Just now, williamweb said:

I know Iceland are not enforcing also👍

I love Richard Walker, (MD Iceland), have seen him interviewed many times on Covid, and he has such common sense, shame he has no political ambitions!

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

I regularly see staff of shops not wearing a mask (NI never dropped it's mask wearing legislation), doesn't bother me in the least...

No, it doesn't bother me either. Just curious, having seen no clarification of exactly who was meant to be covered.

Agree it's not up to retailers to enforce this stuff, and certainly don't see why shop staff should have to take any flak over it.

 

59 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

No, it doesn't bother me either. Just curious, having seen no clarification of exactly who was meant to be covered.

 

The following is on the gov.uk web site updated yesterday...

"Staff within these settings, except some transport workers (see the ‘Face coverings at work’ section below), are required to wear face coverings when they are in a part that is open to the public. Staff may also wear face coverings when working in settings where face coverings are not required, and businesses are encouraged to support them in doing so."

I would hope the staff just tell their employer they are 'exempt' and as such, it's illegal to question their reason why!

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

The following is on the gov.uk web site updated yesterday...

Good spot, Stephen! I frequently lurk on there but hadn't spotted the latest update.

I must admit I wouldn't like to be a manager at present. I worked in an industry that was red hot on (sensible) safety measures so had no issue with seeing they were complied with. But this stuff ............ ?😀

 

3 hours ago, williamweb said:

I know Iceland is not enforcing also👍

im not traveling that far just so i dont have to wear a mask. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I got my booster several weeks back, Pfizer, no ill effect whatsoever, but my poor partner got her booster this week, Moderna, and she's been as sick as anything since, and complains of a painful arm as if she's been stung over & over again... She normally isn't effected by any jabs.

49 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

I got my booster several weeks back, Pfizer, no ill effect whatsoever, but my poor partner got her booster this week, Moderna, and she's been as sick as anything since, and complains of a painful arm as if she's been stung over & over again... She normally isn't effected by any jabs.

I think that is par for the course with the Moderna one. Three of us got it on Monday and we were all not feeling great yesterday. I have now fully recovered and so has my 90 year old mother, but my brother is still not feeling great.

Strangely enough I was the only one with a very sore arm, the one that had the Moderna Jag (we all had the Flu one as well), so much so that just lifting my arm to shoulder level was very painful. 

Every one else that I have talked to has been the same after the Moderna one, but they recovered after no more than 2 days. 

9 hours ago, Tizer said:

I think that is par for the course with the Moderna one. Three of us got it on Monday and we were all not feeling great yesterday. I have now fully recovered and so has my 90 year old mother, but my brother is still not feeling great.

Strangely enough I was the only one with a very sore arm, the one that had the Moderna Jag (we all had the Flu one as well), so much so that just lifting my arm to shoulder level was very painful. 

Every one else that I have talked to has been the same after the Moderna one, but they recovered after no more than 2 days. 

Great to hear you have almost all recovered.Hope your next Covid  booster in another 3-6 months goes as well.Goodluck.

29 minutes ago, williamweb said:

Great to hear you have almost all recovered.Hope your next Covid  booster in another 3-6 months goes as well.Goodluck.

Thanks, the feeling unwell was a bit like having a cold but without the blocked or runny nose and it did go away quicker than a cold normally does. I was always more concerned about my mother, who has still not fully recovered from having Covid a year ago.

The sore arm is only slightly sore if I touch it now, not sore if I lift it anymore. That was just a minor annoyance because it did not lose any power in the arm. 

I hope this does not put anyone off, I would gladly have another booster of any of the approved ones again.

22 hours ago, JImpster said:

A friend commented that Omicron B is an anagram for NO CRIMBO LOL

Where did the B come from? Presumably they just added it to make the anagram work!

2 minutes ago, pcaouolte said:

Where did the B come from? Presumably they just added it to make the anagram work!

Well, it kinda has a 'B' associated with it LOL

https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern

 

22 hours ago, StephenFord said:

... We have been told for over a year now that we need to learn to 'live with it', yet the government consistently does not allow us to do that.

The whole reaction to Omicron, is both sad and scary, at this rate we'll never actually 'live with it', but lurch from one variant to the next. This is not the way I want to live...

We are living with it. Living with it is not the same as ignoring it. We need to learn to live with it whilst taking sensible precautions to avoid helping it to spread.

Wearing a mask is no hardship. Taking tests when you are displaying possible symptoms is a very minor inconvenience. Millions of people have had vaccinations against it without significant inconvenience or (in the vast majority of cases) adverse side effects. It is likely that we will need boosters against variants of the virus for years to come.

This is all allowing us to live with it. 

7 minutes ago, pcaouolte said:

 

Wearing a mask is no hardship.

 

Wearing a mask is useless. Austria went into full lockdown last week after mandating proper medical grade FFP2 masks since January 2021. (Not the piece of old cotton our government has mandated)  If they worked for the mass population, infection would decrease, not rise. (It's almost that they don't work at all outside a proper medical environment!)

Oh, Germany & France also mandated proper FFP2 mask in January, they too have seen their number of infections rise, the masks must be working a treat, right?

10 minutes ago, pcaouolte said:

Taking tests when you are displaying possible symptoms is a very minor inconvenience.

 

When you are 'displaying symptoms' is probably fair enough, but I refuse to take a test for anything I am not displaying symptoms of...

 

23 hours ago, StephenFord said:

I don't think you realise how a virus works. Australia closed it's borders to ALL, yet still ended up in full lockdown. Closing borders to all is a futile exercise, and an economically crippling endeavour. We are not self sufficient in either food, nor energy, so we'd die of starvation, and freeze to death.

The whole reaction to Omicron, is both sad and scary, at this rate we'll never actually 'live with it', but lurch from one variant to the next. This is not the way I want to live...

I do know how a virus works, Nigeria was aware of omicron a month before the world became aware and it was brought in by south africans, why was this not shared and acted on by the world. If a country closes its borders it can concentrate on those already there and not allow immigrants or tourists to enter wether they test negative or not. Its all well and good isolating citizens when it should be countries. Yes its using the "B" word we've destroyed our manufacturing bases over 50+ years in the name of globalisation, we could be sulf sufficient more so now after "B".

1 hour ago, pcaouolte said:

Wearing a mask is no hardship.

Now a precedent has taken place,let us know if you feel like this in 5 years time👍

1 hour ago, williamweb said:

Now a precedent has taken place,let us know if you feel like this in 5 years time👍

In every futuristic sc-fi film they make generally citizens are wearing masks, did they know something we didnt.

12 minutes ago, JImpster said:

In every futuristic sc-fi film they make generally citizens are wearing masks, did they know something we didnt.

Star Trek never wore masks, though they had 'bones', he knew a thing or two about disease control LOL

It all makes sense now. The face huggers in Aliens were just trying to protect us from coronavirus. 

5 hours ago, StephenFord said:

Wearing a mask is useless. Austria went into full lockdown last week after mandating proper medical grade FFP2 masks since January 2021. (Not the piece of old cotton our government has mandated)  If they worked for the mass population, infection would decrease, not rise. (It's almost that they don't work at all outside a proper medical environment!)

Oh, Germany & France also mandated proper FFP2 mask in January, they too have seen their number of infections rise, the masks must be working a treat, right?

Austria is apparently planning on making vaccinations compulsory and I see the EU as a whole are starting to make similar noises. I'd put my money on that as a more effective measure, much though I am against compulsion generally. (I did hope good sense would prevail.)

Anyway, one thing is UK guidance on face coverings has now at last been updated to recognise the uselessness of perspex faceshields against Covid:

"A face visor or shield may be worn in addition to a face covering but not instead of one. This is because face visors or shields do not adequately cover the nose and mouth, and do not filter airborne particles."

 I still saw several being used in Tesco this morning, without another face covering, but then, how would most people get the correct advice as it's buried in the Gov.Uk site?

Every cloud has a silver lining though, and one happy consequence of the return of mandatory face coverings is that the hordes of students from the local college who I moaned about in an earlier post have disappeared as if by magic!😀

34 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Austria is apparently planning on making vaccinations compulsory and I see the EU as a whole are starting to make similar noises. I'd put my money on that as a more effective measure, much though I am against compulsion generally. (I did hope good sense would prevail.)

 

I wonder if they are going to mandate that 'obese' people will denied medical assistance, or that, 'smokers' will be denied medical assistance, as they take up more than their fair share of medical intervention. Makes as much sense. It's disgusting mandating vaccines as they do NOT prevent the spread of Covid, but do give added protection to the recipient.

 

34 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

"A face visor or shield may be worn in addition to a face covering but not instead of one. This is because face visors or shields do not adequately cover the nose and mouth, and do not filter airborne particles."

Just like those protective perspex shields which physically separate you that are in businesses all up & down the country which people have spent £Millions on following government advice. Now proven not only to be ineffective, but also detrimental, as they create pockets of stale air so the virus can linger. Kinda like the difference between taking a shower in fresh clean water, and wallowing in your own dirty bath water. Still, the government is clever enough to know about this stuff, right?

46 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

I wonder if they are going to mandate that 'obese' people will denied medical assistance

They're already doing that in England. We know of several people waiting for treatments/operations who have received letters from the local Clinical Commissioning Group to the effect that it they did not reduce their BMI, they would not get the treatment until they had. As in at least 2 cases the high BMI was a direct result of the medication they had been prescribed for their conditions, this was rather offensive to say the least.

34 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

It's disgusting mandating vaccines as they do NOT prevent the spread of Covid, but do give added protection to the recipient.

Several sources would argue that vaccines may not prevent the spread, but may reduce it, it seems:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/covid-vaccines-e2-80-9cabsolutely-do-reduce-transmission-of-virus-e2-80-9d-ni-chief-scientist-says/ar-AAR31Yz?ocid=uxbndlbing

1 minute ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Several sources would argue otherwise, it seems:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/covid-vaccines-e2-80-9cabsolutely-do-reduce-transmission-of-virus-e2-80-9d-ni-chief-scientist-says/ar-AAR31Yz?ocid=uxbndlbing

LOL, I stopped reading when I realsed the source was my very own, 'NI Chief Scientist'. He falls into the same category as Prof Neil Ferguson in his mystic Meg predictions, though he hasn't been caught with his trousers down 🤣

9 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

They're already doing that in England. We know of several people waiting for treatments/operations who have received letters from the local Clinical Commissioning Group to the effect that it they did not reduce their BMI, they would not get the treatment until they had. As in at least 2 cases the high BMI was a direct result of the medication they had been prescribed godfather conditions, this was rather offensive to say the least.

I had to reduce my weight, BMI, and blood sugars before being accepted onto the surgeons list for Bariatric surgery, i have a date of 20/12/2021 at the Nuffield in Chester. Took 4 years to aceive and will be monitored for a further 2 years after

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

LOL, I stopped reading when I realsed the source was my very own, 'NI Chief Scientist'.

Lol, just as I hit the post button I remembered your deep admiration for this chap!😀 He wasn't actually "the source", but the article was an easy way of listing some of the sources that have commented on this aspect.  There's similar stuff on the web from various sources including the WHO, BMJ, Lancet and UK Department of Health.

The main point of the various sources was actually to dismiss the notion that it you have been vaccinated you can't get the virus, to downplay the efficacy of vaccines in reducing transmission and to stress the need to use additional measures including (as if you haven't guessed) face coverings. They do all seem to agree that vaccinations do reduce the transmission to a degree, but percentages given vary and do all seem fairly low. Jury's still out on Omicron, of course.