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UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#71
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even don't be associated with. As someone who used to visit the west bank for work I've spent many hours in intimidating interrogation, appropriated laptops, missed flights and most recently 3 days in a horrible prison without access to a shower or fresh clothing, after being denied access to the country for completely nonsense reasons. And the security argument is complete BS most of the time, NGO employees get t…

Ethnicity is irrelevant actually. Don't be associated with trouble makers.

I don't associate with trouble makers, that's your racist bias. I work with palestinian students and software developers.

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#72
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term you're looking for is security theatre

Security theatre is a different thing. That’s when you perform a pointless ritual to convey the feeling of security. People coming up with onerous new rules and restriction just to remind you who’s in charge is something else.

I always viewed the continual cycle of changing the rules which usually coincides with some negative publicity be it an attempt or attack or investigation… as a form of being seen to do something for the sake of having to do something in response to the recent event, as just another layer of the security theatre. Like the production of a whole season of shows by a live theatre group is just as much a layer above the repetition of the performance each night and no less part of making the “theatre” happen than each individual performance is.

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#73

In Tel Aviv they had very strict airport security measures: opening the suitcase and passing chemical papers several times, asking lots of questions, etc. The 1 liter bottle of water, you can pass that no problem. Maybe they already have these scanners?

Israel never cared for the 100ml security theater. Hardly a country that doesn't care about security, so that should tell you everything you need to know about "liquid bombs".

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shoes and liquids are so 2000s. It's 2023, so it's all about masks and vax mandates What's wrong with COVID vaccine mandates? It sort of stops people from dying. Sure you can be annoyed at masks (I don't wear one, for instance), but vaccines ? You get poked a couple times and you're done. It's basically nothing and doesn't impact your life whatsoever. (Unless you have some sort of allergy or immune disorder of cour…

Mandating a medical treatment may be in some cases ethically acceptable, but it should only be done if absolutely necessary. In our current context, this is probably about the COVID vaccines. They don't seem to stop transmission, so mandating them on populations that aren't at risk is hard to justify. Personally I think if someone only increases risk on themselves, it's the same as refusing cancer treatment or anythi…

> In our current context, this is probably about the COVID vaccines.

Of course.

> They don't seem to stop transmission, so mandating them on populations that aren't at risk is hard to justify.

If you transmit to someone who is vaccinated, there's a lower chance they'll get sick. Vaccines are a preventative measure; I would rather see people vaccinated before they become at risk rather than seeing them get COVID because they weren't vaccinated in time.

(Not claiming vaccines completely prevent COVID, just that they definitely seem to reduce the risk of one getting sick from it.)

And what about herd immunity? If, say, 99% of a population is vaccinated, then will 1 in 100 people still be at great (or greater) risk due to the vaccinated population still carrying and transmitting the virus freely? Or would those 1 in 100 people be at lesser risk due to less people coughing and sneezing everywhere?

-Emily

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#75
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, don't remind me of Singapore. Transferring after a flight from London, I see a water bottle refill fountain, which I use. We're running late, so I head straight to the gate...and then have to immediately dispose of my newly filled 2L water bottle. I've never known another airport to have this security setup, and as a massive transit hub, I really can't make sense of why they chose to put it at that point - but t…

I think the reason is, like you said, it is a transit hub. So passenger flying out of Singapore can mix with people in transit. Therefore, putting the scanner before boarding prevent a possible terrorist attack when someone smuggle in explosive or what not from Singapore or from transit flight.

In Dubai, which is a massive transit hub, they do the security check upon arrival, before you enter the departures area. They still do some lighter spot checks at the gates, but liquids allowed.

Heathrow as a major transit hub also doesn’t do security checks at the gate, rather it’s when you enter airside. Far better.

Singapore and KL airports are the odd ones out. I suspect because they were built before the security rules required better separation of departing and arriving passengers, and retrofitting the added security paths made less sense financially than just doing checks at every gate.

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#76

In Berlin at BER I had someone from security straight up tell me that water being sold at a premium after security, with a profit for the airport shops that pay hefty rents, is the only reason for keeping up the 100ml liquids rule. That was a heated discussion point for a while, since the airport had to stop people from drinking tap water inside because of an e.coli infestation in the water system of the airport. We'…

I really don't get the BER hate. It's not only a huge improvement over SXF and TXL (minus T1 at TXL, RIP turning up 10 minutes before boarding), but it's a perfectly good airport in its own right.

The building of it and the budget overrun was a disaster, and demonstrated the worst of infrastructure building in this country, but will happily die on the hill that the result is good, actually. (If we want to get into contenders for "worst in the world", my opening bid is ATL.)

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Shoes and liquids are so 2000s. It's 2023, so it's all about masks and vax mandates What's wrong with COVID vaccine mandates? It sort of stops people from dying. Sure you can be annoyed at masks (I don't wear one, for instance), but vaccines ? You get poked a couple times and you're done. It's basically nothing and doesn't impact your life whatsoever. (Unless you have some sort of allergy or immune disorder of cour…

> What's wrong with COVID vaccine mandates? It sort of stops people from dying.

Not so.

The UK government has now published its estimate of the number of people needed to vaccinate to prevent a COVID-19 hospitalisation:

25-Jan-2023 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

For example, in the 30-39 year no-risk group (my age group), the number needed to vaccinate to prevent a visit to a hospital is 9,900. To prevent one serious hospitalisation requiring oxygen or ventilation you would need to vaccinate 87,600.

As for the safety of the vaccines, in randomized control trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines here in the UK, we now know that the risk of serious adverse effects from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated i.e. a ~1 in 800 chance of serious adverse effects:

22-Sep-22 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/

In other words, our risk associated with vaccination is more than 100 times greater than the protection we would receive from it - even if we didn't have some degree of natural immunity - which we do.

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#78
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but to their defense, there have not been 9/11 attacks or anything remotely similar since 9/11... so either it was all fake anyways or the security theater also deters potential low IQ attackers?

The biggest thing that stopped 9/11 attacks since 9/11 was locks on cockpit doors. The second biggest thing that stopped them since 9/11 is passenger awareness that they could just... Not let a few assholes with boxcutters fly a plane into a building.

Recognising that domestic flights also need security and not treating them like flying Greyhound buses probably helped.

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#79

In Japan for domestic flights, they have some sort of a sniffer machine they put your liquids on for testing, so flying with them is fine. When I flew through Beijing and had forgotten a can of beer in my backpack (<3 Julebryg), it was flagged on the X-ray, and when they guy found it, saw "it was just a can of beer", he gave it back to me. I guess that works too.

I flew with liquor on a domestic Japanese flight. They didn’t even have a scanner. I showed them that I have it in my backpack and they said it’s no problem at all.

Yeah, the domestic Japanese flight I took [in 2017] was entirely devoid of security, at least overtly. We just bought a ticket and walked to the plane, like in the good old days. Half of the people on board seemed to be carrying cats or dogs in baskets too. And the ticket was absurdly cheap. Pretty strange / cool!

Re: UK airport scraps 100ml liquid rule with new scanners

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandating a medical treatment may be in some cases ethically acceptable, but it should only be done if absolutely necessary. In our current context, this is probably about the COVID vaccines. They don't seem to stop transmission, so mandating them on populations that aren't at risk is hard to justify. Personally I think if someone only increases risk on themselves, it's the same as refusing cancer treatment or anythi…

> In our current context, this is probably about the COVID vaccines. Of course. > They don't seem to stop transmission, so mandating them on populations that aren't at risk is hard to justify. If you transmit to someone who is vaccinated, there's a lower chance they'll get sick. Vaccines are a preventative measure; I would rather see people vaccinated before they become at risk rather than seeing them get COVID becau…

> If you transmit to someone who is vaccinated, there's a lower chance they'll get sick.

Not if they already had it and recovered with mild symptoms.

> would rather see people vaccinated before they become at risk rather than seeing them get COVID because they weren't vaccinated in time.

It doesn't matter what you want. It matters what the patient receiving the treatment wants. It's their body not yours.

> And what about herd immunity?

Herd immunity means widespread natural immunity, which is what the largely benign but highly transmissible omicron strain gave to us over a year ago.

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