I went to all three Autumn internationals at Murrayfield. For the Australia and Japan games, I vaguely waved my Covid pass in the direction of the people who were "checking" them. For the SA game, I didn't even have to do that.

Come on, you know the drill. You'll get nowhere with logic, or even by citing the opinion of experts and the meticulously expressed results of their examination of available data.

You are dealing with folk who simply know better, and can provide snippets of quotes to prove it :)

Well this should be an eye opener to anyone who thought we may actually get out of this pandemic.

These are pre-emptive restrictions, there is no impact whatsoever on the NHS so far based on omicron.

Instead we are imposing restrictions, including mandatory vaccine passports which we have never had before in England and now "a national conversation" on mandatory vaccines because of something which hasn't even happened and may not do. Dodgy variants will appear again in the future so if this is how we are going to react every time be prepared to keep repeating this cycle every few months.

OK, Omicron mightn't be having any impact on the NHS but... I've had to help out family and friends with access to healthcare for serious issues (fractures, tumours, mental health) and the response from the NHS has been abysmal. A lot worse than in the past. I don't know if it's done on purpose (all those who had to have help are European immigrants) but it felt as if the response was designed to tell people to eff off and go private/back in their home countries.

This is rapidly turning into a Bad OMNI discussion, but I was amused by the Torygraph today which reported HMG's official advice as being "Don't go to work, but do go to parties". Of course HMG is led by science.

I'm quite certain that you don't really even believe this yourself.

Well, I honestly have a feeling that in all the cases I've seen in my family/friend circle the patient-to-be was looked as a package to be offloaded. My wife tried to go to the GP three times to get an appointment, or a referral, to a specialist. She was constantly fobbed off or offered ibuprofen. The GP receptionist suggested her she goes private... and lo and behold when we did they found she had an elbow fracture and a torn ligament.

A friend of mine was told that she'd probably be better off by going back to check with doctors her EU home country when the gynaecologist here had a 6 month waiting list for a specialist visit (she did and was operated for a tumour that, left untreated, could've caused her to lose her uterus).

Another was told that there was nothing the NHS could do for her when she sought professional help to deal with the follow-up of an assault and she should check with private providers or "elsewhere". All these people are legal residents here and pay taxes here.

I think everyone is getting the 'go-away' treatment:


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ca106ae920.jpg

We can all present our own personal data points on how the NHS is coping - mine are all overwhelmingly positive. My own GP surgery is operating very efficiently and we have had no issues with appointments, referrals, flu jabs etc. I also spent 6 hours last weekend in a big city A&E department at peak time, and there was no sign of a service 'on its knees'.

I see the Sage and Indy Sage are trotting out their usual set of doom predictions again. Given that their previous attempts to scare us all were off by a factor of 10, you would think they would get less coverage than they do...

Come on you know that mutations are due to large transmissions. Dodgy variants will not appear every few months if transmissions are down. You do not heard of mutations for endemic disease with low transmissions due to them being controlled (plague, malaria, etc ....). If the pandemic is controlled the cycle will disappear. The big unknown is the animal reservoir, but nothing we can do about this for the moment.

We also know that the natural inclination for a virus is to survive, so mutations tend to me more transmissable, and less deadly. This is clearly what we are seeing here. We will soon have to learn to live with covid as we live with cold and flu.

Interstingly I stumbled across this today, and it does make me wonder.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b4170b891e.png

The evidence is gathering that Omicron is generally a lot more mild but I'm comfortable with application of the caution principle. Data is key; the more the better.

South African Covid cases up 255% in a week as Omicron spreads | South Africa | The Guardian

Daily data:

Cases 50,867 (53,945 last Thursday)
Deaths 148 (141)
Patients admitted 813 (705 on the 28th)
Patients in hospital 7,347 (7,330 on the 1st)
Patients in ventilation beds 890 (895 on the 1st)
People vaccinated up to and including 7 December 2021:
First dose: 51,183,457
Second dose: 46,640,237
Booster: 21,715,504

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 8.0% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 0.7%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 122.0 today.

Ignoring the expletive :D, that might be well-intended, sensible advice.

My GP diagnosed a likely solar keratosis on my skin, possibly a precursor of skin cancer. Nothing urgent, but something better seen to sooner rather than later. There was no foreseeable NHS dermatology appointment so my insurance kicked in with a private one a week later, where the lesion was frozen into oblivion.

Chatting with a medic friend in Lisbon over the weekend he assured me my local centro de saúde/policlínica would have got me referred within six weeks.