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England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

bbc.co.uk

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Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#251
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc. I don't think you live in the UK - because none of those things are true. You can go into just about any library and read a book without showing a library card. I've never had to show ID for a hotel stay. My driving licence stays at home. If I want to…

> If I want to hire a car, I generate a one-time code. The GP comment said "driving a car," not hiring one. It's not clear to me why you responded to a different assertion, and I can't find anything that supports the idea that you don't need to show a driving license while driving if it's requested. https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ... "If you do not have these documents with you, you have…

I don't need to show my licence to get in my car and drive. For any normal use of a car, there is no requirement to show a licence before doing so.

Have you ever applied for a library card? Most libraries will give you one without any verifiable form of ID. And the card itself certainly isn't ID.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long covid is a real, debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost…

How do you distinguish between the symptoms of “long covid” from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate according to John’s Hopkins) so if “long covid” is so real, where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there should be at least ten million sufferers.

Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for weeks and months.

I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect as well as the after effects of the inhuman living conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun entertainment options), etc.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#253
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc. I don't think you live in the UK - because none of those things are true. You can go into just about any library and read a book without showing a library card. I've never had to show ID for a hotel stay. My driving licence stays at home. If I want to…

By the same token, you don't show your id to buy groceries, or your license to enter a party. Gattaca was a dystopia, not a goal.

I've never had to show any ID to buy groceries. Not sure what point you're making.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#254

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

> The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat. So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds available and that they are sending patients out of state? > At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity, according to numbers reported to the federal government during the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin,…

It could be related to staff shortages. Number of beds is not a literal figure, it also accounts for the number of staff that can treat patients in the bed. If you're short staffed you're short bed'd too

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#255

Don’t worry everyone. The unilateral powers created by our government during covid is a one time thing. Surely covid will one day “go away”, and with it the surveillance state will dismantle their powers and stop trying to control what their citizens think and do!

I believe everyone should be vaccinated but your point worries me. This doesn't seem 'right.' I don't believe in conspiracy theories of people pushing anti vaccination propaganda just to bring this state of affairs about as some are suggesting: that said, I don't want us to be in this place, but I also want everyone vaccinated so the vaccines can actually work and we can eradicate this thing. I can't help but feel ma…

Being pro vaccine and anti-government “emergency powers” is a perfectly reasonable position to take.

The media and the government forces the false dichotomy on people. They say you’re either all-in surveillance state or you’re antivax. It’s part of their design.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delta has an R value of 6 to 7. Measles has a much higher R value of 12 to 18, yet the vaccination is highly successful. You’re promoting disinformation.

The vaccine for measles is sterilizing. The vaccines for COVID are not. They're two completely separate classes of intervention. I'm not the one spreading disinformation here. Just because substance A and substance B are both called "vaccines" doesn't mean that A and B have comparable effects and can be treated the same way. It is simply not medically possible for COVID vaccination to stop the spread of COVID. We hav…

Sterilizing immunity is a myth.

MMR is definitely not a 100% guarantee of immunity; and the vaccine, despite what you’ve been lead to believe, is not a lifetime guarantee.

Herd immunity is what makes vaccines work so well. You want freedom? Get the shot so that one year or two from now, we can get on with our lives without more legislation being put into place.

Because the mandates will be happening if people keep ignoring the “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” principle.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#257

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

> The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat. So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds available and that they are sending patients out of state? > At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity, according to numbers reported to the federal government during the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin,…

I don’t know. But what I do know is that data will speak much more clearly than somebody’s news article.

Those hospitals at 90%: what is their base load? The hospitals with no beds: what is their base load?

These things make very profitable news articles, but they don’t do a very good job of informing.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely and incontrovertibly bullshit that vaccines don't help unvaccinated people. Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care. We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.

> Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care. Don't hospitalise unvaccinated people who have covid then, problem solved.

Okay. As long as you remove all medical regulations so that those people can buy whatever drugs or treatment machines they want.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, again this is a great talking point for those who are enjoying their newfound power, but unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the inhabitants of this country!) the numbers do not bare this out: https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/hospitalization-utiliza... Do you know of a hospital system that’s overloaded in the way you are worried about? I’ve seen plenty of bloggers who talk about this, but they never…

What kind of argument is there to cite a single state's COVID ICU utilization as an argument? First of all, that's not total ICU utilization, which is the metric that should interests you. Illinois, the state you cherry-picked, has only 508 ICU beds remaining out of 3127. That's one doubling away from disaster. Here's an example of people dying because they couldn't find an ICU bed : https://meaww.com/ray-demonia-car…

As the sibling comment pointed out, 78% ICU occupancy is not that high compared to baseline.

From a 2014 analysis:

>Issues pertaining to the utility, interpretation, and reporting of ICU occupancy measures were identified and there were indications that optimal ICU occupancy rates were around 70-75%

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24373914/

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#260
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is technically true, it's only because the FDA abandoned all previous procedure for full approval.

Expedited approval in the middle of a pandemic is not the same as "abandoning all previous procedure".

Except that it is. They were already able to distribute the product under EUA. The push for 'full approval' was entirely political.

What's the bar for full approval? Whatever the FDA says it is. Usually that includes convening the advisory committee. That didn't happen. Recently, 3 members resigned from said committee. While these resignations weren't about the vaccines, they were about a lack of trust in FDA (interim) leadership.

If you want to continue to believe everything is just okie-dokie, knock yourself out, but you're not going to convince anyone.

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