Ross County v Motherwell 18/1/22

[Al B]

Firstly I want to say that all this "Wee Nippy" and "Wee Kranky" and "ahhh want ti go ti the fitbaw!!!" shitely-made points that just sound like "old-man shouts at cloud" is possibly the most counter-productive thing I've heard in a long time. My post below will leave no doubt as to where I stand on this issue, but it's this embarrassing narrative that I believe is hugely impacting the rational view. The "Wee Nippy/Kranky" brigade are as useless to the debate as the "Thank you for everything First Minister" brigade.

Anyway.....

Infection rate in Scotland in the week leading up to 31st Dec - 1,900 cases per 100,000.

Infection rate in England in the week leading up to 31st Dec - 1,600 cases per 100,000.

Scotlands infection rate was even higher than London which is the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak.

Now that the vaccine is in place, the re-introduced restrictions implemented by the Scottish Government are doing absolutely nothing other than further ruining the economy and Scottish businesses (and yes that involves football clubs).

They were also outright asked about the figures they publish being "with Covid", as opposed to being "as a result of Covid". The first reply was that they didn't have those figures, and when pressed on the fact that if they are claiming their actions are driven by data then surely they must have them, they respond by saying well, we do have them but we can't tell you due to data protection. *Read - we won't tell you because the figures that are actually as a RESULT of Covid and BECAUSE of Covid, are low enough that they don't justify the governmental response.

If a person dies for any reason at all, spread under the wheels of a bus, for example....and they are found to have had 100% completely asymptomatic Covid in their system...they are included in the Covid death figures.

If you die OF ANY REASON WHATSOEVER within 28 days of having taken a positive test, you are included in the Covid death figures.

That in itself is an absolute nonsense, and wildly skews the figures to an unimaginable degree. If you remove from the figures all of the people who happened to have Covid-19 in their system and were not affected by it in the slightest yet died by Heart Attack, Stroke, Cancer, Traffic Accident, Suicide etc etc etc, and either did not even know it was in their system or within 28 days of having had a positive test, then the numbers left make the response utterly and embarrassingly disproportionate and damaging. Imagine for a second that death from any cause within 28 days of being on a flight, was recorded as an aviation disaster, and you see how ridiculous it is.

Two leading professors revealed earlier this week that if the exact same figures for hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths were occurring in 2018, no-one would even know anything was wrong. They are so low that no-one would even notice and we'd never have heard a thing about it.

Two things are happening in my opinion, 1 - the Government are feeling the hit of a woefully under-funded NHS, and passing the responsibility for it onto the people, and 2 - Nicola Sturgeon took this latest action as part of her future drive for Independence as it was assumed one of 2 things would happen; either Westminster would introduce restrictions later on and the SG could re-use their quote of "I will never apologise for caring more for the people of Scotland than Westminster do", or the UK Government wouldn't introduce restrictions at all and their infection rate would dwarf that of Scotland and she could say the same:  "Look how much better it was when we decided for ourselves". Except that didn't happen, it wasn't, and we are now in the "oh shit" phase of Scottish Government.

It's apparent now that her nightmare scenario has happened where Westminster did nothing and still has a better infection rate, so all she's done is ruined the country for absolutely no benefit at all. They are realising that, hence the thickly-veiled climbdown that's starting to happen now. Which in itself introduces things that make absolutely zero sense because the drop in self-isolation from 10 to 7 days apparently doesn't work retrospectively, so someone thats on day 5 of self-isolation today has to continue for 10 even if they now test negative, but someone who tested positive yesterday only has to for 7. In fact, it's actually stupider than that....someone who tested positive on Wednesday will still be stuck in their house after someone who tested positive yesterday is out and about.

Swinney has already been called out for using incorrect figures to back up the restrictions, and the worm is 100% definitely turning. I'm actually extremely surprised to see that the concensus of opinion on Stellmen Online is the polar opposite of the general view I'm seeing elsewhere and in general life. People in high positions are starting to call out bullshit, and even the media are (finally) starting to ask questions when things don't make sense. The legal wagons are circling already and there will be court-cases for YEARS to come when this starts to die down. Perhaps even criminal cases when it's taken into account that they knowingly sent people to their deaths by discharging elderly Covid patients back into care-homes so they could use the hospital beds for other people (mainly caused by years of under-funding). This, for me, is the main reason they HAVE to continue with the charade of restrictions because if they admit they made a mistake, then by association they are accountable for every business that went under as a direct result of uneccessary restrictions, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses can just sit back and reap the rewards of the legal teams that the previous CEO's of Debenhams, Arcadia Group, Frasers Group can afford. If you think Covid has fucked the world, just wait til you see what the next 10 years holds when people are held to account.

Caveat to this is, I'm a previous SNP supporter who was a huge fan in general of Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government, but they have absolutely without doubt lost my future vote along with many many others that I either know personally or have heard of anecdotally. If there was even a shred of a credible opponent up here at all, I truly believe they would be out on their ear come the first sniff of an election. Except there isn't, so they will be re-elected with an albeit much smaller majority, and it will be completely pointless because we'll now either never have another referendum in anyone alive's lifetime, or if there is it will be overwhelmingly no, because we had the chance to show we could be better on our own and they made a monumental c*nt of it.

Looking back now, the memory of us all standing in the street whacking pots with spoons and clapping is absolutely cringe-inducing to the point where I wish I could convince myself I hadn't joined in.

[steelboy]

100% correct Al.

There has to be a reckoning over sending untested people into care homes at the height of the first wave. 

As he says cases are higher here despite the darts, football, clubbing, gigs and not wearing a mask to go for pish in England. If it's not full crowds from the next fixture I think there will be a serious backlash. 

 

[Motherwell Daft]

Couldn’t agree more, great points made by Al B, the bullshit of Covid deaths, and every death is a disaster to families involved but when deaths FROM Covid NOT WITH using Governments (ONS) own figures was the the 24th lowest cause of death, that’s below the numbers killed on the UK roads, or the number killed by FLU was used as a cloak to destroy industry, take away rights from the ordinary person is now clearly visible, only question for me is will the media who have been a government mouthpiece since early 2020 now turn around and actually report the truth, warts and all, if they do and people stop believing the rhetoric being served up to maintain this charade then we can all get back to our “normal” lives including watching the mighty Well as soon as possible, otherwise we will be in this cycle of crap forever.

[Winning by Name]

10 hours ago, steelboy said:

Infections and positivity rates are dropping.

But admissions at hospitals are not.

[Motherwell Daft]

1 minute ago, Winning by Name said:

But admissions at hospitals are not.

But what with? Cancer? Heart disease? Old age? Diabetes? Road traffic accident? 

[Winning by Name]

Just now, Motherwell Daft said:

But what with? Cancer? Heart disease? Old age? Diabetes? Road traffic accident? 

Everything! And if you work there it doesnt matter!

[Motherwell Daft]

19 minutes ago, Winning by Name said:

Everything! And if you work there it doesnt matter!

Exactly, is that not what our hospitals usually receive,  their receiving profile hasn’t changed to a massive number of virus based patients plus their usual receiving profile, with the small number of virus based patients only taking up minimal beds and every thanks to staff who work there and doing their chosen jobs.

Hospitals are receiving the standard numbers of people requiring care as expected in any standard December/January and February when hospitals ‘ are every year known to  before the virus be very busy.

In my own very humble opinion, and it is only that, a personal opinion which is presently still permitted in this country, there is no need for the restrictions we are seeing right now.

Lets  get back to normal as soon as possible! 

[steelboy]

33 minutes ago, Winning by Name said:

But admissions at hospitals are not.

Hospital admissions have run 10-14 days behind infections throughout the pandemic. 

The ICU figures from London show far fewer hospital admissions needing ventilation despite them having the lowest vaccination rate in the country. 

[Al B]

8 hours ago, Winning by Name said:

But admissions at hospitals are not.

Surely this shows that the restrictions aren't doing anything then, and are only causing further damage to the economy and businesses? If they don't slow the rate of hospital admissions then what are they for? The general party line in response to that would be "the restrictions are preventing them being even worse", but the figures in England are proving that to not be the case as their ratio is better than ours and they had no restrictions.

However, that aside, to take your point in isolation it's because they continue to record the figures in the way they do.

Think about it this way; Lets say for a second that they were to test every single person in Scotland during February.

Given that they are reporting that 1 in 10 people in Scotland will have Covid by then, that means that because every death from any cause within 28 days of a positive test is counted as a Covid death, then if everyone in the country was tested in February then by default the stats will show that 10% of every single person who dies in Scotland in March is a Covid death. At an average of 5000 deaths per month that would be reported as going from ZERO deaths on 4th Jan to FIVE HUNDRED Covid deaths in March......thats devastating!!

Except it's not, there's no change whatsoever other than the amount of tests being done. That's ridiculous, and all down to the insane way they are reporting the figures.

And yet they are actually AIMING for as many asymptomatic tests as possible! Then dramatising any increase in figures. I mean....anyone with a basic grasp of ratios understands why the figures fluctuate proportionately with testing.

As a government they are supposed to implement a response to a crisis which stems the cause of the crisis, but to flip that round and actually manipulate the impact of the cause in order to justify their response is disgusting. Getting that the wrong way round is borderline criminal, and as I say the worm is turning as we speak...I believe they will be held to account in the coming years.

[Yorkyred]

Almost one in five people in Scotland have covid just now and that’s just the reported number, a huge number will also be unrecorded, as high as another two million suggested. That’s all anyone needs to know when they moan about not been able to attend a game of football.

[Al B]

49 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

Almost one in five people in Scotland have covid just now and that’s just the reported number, a huge number will also be unrecorded, as high as another two million suggested. That’s all anyone needs to know when they moan about not been able to attend a game of football.

Well, it's not really. No-ones trying to stop the spread of Covid, you can't stop it in the same way you can't stop the spread of any of the other countless airborne respiratory infections. The end game is to minimise it's impact on health, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the vaccines have achieved that. Omicron scared everyone into assuming that an increase in cases would have a proportionate increase in serious illness and death and so they panicked, and then it turned out that.....wow, the vaccines actually did their job and their reaction was hugely inappropriate and uneccessary. The announcement of the withdrawal of PCR testing for asymptomatic positive LFT's shows that they are finally admitting that (whilst not actually admitting it).

If there isn't an unusual amount of serious illness or death from it, then it literally doesn't matter how many people have Covid. In fact the evidence that Omicron (a mild varient almost 100% dealt with by the vaccine), has all but killed out the Delta variant (that was more serious and did actually kill people), shows that the wide spread of Omicron is actually benificial in the overall big picture and is helping in the fight to suppress the pandemic completely.

In fact, you actually emphasise the point I'm making in the post above yours. If we take your 1 in 5 information and plug it in to my example, then we're looking at going from reporting 0 Covid deaths on 4th January, to reporting 1000 Covid deaths in March, even although there isn't. There's just a load more tests being done, and the criteria for a what is a Covid death is ridiculous.

[steelboy]

1 hour ago, Yorkyred said:

Almost one in five people in Scotland have covid just now and that’s just the reported number, a huge number will also be unrecorded, as high as another two million suggested. That’s all anyone needs to know when they moan about not been able to attend a game of football.

You think 3 million people have Covid in Scotland today?

Have you got some sort of disability relating to numeracy? Al B posted the actual figures for the last week of 2021 in his first post on this page. 

 

[ohwulliewullie]

40 minutes ago, Al B said:

Well, it's not really. No-ones trying to stop the spread of Covid, you can't stop it in the same way you can't stop the spread of any of the other countless airborne respiratory infections. The end game is to minimise it's impact on health, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the vaccines have achieved that. Omicron scared everyone into assuming that an increase in cases would have a proportionate increase in serious illness and death and so they panicked, and then it turned out that.....wow, the vaccines actually did their job and their reaction was hugely inappropriate and uneccessary. The announcement of the withdrawal of PCR testing for asymptomatic positive LFT's shows that they are finally admitting that (whilst not actually admitting it).

If there isn't an unusual amount of serious illness or death from it, then it literally doesn't matter how many people have Covid. In fact the evidence that Omicron (a mild varient almost 100% dealt with by the vaccine), has all but killed out the Delta variant (that was more serious and did actually kill people), shows that the wide spread of Omicron is actually benificial in the overall big picture and is helping in the fight to suppress the pandemic completely.

In fact, you actually emphasise the point I'm making in the post above yours. If we take your 1 in 5 information and plug it in to my example, then we're looking at going from reporting 0 Covid deaths on 4th January, to reporting 1000 Covid deaths in March, even although there isn't. There's just a load more tests being done, and the criteria for a what is a Covid death is ridiculous.

I don’t agree with you, but I may eventually do so on a number of your points… but your perspective is well argued and I appreciate the fact that you’ve pointed out a few things that I previously hadn’t considered. 

The reason for my caution is that I fear that the high number of cases will turn into a high number of deaths… as a result of the normal time lag between infection - hospitalisation - death (e.g. as more older people became infected during the festive period)… and the risk that the NHS is so under pressure that many people die (as a result of Covid or other causes) who would otherwise have survived with proper / timely care. This is the situation that the NHS faces now, or could do soon… the reasons for that / root causes probably matter less right now than what is actually done about it. For those reasons I’m OK at the moment for a more cautious approach that means there are more restrictions in place. 

[steelboy]

Your fear isn't reason to put the football off though. That's a reason for you to stay in the house.

We are now 20 days into our Omicron wave and there has been no spike in serious illness. This matches data from South Africa, London and Denmark. It is undeniably far milder. 

[Yorkyred]

21 minutes ago, steelboy said:

You think 3 million people have Covid in Scotland today?

Have you got some sort of disability relating to numeracy? Al B posted the actual figures for the last week of 2021 in his first post on this page. 

 

You might want to look on the BBC website and the article on it at the moment. You believe it’s all pretty much unimportant so nothing is going to change your mind but the actual reported figures are never going to be close to the actual number of people that have it and record it.

[Al B]

1 hour ago, ohwulliewullie said:

I don’t agree with you, but I may eventually do so on a number of your points… but your perspective is well argued and I appreciate the fact that you’ve pointed out a few things that I previously hadn’t considered. 

The reason for my caution is that I fear that the high number of cases will turn into a high number of deaths… as a result of the normal time lag between infection - hospitalisation - death (e.g. as more older people became infected during the festive period)… and the risk that the NHS is so under pressure that many people die (as a result of Covid or other causes) who would otherwise have survived with proper / timely care. This is the situation that the NHS faces now, or could do soon… the reasons for that / root causes probably matter less right now than what is actually done about it. For those reasons I’m OK at the moment for a more cautious approach that means there are more restrictions in place. 

And you are absolutely right to do so, if that is what you believe. And that is really the crux of my point in fairness, we are now at a point where the public should be trusted to assert their own attitude to risk, much like if an individual believes that the risk of a plane crash is too high for them, then they are fully within their rights to not go on one and that is absolutely fair enough. But you don't ban air travel because some planes crash.

I don't think anyone is (rationally) saying that no action should be taken at all. The point is more that the action shouldn't just be arbitrary and should have some sort of basis behind it.

A lot is being made of the whole "football fans shouldnt be so selfish" thing, but the fact that it's football is neither here nor there. On the one hand you have football being limited to 500 people in stadiums whilst schools stayed open. What you can essentially break that down into is  a group of 98% vaccinated people outdoors, Vs a group of 100% unvaccinated people in an enclosed space. Which one is more of a threat? And yet which one was allowed to continue?

The fact that it's football doesn't matter....it's the fact that it doesn't make sense and isn't dealing with the problem, is what's infuriating people.

That's not even touching the fact that, yes limiting Fir Park to 500 fans spreads everyone out, but if you take a smaller club with one stand that normally has maybe 250 people in it, with 600-700 spread out around the rest of the stadium, then what the 500 limit is actually doing in real terms, is taking a stand that normally has 250 people in it, and putting 500 people in it. Again, the fact that it's football is neither here-nor-there, it's the fact that it's arbitrary, across the board, and makes no sense, that is causing the outrage.

Or take the mandatory re-introduction of screens in pubs and shops, which were literally proven to reduce airflow and contain air particles into areas rather than allowing them to disperse. Again, no-ones saying there should be no action....but it should be proportionate and at the very VERY least, correct and helpful.

 

It was reported by a journalist that I can't for the life of me find now (I will keep trying as I fully appreciate how unbelievable this is....which is basically my point), that he had the following exchange in a private media briefing with a government rep in advance of a public one:

"Is it the case that if I am in a Church then I must wear a mask, unless I am singing in which case I can remove the mask?

Yes.

Does that mean that I can go into Tesco without a mask as long as I am singing?

Well, techincally by the letter of the rules, yes."

 

I mean.....let's just leave it there cos even though it's Friday I should at least do SOME work.

[steelboy]

7 minutes ago, Yorkyred said:

You might want to look on the BBC website and the article on it at the moment. You believe it’s all pretty much unimportant so nothing is going to change your mind but the actual reported figures are never going to be close to the actual number of people that have it and record it.

You posted that you think 60% of the entire Scottish population have Covid today.

The BBC story is the total number of infections during the entire pandemic.

[ohwulliewullie]

10 minutes ago, steelboy said:

Your fear isn't reason to put the football off though. That's a reason for you to stay in the house.

We are now 20 days into our Omicron wave and there has been no spike in serious illness. This matches data from South Africa, London and Denmark. It is undeniably far milder. 

I used the word ‘fear’ more in the sense of concern for society in general, rather than feeling personally scared. If I could go to the football then I wouldn’t hesitate, and I’m going about my business as normally as I can (work / gym / etc), albeit I’m in pubs / restaurants less than pre-Covid. 

As you say, given that we’re only 20 days into the current wave, in my opinion a wee bit of caution for a couple of more weeks say (to prove that the NHS can cope with what transpires) is OK.

[steelboy]

Just now, ohwulliewullie said:

I used the word ‘fear’ more in the sense of concern for society in general, rather than feeling personally scared. If I could go to the football then I wouldn’t hesitate, and I’m going about my business as normally as I can (work / gym / etc), albeit I’m in pubs / restaurants less than pre-Covid. 

As you say, given that we’re only 20 days into the current wave, in my opinion a wee bit of caution for a couple of more weeks say (to prove that the NHS can cope with what transpires) is OK.

It's 20 days since Sturgeon said Omicron was dominant which meant taking over Delta which was widespread. All the signs are pointing to this being far milder, it's not going to suddenly change severity. 

The Scottish Government today finally put out figures separating out who is being treated for Covid and who has Covid in hospital for two health boards. It's 60% for and 40% with which translates to roughly 500 people being treated for Covid in the whole of Scotland  which is good news.

[Al B]

5 minutes ago, steelboy said:

It's 20 days since Sturgeon said Omicron was dominant which meant taking over Delta which was widespread. All the signs are pointing to this being far milder, it's not going to suddenly change severity. 

The Scottish Government today finally put out figures separating out who is being treated for Covid and who has Covid in hospital for two health boards. It's 60% for and 40% with which translates to roughly 500 people being treated for Covid in the whole of Scotland  which is good news.

Let's not forget how much lower that number goes when you take into account unvaccinated patients, and therefore preventable cases.

[steelboy]

1 minute ago, Al B said:

Let's not forget how much lower that number goes when you take into account unvaccinated patients, and therefore preventable cases.

It'll be difficult to make sense of those figures now as the Scottish Government legally changed the definition of unvaccinated the other day.

Unvaccinated now means 0,1 and 2 doses plus people who are triple jagged but had their booster less than 14 days before their positive test.

[Kmcalpin]

5 minutes ago, steelboy said:

It'll be difficult to make sense of those figures now as the Scottish Government legally changed the definition of unvaccinated the other day.

Unvaccinated now means 0,1 and 2 doses plus people who are triple jagged but had their booster less than 14 days before their positive test.

Are you sure about that? I don't know  but it seems ridiculous if so.

 

[steelboy]

 

[Al B]

2 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said:

Are you sure about that? I don't know  but it seems ridiculous if so.

 

Add it to the ridiculous list. It's completely true.

 

The numbers we should be looking at, dealing with, and reacting to, are hospitalisations caused by unpreventable* Covid, ICU admissions caused by unpreventable* Covid, and deaths caused by unpreventable* Covid. They are literally the only statistics that mean anything...and when you imagine how small those numbers are, then it makes a fair chunk of post-vaccine Britain scarier than any pandemic could be.

*By preventable, I mean opted to not be vaccinated.

[Al B]

Oh, and 2-0 Motherwell, KVV and fancy Mugabe from a corner.