Threat to supporters in stadia.

[Keyser Soze]

It really is rather silly reading Pars fans saying pretty much exactly what Hearts/Rangers/Thistle/Falkirk fans were saying last year. Makes me cringe when I read stuff like the other clubs “have shafted us” and “I hope it comes back to bite them”. By all means have a go at the government who have openly admitted to not following the science when making this ridiculous decision. Every club has voted with self-interest and let’s not pretend our club is any different for goodness sake. I bet you if by some weird twist we didn’t have any scheduled home ties during the proposed suspension we would’ve voted to carry on. 

[Lochalsh Par]

13 hours ago, Number Eleven said:

I’m glad the club supported a short suspension of the league. It’s a shame that a majority of clubs want to press on regardless. It seems it’s financially better to play behind closed doors than have 500 fans in.

I’d like to see the government analysis that proves it’s safe for exactly 500 people to attend any game regardless of the size of the ground and the quality of transport links.

I would like to see the science behind many of the recent decisions in general. I am really struggling to understand any of what has come out of the Scottish Gov on Covid recently. So far all I get is nonsense and rhetoric about saving the NHS.

[Rengade Master]

35 minutes ago, Lochalsh Par said:

I would like to see the science behind many of the recent decisions in general. I am really struggling to understand any of what has come out of the Scottish Gov on Covid recently. So far all I get is nonsense and rhetoric about saving the NHS.

The NHS is only struggling due to the 10 day isolation rules, the occupied beds due to covid including ICU are at the lowest for months. As are the daily figures we were up around 7000 daily cases in the summer and no further restrictions we are around 3000 at the moment with a weaker strain. Zero logic except no Euro's or COP26 around at the moment.

[GG Riva]

1 hour ago, Keyser Soze said:

It really is rather silly reading Pars fans saying pretty much exactly what Hearts/Rangers/Thistle/Falkirk fans were saying last year. Makes me cringe when I read stuff like the other clubs “have shafted us” and “I hope it comes back to bite them”. By all means have a go at the government who have openly admitted to not following the science when making this ridiculous decision. Every club has voted with self-interest and let’s not pretend our club is any different for goodness sake. I bet you if by some weird twist we didn’t have any scheduled home ties during the proposed suspension we would’ve voted to carry on. 

If you read back you'll see that I said we'd been shafted by the SG and only kicked in the nuts by some of our fellow Championship clubs, Keyser. 🙂

Now you may believe it's OK to vote only in your self interest and state that everybody does it, but that doesn't make it right. If I can widen the argument, selfishness and self interest is one of the main reasons we have such an unequal, fecked up world. A couple of days ago, I watched a TV news clip, which showed hundreds of thousands of Covid vaccines being dumped in a European landfill sight because they had exceeded the use by date. Meanwhile, millions of people in poorer countries are unvaccinated due to a lack of vaccines. I also remember a year when Canada produced far more wheat than it could use, sell or store. Rather than donate it to the world's poor, it was loaded onto large ships and dumped in the ocean. ☹

I'd really love to hear the reasoning behind their decision, by those who voted against a suspension 

Edited December 23, 2021 by GG Riva

[SanguinePar]

12 hours ago, Rengade Master said:

Oh Look the same conclusions as they found in RSA.

BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.

Sometimes waiting on data before making crippling decisions can be beneficial to all the industries being hardest hit!

It's not just about the risk of hospitalisation though, is it, it's about transmissibility rates. Even if Omicron is less likely than Delta to hospitalise those who do get infected , it may still infect more than enough people to outweigh that lower hospitalisation rate and still result in more actual people in hospital overall.

IIRC Omicron currently has an R number of about 3.5 and Delta is at 1 - so as long as that's the case a lot more people will get Omicron than got Delta. A smaller proportion of a much larger number may still give a larger final figure than a larger proportion of a much smaller number.

Plus, this is still early data and not conclusive. And if we've learned anything from the last 2 years it's that being overly optimistic in the early stages has regularly led to a much worse situation in the end. If the governments had done a proper lockdown way, way back at the start (and last xmas) we could well have been in a much better state than we eventually found ourselves.

 

[Keyser Soze]

34 minutes ago, GG Riva said:

 

Dearie me, GG. That’s in astonishingly poor taste. I’ve removed the content to give you the chance to delete it. I really hope you will because to make that comparison  is really quite disturbing.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Keyser Soze
Spelling

[Digs]

41 minutes ago, SanguinePar said:

IIRC Omicron currently has an R number of about 3.5 and Delta is at 1 - so as long as that's the case a lot more people will get Omicron than got Delta. A smaller proportion of a much larger number may still give a larger final figure than a larger proportion of a much smaller number.

There is actually no publicly available data that supports this because the data released to the public relates to what happened 2-3 weeks prior. The current R number in Scotland, from when Omicron was first discovered here is currently somewhere between 0.9-1.1 and has been for weeks. This was when Delta was dominant. 

All they've said is that they 'believe' what you've said above to be the case.  The R number is always an approximation and isn't exact. This is the sort of stuff based on doomsday modelling that has people questioning actual data. 

[Rengade Master]

17 minutes ago, Digs said:

There is actually no publicly available data that supports this because the data released to the public relates to what happened 2-3 weeks prior. The current R number in Scotland, from when Omicron was first discovered here is currently somewhere between 0.9-1.1 and has been for weeks. This was when Delta was dominant. 

All they've said is that they 'believe' what you've said above to be the case.  The R number is always an approximation and isn't exact. This is the sort of stuff based on doomsday modelling that has people questioning actual data. 

Along with the cases will double day on day which has also failed to materialise. 

This was before any restrictions were in place yet 4 weeks later when none of the doomsday figures have happened restrictions are put in place. Modelling is obviously only going to predict the worst but as every passing day and week goes by it can't take a mastermind to be able to collate current figures against previous figures as we now have history whereas we didn't previously to be able to constantly remodel. i.e with 1000 Kent confirmed cases 2 weeks later we had 200 admissions for instance. 1000 Omicron cases 2 weeks later we had 10 hospital admissions. Cases have not double but risen by 8-10% on a day to day basis. Easy Maths for the experts I'd have thought, more so that the current figures are being driven from London the most densely populated area of the UK and with the largest ethnic population where the vaccine uptake has been at it's lowest, yet Scotland is almost completely opposite and has enforced the tighter restrictions that make no sense!

[rosythpar]

So far we are the only championship club who wont be letting 500 fans in,another three clubs to still make a decision.

[SanguinePar]

1 hour ago, Digs said:

There is actually no publicly available data that supports this because the data released to the public relates to what happened 2-3 weeks prior. The current R number in Scotland, from when Omicron was first discovered here is currently somewhere between 0.9-1.1 and has been for weeks. This was when Delta was dominant. 

All they've said is that they 'believe' what you've said above to be the case.  The R number is always an approximation and isn't exact. This is the sort of stuff based on doomsday modelling that has people questioning actual data. 

Here's a source from a couple of weeks ago for R3.5 (actually he says between 2.75 and 4.4) although it wasn't here that I first heard it, not sure where it was tbh: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-england-university-of-east-anglia-wales-scotland-b1971598.html

Early research based on UKHSA figures, not sure if there's been any update.

As with the belief that hospitalisations are lower with Omicron, it's based on early and limited data.

I see a few more recent stories talking about estimates of R3-5, but not sure what they are based on. 

I'm not taking any particular side on all this, but I do think it's too early to just assume that hospitalisation numbers (as opposed to rates) won't become much higher.

[Raymie]

The majority of people catching Omicron are fairly young and therefore tend not to get seriously ill?

A couple of weeks after Christmas will give a far better insight into the severity of this variant, as it's likely an older demographic will be affected?

I think it's a bit too soon to be complacent?

Edited December 23, 2021 by Raymie

[Digs]

26 minutes ago, SanguinePar said:

Here's a source from a couple of weeks ago for R3.5 (actually he says between 2.75 and 4.4) although it wasn't here that I first heard it, not sure where it was tbh: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-england-university-of-east-anglia-wales-scotland-b1971598.html

Early research based on UKHSA figures, not sure if there's been any update.

As with the belief that hospitalisations are lower with Omicron, it's based on early and limited data.

I see a few more recent stories talking about estimates of R3-5, but not sure what they are based on. 

I'm not taking any particular side on all this, but I do think it's too early to just assume that hospitalisation numbers (as opposed to rates) won't become much higher.

That was my point, none of the was a real time, actual figure. There was lots of supposition at play, and even says is likely to be an over estimate, and as I said, appears to be the number they have come up with using modelling to determine how it will extrapolate. That's a completely different thing to saying that is the number associated with this variant. 

I'm not having a go mate, genuinely, but IMO semantics are important when talking about this stuff. The one thing that has annoyed me through all of this is the blanket 'we are following the science' chat. Let's see the data then. I've seen Chris Whitty share lots of pretty graphs, and a huge number of them are projections based on an algorithm on a computer programme. Every single spike in cases he has come away with an arbitrary number about how many cases it could lead to. or deaths or hospitalisations, that have ended up being about 5 times higher than actually transpired. That is then retrospectively taken as a measure of success of their actions, no matter how things have panned out. It's nonsense.  The Welsh FM even said yesterday that Omicron was 7 times more dangerous than Delta which was a complete mangling of what he was actually trying to say. It's things like that, that cause people to not trust what is being said. It's certainly why I have kept my own eye on the stats rather than take their word for things at face value. 

If they just explained specifically what the precise reason for doing things are, I'd accept it far easier rather than just using soundbite phrases like 'a tsunami of cases' which is unhelpful and entirely without a huge amount of context.

[GG Riva]

1 hour ago, Keyser Soze said:

Dearie me, GG. That’s in astonishingly poor taste. I’ve removed the content to give you the chance to delete it. I really hope you will because to make that comparison  is really quite disturbing.

D'you think so, Keyser? Thanks for the offer but I won't be deleting anything. I'm comfortable with my assertion that the world would be a better place if there was more altruism and less selfishness. Sadly, years of Thatcherism instilled in much of the population an "I'm alright, Jack" mentality. I don't want to get too political, but you can see the fruits of yet another Tory Government who ensure they look after their own self interests and sod the rest.....

[SanguinePar]

3 minutes ago, Digs said:

That was my point, none of the was a real time, actual figure. There was lots of supposition at play, and even says is likely to be an over estimate, and as I said, appears to be the number they have come up with using modelling to determine how it will extrapolate. That's a completely different thing to saying that is the number associated with this variant. 

Fair enough. I guess we'll just need to see, unfortunately.

3 minutes ago, Digs said:

I'm not having a go mate, genuinely, but IMO semantics are important when talking about this stuff. The one thing that has annoyed me through all of this is the blanket 'we are following the science' chat. Let's see the data then. I've seen Chris Whitty share lots of pretty graphs, and a huge number of them are projections based on an algorithm on a computer programme. Every single spike in cases he has come away with an arbitrary number about how many cases it could lead to. or deaths or hospitalisations, that have ended up being about 5 times higher than actually transpired. That is then retrospectively taken as a measure of success of their actions, no matter how things have panned out. It's nonsense. 

Never thought you were having a go, no worries 🙂

I take the point about overestimates, but I guess it's hard to say whether they would have planned out without action.

Reminds me of the Millennium bug story. Nowadays a lot of people laugh and say what a nonsense that was, while other will argue that it's only because they took it seriously that things turned out generally ok. Hard to say for sure. 

I guess I do tend to err on the side of caution over optimism though. Maybe I should change my username! 🙂

[Berry]

Seem to be in the minority but I was ok with the decision to play on, not convinced at this stage whether delaying a few games was going to provide any benefit, nothing at the moment to suggest the restrictions wont continue and it’s difficult for clubs who still have players wages to pay for etc, to wait a few weeks only to potentially have the same restrictions still in place is a risk probably too high for some, odds of that happening are potentially low but with how fluid the situation seems to be..

From a fan perspective, I just want this season done with, the 500 entry I’m disappointed we didn’t bother to try and accommodate, I wasn’t a fan of a ballot, just a first come first serve online would’ve done the trick, ST holders only, if you miss out so be it, you have to just keep these things simple and try not to cater for every situation, you aren’t going to be able to please everybody.

Just to end that I’ve read this thread in its entirety and the calibre of dialog and debate is high and refereshing, appreciate the topic but been quite enjoyable to read.