard Quayle was asked about Covid enforcement in the island during its ITV interview (the one that he was so keen to arrange) he just lied and said that 12 had been jailed (he actually availed himself of a circumlocution, but anyone who doesn’t regularly read IOMToday or this forum must have understood the figure of 12). He also stated brazenly (or delusionally) that his policies have 99% support on this island. That sickening ITV interview was uploaded on this forum; it is there for you to make up your own mind. Not the first time we hear open lies from him and Ashford anyway.

 

If you strip out personality and money from the posting on top of this page; there are a lot of well thought through arguments on the things that matter: what the hard-line IOM covid response; the border closure and widespread jail sentencing of covid transgressors has achieved; and at what cost?

Switzerland did not ditch civil liberties to fight the virus; it did not close its borders and restrict travel; and still it had less fatalities than its four neighbouring countries that all had those restrictions. That should give you a pause for thought; to consider whether or not the curtail of the most basic personal freedoms was warranted. You can’t just dismiss all of it for being the point of view of the moneyed class.

On this forum there is no formal ban for lockdown sceptics. But you have succeeded de-facto excluding us by branding us a selfish and interested parties and with all those constant reminders about the boat in the morning that allows one to leave. It gets tiring after a while to have to fight against the prevailing current.

I say this to IOMG: authoritarian regimes always end up being hated, not matter the large popular support from which they purportedly drew their authority. Boris Johnson’s plans is just to hold through the next UK electoral cycle, which may well succeed. For the isle, loss of faith in its institutions could mean a lot of young people leaving and degradation of the livelihood of those who are left. This is not a rich versus poor juxtaposition.