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Firstly I want to say that all this "Wee Nippy" and "Wee Kranky" and "ahhh want ti go ti the fitbaw!!!" shitely-made points that just sound like "old-man shouts at cloud" is possibly the most counter-productive thing I've heard in a long time. My post below will leave no doubt as to where I stand on this issue, but it's this embarrassing narrative that I believe is hugely impacting the rational view. The "Wee Nippy/Kranky" brigade are as useless to the debate as the "Thank you for everything First Minister" brigade. Anyway..... Infection rate in Scotland in the week leading up to 31st Dec - 1,900 cases per 100,000. Infection rate in England in the week leading up to 31st Dec - 1,600 cases per 100,000. Scotlands infection rate was even higher than London which is the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak. Now that the vaccine is in place, the re-introduced restrictions implemented by the Scottish Government are doing absolutely nothing other than further ruining the economy and Scottish businesses (and yes that involves football clubs). They were also outright asked about the figures they publish being "with Covid", as opposed to being "as a result of Covid". The first reply was that they didn't have those figures, and when pressed on the fact that if they are claiming their actions are driven by data then surely they must have them, they respond by saying well, we do have them but we can't tell you due to data protection. *Read - we won't tell you because the figures that are actually as a RESULT of Covid and BECAUSE of Covid, are low enough that they don't justify the governmental response. If a person dies for any reason at all, spread under the wheels of a bus, for example....and they are found to have had 100% completely asymptomatic Covid in their system...they are included in the Covid death figures. If you die OF ANY REASON WHATSOEVER within 28 days of having taken a positive test, you are included in the Covid death figures. That in itself is an absolute nonsense, and wildly skews the figures to an unimaginable degree. If you remove from the figures all of the people who happened to have Covid-19 in their system and were not affected by it in the slightest yet died by Heart Attack, Stroke, Cancer, Traffic Accident, Suicide etc etc etc, and either did not even know it was in their system or within 28 days of having had a positive test, then the numbers left make the response utterly and embarrassingly disproportionate and damaging. Imagine for a second that death from any cause within 28 days of being on a flight, was recorded as an aviation disaster, and you see how ridiculous it is. Two leading professors revealed earlier this week that if the exact same figures for hospitalisations, ICU admissions and deaths were occurring in 2018, no-one would even know anything was wrong. They are so low that no-one would even notice and we'd never have heard a thing about it. Two things are happening in my opinion, 1 - the Government are feeling the hit of a woefully under-funded NHS, and passing the responsibility for it onto the people, and 2 - Nicola Sturgeon took this latest action as part of her future drive for Independence as it was assumed one of 2 things would happen; either Westminster would introduce restrictions later on and the SG could re-use their quote of "I will never apologise for caring more for the people of Scotland than Westminster do", or the UK Government wouldn't introduce restrictions at all and their infection rate would dwarf that of Scotland and she could say the same: "Look how much better it was when we decided for ourselves". Except that didn't happen, it wasn't, and we are now in the "oh shit" phase of Scottish Government. It's apparent now that her nightmare scenario has happened where Westminster did nothing and still has a better infection rate, so all she's done is ruined the country for absolutely no benefit at all. They are realising that, hence the thickly-veiled climbdown that's starting to happen now. Which in itself introduces things that make absolutely zero sense because the drop in self-isolation from 10 to 7 days apparently doesn't work retrospectively, so someone thats on day 5 of self-isolation today has to continue for 10 even if they now test negative, but someone who tested positive yesterday only has to for 7. In fact, it's actually stupider than that....someone who tested positive on Wednesday will still be stuck in their house after someone who tested positive yesterday is out and about. Swinney has already been called out for using incorrect figures to back up the restrictions, and the worm is 100% definitely turning. I'm actually extremely surprised to see that the concensus of opinion on Stellmen Online is the polar opposite of the general view I'm seeing elsewhere and in general life. People in high positions are starting to call out bullshit, and even the media are (finally) starting to ask questions when things don't make sense. The legal wagons are circling already and there will be court-cases for YEARS to come when this starts to die down. Perhaps even criminal cases when it's taken into account that they knowingly sent people to their deaths by discharging elderly Covid patients back into care-homes so they could use the hospital beds for other people (mainly caused by years of under-funding). This, for me, is the main reason they HAVE to continue with the charade of restrictions because if they admit they made a mistake, then by association they are accountable for every business that went under as a direct result of uneccessary restrictions, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses can just sit back and reap the rewards of the legal teams that the previous CEO's of Debenhams, Arcadia Group, Frasers Group can afford. If you think Covid has fucked the world, just wait til you see what the next 10 years holds when people are held to account. Caveat to this is, I'm a previous SNP supporter who was a huge fan in general of Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government, but they have absolutely without doubt lost my future vote along with many many others that I either know personally or have heard of anecdotally. If there was even a shred of a credible opponent up here at all, I truly believe they would be out on their ear come the first sniff of an election. Except there isn't, so they will be re-elected with an albeit much smaller majority, and it will be completely pointless because we'll now either never have another referendum in anyone alive's lifetime, or if there is it will be overwhelmingly no, because we had the chance to show we could be better on our own and they made a monumental c*nt of it. Looking back now, the memory of us all standing in the street whacking pots with spoons and clapping is absolutely cringe-inducing to the point where I wish I could convince myself I hadn't joined in.

I liked Crawford, thought he got on the ball well, but ultimately not quite good enough for us in the end. Hope he does well at Partick.

So.........what about this Ross County game.

Oh, and 2-0 Motherwell, KVV and fancy Mugabe from a corner.

Well, it's not really. No-ones trying to stop the spread of Covid, you can't stop it in the same way you can't stop the spread of any of the other countless airborne respiratory infections. The end game is to minimise it's impact on health, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the vaccines have achieved that. Omicron scared everyone into assuming that an increase in cases would have a proportionate increase in serious illness and death and so they panicked, and then it turned out that.....wow, the vaccines actually did their job and their reaction was hugely inappropriate and uneccessary. The announcement of the withdrawal of PCR testing for asymptomatic positive LFT's shows that they are finally admitting that (whilst not actually admitting it). If there isn't an unusual amount of serious illness or death from it, then it literally doesn't matter how many people have Covid. In fact the evidence that Omicron (a mild varient almost 100% dealt with by the vaccine), has all but killed out the Delta variant (that was more serious and did actually kill people), shows that the wide spread of Omicron is actually benificial in the overall big picture and is helping in the fight to suppress the pandemic completely. In fact, you actually emphasise the point I'm making in the post above yours. If we take your 1 in 5 information and plug it in to my example, then we're looking at going from reporting 0 Covid deaths on 4th January, to reporting 1000 Covid deaths in March, even although there isn't. There's just a load more tests being done, and the criteria for a what is a Covid death is ridiculous.

Almost one in five people in Scotland have covid just now and that’s just the reported number, a huge number will also be unrecorded, as high as another two million suggested. That’s all anyone needs to know when they moan about not been able to attend a game of football.

Surely this shows that the restrictions aren't doing anything then, and are only causing further damage to the economy and businesses? If they don't slow the rate of hospital admissions then what are they for? The general party line in response to that would be "the restrictions are preventing them being even worse", but the figures in England are proving that to not be the case as their ratio is better than ours and they had no restrictions. However, that aside, to take your point in isolation it's because they continue to record the figures in the way they do. Think about it this way; Lets say for a second that they were to test every single person in Scotland during February. Given that they are reporting that 1 in 10 people in Scotland will have Covid by then, that means that because every death from any cause within 28 days of a positive test is counted as a Covid death, then if everyone in the country was tested in February then by default the stats will show that 10% of every single person who dies in Scotland in March is a Covid death. At an average of 5000 deaths per month that would be reported as going from ZERO deaths on 4th Jan to FIVE HUNDRED Covid deaths in March......thats devastating!! Except it's not, there's no change whatsoever other than the amount of tests being done. That's ridiculous, and all down to the insane way they are reporting the figures. And yet they are actually AIMING for as many asymptomatic tests as possible! Then dramatising any increase in figures. I mean....anyone with a basic grasp of ratios understands why the figures fluctuate proportionately with testing. As a government they are supposed to implement a response to a crisis which stems the cause of the crisis, but to flip that round and actually manipulate the impact of the cause in order to justify their response is disgusting. Getting that the wrong way round is borderline criminal, and as I say the worm is turning as we speak...I believe they will be held to account in the coming years.

Jings, I think Spiderpig must have been watching too many BBC news reports for the past 2years and been brainwashed into thinking the world is governed by an AI virus, the very same virus that knows when your wearing a non hazmat suit mask, eating food, can tell the time, knows if the drink you have is alcoholic, knows if your fan number 501 instead of 500 and on we go with more stupidity…we need to just get on with life as we done every year with colds n flu and get everyone back to work, industry going again travel and fans back into Fir Park, Spiderpig is invited of course if he can bear to cross over the door! Let’s get back to football n wee krankie can resign or perhaps she’ll be jailed if the police investigation finds enough evidence! Cmon the Well!!!!

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/ Yesterday there were 11 thousand cases with 23% positivity. On Monday were there 20 thousand cases with 35% positivity.

I think Slattery would be wasted on the right. His strengths IMO are being a pivot, shielding/retaining the ball, moving play on and drawing free kicks. Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

I think we will win 1-0

If he is half as good as that big carthorse Rogic , he will do for me !!!!! I asked my mate about his quote , because I didn’t know if Shaw was a wee guy or a big guy ...but he said he was ....a big guy , physical , but has got a lot of quality as well..

Glad about that. Guy is a player and you can never have too many of them in your squad regardless of the circumstances.

Seems that 60% is made up of 48% "definite" and 12% "probable", which means they are still combining admissions BECAUSE of Covid, and admissions for something else but also showing symptoms of covid. The 40% are people who are there for something completely unrelated and tested positive upon admission. I can't wrap my head around why they are being so cagey about telling us how many people are being hospitalised by Covid, who would otherwise be at home completely fine with nothing wrong with them if they didn't have it. (Which is of course the number that everything should be based on)

Double vaccinated and boostered NHS staff don’t need to isolate if they are negative. They just need a negative PCR and then daily negative LFT’s to be allowed to attend work. Edit to avoid confusion: this was in place long before the changes in the last couple of days

Well, that's what happens when you force completely healthy, double vaccinated and boostered NHS staff to sit in the house for a week even with a negative test, just because someone they know has tested positive. Again, it's ridiculous to expect an instruction to increase testing to not result in a proportionate increase in positivity. If those two stay relative...that's a good thing....that's what you want. It's only if they widen that it means anything bad is happening. It's equally ridiculous to widen the parameters of isolation requirements (esstentially causing healthy, negative testing people to isolate) and then report theres a crisis because more people aren't at work. What did they think would happen when they extended the isolation rules to include people who don't even have Covid? Their instruction is literally causing the staffing crises in the first place.

And the same for each region in England. I honestly can't see their not being some sort of legal action taken by the hospitality and leisure sector, and if there is, the Government surely can;t have a leg to stand on. Even if they don't accept retrospectively that they were wildly wrong, the official figures are uncontestable proof that restrictions don't make any difference and need to be removed immediately. Thing is, if they do that, then they have to admit they were put in place wrongly in the first place, which then opens the legal Pandora's Box. They have utterly and absolutely fucked it, and are being found out. And I've got absolutely no clue who I'm gonna vote for now, and have to re-evaluate whether I even want indepencence when I was a nailed-on supporter before. I wouldn't even let Nicola Sturgeon and her team run a tote sheet let alone my country.

Actually a good debate. Some good reading and excellent posts from Al B. I am no fan of the SNP, but I can understand why they took the decision to have restrictions to protect the NHS and until the data proved otherwise. Was there an element of being different from London and Boris etc. Possibly but if Boris is proved correct it looks like it will be by a bawhair. The disappointing element of this is timing. Omicron could have arrived earlier or indeed later. The fact it arrived to coincide with Xmas and New Year makes it terrible for the hospitality industry. Literally their busiest time of year. I would expect crowds to return after the 17th but will be interested to see if they go from 500 to full houses. My worry is they come up with a middle ground. Leaving clubs to again manage ballots and tickets and all sorts of nonsense. The other issue is timing. Sport needs to know (you would imagine) early next week and not 2pm on the 17th January to prepare. Leaving it at 500 will lead to a considerable backlash. Is it law ? Could the SPFL tell clubs to allow crowds in. Certainly there will be a confrontation if it is the status quo.

And you are absolutely right to do so, if that is what you believe. And that is really the crux of my point in fairness, we are now at a point where the public should be trusted to assert their own attitude to risk, much like if an individual believes that the risk of a plane crash is too high for them, then they are fully within their rights to not go on one and that is absolutely fair enough. But you don't ban air travel because some planes crash. I don't think anyone is (rationally) saying that no action should be taken at all. The point is more that the action shouldn't just be arbitrary and should have some sort of basis behind it. A lot is being made of the whole "football fans shouldnt be so selfish" thing, but the fact that it's football is neither here nor there. On the one hand you have football being limited to 500 people in stadiums whilst schools stayed open. What you can essentially break that down into is a group of 98% vaccinated people outdoors, Vs a group of 100% unvaccinated people in an enclosed space. Which one is more of a threat? And yet which one was allowed to continue? The fact that it's football doesn't matter....it's the fact that it doesn't make sense and isn't dealing with the problem, is what's infuriating people. That's not even touching the fact that, yes limiting Fir Park to 500 fans spreads everyone out, but if you take a smaller club with one stand that normally has maybe 250 people in it, with 600-700 spread out around the rest of the stadium, then what the 500 limit is actually doing in real terms, is taking a stand that normally has 250 people in it, and putting 500 people in it. Again, the fact that it's football is neither here-nor-there, it's the fact that it's arbitrary, across the board, and makes no sense, that is causing the outrage. Or take the mandatory re-introduction of screens in pubs and shops, which were literally proven to reduce airflow and contain air particles into areas rather than allowing them to disperse. Again, no-ones saying there should be no action....but it should be proportionate and at the very VERY least, correct and helpful. It was reported by a journalist that I can't for the life of me find now (I will keep trying as I fully appreciate how unbelievable this is....which is basically my point), that he had the following exchange in a private media briefing with a government rep in advance of a public one: "Is it the case that if I am in a Church then I must wear a mask, unless I am singing in which case I can remove the mask? Yes. Does that mean that I can go into Tesco without a mask as long as I am singing? Well, techincally by the letter of the rules, yes." I mean.....let's just leave it there cos even though it's Friday I should at least do SOME work.

You think 3 million people have Covid in Scotland today? Have you got some sort of disability relating to numeracy? Al B posted the actual figures for the last week of 2021 in his first post on this page.

But what do you think the fitba result will be?

They kept us locked down for 9 months from a 3 week circuit breaker so I have to disagre with you there. The current restrictions are not an attempt to control the virus. You can go the gym, cinema, pub, restaurant and have a big party in your house. There were weddings over the festive period. These restrictions are a political move to be seen to be doing something and the targets as they were back in the Thatcher era are football fans and dance music.

Hospital admissions are increasing because people are being admitted for other reasons and testing positive for asymptomatic Covid. The ICU number is currently 42. The figures from England show that sporting events make no difference. Anyone who genuinely believes that stopping football matches which are attended by less than 2% of the population for a few hours a week will reduce transmission has little grasp on Covid or arthimetic. Pushing people from an outside activity towards inside activities probably increases transmission overall.