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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Red list countries are;


  • Angola
  • Argentina
  • Bolivia
  • Botswana
  • Brazil
  • Burundi
  • Cape Verde
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Ecuador
  • Eswatini
  • French Guiana
  • Guyana
  • Lesotho
  • Malawi
  • Mauritius
  • Mozambique
  • Namibia
  • Panama
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores)
  • Rwanda
  • Seychelles
  • South Africa
  • Suriname
  • Tanzania
  • United Arab Emirates (UAE)
  • Uruguay
  • Venezuela
  • Zambia
  • Zimbabwe
It's an er... interesting... list. I think mostly related to potential for new variant strains?
 
I know this will be controversial. But I'm just watching a C4 report about Asian areas in the UK being higher risk and suffering much higher rates of infection. I moved into a largely Asian community in East London a month or so ago. Virtually nobody wears masks. I feel really weird when I go into shops/takeaway places, like some kind of prude as i strap mine on. Not many people are observing much in the way of social distancing either. I really like it here in general but I think maybe the elephant in the room is that, for whatever reason, a lot of people here are just completely ignoring Govt advice which is hugely contributing to the problem in their community.
 
Petcha said:
I know this will be controversial. But I'm just watching a C4 report about Asian areas in the UK being higher risk and suffering much higher rates of infection. I moved into a largely Asian community in East London a month or so ago. Virtually nobody wears masks. I feel really weird when I go into shops/takeaway places, like some kind of prude as i strap mine on. Not many people are observing much in the way of social distancing either. I really like it here in general but I think maybe the elephant in the room is that, for whatever reason, a lot of people here are just completely ignoring Govt advice which is hugely contributing to the problem in their community.
Click to expand...
My bro says there is a very similar situation in the area of Birmingham where he lives.
Such things as unmasked, multi-generational groups crowding together in local shops.
 
StoneRoad said:
My bro says there is a very similar situation in the area of Birmingham where he lives.
Such things as unmasked, multi-generational groups crowding together in local shops.
Click to expand...

Same in the area I live in, mostly Pakistani and Indian background ethnically/nationally, although a wider mix than solely that. Noticeably much lower mask wearing and social distancing. I think it's more complex than just ignoring Government advice though (although sure some of that is going on), there's a communication/language problem, as well as access to information, and where people get their news, which from my experience is largely not the UK national broadcasters.
 
Badgers said:
When British travellers return from abroad, they have to pay £1,750 to quarantine, but when Dominic Cummings broke quarantine, he got a £50,000 council tax bill written off
Click to expand...

He also got a massive pay rise. The cunt. I assume he also got quite a nice severance package.
 
Supine said:
I doubt Portugal can stay on the red list without Spain for long. Covid isn't going to recognise that border.
Click to expand...
Portugal is on the list because a lot of flights from Brazil land there & is a transit point for further travel to the rest of Europe.
 
Supine said:
I doubt Portugal can stay on the red list without Spain for long. Covid isn't going to recognise that border.
Click to expand...

MrSki said:
Portugal is on the list because a lot of flights from Brazil land there & is a transit point for further travel to the rest of Europe.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was wondering if it was something more specific than them just having a bad outbreak (which seems to have a better trajectory than Spain) at the moment.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Same in the area I live in, mostly Pakistani and Indian background ethnically/nationally, although a wider mix than solely that. Noticeably much lower mask wearing and social distancing. I think it's more complex than just ignoring Government advice though (although sure some of that is going on), there's a communication/language problem, as well as access to information, and where people get their news, which from my experience is largely not the UK national broadcasters.
Click to expand...

It's really sad. I've noticed a lot of the local women in particular don't speak much English, which doesn't help. Although ironically they're often better protected than their husbands as they're wearing face coverings.

I've not seen any signs up in Urdu or other languages. Just English. Which doesn't really help.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Same in the area I live in, mostly Pakistani and Indian background ethnically/nationally, although a wider mix than solely that. Noticeably much lower mask wearing and social distancing. I think it's more complex than just ignoring Government advice though (although sure some of that is going on), there's a communication/language problem, as well as access to information, and where people get their news, which from my experience is largely not the UK national broadcasters.
Click to expand...

This was raised after the first lockdown wasn't it? e.g this from Brunel.
 
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Petcha said:
It's really sad. I've noticed a lot of the local women in particular don't speak much English, which doesn't help. Although ironically they're often better protected than their husbands as they're wearing face coverings.

I've not seen any signs up in Urdu or other languages. Just English. Which doesn't really help.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the local council here has been totally neglectful for communicating about the pandemic with non-native English speakers in this area. Would have thought it would be reasonably easy for some multi-lingual notices/adverts and some door-to-door leaflets.
 
Is it plausible that language barriers are a significant factor? Is the idea that people aren't aware there's a pandemic going on, or aren't aware of broadly what the rules are supposed to be? Isn't it more about cultural stuff to do with trusting authority, health advice and so on. Not sure if that can be sorted with multilingual leaflets.
 
I suspect that it is a combination of at least four factors -
difficulties with different languages,
significant cultural differences,
as well as the distrust of authority in general
and not just with respect to ignoring advice about health matters.
 
Cid said:
Red list countries are;


  • Angola
  • Argentina
  • Bolivia
  • Botswana
  • Brazil
  • Burundi
  • Cape Verde
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Ecuador
  • Eswatini
  • French Guiana
  • Guyana
  • Lesotho
  • Malawi
  • Mauritius
  • Mozambique
  • Namibia
  • Panama
  • Paraguay
  • Peru
  • Portugal (including Madeira and the Azores)
  • Rwanda
  • Seychelles
  • South Africa
  • Suriname
  • Tanzania
  • United Arab Emirates (UAE)
  • Uruguay
  • Venezuela
  • Zambia
  • Zimbabwe
It's an er... interesting... list. I think mostly related to potential for new variant strains?
Click to expand...

Something interesting going on in the southern hemisphere then 🤔
 
Petcha said:
It's really sad. I've noticed a lot of the local women in particular don't speak much English, which doesn't help. Although ironically they're often better protected than their husbands as they're wearing face coverings.

I've not seen any signs up in Urdu or other languages. Just English. Which doesn't really help.
Click to expand...

Anecdotally, that doesn't seem to be an issue here. There's plenty of mask wearing by the Indian & Pakistani communities, particularly amongst the elderly. My local Asian supermarket were giving out free masks well before it was mandated to wear them. I get a weekly LF test before I go into work at the mosque around the corner where there is signage in other languages and there always seems to be some Eastern Europeans on the desk helping with language difficulties.
I guess it depends on what you're council are like. I've just noticed ours have translated all the info into 15 different languages on their website too (although I guess this is standard?)
 
frogwoman said:
Why isn't the USA on that list?
Click to expand...

I think the list is based on prevalence of new variants. It does, at first glance, look flat out racist of course, and they are Tories... But - other than our very own variant - the Brazil and SA ones do seem to be the most concerning. So countries with direct ties, or with high detected rates of those variants are the obvious ones to place on that kind of list. If you're going to make your list of restricted travel areas as small as possible.
 
Cid said:
I think the list is based on prevalence of new variants. It does, at first glance, look flat out racist of course, and they are Tories... But - other than our very own variant - the Brazil and SA ones do seem to be the most concerning. So countries with direct ties, or with high detected rates of those variants are the obvious ones to place on that kind of list. If you're going to make your list of restricted travel areas as small as possible.
Click to expand...

The problem is that we do far more sequencing of homegrown strains than other countries do, despite us also doing much sequencing for other countries.

This means that just because fewer concerning strains have been found overseas than here, doesn't mean they don't exist.

If we're not going to close the borders completely we should should probably operate with a whitelist of countries with low prevalence and adequate sequencing programs.
 
Last edited:
A little while ago on a radio news bulletin, some ***** from the travel industry was whinging that the Quarantine requirement was going to kill off any potential for resurgence in the travel sector. He seemed to prefer slightly more testing.

Now, unless my geography knowledge has evaporated, or continental drift has had a rapid shuffle, South Africa is a long way away, effectively on the other side of the world.
So, how has that SA variant got here, except through travel (by air) ?

Note also, the cases in the tennis players that flew to Australia last month ...
 
When the history of this is written and the inquiries completed, not closing the airports to anything other than minimal/emergency traffic will be up in the top 3 or 4 catastrophic mistakes our government has made. Ditto not testing arrivals.
 
Wilf said:
When the history of this is written and the inquiries completed, not closing the airports to anything other than minimal/emergency traffic will be up in the top 3 or 4 catastrophic mistakes our government has made. Ditto not testing arrivals.
Click to expand...
I dont think many european countrues did though.
 
Cid said:
I think the list is based on prevalence of new variants. It does, at first glance, look flat out racist of course, and they are Tories... But - other than our very own variant - the Brazil and SA ones do seem to be the most concerning. So countries with direct ties, or with high detected rates of those variants are the obvious ones to place on that kind of list. If you're going to make your list of restricted travel areas as small as possible.
Click to expand...
Its flimsy evidence re new variants though, Portugal for example is riddled with the UK variant with litterally a handful of cases with the Brazil variant. Obviously this might change but at the time it was added to the red list it didnt have any detected cases of the Brazil one. I can see why Porugal is on a list though as its surge ( thankfully retreating now) has been massive .
 
Artaxerxes said:
There fucking idiots to.

Just a robust quarantine and test system is important even if you don't shut the fuckers down
Click to expand...

I agree with the latter sentiment. In the future I'd also back covid passports, funnily enough I think BA is trailling them even though the UK government is against them.

I'm not certain but wasnt the early SAGE advice not to shut down airports?
 
platinumsage said:
The problem is that we do far more sequencing of homegrown strains than other countries do, despite us also doing much sequencing for other countries.

This means that just because fewer concerning strains have been found overseas than here, doesn't mean they don't exist.

If we're not going to close the borders completely we should should probably operate with a whitelist of countries with low prevalence and adequate sequencing programs.
Click to expand...


The39thStep said:
Its flimsy evidence re new variants though, Portugal for example is riddled with the UK variant with litterally a handful of cases with the Brazil variant. Obviously this might change but at the time it was added to the red list it didnt have any detected cases of the Brazil one. I can see why Porugal is on a list though as its surge ( thankfully retreating now) has been massive .
Click to expand...

To be clear I am absolutely not saying the policy is ‘good’, just that that appears to be the rationale. It is, as with many things in this, probably the narrowest interpretation of advice they could get away with and still keep a veneer of ‘following the science’. Though checking up even sage were saying reactive rather than total travel bans were pointless.
 
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