IOM Covid removing restrictions

[John Wright]

3 minutes ago, Banker said:

Moderna vaccine being rolled out today in Wales , hopefully we’ll get our share soon & won’t sit on it for too long 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56657038

Our share is 20,000 doses ( 10,000 people ) spread over the next 8 months. So 2 days worth of our current vaccination rate every month. Of course, every little helps.

[Gladys]

12 minutes ago, pongo said:

What is it about 5?

 

 

 

 

 

 

etc

You can count it on one hand.. 

[Boo Gay'n]

1 hour ago, WindJammer said:

I’m dealing with about 5 families leaving the island at the moment.

"Dealing with"?  What sort of job do you have - removal firm, psychotherapist (shicklaagagh for the Manxies leaving the gem of God's earth) or ... member of Tynwald?

[Banker]

Another jailed https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/ramsey-man-jailed-after-breaching-coronavirus-restrictions/

[Newbie]

1 hour ago, WindJammer said:

They’d rather be near family than live locked away from covid

For most of last year they would have been able to travel to the UK, albeit with restrictions upon their return. However, the majority of the UK population were living under quite tight restrictions anyway for large parts of last year. Overall, given the priorities you say they have, it sounds as though the Isle of Man might not be an ideal location for these families irrespective of Covid

[pongo]

On 2/12/2021 at 3:07 PM, TerryFuchwit said:

about 5 companies

what is it about 5?

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by pongo

[quilp]

"It's five to five, i-i-i-it's Crackerjack!"

Edited April 7, 2021 by quilp

[pongo]

You've won a pencil.

[quilp]

Belly laugh there pongo... 🤣

[pongo]

Just now, quilp said:

Belly laugh there pongo... 🤣

Good. I like it when we are on the same wavelength.

[Nom de plume]

13 hours ago, Filippo said:

I am back in the isle; running in the glens and windy moorlands of its landscape. Not much else to do in my free time, thanks to… you know. The return journey was much less adventurous than the outbound odyssey of early January; an evening flight from Vienna to Heathrow (rescheduled two times), an overnight bus to Lancaster, a bus to Heysham, and the afternoon boat. – I had lost touch with this thread; and thus I skimmed a bit through the last few months to see what I have missed.

Here I have got some legal cookies for John Wright. And useful information for anyone who might be planning a journey to foreign lands in the current circumstances. UK government web pages (1st pic below) state that all international arrivals have to quarantine and pre-book two Covid tests to be released later. The BBC web-page (2nd pic) was much on the same tune. Realising that the UK locator form mainly reflects the rules of England and it is not mutually consistent with the rules of the devolved administrations and other jurisdictions of the British isles, I poured through the details of "The Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) Regulations" in force since last June as a "statutory instrument" (meaning that it was passed with no effective parliament supervision). The text of that "law" (wanting to dignify it with that epithet) is 94 pages long (some relevant excerpts are shown in 3rd and 4th pics below). My conclusion had been that as a transit traveller my UK locator form did not need to specify a UK quarantine address nor the pre-booking (and pre-payment) of the Covid tests.

Unfortunately, when my paperwork was checked at Heathrow, the woman police officer 
going through it, after asking for passport, pre-travel Covid test etc, started going through my UK locator form (which I had on my laptop) much more carefully than I had expected and took the position that I still had to to take the two Covid tests: “every traveller to the UK needs them”. When the argument started, she said "show me the law" in a challenging tone and thus, imagine me holding in front of her face a laptop and scrolling down all of the above mentioned documents and legal stuff while trying to convince her.

Unable to either accept or refute my legal arguments and other justifications, she went first to fetch a colleague at a nearby desk and then a supervisor; the whole argument going on for about a quarter of an hour with the three of them. The supervisor said that the mentioned law was from last June; now superseded by the January instrument requiring the two Covid tests. No I said: the January instrument introduced the requirement of having two Covid tests for all inbound travellers quarantining in England; but it DID NOT abrogate the June legislation, which still stands. Finally, the three of them found a book of police internal guidance on these matters; after a bit of skimming through it, the same police woman started saying "I think he is right…" and her two colleagues nodded it through tacitly. The whole argument with them had not been animose or unpleasant. Before I departed, I had though what a nut I am for spending time on the details of the damn Covid legislation (which I hate and despise all of it). I am capable to prepare my recklessness; the fundamental difference between me and the jet-skier.

Now, to your regret perhaps, I decided to omit all the bit about my dealing with the authorities of this island on my returning here. My reporting of the January trip (cf. my posting to this thread on the 21st of January) had also to be sanitised after some reflection (it omits all the bits of when I had to cut trough the woods to cross an international border). But it was all worth; I had a truly fab month in the Swiss alps and my yearly reboot, like every other winter.

 

 

 

 

 

I am being asked by GD4ELI if I have changed my mind in respect to my first posting to this thread on 22 April 2020. Obviously we know so much more after one year and my arguments have evolved. Also, I have first hand experience from my winter journeys across Europe.

I spent a full month in the Swiss canton of Valais during their second wave and I have seen a different approach than both the UK and this isle. The federal Swiss authorities made clear that their aim is mitigation rather than elimination; and only to the extent of keeping hospital occupancy within capacity. Switzerland shut down the most hedonistic and risky part of their leisure industry for a length of time which is less than the UK and no more than the Isle of Man. Most importantly, it never had the disproportionate restrictions on personal freedoms that have been imposed on us. Practically there have been no restrictions on travel and no restrictions on meeting whom you want to meet. There has been a limit on public gathering above 15, that’s it. The few restrictions on what people can do, mostly coming from the federal government, have not been enforced by the cantonal authorities (or to a minimum extent and reluctantly); only restrictions on business have. The border has always been open. It is the only European country in which I have been able to come and go without checks or any question asked. I never saw the demented "stay at home message" drummed incessantly into people ears as if the recipient were too retarded to understand it. Obviously, the ski resorts would have not been open otherwise; I was there doing winter sports...

You would then expect Switzerland to have had higher Covid mortality than the kind of countries that tried to keep people prisoners of their homes. But Switzerland has had less fatalities on a per-capita basis than both the UK and three of its four neighbouring countries. Only Austria had less fatalities, but not by much. Germany, France, Italy and Austria all had strict limitations on what people can do analogous to the UK, and they have nothing to show for it. It is my opinion that those restriction have been imposed on us in part for political reasons, in part for ignorance and stupidity; but they achieved little or nothing. There are academic studies from the time of the first wave that support this point of view quantitatively.

The Isle of Man, within the context of being an island, had less fatalities than Switzerland on a per capita basis, at the cost of the border closure and the degradation of people lives to which you have been submitted. Making the population-size proportion, IOMG appears to have saved about 50 lives with the border closure and the punishing lockdown (more people jailed than any other jurisdiction). However, half of those 50 souls are now dead anyway; because it is the nature of coronavirus that half of its victims have less than one year to live; thus IOMG lockdown accomplishment so far is more in the ballpark of 25 lives saved. Please raise your hands those who think that the border closure and the other lockdown consequences, which include the depletion of government coffers, won’t cause many more than 25 premature deaths over time.

When I left the island with the ERJ-145, the back of the cabin had a group of elderly travelling exclusively for medical reasons. I overheard them complaining about the many difficulties they had repeatedly experienced with trying to obtain medical tests and treatments; their inconveniences and deprivations from having to isolate after ever return journey from vising an UK hospital. Neither Australia nor New Zealand have to send their patients overseas for routine treatments; this little island is not remotely self-sufficient as concerns its health care needs. It is also devoid of any private hospital where tests for suspected conditions could be carried out when the NHS is not available. There are so many illnesses other than Covid. One in 7 women will fall ill with breast cancer, one in 8 men with prostate cancer, at a certain point of their lives. Even in the blinkered balance sheet that assigns zero value to individuality and personal choice (not my balance sheet) if the only purpose is keeping us living for longer, the focus should be on the preemptive diagnosis and treatment of those unfortunate illnesses that have a statistical chance to kill us soon or later. Try to get an MRI on this island for anything rather than the urgent diagnosis an illness whose symptoms have already progressed to the stage where they can’t be ignored anymore. Each MRI machine has a starting price of one million USD; absolute peanuts for a government that can afford to spend hundreds of millions on lockdown.

The British Isles have the lowest healthy-life expectancy than the whole of Western Europe (68 years to be precise; the number of years that one can expect to live a life free of crippling illnesses in these islands). The actions of our government are making sure that these isles will stay that way: a middling income country with inhabitants having unhealthy lifestyles and prone to precocious illnesses. It is naive to trust the government with our own health and general wellbeing. Boris Johnson, Howard Quayle, David Ashford are such a poor example of healthy lifestyle that it is a joke having them mandating health activities to anyone.

Switzerland is by no means the only example of country respectful of civil liberties. From mid March wide swathes of America have reopened and are now almost back to business as usual. Texas governor has bragged that his state is now "open 100 per cent" (Texas never really enforced Covid restrictions on people; no one there ever got fined for not wearing a stupid mask). In Florida, students have been packing on beaches for the past month and families are have been entertaining themselves in Disney World. This laissez faire doesn’t appear to have made much difference as concerns the overall severity of the pandemic in respect to those other US states such as California and New York that have had some stringent restrictions and enforcement (although, no US state has been as Covid fixated as the British).

The Isle of Man has jailed about 60 people for flouting its strict Covid restrictions. That is the per-capita equivalent of the UK jailing 47,000 or communist China jailing one million! When last January Howard Quayle was asked about Covid enforcement in the island during its ITV interview (the one that he was so keen to arrange) he just lied and said that 12 had been jailed (he actually availed himself of a circumlocution, but anyone who doesn’t regularly read IOMToday or this forum must have understood the figure of 12). He also stated brazenly (or delusionally) that his policies have 99% support on this island. That sickening ITV interview was uploaded on this forum; it is there for you to make up your own mind. Not the first time we hear open lies from him and Ashford anyway.

 

 

During the month I spent skiing I did not see anyone regulating their speed down the slopes due to some vague concern that if a rescue were to be needed a Covid spread event may occur. Berating a runner for taking care of himself by branding him as "selfish" says more about you than the runner. Why would you want to impose your lifestyle choices on others? Anyone with half brain understands your inner motivations. Actually, the imposition of pointless lifestyle limitations on others is too idiotic even for someone who is naturally mean. Only the very old, and afflicted by enough cognitive degeneration as to lack basic self-awareness, would make that kind of statements with the pretense of offering some kind of wisdom.

You know some of my long-term US health care investments have an exciting pipeline of new drugs targeting old age cognitive degeneration; for instance Biogen’s Aducanumab, Eli Lilly’s Donanemab and yet unnamed drugs under trial. Since your are heading to those conditions quite soon (if not already there), it may be of some comfort to know that there might be remedies. Unfortunately, the expected costs of any of those pills is in the region of USD 50,000 per year per patient; nothing that looks like an affordable expense for UK NHS or IOM NHS. The consequence of imposing lockdown on others who might have had better things to do.

 

 

 

 

A stunning post (again) reflecting the thoughts of many intelligent Island folk though Howard Quayle, the sycophantic CoMin gang and a small minority of MF trolls would beg to differ and challenge.

You really need to send this to every MHK including the Chief Minister. 

I'm glad you had a fantastic trip, I'm very envious. 

[P.K.]

1 hour ago, Banker said:

Similar estimates for number of deaths caused by lack of treatment for illnesses because health facilities restrictions.

Where do you get that from?

Found the piece with the numbers. According to this hospitalisations for flu are way down.

Worth a read:

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/apr/04/how-is-it-possible-that-the-number-of-deaths-is-now-so-low

[piebaps]

1 hour ago, Banker said:

Another jailed https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/ramsey-man-jailed-after-breaching-coronavirus-restrictions/

To be fair, he's just a prison sentence waiting to happen

https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/man-denies-assault-with-intent-to-resist-arrest-and-drink-driving/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-30478586

 

[Mailman]

38 minutes ago, pongo said:

what is it about 5?

 

Actually a very common term. Like you can count them on one hand etc. Its probably used by a large part of the general population. So I’d imagine it would only be a sad, useless, whining little cunt who would concoct such a mental argument. 

[Banker]

2 minutes ago, P.K. said:

Where do you get that from?

Found the piece with the numbers. According to this hospitalisations for flu are way down.

Worth a read:

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/apr/04/how-is-it-possible-that-the-number-of-deaths-is-now-so-low

Well it’s been widely reported but here’s one report from guardian just on heart deaths to November, 5000 plus say another pro rata 3000 by now, cancer similar.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/14/heart-disease-deaths-soar-in-england-covid
 

How many extra will die in IOM from the massive 3000+ endoscopy waiting lists or be in pain from similar orthopedic lists?