sime42

I've noticed the same with a lot of ambulance people and nurses too, an awful lot of bloaters around. It's just a sign of how endemic it is in this country I guess. (Present company excepted!) I caught a bit of some Highland Zoo prog in TV last night. There was some kind of staff charity Tug-of-war thing going on. I was struck by how many of them were on the large side. Pretty much all of the 10 or so on either side that I could see. It really is the new normal. People with a healthy body shape are often in the minority in some contexts these days.

Exactly. We can now even map the complete human genome.

Here we go, back on the personal attack. (In lieu of a robust response to the Norway Vs UK debate maybe). My turn now is it? You're skating on very thin ice by talking about racism. The tone and content of some of your many posts hint at something sinister lurking just beneath. You'll have to take my word for it but I'm one of the least racially prejudiced people that you're likely to meet. I have nothing against immigrants, of any race, colour or creed. I didn't vote for Brexit. You've also twisted my words as you are so fond of doing. Go back and have another read. I said something like religious beliefs are most common in ethnic groups. I don't believe there's any implied criticism or indeed negative connotation in that.

All true. I too am uncomfortable with the speed with which they've all been developed. There's a lot of info available out there explaining how they are safe though. I've not studied any of it in depth but the gist of it is that development/testing/approval processes have all been done in parallel due to the urgency and thus extra funding available. Normally all those processes would be done in series. I'm sure some will ask for further proof but that's enough for me to decide that on balance it's better for me to take a small risk with the vaccine rather than a bigger risk from the virus.

Fair enough. Guilty as charged, I don't like to be wrong. I'm sure that less than admirable trait has got worse since I've been on here. I must have been learning from the best!

I apologise, my mistake, I misread your post. You didn't ask a question. However I'm sure you were trying to make some kind of point, and it probably wasn't in favour of vaccination, but I may be wrong .................. great news if you have finally seen the light.

BAME = most religious Under-30s = biggest users of social media Those in most deprived areas = most distrusting of authority. Easy.

You've answered your own question there I think. ""The study notes that doctors are the only staff group at the NHS trust in which minority ethnic individuals form the majority"" Which demographic groups in the UK do you suppose are most likely to hold religious beliefs? Seems quite a simple answer to me.

Typo. No consistency.

Didn't people used to go on about how well Sweden was doing without a lockdown? They did bit they haven't been latterly. Funny that isn't it? No consistently.

Maybe you misread my comments again. Religious convictions. Belief beats logic and science every time unfortunately. We see evidence of that on here.

Drs!!!? How do you mean?

Looks beautiful. I've really missed skiing this year and last.

I think you'll find that the main reasons for lower CV-19 vaccine uptake by some groups, within NHS workers, care staff and public, is due to religious beliefs and more worryingly anti-vax propaganda. You seem to stray into the latter at times. You need to consider that not everyone is as strong-willed and intelligent as yourself. Covid-19: How did a volunteer panel react when we showed them an anti-vax video? WWW.BBC.CO.UK We showed eight people a viral video filled with falsehoods. Did it change their minds? Poor common flu vaccine uptake is also an issue. Though nowhere near as serious. The flu vaccine is generally less effective as has already been pointed out so individuals not taking it doesn't have as much impact on an epidemic scale. Also, Covid-19 is a far more serious infection than normal flu, it is not the same. Contrary to your fake news and propaganda being used to downplay the pandemic.

Your second paragraph hints that you don't believe the figures for Covid in the UK, the number of infections, admissions and deaths. Do you think they've been fabricated as well by SAGE or some other body? It's common courtesy to answer questions if another person asks one of you. That extends to forums as well I believe. You had a question about Norway Vs UK. I don't know much about Norway so I can't say anything with authority but I can make a few half educated guesses. Time is probably one of the biggest reasons why the UK cannot use the same relatively relaxed anti-covid measures. We are 12 months TOO LATE! If we had taken the same strict approach as Norway back in February/March 2020 then maybe we could have kept the situation under control and be able to live under more relaxed restrictions. So far we have only ever been reactive rather than proactive in our pandemic response. As lots of different countries around the world have demonstrated: the harder and more rapid the initial response, (lockdown, border control, testing, track and trace etc), the sooner you can return to some semblance of normality. There have been 65,338 positive cases in Norway at the time of writing, with 583 people now confirmed dead. There are 89 people hospitalised around the country, of which 31 are in intensive care. This is a notable improvement from the 163 hospitalised in mid-January.>>>>>>>>> I've just copied that from here:- Coronavirus in Norway: The Latest News on the COVID-19 Outbreak WWW.LIFEINNORWAY.NET UPDATED 10 FEB: Norway's border closure to most non-residents including many foreign workers has been extended to the end of the month. Different measures are in place throughout the country. Read on for full details. If we had stats like that then we could take the Norway approach. I'm almost certain that if Norway had stats like ours (4,038.078 cases, 117,167 deaths, 23,341 hospitalisations), then they would be imposing far, far tougher restrictions than the half arsed attempts that we've currently got in the UK.

Sorry for misleading mate. The comment was actually directed at the subject of your post, not yourself. I meant that he appears to keep showing a lack of empathy in what he writes. Anyways, your language didn't look that bad too me! There's no problem with bad language but aggressive name calling and personal attacks is something else.

Empathy defecit.

Wasting £22 billion on a corrupt pandemic response scheme is bad enough. But for that massive failure to have played a part tens of thousands of people losing their lives and been a significant factor in the financial ruin of hundreds of thousands more is truly criminal.

"World Beating" Great Britain. I imagine NZ's economy must be even more screwed than ours since they enforced a much stricter quarantine almost a year before us.

Got rid of that hacker then, phew. Hope he didn't do too much damage to your reputation.

What types of human behaviour do you mean? Plundering and generally fcking with nature and mass galavanting around the globe types? Very hood call on changing those for the future, but a bit late in this instance, the cat's well and truly out of the bag with this virus.

Are you sure? We'll miss your banter! [emoji26]

The trouble is that these super rich, the likes of Jeff the Amazon guy and Mark the Facebook guy, are pretty much untouchable. No government yet, except the French, has dared to stand up to them. All we can do is hope to get lucky, and wait for them to do the right thing and show some altruism. It's not a great position to be in given that there's so much at stake. There's some hope; Bill Gates seems to have turned to the right side, (cue someone jumping in to contradict me on this point!). Also Elon Musk appears to be championing green technology, but I'm very cynical about that, I don't trust him one little bit. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Episode #24 - Vaccine myths vs science WWW.WHO.INT WHO’s Dr Katherine O’Brien busts some vaccine myths related to infertility, DNA and composition of vaccines in this week’s Science in 5.

Obviously there are plenty of others that share your viewpoints. I'm not intentionally focusing on you pair. It's just very hard not to when you're by far the most prominent in terms of volume of posts and belligerence of tone within them. Other people espousing similar opinions do so in a much more reasonable manner. Besides you've said a few times now that you welcome "robust" debates. One could almost be mistaken for thinking that you actually enjoy them, your partner in crime in particular! If ever there is an argument ensuing on here Mr Trigger is normally to be found at the centre of it. Regardless of the subject.