IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Andy Onchan]

10 minutes ago, quilp said:

If you read all that and absorbed it intently in 8 minutes then I'm a Chinaman...

He's been to the Skelly School of Skim-reading!

[Happier diner]

28 minutes ago, quilp said:

If you read all that and absorbed it intently in 8 minutes then I'm a Chinaman...

You mean he's a chinaman

[Nom de plume]

31 minutes ago, quilp said:

If you read all that and absorbed it intently in 8 minutes then I'm a Chinaman...

I didn’t need to.

I’m acutely aware of the issues on the ground in China atm. My business has ties.

They haven’t got it under control at all as suggested in the BMJ article but you crack on sunshine.

[Gladys]

Elimination is the ideal, of course, but it has to be achieved in our near neighbours, and their near neighbours and so on,  if it is going to be a goer here.

[AcousticallyChallenged]

3 hours ago, Nom de plume said:

I’m going to say it one more time.

Vaccjnate the elderly, care staff & extremity vulnerable then allow the rest of us to crack on.

The risk to those below pension age is incredibly small.

The country has been literally scared to death. I’m not dismissive of the virus, I believe it’s a nasty little bugger for a lot of people BUT not the majority who’s futures & livelihoods have been gradually strangled & destroyed.

Yes ... I’m a lone voice in an ocean of bed wetting. I might even die of this thing, who knows ... but it’s what I truly believe.

What about the athletes? Arguably very fit people showing heart inflammation on the back of COVID19?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2772399

It's a nasty virus, and the post-viral syndrome can really screw you up. Plenty of people who are wiped out for months after it.

Realistically, once you've got the over 60s, and vulnerable vaccinated, the pressure is off. But I don't think that'll be the end of masks and social distancing if the virus is still in circulation.

[TheTeapot]

54 minutes ago, Nom de plume said:

Except China don’t have it under control so the BMJ is a lot of old tosh I’m afraid:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/19/lockdowns-after-chinas-new-covid-19-outbreak-impact-steel-iron-ore.html

As I’ve stated regularly on here since the spring of 2020, the world must learn to live with it, that’s it frankly.

It's a discussion piece from a month ago. An opinion rather than a news article. If you read the responses you'll see the Isle of Man get a mention too, which is no longer true either. But because it says something about a situation that has now changed you can just dismiss it out of hand, cos that's how things are these days yeah?

You've never been able to describe, or even show someone else describing, how exactly your protect the vulnerable and get on with it mantra would actually work in practice. It's nice in theory I grant you, but the practicalities are just completely unrealistic. Unless, all these months later you can actually show otherwise...

We do need to find a way to live here, I'm properly annoyed about this lockdown which I believe was a panicked overreaction, but your concept cannot to my knowledge be backed up with any meaningful proof.

[Nom de plume]

4 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

It's a discussion piece from a month ago. An opinion rather than a news article. If you read the responses you'll see the Isle of Man get a mention too, which is no longer true either. But because it says something about a situation that has now changed you can just dismiss it out of hand, cos that's how things are these days yeah?

You've never been able to describe, or even show someone else describing, how exactly your protect the vulnerable and get on with it mantra would actually work in practice. It's nice in theory I grant you, but the practicalities are just completely unrealistic. Unless, all these months later you can actually show otherwise...

We do need to find a way to live here, I'm properly annoyed about this lockdown which I believe was a panicked overreaction, but your concept cannot to my knowledge be backed up with any meaningful proof.

The vaccine is the only answer for the fear fed snowflakes I’m afraid.

That’s how it has to be.

I don’t agree with much of what has gone before (policies) but hey ho, it’s a forum.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Nom de plume

[TheTeapot]

1 minute ago, Nom de plume said:

 

I don’t agree with all that’s gone before but hey ho, it’s a forum.

Sure is. There are things you post I agree with and things I don't. That's kind of the point. I'd love there to be a way to do what you keep saying, but I just don't know how, and from what I can see neither does anyone else.

I am always open to having my mind changed though.

[Filippo]

On 1/8/2021 at 9:42 PM, jaymann said:

I think everyone need to accept that many many people that live and work here do so because it is an amazing and beautiful 'base'.

That- in normal times - is easily accessible to get to and from as and when you want or need to.

I can certainly see why people are going crazy over it. I won't ridicule them for it and nor should anyone else. Their being here on our Island is likely a benefit to us economically and helps to maintain a wider quality of life for everyone else.

 

On 1/8/2021 at 10:15 PM, horatiotheturd said:

Thats fine.  Good for you

Working remotely doesn't work for me or the businesses who were going to relocate here and haven't.

Just checked and I did 24 flights and 8 ferry crossings before lockdown last year.

Being stuck here is shit and unnecessary.

 

On 1/18/2021 at 6:24 PM, Banker said:

5 more residents off to Jurby for breaches including 2 who were in car crash on mountain, jailed for non essential journeys?

https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/five-jailed-for-covid-breaches/

 

On 1/18/2021 at 9:24 PM, Out of the blue said:

It makes you wonder why they instigated a fixed 21 day lockdown in the first place if it was always going to be a moving target. 

 

On 1/18/2021 at 10:31 PM, Non-Believer said:

Initial 3 weeks was an open ended political safe bet. Long enough to recognise the virus characteristics and potentially get the spread under control but short enough not to riot the populace, albeit there's been enough bleating already.

Still open ended though - tacking one week on at a time now means people grumble but accept it by and large. Throw another 3 weeks at them in one block and some of them will flip.

 

On 1/19/2021 at 12:12 PM, 2112 said:

If HRH The Chief Minister is coming out with these comments then I’m afraid he is undermining part of his and previous administrations policies as regards to creating jobs, new companies and new growth and opportunities. Starship Enterprise and its forerunners were encouraging, Cleansweep and Biotech businesses to relocate here, and also medical companies. Some were based at the Freeport - very high tech and cutting work involved with DNA testing etc. Any new medical companies would wish to relocate here now with the likes of HRH The Chief Minister and ‘I know best’ Ashy, would soon decide to pack up when faced with such drivel. I’m afraid he is now becoming a laughing stock and embarrassent. Ashy is merely the ventriloquist dummy, having his strings pulled.

 

On 1/20/2021 at 12:46 PM, Nom de plume said:

Just like we said, right up to the elections.

Quayle & Ashford - The Peoples Covid Champions.

 

On 1/20/2021 at 12:47 PM, jaymann said:

I hear whispers that HQ is thinking of standing again now because he feels he might be leaving without 'finishing the job'. But I doubt the others will vote him for CM.

 

18 hours ago, WTF said:

that's fortunate, cos the people that came up with some of these restrictions may just have half a brain.

 

Here goes the Covid-obliteration monkey: "The Isle of Man Government's response to the virus since day one has been to pursue a strategy of elimination. We are not seeking to suppress the spread of the virus. We are not seeking a way to co-exist with the virus. We are not seeking to make the virus a normal part of our lives. The Council of Ministers remains resolute that our objective is to obliterate the virus from our shores…"

I was at Wien Hauptbahnhof when, using the WiFi system of the station, I checked my email box and saw a message from the NSC warning of the impending closure. Then, reflexively, checked with Manx News and I was flabbergasted about a new lockdown in the isle just because of a few positive cases. It follows the above logic of absolute eradication of the virus from the island, which will have to be revised to a more realistic proposition at a certain point. Unless your fellow islanders are willing to accept an authoritarian government permanently intruding and controlling their lives and experimental drugs/vaccines pursuing the chimera of sterilizing immunity rather than individual resistance to infection.

About at the same time as above speech, Stephane Bancel, CEO of Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna, warned that “SARS-CoV-2 is not going away”; it will be with us as an endemic respiratory illness “forever” (the occasion was JPMorgan Healthcare Conference on the 13th of January to be precise). But then, as some of you have already pointed out in this thread, CoMin never really had a long-term Covid plan; it decided early on that having their own plan was beyond them and too risky. It looks at what other insular jurisdictions are doing and adjusts its policy according to a short-term narrative that is perceived as political convenient within the context of the island.

I had left the isle two days earlier, on the 4th of January, with a BA flight to Heathrow. My connecting BA flight from Heathrow to Vienna had been canceled one week earlier, thanks to the scaremongering of the dangerous English variant of Covid (Covid has 4,000 known strains; of course some have higher prevalence; it is the discovery of the hot water); and so I had a number of alternative plans to escape the British Isles, as I do every winter; my normal winter in the Alps. I spend an overall four weeks in various Alpine resorts, back and forth from one of my homes (a few details omitted here, just in case it causes me trouble). These winter sports (skiing, climbing, running at altitude) in the open wilderness of the mountain is a sort of spiritual activity for me, the yearly reboot of the unbreakable kernel. I have been going up and down these mountains for the past million years; and I will always keep going up and down these mountains; nothing is going to break my spirit; certainly not those lefties using a stupid respiratory illness to make the world more congenial to them.

I don’t keep any of my skiing and climbing gear in the isle; I had to go to pick up those, before heading to Switzerland, the only country keeping its mountain resorts up and running this year. The three alternative routes I had in mind were (i) the Baltics, which would have entailed at the least three flights; (ii) the French route, all by train; and (iii) flying through Prague. Routes (i) and (iii) would have not required a Covid test, for a traveler only transiting through those places; route (ii) would have required one. Before leaving the isle I had bought tickets for travel through (iii) on the 4th; and a ticket for the early part of (ii), the train from London to Paris, on the following day as a backup option.

The flight to Heathrow in the ERJ-145 had been incredibly smooth and I took that as a good omen (wishful thinking in light of what follows). Went from Heathrow to Luton by underground and train through a mostly deserted London like one of those day-after movies (the sick show of all those empty trains). As soon as I arrive at Luton, a reality check comes down hard on me. One hour earlier the Czech authorities had rang up the airport: only Czech citizens and those with a demonstrable Czech residence permit could fly from the UK; that call had just arrived to spoil my whole journey and make it so much harder than I had hoped.

Stranded at Luton, I decided that the best course of action was having the antigen test, being it needed for the French route (two hours standing in the cold open space of a car park to have it done; and charged twice the cost on my credit card as the connection had fallen shortly after entering PIN and there was not certainty the first transaction had gone through). Already mid afternoon, I was growing so uneasy and impatient with the idea of having to wait until next morning to catch the train to Paris. UK news were prospecting an imminent third lockdown, which could have made travel out of the UK even harder or impossible; I had to get out of the UK ASAP. I improvised a fourth escape route, I had just found about it online: a bus from Bulgarian company Union Ivkoni leaving from London at 22 pm and travelling all the way to Sofia (my intention being jumping out at Bruxelles to catch a train): most unhinged fellow travelers I have ever been with (believe me I have seen it all, like Ukrainian trains during the war with Russia five years ago). At Dover, the bus could not go through because the UK government had just shut the Covid testing facility in there for anyone but truck drivers (another critical change of policy just a few hours earlier). Only four passengers on that bus had a viable Covid test. A French nurse, among the most disquieted and inflamed passengers, called the police, and that police, understanding the unmanageable situation of the bus, directed it to a couple of other places, which also, it turned out, could not offer tests to anyone else but truck drivers. Comes the morning, I had managed to ramp up the hysteria of the French nurse who, through various threats, bullied the bus driver into bringing the two of us to Dover train station. Jumping out of the bus and catching a train from Dover to London, me and her. She continued to Coventry, her place of work (much better pay than France she said). The whole train, me, the French nurse, and five cops telling me that even with a nearly empty train, I still had to keep the bloody mask on.

Back to London, I headed to St Pancras (shocking, those huge stations empty of people, apart the police at every corner directing one’s path through the station with a sense of urgency) and caught a train to Paris Gare du Nord. France only permits limited categories of people to arrive from the UK, such as transport workers or those who normally live in France. Armed with the Antigen test, two passports and one national ID card, and a convincing story, I talked my way through French border control. Then, all the way to the other side of Europe by train. Stopped for a few hours in Frankfurt and changed station before catching an overnight train. Came across one rave in the underground levels of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and two in the underground levels of Frankfurt Sud; all music and drinking to cheer one up. Later on two polizei, not believing my explanations and obviously disliking my freewheeling spirit, kicked me out of a train; and of course I went on by catching the next train.

Had two nights sleeping in a proper bed of mine, then, on the 8th, headed to Zermatt. As soon as I got that message in my mobile “Welcome to Lietchenstain” I knew I was safe and, thanks to OBB trains’ WiFi, booked four contiguous weeks, until the 6th of February; had not wanted to take the chance of wasting thousands of pounds with reservations I could not use (the back and forth between home and a ski resort across international borders is obviously not viable this year). Arrived at Zermatt in the early morning, knowing that the apartment was not yet ready, I left my stuff in the deposit facilities of the train station and headed straight to the slopes. Of the previous six nights only two had been slept on a bed; one had been slept on a bus, one on a train, the other two, including the one of the trip to Zermatt, not even tried to sleep. A few days later I joined a group of French skiers. In a godola of the Matterhorn Express a French couple were arguing with animosity about something. Then they gave me a mobile with two pictures of a shorthair tabby cat with golden stripes and asked me to judge which cat was better (he had a cat, and she had a cat, though I could not tell one from the other). Normally I would have declined the invitation to join a group of people I don’t know (and even those I know); made an exception this time. Dear control freak Chief Minister, I am living with the virus and I am much happier with this virus than under your crass obliteration policies. It is my choice, my life.

Zermatt usually attracts a mature international clientele, which hasn’t turned out in significant numbers this year. France, Austria, Italy, Germany have all shut their own resorts; and thus the Swiss ones have been a watershed for die-hard skiers, usually in the prime of their years, from Switzerland and neighbouring countries; but there seem to be only so many of them who can travel or foot the bill; and so overall attendance to the resort and the skiing facilities is about one third of the normal, from what I can see. I had an early clue of the different crowd this year when I bought a ticket on the panoramic train between Visp and Zermatt two days in advance, and a 1st class ticket was being given away at 10% discount to a 2nd class one. I would rate half of these skiers between good and expert level; rarely saw anyone falling ad rolling down the mountain. Apart from the days I have been with the French skiers, I usually have a whole 8-person gondola or a 6-person chairlift all for myself. And the snow remains well groomed in the afternoon.

For a month before I left the isle, I had been watching with growing concern the number of Swiss coronavirus deaths climbing to over 150 per day, while keeping a side eye on web-page “zermatt.ch”; and every time there had been that reassuring upfront message: “The whole of Zermatt’s mountain railway and cable car infrastructure is sill available to guests to guests this winter, blah, blah, blah” to keep my hope alive. In the end the powerful Alpine cantons of the Helvetic Confederation had their way and made the point of keeping the whole show running. The few restrictions come from Swiss federal government, which anyway has made it clear that its aim is not to eradicate the virus but to keep hospital loads manageable. All non essential shops are all open. The only things that are shut are night-clubs and restaurants outside hotels are only open for takeaway. Furthermore, there are no restrictions on personal freedoms, you can travel and meet whomever you want to meet. I saw the local police only once; it was overseeing emergency civil engineering work in the river that cuts through the village. I cook my own food and have no time or interest for going out in the evening; couldn’t care less for current restrictions on apres-ski. This isn’t only about winter sports; it is about sticking a finger to those lefties who thought about using the virus to deplete our net-worth and degrade our livelihoods (by the way, I am not regarding the Chief Minister as one of those lefties; he doesn’t seem to think much about anything).

Repressive government is creating a new class of common herd pigs, usually marooned in their native lands, hardwired to state TV’s dumb news feds, staying at home all time just waiting to be fed by their next Tesco delivery. As opposed to those who instead can get away from all of it; or at the least capable of minimizing the effect of the repression on their lives. If the repression is pushed further, the end result will be a final separation: the pigs in their pigsty and the free spirits in the liberal jurisdictions of the world. When you engage in all those lockdown rituals and then join the orderly queue of the vaccine, that Eucharist to make peace with the powers that be, think about me skiing down those slopes shaded by the Matterhorn or running up the glaciers of Monte Rosa. The stay-at-home deprived of physical exercise looks so right to those who have unhealthy lifestyles by habit and are so mean and hypocrite as to want everyone to become the pig they are.

IOM’s zero Covid delusion, with its obvious implications, the travel restrictions, the jailing of dissidents etc, makes the island of little value to the kind of people who can choose where to live and what to do in life. You may not like to hear it, or you may not care about it, but that is how it is. The island will be poorer and its population older and sicker (forget the TT as well). I am not writing this to scorn you; it is more because of a mixed feeling of anger and sorrowfulness about the isle. I keep telling myself, it is a temporary aberration, it will pass.
 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2021 by Filippo

[Apple]

14 hours ago, Banker said:

Dili is a well known trouble maker so don’t get sucked in by his uncaring crap 

My first thought was to agree.

But the problem is I (I can only speak for myself here) actually need Dilligaff. To pod, poke, provoke and cause me to rethink. I don't like offensive language as I think most people own here know by now ( yes I am probably a snowflake too) but I think every poster has something to offer. 

Dilligaff knows the rules better than anyone by now I should imagine and there enough moderators who can take action when needed, and do as far as I can see.

I post some daft things sometimes (yes, I know that is hard to believe 😄 ) and the next day I could kick myself.

I am happy to leave any pitchfork stuff to the Book Face thingy - that's where its belongs.

Am going to hide now ! 😎

[Banker]

Just been to eastern amenities centre to dump another load of rubbish from cleaning out garage.

Steady stream of traffic, only changes are a handwritten sign saying no mask no entry, some barriers by skips giving say 10m distance now. Whole new set up probably took 30 minutes so why they shut it in first place is a mystery 

[Utah 01]

1 hour ago, Gladys said:

Elimination is the ideal

Gladys, I really did think you were one of the clearer thinkers on here with the facility to rationalise (an ever decreasing ability amongst 99% of the population) and a possessor of that rare commodity - common sense.  Therefore, I hope that statement was an aberration; elimination is impossible and anyone who really believes that elimination is even remotely possible needs locking away.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Utah 01

[Gladys]

Just now, Utah 01 said:

Gladys, I really did think you were one of the clearer thinkers on here with the (ever failing ability amongst 99% of the population) the rationalise.  I hope that statement was an aberration; elimination is impossible and anyone who really believes that needs locking away.

No, I said it was the ideal, everyone would agree.  How achievable is a different matter,  particularly if every country around us can't achieve it.  That was my point. 

[wrighty]

Just now, Utah 01 said:

Gladys, I really did think you were one of the clearer thinkers on here with the (ever failing ability amongst 99% of the population) the rationalise.  I hope that statement was an aberration; elimination is impossible and anyone who really believes that needs locking away.

Local elimination, particularly on an island with limited access points, is entirely possible.  Whether it's desirable due to the consequences for freedom of movement of doing so is another matter.

You're not confusing eradication are you? 

[SleepyJoe]

Be fair to Gladys

The lady described elimination as 'ideal' & we can surely all agree on that?