2 responses to “Infections Continue to Rise as 1 in 16 People in Scotland Test Positive for #Covid”

1. 

   S Davidson

   July 15, 2022 at 8:00 pm

   Well… if this does not dampen one’s spirits, I do not know what does.

   Covid is very much with us and it is continuing to cause harms, physically, mentally, socially and economically. We could limit those harms… by applying reason, logic and common sense… but we just behave as it they all had gone out of fashion or fell victim to social media influencers.
   The current approach of “Living with Covid” is based on a misconception of the relationship between harms and promoting harms in (yet open ended) perpetuity.

   Imagine your neighbour kept a really dangerous animal, is not bothered when this animal strays into your garden and just shrugs their shoulders when you ask them to keep it confined in their own space or on a lead. This would not be deemed acceptable.
   Another example: smoking has been banned in so many shared and/public spaces. This was certainly not done to protect the smokers, in fact it was done to protect others. Funny though, although this is in fact a restriction (and despite being a smoker myself I have to admit that it is a sensible one), people do not complain about this restriction.
   We are legally prevented from exercising polygamy, from carrying weapons around in public, from going shopping naked, driving drunk or in excess of speed limits…hence we do face many restrictions in our daily life, many of them for very good reasons, and we just accept them as part of a framework of rules, laws or social conventions.

   But how can masks be called a “restriction”? They are not. Business closures are restrictions, staff shortages (due to Covid absences) result in restrictions (of availability of goods or services), an overwhelmed NHS workforce leads to restricted services (for everybody!) and so forth.

   What a confusing mix of double standards. Public health measures have been politicised, mainly by a blonde man without access to a hairdresser (he has time now to look for one), and it is time to end this.
   The ones who take a cavalier approach to others’ health by not observing some simple common sense precautions (such as masks) exercise antisocial behaviour, no matter whether this happens with the permission of a (UK) government or not. We know now that the (UK) government’s behaviour didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and that they ignored, instead of followed, the science… we – the public – can certainly do better.

   Dampening spirits: Today’s IndieSage briefing on youtube has my recommendation… as an eye opener on which path we currently are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRMRCx8JYos
   Listen to the numbers of hospital acquired infections (dropping the mask mandate in healthcare was a driver), rising death numbers and the effects on children…

   And some last words about masks: the endless disputes about their efficacy… they are effective if the right type is used and it they are used correctly.
   We had a campaign about hand washing earlier in the pandemic, TV adverts etc., and one could dispute whether the public really had a knowledge deficit in hand washing… personally I doubt it.

   We should have had an education campaign about masks. To this day many have not detected the little metal strip to adjust the masks correctly over the nose; huge gaps to the sides and the top very much limit the filtering capacity of masks because air flows in and out where there is the least resistance (where the gaps are). Logic tells us that any virus which is as easily transmitted as the current variants, will simply escape the mask, at least in part.
   You wouldn’t put a safety belt on incorrectly… we should follow the same approach with masks.

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2. 

   NSThomas

   July 16, 2022 at 10:09 am

   Some very good points there — thank you!

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