Situation in Kent from the Polish truck driver's perspective

[harry_monk]

orys:

Harry Monk:
Yes, it is a hoax. The whole thing is an enormous lie. Covid-19 is a completely average Winter virus, such as happens every Winter, nothing more and nothing less.

Oh, good to know. I have to tell that to my father’s childhood friend. Or to my mother’s coworker. Ah wait, I can’t, because they are dead, along with 30000 or so of extra Polish people who died this year compared to the last.

How silly they are, to die of the ordinary winter virus! To fell for such a hoax that even a random guys on the internet without medical knowledge can see through it. How people can be so silly and fall for it?

Take that colleague from my work, who spent 4 weeks in the hospital this spring, one of it in coma on the intensive therapy. Does he not have some better things to do in a beautiful month of April? Or my friend, who is just recovering from an ordinary winter virus and is still struggling to get up 12 stairs to her flat, I wonder how much they paid her to pull my finger like that. I am sure she’s running marathons when nobody’s looking.

Or that idiot girl from my partner’s work who keeps crying because both of her parents died within a week from each other. Should we tell her it’s all a hoax now, or should we wait for her parents to pop out from the cupboard crying “gotcha!”, so we won’t spoil the joke?

Well, ok then, you can’t blame the French for making you stay at Manston until you had been tested.

I mean, you can’t have it both ways.

[ezydriver]

Harry Monk:
My understanding is that out of 21,849 tests carried out in Kent, only 66 proved positive. So an infection rate of 0.3% compared to the infection rate in France of 6.2%.

Yes, it is a hoax. The whole thing is an enormous lie. Covid-19 is a completely average Winter virus, such as happens every Winter, nothing more and nothing less.

Political strategies aside, 21,849 lorry drivers, presumably trampers, who live primarily alone for weeks on end in their own cab, generally not mixing with large numbers of people, if anybody at all, especially as cafes, pubs, and restaurants are largely closed too. Of course only 0.3% showed positive. In fact, is 0.3% not quite high for a demographic that are essentially loners and hermits? I would have expected almost zero in light of the job’s nature and social restrictions.

Students in halls, staff and old folk in care homes, patients in hospital wards, schoolchildren on buses, and children and teachers mixing in classrooms on the other hand… it’s not a hoax mate. The media has perhaps sensationalised this, yes, and it’s hardly Ebola, but it’s not a hoax.

[orys]

Harry Monk:
Well, ok then, you can’t blame the French for making you stay at Manston until you had been tested.

I mean, you can’t have it both ways.

But you know that going on business as usual saying “there is no pandemic, it’s a hoax” or closing everything while running in circles and screaming “aaah, terrible pandemic, we are all going to die, we are doomed!” are not the only two possible courses of action, right?

[wheel_nut]

I shared the Orys link on several mediums and it was well received and understood by mainly continental hauliers and drivers, some of the supermarket jockeys expected a personal visit from Boris with iced water and meal deals from Waitrose.

The thread has moved on slightly and I was on another forum today with people wishing end of year celebrations and messages to friends, they mentioned people who had been lost in the pandemic. This is where I struggle, we were first told of Coronavirus in January 2020, it January 2021 tomorrow and I can truthfully say I do not know a single person who has passed away with Covid-19. I know people who have died this year, some have died young, but generally it has been either accident or life threatening disease.

I know I will get those saying they know someone, but generally it is “my aunties friends dog sitter”

I mentioned my wife had been working on a covid positive unit in Hull and was slated for it. She has to collect her test kit on Wednesday the 5th of January 2021. This is the very first time she has been offered a test and she has to do it herself and send the results in weekly to her line manager. While she worked on that unit, she saw 4 or 5 deaths, these were end of life patients who had other issues besides respiratory.

I really do think this lock down malarkey has gone too far now, its ruined business and families, I don’t doubt it has caused domestic violence, ■■■■■■ assaults and money rows.

[orys]

Wheel Nut:
The thread has moved on slightly and I was on another forum today with people wishing end of year celebrations and messages to friends, they mentioned people who had been lost in the pandemic. This is where I struggle, we were first told of Coronavirus in January 2020, it January 2021 tomorrow and I can truthfully say I do not know a single person who has passed away with Covid-19.

I don’t see how is that an argument. I don’t know a single person from New Zeland, does it mean, that New Zeland is some fake conspiracy theory?

As per my article and Dover malarkie - it could be worse. There is a Polish guy who - along with some other, more local truckers - is stuck at the Russian-Mongolian border FOR A MONTH NOW: 40ton.net/polski-kierowca-przyw … -miesiaca/
They say they open borders on 15th of January. And he can’t just turn around and go back, as this is not EU, he gots his TIR carnets and everything… He left Poland on 30th of October.

[harry_monk]

orys:
I don’t see how is that an argument. I don’t know a single person from New Zeland, does it mean, that New Zeland is some fake conspiracy theory?

There is abundant proof of the existence of New Zealand. However, if somebody was to say to me “Avoid people from New Zealand, if you come into contact with one all of your fingers and toes will fall off” then I would say “Where is your evidence?”

Therefore your analogy fails.

[orys]

Harry Monk:

orys:
I don’t see how is that an argument. I don’t know a single person from New Zeland, does it mean, that New Zeland is some fake conspiracy theory?

There is abundant proof of the existence of New Zealand. However, if somebody was to say to me “Avoid people from New Zealand, if you come into contact with one all of your fingers and toes will fall off” then I would say “Where is your evidence?”

Therefore your analogy fails.

Apart from that there is enormous amount of proof of existence of Covid, you’re of course right

[beefy4605]

The French closed the border with no warning for 48 hours and then decided they wanted everyone tested before they would let them back into France and its all the fault of the UK ■■
Catch yourself on . There have been plenty of queues at borders in the past - heard many stories of trucks being held up for days or even weeks trying to cross over into Russia / Turkey etc etc . What was ever done for those guys left sitting on the side of the road ? Did anyone ever come round and see if they were all right , bring them food and water , provide them with toilets ■■ I’m sure some of the older members could provide you with some enlighenment.

[simon]

beefy4605:
The French closed the border with no warning for 48 hours and then decided they wanted everyone tested before they would let them back into France and its all the fault of the UK ■■
Catch yourself on . There have been plenty of queues at borders in the past - heard many stories of trucks being held up for days or even weeks trying to cross over into Russia / Turkey etc etc . What was ever done for those guys left sitting on the side of the road ? Did anyone ever come round and see if they were all right , bring them food and water , provide them with toilets ■■ I’m sure some of the older members could provide you with some enlighenment.

Nope, that isn’t what the problem was.

The problem was the ■■■■ poor British response to that.

Park trucks heading for Dover or the pipe down a motorway. Put a couple of turdis every few km, that’ll do.
Oh, we don’t have enough motorway, ok, park a few thousand of them on an airfield. There are already a dozen turdis there, that’ll be fine.
No they are not allowed to leave the airfield for supplies, they are not allowed to use their cooker either, not even to boil a kettle of water for a brew.
There is ONE burger van on site now. That’ll be sufficient to keep 3,000+ drivers in hot drinks and burgers.
No, good hearted citizen will not be allowed to drive slowly through the parked up trucks to distribute hot meals.
No good hearted citizens will not be allowed onto the airfield to distribute hot meals. Meals they have cooked out of simple sympathy for people stuck in the middle of nowhere through no fault of there own, immediately before Christmas.

Every turdis I have ever seen has a notice in it. It reads something like, “this facility is intended for the use of up to 10 persons, for a set length of time” probably 5 working days, I don’t remember exactly. Not “for use by 500 persons for an unlimited time”. They were full within hours.

This could quite easily have been a chance for Britain to give Macron the V sign, IF we had done it right.
There’s a huge garrison not that far away at Aldershot. The military are very experienced at setting up a kitchen in the middle of know-where, and within a few hours dishing out hundreds of hot meals. They can set up a complete hot shower system in the middle of a forest and have hundreds of squaddies in, showered, and away within hours. If I was a squaddie, just about to head off on Christmas leave, would I be happy about being collared to do this? No I would not.But I would see the requirement, moan about it, then get on with the job. No-one else in the UK has the capacity or the equipment to do that except the military. There are several other garrisons around London, so the “pain in the neck” job could easily have been circulated around them, so that each squad only did one day on duty.

Queueing at borders was normal, especially once going beyond what is now EU borders. Being held for days was known about, anticipated and stocked up for. This was none of those. These drivers were expecting to go down to Kent, Q for a while, catch a ferry or train, be home in a few days for their Christmas break, the same as last week. Those that did self catering were probably running their stock of supplies down so as not to leave any perishables over Christmas. THEN they get parked up for days, low on supplies, not allowed to cook what they did have. No information, not that the UK had much information to give, but the information they were given was gobbledygook anyway.

THAT is what the problem was.

[pierrot_14]

^^^^^ Def this ^^^^^

Excellent post Simon

[cav551]

Exactly that. A kindergarten class could have predicted what would happen having seen the build up of the queues over the previous days but the UK authorities were asleep on the job. de Pfeffle was completely out of his depth with a practical problem, desperately looking through his Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer for how to decline the vocative singular for excrementum.

[santa]

Wheel Nut:
The thread has moved on slightly and I was on another forum today with people wishing end of year celebrations and meThis is where I struggle, we were first told of Coronavirus in January 2020, it January 2021 tomorrow and I can truthfully say I do not know a single person who has passed away with Covid-19. I know people who have died this year, some have died young, but generally it has been either accident or life threatening disease.

My father and his brother were both in the Army through WW2. My mother, with my sister and I, were evacuated from East London and my grandfather worked in an ammunition factory. Despite this, No one in my family lost their lives. Baed on this evidence I can only assume that WW2 was fake news.

[the_maoster]

Santa:

Wheel Nut:
The thread has moved on slightly and I was on another forum today with people wishing end of year celebrations and meThis is where I struggle, we were first told of Coronavirus in January 2020, it January 2021 tomorrow and I can truthfully say I do not know a single person who has passed away with Covid-19. I know people who have died this year, some have died young, but generally it has been either accident or life threatening disease.

My father and his brother were both in the Army through WW2. My mother, with my sister and I, were evacuated from East London and my grandfather worked in an ammunition factory. Despite this, No one in my family lost their lives. Baed on this evidence I can only assume that WW2 was fake news.

Where the Covid fanatics fall down in their reasoning is by assuming that anyone who questions the official narrative is automatically saying that Covid-19 is a hoax. This is simply not the case; I don’t know a single person who denies that Covid is an actual problematic disease, they are merely questioning the handling of the pandemic and increasingly more and more people are fearful that the cure will undoubtedly cause more death and misery than the actual virus. Simple as that.

Using your WW2 analogy I don’t know a single person who has been killed by a falling tree in the Amazon rainforest, but if I heard a report of such an event I’d have no reason to assume it was false information.

[franglais]

the maoster:
Where the Covid fanatics fall down in their reasoning is by assuming that anyone who questions the official narrative is automatically saying that Covid-19 is a hoax. This is simply not the case; I don’t know a single person who denies that Covid is an actual problematic disease, they are merely questioning the handling of the pandemic and increasingly more and more people are fearful that the cure will undoubtedly cause more death and misery than the actual virus. Simple as that

Look at your language:
“Covid fanatics” “official narrative” “undoubtedly cause”
Somewhat loaded from the off.

[robroy]

Franglais:

the maoster:
Where the Covid fanatics fall down in their reasoning is by assuming that anyone who questions the official narrative is automatically saying that Covid-19 is a hoax. This is simply not the case; I don’t know a single person who denies that Covid is an actual problematic disease, they are merely questioning the handling of the pandemic and increasingly more and more people are fearful that the cure will undoubtedly cause more death and misery than the actual virus. Simple as that

Look at your language:
“Covid fanatics” “official narrative” “undoubtedly cause”
Somewhat loaded from the off.

Interesting the parts on this that you cherry pick, or the ‘‘Loaded bits’’, that you disagree with.
.ie your take on this.

Leaving those bits out for a minute, what are your comments on the paragraph starting with…
‘‘I don’t know’’ and ending with ‘‘actual virus’’
ie… Most other people’s take on this.

[franglais]

robroy:

Franglais:

the maoster:
Where the Covid fanatics fall down in their reasoning is by assuming that anyone who questions the official narrative is automatically saying that Covid-19 is a hoax. This is simply not the case; I don’t know a single person who denies that Covid is an actual problematic disease, they are merely questioning the handling of the pandemic and increasingly more and more people are fearful that the cure will undoubtedly cause more death and misery than the actual virus. Simple as that

Look at your language:
“Covid fanatics” “official narrative” “undoubtedly cause”
Somewhat loaded from the off.

Interesting the parts on this that you cherry pick, or the ‘‘Loaded bits’’, that you disagree with.
.ie your take on this.

Leaving those bits out for a minute, what are your comments on the paragraph starting with…
‘‘I don’t know’’ and ending with ‘‘actual virus’’
ie… Most other people’s take on this.

I quoted the whole post enabling all to see the whole context, so where do you get “cherry picking” from? Pointing out a topic for criticism is hardly that. How can anyone point to a particular issue otherwise?
I pointed out 3 phrases (I find loaded) in a post of 4 lines.
I say it is loaded language. Anyone is free to agree or otherwise.

Using (by your example) two unbiased phrases along 3 biased (I think) ones seems to suggest I have a basis for my post.
Pointing to all the kittens I havent kicked, doesnt mean I haven`t kicked any.

[robroy]

Ok mate, ok , calm down man.
I was merely pointing out that you prefer to take offence to the points that you say are loaded, ie official narrative etc, rather than address the point he was making by pointing out the view of most people who do not share your own.
That was all.

[the_maoster]

Of course I’m using loaded language, 12 months ago I probably wouldn’t, but human nature is what it is and perhaps wrongly I respond to what appears to be increasingly high pitched near hysteria surrounding anyone who has the temerity to question the official line.

Take for example your incessant contributions to anything Brexit, you’ve (to your credit) used nothing but polite and moderate language in any interchange. However the perception from readers rightly or wrongly a visible ramping up of desperation on your behalf. It’s that perception that leads to any backlash.

[franglais]

the maoster:
Of course I’m using loaded language, 12 months ago I probably wouldn’t, but human nature is what it is and perhaps wrongly I respond to what appears to be increasingly high pitched near hysteria surrounding anyone who has the temerity to question the official line.

Take for example your incessant contributions to anything Brexit, you’ve (to your credit) used nothing but polite and moderate language in any interchange. However the perception from readers rightly or wrongly a visible ramping up of desperation on your behalf. It’s that perception that leads to any backlash.

Hats off for looking at your post and seeing that, maybe with reason, you are loading it. But I do question (rhetorically?) where is the near hysteria in criticism of contrary views? Do you mean some of the over the top posts around some particularly bizarre YouTube offerings? When someone offers unsupported statements and anecdote against peer reviewed studies what is the correct response? Would you as a driver with years of experience, have some spotty office kid, telling you that youre turning the steering wheel the wrong way when reversing, act politely? Maybe if you react how I would the kid would tell his mates how you got…all worked up about it? I mean, hed watched a YouTuber calling himself an expert* on the phone just that afternoon. Thanks for saying that I try to be polite, and I wont support those who are otherwise, but I do see the frustration out there at the slick videos with well dressed, well spoken people, talking absolute rubbish. Watch one vid saying “virus hoax” and your search engine will feed you more. The world you see through your screen becomes distorted. And biased language can become your everyday vocbulary without you realising it. I dont mean just The Maoster of course, it affects us all. I try to look for bias in myself but obviously unintentional bias is invisible to the holder of it. In the sciences egos are (meant to be) small and unimportant. If you show me where Ive made a mistake I (try) not to be offended, I dont take it as an insult to my intelligence, or my manhood, or whatever. . Playing down the severity of the C19 virus seems more evident here than in other circles I move in, but why, I dunno. . And why are my contributions to anything Brexit "incessant"? Why not "regular", or why arent I “tireless”, “enthusiastic”, or even “dedicated”?
It is a subject that interests me, and there is so much false info, spin and downright lies surrounding it, it is difficult to ignore. You condemn those who you perceive to swallow the lies of the establishment, why shouldn`t I speak against those lies that I see?
Anyone can refute my posts with facts, and some do. No problems with that.
.

• Or a nice grey haired bloke taking a selfie in a white room with a bookshelf behind him, tells us the next speaker is an expert with a great reputation. Bonus point for believability if they also that the video you are about to watch has been banned, of course.
  .
  Oh, and on a Brexit vid it is often “corrupt” “gravy train”, “dictatorship” etc etc. Repetition tends to wear down any doubts or scepticism one has.
  Tell two “truths” like this, and the third statement will be believed. (Basic advertising Class 101)

[the_maoster]

^^^ I have nothing. I’m incredibly drunk and your response deserves more respect than I can give it now. My apologies my friend, I will address your post when I’m in a fit state.