IOM Covid removing restrictions

[P.K.]

19 minutes ago, John Wright said:

God, Peter, you're obtuse some times. No one with covid in Nobles ICU, hasnt been for some time and vaccination rates are high

Quite.

Chatting with a friend yesterday. They have a colleague who refuses to get vaccinated. The reason they gave was "I know my body better than any doctor..."

WTF does that mean? There sure are some strange reasons out there for not getting jabbed and the iom will no doubt have some.

Edited December 9, 2021 by P.K.

[piebaps]

8 hours ago, opusManx said:

I admire your bravery wading into such waters! (But good on ya for doing so.)

I'm new to the forum and "IOM-curious". Here I was thinking IOM was just a sleepy little land with the odd motorbike race. A Hobbiton-Upon-the-Sea with flashes of anime race sequences, if you will.  But lo and crikey, you're a lively bunch! I'll steer clear of the vaccine debate 🤐 for fear of alienating half the populace before I get there (I tend to get into trouble by invoking the "Darwin Awards" in my analogies... 😉).

Welcome and get stuck in. Don't worry about the alienation thing, as long as you hate the Govmint you'll fit in fine😂

[cheesypeas]

Has anyone filled in the UK passenger locator form when coming back to IOM from outside the CTA in the last week?

I thought there was a 'travelling to the IOM section', so you could prove you didn't have to book a PCR in advance of departing foreign shores.

Do you tick 'staying in the UK', or one of the transit options? It sounds obvious to tick transit, but I'm unsure.

 

Cheers

[Numbnuts]

2 hours ago, cheesypeas said:

Has anyone filled in the UK passenger locator form when coming back to IOM from outside the CTA in the last week?

I thought there was a 'travelling to the IOM section', so you could prove you didn't have to book a PCR in advance of departing foreign shores.

Do you tick 'staying in the UK', or one of the transit options? It sounds obvious to tick transit, but I'm unsure.

 

Cheers

I travelled back on friday into UK and into IOM on saturday. Its confusing tbh as to which option to tick. But fortunately you can log out and go back in till you sort it out. I think it took me 5 goes just to get the right page up regarding transit. Basically from memory if you tick the wrong one you dont get the transit option so I just kept trying  till it came up. It is frustrating for sure and not obviously clear. Once you get it though its a breeze to get back through with little checks. Also if you fill the landing form for IOM on line too rather than the paper copy after payment £30, you get email confirming your PCR test you have to do on arrival. I arrived at 7 30 am on Saturday and they had booked my PCR test at 9 am and had my negative result by 6 same day. I'm sure its the transit option from memory but see my other observations .

Edited December 9, 2021 by Numbnuts

[cheesypeas]

9 minutes ago, Numbnuts said:

I travelled back on friday into UK and into IOM on saturday. Its confusing tbh as to which option to tick. But fortunately you can log out and go back in till you sort it out. I think it took me 5 goes just to get the right page up regarding transit. Basically from memory if you tick the wrong one you dont get the transit option so I just kept trying  till it came up. It is frustrating for sure and not obviously clear. Once you get it though its a breeze to get back through with little checks. Also if you fill the landing form for IOM on line too rather than the paper copy after payment £30, you get email confirming your PCR test you have to do on arrival. I arrived at 7 30 am on Saturday and they had booked my PCR test at 9 am and had my negative result by 6 same day. I'm sure its the transit option from memory but see my other observations .

Thanks Numbnuts (just feels wrong typing that). I've been messing with the application, and it's actually the 'remain in the UK' option. Towards the end it gives you an exemption box, and if you start to type 'transit' , the right option shows up. It is a bit of a minefield though.

Thanks for the response.

[Numbnuts]

9 minutes ago, cheesypeas said:

Thanks Numbnuts (just feels wrong typing that). I've been messing with the application, and it's actually the 'remain in the UK' option. Towards the end it gives you an exemption box, and if you start to type 'transit' , the right option shows up. It is a bit of a minefield though.

Thanks for the response.

No problem . The bit , i'm remembering now , that confused me was remaining  in the UK option. We are not in UK but obviously we are with regard to this situation and the form. Good luck travelling back . 

[Max Power]

I'm beginning to wonder how effective tracking and tracing the new Omicron version is going to be if, as is being reported, it is no more severe than a cold? Who will bother getting tested and report symptoms etc? Most will probably just carry on as normal until it peters out i imagine and governments will have to find a new way to keep us scared?

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-omicron-variant-may-be-milder-but-its-infection-rate-could-be-devastating-expert-warns-12490761?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

 

[finlo]

5 minutes ago, Max Power said:

I'm beginning to wonder how effective tracking and tracing the new Omicron version is going to be if, as is being reported, it is no more severe than a cold? Who will bother getting tested and report symptoms etc? Most will probably just carry on as normal until it peters out i imagine and governments will have to find a new way to keep us scared?

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-omicron-variant-may-be-milder-but-its-infection-rate-could-be-devastating-expert-warns-12490761?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

 

Ah but there's money to be made by keeping people shitting it!

[Andy Onchan]

My guess is that this variant has been doing the rounds in UK for quite some time which is why the number of cases have remained high.

And of course the scientists love all the attention. Every bloody scientist with literally anything to say about CV (and now Omicron) is being harvested by the media.

[Roger Mexico]

18 minutes ago, Max Power said:

I'm beginning to wonder how effective tracking and tracing the new Omicron version is going to be if, as is being reported, it is no more severe than a cold? Who will bother getting tested and report symptoms etc? Most will probably just carry on as normal until it peters out i imagine and governments will have to find a new way to keep us scared?

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-omicron-variant-may-be-milder-but-its-infection-rate-could-be-devastating-expert-warns-12490761?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

That's a long and perfectly fair news article and you pick one phrase out of it and claim that it means there's nothing to worry about, despite the content of the rest of the article.

There's actually no indication that Omicron is actually any 'milder' by the way.  What is happening is that it is infecting a population in South Africa (we don't have enough data yet from elsewhere) that has much more immunity than it did in previous waves, both from those previous waves and from vaccination[1].  So even if this variant is as severe as previous ones, the population is better protected and so hospitalisation etc will be lower for the same amount of infection.  As John Burn Murdoch put it earlier:

Also - as the Sky article points out - even if the individual effect of Omicron is less because of this, it may still be as dangerous.  Because by being so transmissible and because it may be more likely to infect those who have already had Covid, it may affect more people.  If it is only half as likely to put someone in hospital, that's not going to change things if twice as many are infected at a particular time.

 

[1]  South Africa is often being reported as if it had no vaccination, but it's actually now about 30% who have had at least one jab.  But almost all of that is since June (presumably stocks weren't available before), so it's all since Delta hit them at about that time.

[AcousticallyChallenged]

By all accounts, there are now cancer operations being cancelled, because the majority of people in ICU with COVID are unvaccinated. The cancer patients obviously needing an ICU bed in case of complications. The COVID patients blocking up the beds, because they weren't vaccinated.

By the time surgery is rebooked, it may be futile to operate on the cancer. This is taking a toll on the medical staff.

Maybe we should rebrand anti-vaxxers as pro-covid.

There's an article on it here.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doctors-and-nurses-vent-anger-as-unvaccinated-covid-cases-delay-vital-operations-z3zchvv9l

Quote

Parekh said that Covid patients had a significantly longer length of stay in critical care than other patients, with an average of nine days; longer if they survived the infection. In his unit he said this meant that as many as 100 to 140 other surgeries, which would require stays of only one or two days, had to be delayed each week.

“These are transplants that can’t go ahead. These are patients waiting for complex cancer surgery where every week counts. It could tip them over from an operable cancer to an inoperable cancer,” he said

 

[Roger Mexico]

25 minutes ago, Andy Onchan said:

My guess is that this variant has been doing the rounds in UK for quite some time which is why the number of cases have remained high.

And your guess would be wrong.  The UK does genetic sequencing in about 15% of its Covid cases - the percentage is much lower in South Africa:

If it was present in the UK for any length of time, it would have been picked up there first.

[Max Power]

15 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

That's a long and perfectly fair news article and you pick one phrase out of it and claim that it means there's nothing to worry about, despite the content of the rest of the article.

There's actually no indication that Omicron is actually any 'milder' by the way.  What is happening is that it is infecting a population in South Africa (we don't have enough data yet from elsewhere) that has much more immunity than it did in previous waves, both from those previous waves and from vaccination[1].  So even if this variant is as severe as previous ones, the population is better protected and so hospitalisation etc will be lower for the same amount of infection.  As John Burn Murdoch put it earlier:

Also - as the Sky article points out - even if the individual effect of Omicron is less because of this, it may still be as dangerous.  Because by being so transmissible and because it may be more likely to infect those who have already had Covid, it may affect more people.  If it is only half as likely to put someone in hospital, that's not going to change things if twice as many are infected at a particular time.

 

[1]  South Africa is often being reported as if it had no vaccination, but it's actually now about 30% who have had at least one jab.  But almost all of that is since June (presumably stocks weren't available before), so it's all since Delta hit them at about that time.

Roger, the point I was making is, it was the fact that it is being reported that the symptoms are less severe, and are more 'cold like' rather than 'flu like' that I was concerned about. If it is more transmissible, more are infected but with lesser symptoms, how many will just carry on as normal, spreading the virus either unknowingly or in the belief that it will do no harm?   

"The scientist, who is professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and co-founder of the Zoe app that tracks the spread of COVID, said: "Even with Omicron appearing to be more transmissible than Delta, early signs, including new reports from Zoe users, show that it is breaking through in vaccinated people, but it's causing milder cold-like symptoms."

[P.K.]

6 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Roger, the point I was making is, it was the fact that it is being reported that the symptoms are less severe, and are more 'cold like' rather than 'flu like' that I was concerned about. If it is more transmissible, more are infected but with lesser symptoms, how many will just carry on as normal, spreading the virus either unknowingly or in the belief that it will do no harm?   

"The scientist, who is professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London and co-founder of the Zoe app that tracks the spread of COVID, said: "Even with Omicron appearing to be more transmissible than Delta, early signs, including new reports from Zoe users, show that it is breaking through in vaccinated people, but it's causing milder cold-like symptoms."

In the presser yesterday that nice Professor Chris Whitty stated that he had contacted his South African colleagues that afternoon and they told him that because of how infectious Omicron is hospitalisations for covid had gone up by 300% in the last seven days.

That's 300% in just seven days.

I was so surprised I replayed it and yes, that's what he stated.

If hospitalisations are going up at that rate that would suggest there's more to it than just a common cold.

The data now needed is how badly it effects the none jabbed, the single jabbed, the double jabbed and those who have been boosted.

Incidentally Chris Whitty is not the lying, shifty looking shyster in the middle which means he can be trusted to tell the truth.

[opusManx]

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Edited January 13, 2022 by opusManx