People travelling into the U.K. from countries on the Government’s “red list” must isolate for 10 days in a quarantine hotel – and pay £1,750 per adult for the privilege! They’re not exactly getting their money’s worth, however. Some travellers have complained of a deterioration in their mental and physical health while isolating due to a lack of fresh air, exercise and proper food. The Guardian has talked to nine travellers who are or have recently been in quarantine hotels.
Some of them had travelled abroad due to sickness or death of loved ones and so were already in a distressed and traumatised state before entering the quarantine process…
While nobody challenged the need to quarantine, it is the way the process has been handled that has generated the complaints. A Facebook group called U.K. Hotel Quarantine Support Chat has been set up and has thousands of members, many of whom have raised concerns about quarantine arrangements.
Dr Sanjay Gupta, an NHS cardiology consultant, who was returning from Kenya where he had travelled to be with his dying father, said: “Not everyone can afford to pay the £1,750 cost. There seems to be something shamelessly opportunistic about this situation. But if you’re arriving from a red list country you don’t have a choice.”
Dr Thanjavur Bragadeesh, also an NHS consultant, who had returned from India where he was helping to care for his elderly parents after both had had surgery, said: “It took several hours to reach the hotel after arriving at the airport. The food is not good and the quantities are small. I got a small box of cereal for breakfast with a cheese omelette that was so hard that if I had thrown it, it would hit someone. One of the things I got for dinner was half a naan bread. I don’t know who got the other half!”
He said people quarantining had to be escorted by security guards for their 15 minutes of fresh air. “We are not prisoners, we are not trying to escape,” he said.
“I really feel for the people who are quarantining with children. The hotel staff have been polite but the conditions here are claustrophobic. It is perfectly reasonable and sensible not to bring infection into the country but things don’t need to be this draconian.”
Zahid Siddiqui, 58, returned from Pakistan where he had spent several months visiting his sick father. He expressed concerns about the lack of ventilation, fresh air and exercise and poor food.
“The whole thing was a nightmare,” he said. “I have various medical conditions such as atrial fibrillation and medical advice is that I need to take daily exercise. But I was only allowed to go outside for two of the 11 days. I have never been in jail in my life but this experience felt like it. I have never before suffered from depression but after my time in the quarantine hotel I now understand the meaning of the word.”
There are currently 43 countries on the Government’s travel “red list“, which will be reviewed, along with the “green” and “amber” lists, every three weeks.
Worth reading in full.
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The short answer is ‘Yes’!
The main conclusion from the pandemic is that governments should have done very little at all. If they had done so, fewer people would have died, and we would be in much better shape economically.
The progress of the virus has been remarkably uniform throughout the developed world, regardless of what governments have done.
Historical comparisons are real, modelling is the substitution of imagination for reality.
I don’t think it’s been as intelligent as imagination.
Who says imagination is intelligent?
Or, in this case, that there weren’t false assumptions fed into the modelling?
“Should We Have Relied More on Historical Comparisons, and Less on Epidemiological Models?”
Does a bear sh*t in the woods?
My response when I saw this last week was that it is basically the final vindication for all those who (correctly) characterised the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as basically flu.
It’s a cold rather than a flu, but the significant point is that it is basically just another typical pandemic irruption of a seasonal respiratory virus, blown into a huge catastrophe by panic overreaction. Shame on them all.
“The infectivity and severity of SARS-CoV-2, whether assessed by statistical parameterisation (basic reproduction number and adjusted case or infection fatality ratios, respectively) or synoptic description (household attack rate, time to epidemic peak, and excess all-cause mortality rates), are well within the range described by respiratory viral pandemics of the last few centuries (where the 1918–20 influenza is the clear outlier)”
If those who hysterically shouted down the wise men and women calling for calm and pointing out that it was just another flu were honest, they would be apologising.
They aren’t, of course.
And yes, obviously policymakers should have looked at history rather than at manipulative, fantasy modelling results. It’s not as though we are short of precedents where panic overreactions based on modelling nonsense have led to costly disasters.
Can you think of any that didn’t involve Ferguson?
I agree, but I do believe one thing was different this time around. The French built the lab, the US paid for it, the Chinese released it and the UK helped to cover it up. That warrants some different actions – none to do with management more to do with the hangings.
Three of your four assertions are correct, but read this long article – https://www.unz.com/article/the-flying-pangolin/
Well – a statement of the bleedin’ obvious.
But – a well laid-out argument of the bleedin’ obvious is still worthwhile.
Bluntly – only the brain dead would place any faith in epidemiological modelling after the series of massive miscalculations that have occured.
Even in terms of the immediate history of this epidemic, a forecast based upon that reality is far more accurate than computer gaming.
When Vallance forecast the notorious ‘4000 deaths a day’ in the autumn, I deliberately wrote down (to avoid kidding myself) my own forecast based simply on trends and previous patterns. It was just intelligent use of historical real data – not at all sophisticated. It was essentially an intelligent guestimate.
The result was massively more accurate than any of the mathematical models.
Dominic Cummings has since confirmed that the Government did abandon its original plan at the last minute. He claims, “No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe.”
“Various people”? And “catastrophe” for who exactly? Was this the point they crawled out of their own little bed, and into another much, much bigger bed?
Those various people have clearly been proven wrong by Sweden, South Dakota, Florida&co.
But as nothing changes- to the contrary, they are doubling down on lockdowns et.al. as the only permitted response henceforth and are ready to sign away all their sovereignty here to the WHO in November- it is now very clear that they were and are following a totally different agenda with all this, and also that DC was and is neither in the loop nor as smart as he thinks he is.
it is now very clear that they were and are following a totally different agenda with all this, and also that DC was and is neither in the loop nor as smart as he thinks he is.
Cummings deserves a lamp post of his own, though of course lots of lamp posts will be needed.
Have they back-tested any of Prof Pantsdown’s predictions to see if any of his guff has had any merit at all, ever?
Just look at how ENORMOUSLY wrong IC was on vCJD prediction
… and the rest.
Ferguson from the Bill Gates’s Imperial College simply provides the numbers that his masters and government want. He is just a cog in the wheel, nothing more.
Exactly. A corrupt puppet.
A very rich corrupt puppet.
One can only hope he bumps into someone who can give him the attention he needs.
So long as they clean up afterwards.
“Should We Have Relied More on Historical Comparisons, and Less on Epidemiological Models?” How can this even be a rational question? Of course this should have been the case. Ferguson et al., have a lot to answer for. To then use poorly designed and disproven models as ‘evidence’ for future planning policy, borders on the insane and is at the least a sacking/resignation offence. To then continue with a policy that has wrecked lives, the economy, livelihoods, education, hospitality, psychological equilibrium, is most certainly criminally negligent and worthy of a custodial sentence.
Time to go Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson.
I wouldn’t count on any resignations, they’re all smug in their fantasy that they’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
You’ve missed Farrar, Semple & a couple of other criminals.
Sorry for repeating, but the modelling has been done to support the required messages that created the psyop that was necessary to bring about the public response to the strategy already decided. The modellers might have over-sized egos, but they are foot soldiers, they have done what their masters paid them to do.
Of course the application of brains and a bit of historical perspective would have been better. Actually the output of a community of chimpanzees would have been better. but spending much time on this misses the point.
There is absolutely no way, given what we know about the early timeframes for such things as the Drosten RT-PCR test, that this was an accident of history, a cock-up, a mistake covered up ever since, or even just a combined effort of useless individuals. This was planned and executed, albeit with the usual errors en-route of any grand stategy. If it was any of the afore mentioned cock-ups it would have been wrapped up and swept under the carpet last summer.
Exactly. The headline and article are disingenuous.
I keep on recommending it, but the Council of Europe report on the swine ‘flu non-pandemic really is essential reading, in so far as you can see a template for what actually happened over Covid.
It’s blindingly obvious – but I bet that if you do a search of the archives for the past two years, you will find no mention in the media – a mark of the raddled nature of current journalism. Any proper investigative journalist would have been showing it like a rash.
Indeed & this is how I ended up connected to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, who pretty much shot the last Plandemic in the face.
The problem is that much of the population (and indeed, even especially our governing classes) lacks any historical knowledge of anything before yesterday. The little they do know is that our ancestors were bad, and stupid, and that we are much, much better than them in every way. Year zero advocates must always libel the past.
‘We’ were the victims of psychological, economic and biological warfare.
It’s easier for politicians to do something rather than nothing. Bunch of cowards.
Make that, criminals.
Your headline fundamentally equates to, ‘should we use knowledge and experience or go with guesswork?’
^^^THIS^^^
No sh*t, Sherlock.
GIGO
Well as we already know it’s been a case of garbage fed into the models and consequently we got got garbage out. Too many incorrect assumptions were made by the modellers who were too arrogant to correct the mistake preferring to keep repeating the mistake instead. Most notably the assumption that 100% of the population are susceptible and that our immune systems wouldn’t work.
And that it would kill a higher proportion of those infected than it actually did.
Should we have relied more on knowledge and experience and less on the guesses of narcissists?
The answer should be obvious.
You think? Modelling is no better than medieval alchemy or fairground fortune telling. We really are going backwards.
It didn’t matter what they did as the entire episode was & remains fraud
To me, a unreconstructed non scientist, it appears that the “modellers” and “Sage” and other ( malign) influencers are at their core politically motivated, on the Brexit side of the divide, in thrall to “big” organisations such as the EU and the WHO and therefore their psychological allegiances and bents infect their allegedly professional functions – this is illustrated by the people on “independent” SAGE and it is impossible not to see their mindset/direction of travel. I include career politicians in this description; they all have skin in the game. None of them are brainless but I can imagine that once they decide on how to impart their so called knowledge and experience wrapped round their true aim, they do not do a lot of..” now am I right here, is there something I have missed, I will seek another opinion ” or listen to the little man ( old norse meaning ) on their shoulder. They also know they are currently untouchable – how often do they stare down the barrel to justify their output. Having started on a course of action they know full well is wrong, none of them have the personal integrity to admit they might be wrong – their agenda/narrative prevents that, and the politicians need to get re -elected. Kings/queens new clothes for sure or ” Breaker Morrant Syndrome”. For this reason, I cannot see that powers acquired will be handed back, July 19th regardless, without something happening that forces this to happen….