Peter wrote:
I think this CV19 stuff will die down eventually, but it may take a while.
It won’t. German scientists, amonst them the most prominent one by the name of Drosten, already predict new outbreaks and lockdowns for fall with the G variant, which will ravage the anti vaxxers and those too lazy. I am fully convinced that we will be back in full lockdown despite vaccinations but quite possibly on a more local level for years and years to come, on and off.
Peter wrote:
In today’s paper is a full page on using vacc status to avoid return quarantine. Basically everybody in business is p1ssed off that the UK got a huge vaccine lead over everybody else and now it will chuck it away in the name of PC / equality / etc. So the pressure is building up, which is excellent.
Well, it is absurd. People who are vaccinated should be freed from this, clearly. Not to do this is counterproductive, as people will not bother to get vaccined. This can already be seen: Now that it becomes obvious that Swiss people will most probably be snubbed by the EU in retaliatory measures with our EU conforming certificate, the readiness to vaccinate has dropped massively, also because for PC reasons vaccinated people gain no privileges. That they protect themselves from illness and possible death does not ring with people.
Moreover what the Uk does is also illogical: The UK is currently much worse off than the rest of Europe, so why impose quarantine from “safer” places into the UK? On the other way around, it makes more sense.
However, it is also quite noteworthy that infection rates in the UK vary massively from place to place. So I think if they should keep lockdowns and quarantines in place, this should be taken into account. It is not logical and will antagonize people to follow rules which don’t make sense. The Australian approach, where cities or regions were locked down rather than the whole country, makes much more sense in the current situation, as long as they can be effectively isolated and locked off the rest of the country.
dublinpilot wrote:
There is also a lot of talk by lawyers in the media that as employees return to the workplace, that an employer cannot discriminate against unvaccinated employees, and must make sure that the work place is safe for those unvaccinated employees.
I don’t think that – at least in Germany – jurisdiction will follow this path.
Discrimination in our legal system has always the notion of making unjustified differences. When dealing with people who refuse to vaccinate, however, many differences are actually justified. From an employer POV you could even argue that as soon as you have one employee who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, it is perfectly fine to fire all other employees that refuse to vaccinated although they could. There is no such thing as a perfectly safe workplace.
And I’m pretty sure that employers will be allowed to ask employees about their vaccination status – just as airlines are allowed to ask pilots about their medical. It is an essential information for the organization within the company which employees require special protection.
dublinpilot wrote:
So if you want to force your employer to let you work from home in the future, you might choose not to get vaccinated!
Such stupid behavior could fire back significantly on those who try.
We must nit forget, that much of the current home office practice does only work because we are in pandemic and regulators do not look at it that closely (or, more positively seen: Regulators accept current home office practices as “temporary” in the sense of I.1.(2).b oaf directive 89/654/EWG).
As soon as this home office practice is not temporary, all of the regulations of this great EU workplace health and safety directive do also apply to home offices – with significant requirements on space, furniture, lightning, etc. up to emergency exits and other things that are impossible to fulfill in the majority of cases.
Therefore if the employee really claims that he can no longer work out of the office, the employee has no option than to fire him in due time (obviously after giving him time to organize his home workplace according to regulations which he can’t…)
Mooney_Driver wrote:
People who are vaccinated should be freed from this, clearly. Not to do this is counterproductive, as people will not bother to get vaccined
Although I’m vaccinated myself by now, I still have the same opinion: People who are vaccinated should not have any significant benefits (e.g. not be allowed to do things that negatively tested people are not allowed to do) until everybody in the country got the chance to get a vaccination. This explicitly excludes youvenile and children.
We can no longer tell our children “you are last on any prioritization because you might not get as sick – but now you can watch the adults having party again while you have to wait another 4-6 months…”
infection rates in the UK vary massively from place to place
They do everywhere, where there are different living standards, communities (religious, etc), densities…
Although I’m vaccinated myself by now, I still have the same opinion: People who are vaccinated should not have any significant benefits (e.g. not be allowed to do things that negatively tested people are not allowed to do) until everybody in the country got the chance to get a vaccination. This explicitly excludes youvenile and children.
We can no longer tell our children “you are last on any prioritization because you might not get as sick – but now you can watch the adults having party again while you have to wait another 4-6 months…”
You should explain to your kids that it will be they who will be paying off the cost of this “equality experiment” for some decades and long after you and most of the rest of us have retired and died 
Then see what their reaction is. I reckon they will probably be quite happy to let you have a holiday in Greece Actually, as a German, you already can…
Malibuflyer wrote:
People who are vaccinated should not have any significant benefits (e.g. not be allowed to do things that negatively tested people are not allowed to do) until everybody in the country got the chance to get a vaccination. This explicitly excludes youvenile and children.
We are not far from that by now. Actually, what we are seeing here now is that even though there are lots of vaccination slots available, they are not taken. Therefore, I would suggest that those who want to be vaccined now have either had or will shortly have the chance to do so. From that moment on, there is no reason to protect those who are willingly putting themselves and others at risk by refusing and by prolonging the pandemic by this refusal. Just the opposite: They should see the consequences of their actions.
For those where there is no vaccination possible other means of compliance need to be defined and in fact are: Testing. This includes children and most juveniles, even though they also now have the option (>15) to get vaccinated.
But I suppose in the end the discussion will be a very different one in a relative short time. Once the 4th wave starts to take off, caused by people who refuse, the whole system will be back in Lockdown before we know it. And then those who caused it should carry the full weight of it too.
Last Friday night in my neighborhood If you look closely you’ll see there’s a guy wearing a mask, with a New York labeled shirt to complete his ensemble.
Meanwhile today’s data looks like this.
Friends of mine here are planning a tour in September from Germany to Savona (IIRC), from there on the ferry to Barcelona, a couple of weeks in Spain, then back. I’ve told them they might want to consider ongoing national restrictions despite the recent EU proclamation on tourism but I don’t think they’re likely to listen to me 
My wife and I will probably be Germany and Austria at about the same time, it’ll be interesting regardless to hear of their experiences.
The stupidity of UK’s return test system:
Finally this is reaching the main papers…
The dickheads who set this up ran it for months, either with nobody looking at the data or – much more likely – knowing perfectly well that the testing is finding almost nobody infected, but since the “scientists” were people with no stake in the economy, they just left it running…
Also with the govt having dumped > 30BN into this, everybody running it would keep it running for as long as possible because it is a fantastic gravy train to take the billions and subcontract the harrassment of returning tourists to Indian call centres.
More of the same on the above topic
What’s the problem with totally banning travelling to/from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh?
Politics.
The govt was/is (a) trying to do a trade deal with India and if you p1ss off Modi then he will tell the UK to f- off, and (b) India manufactures a lot of AZ vaccine.
And it is not a small issue, because these communities are a) huge in the UK (due to the colonial connection) and b) are heavy travellers (if say there is a new baby born, or a wedding, the entire extended family and 50 others jump on an airliner). Ask any airline pilot…
The UK is also incapable of managing the situation, due to centuries-old history of civil freedoms. On mainland Europe, enforcement is not a problem Here, we don’t have mandatory identity cards, etc, police aren’t walking around with guns (usually) so they need to be a lot more polite than on the mainland where they can be absolutely thick and still have 100% authority, no legal random stop and search, and there is practically no enforcement of quarantine regs. The prime contractors who soaked up the 30BN+ GBP allocated to track and trace just subcontracted the work to a vast army of muppets, call centres in India, etc, while keeping most of the money for their senior partners and shareholders. Now they run the system and are making sure the amber list is not shrunk even though it obviously does nothing useful. And the police aren’t interested in enforcing anything after the hassle they got with issuing probably 100k illegal tickets last year.
OTOH the red-list quarantine hotels are truly horrible; 10 days in solitary confinement, some rooms with no windows… if it was me I would walk out and risk the 10k fine (which is probably not being implemented anyway).
