Mooney_Driver wrote:
Cost/Benefit is obvious: The way Covid has paralyzed society since now more than a year comes at an enormeous cost, not only monetary. It is imperative that this plague gets dialled back to at least a managable disease, and there is no other way than the vaccination at the point it is now.
Covid hasn’t paralysed anything, governments reaction has paralysed, crippled and killed off parts of the western economy. Like cyber war, foreign governments have played a massive part in spreading misinformation (about lockdowns and how effective they are). Our friends in China have played a very smart game here solidifying their position through the export of their IP (for the first time China exports an original idea) – lockdowns, effectively overtaking the US as the worlds largest economic player. While we all sit debating how to go to zero infections their economy is booming and their capital is quietly acquiring key stakes in parts of the overall economy…
This thread
Can you believe it?
But it could be worse. If we had a brexit thread it would be 10x longer and everybody interested in aviation would have left long ago 
Despite a small number of regulars who kept flying all the way through, GA activity has been pretty well destroyed. Only yesterday I met a guy whose airfield just simply shut and all the planes were left to rot. A good number of them did it. Owners considered legal action but then – the landowner always calls the tune – they would all be kicked off.
But the destruction was mostly not through law – it was through idiocy of management.
Strange, here at LFFK we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of movements and hours flown since the beginning of January 21. It seems everyone is desperate to get into the air, even if there are restrictions. Just in case anyone jumps up and down, all flights are carried out within the regulations.
It depends on the airport management. Shoreham stayed open the whole time, and one could always fly.
Many airports closed because they could not open the cafe, and without the cafe, selling 10,000 calorie stodge, there is no point in life
Some closed “because it was the right thing”.
Many people stopped “because it was the right thing”.
I think the French are not so bothered about the virus The Brits are bothered about everything, and do a risk assessment if they have to change the knicker colour
The rest carried on. This trip was legal but there was a possible £200 fine (imposed by the police, often not legally) under the “guidance” so I had the £200 ready in a plastic bag. I am now trying to fly to Caen to collect something but it is more “risky”.
Peter wrote:
It depends on the airport management.
Peter wrote:
Many airports closed because they could not open the cafe, and without the cafe, selling 10,000 calorie stodge, there is no point in life
It even more depends on the economic situation of the airfield itself. Some airfields (at least in Germany) simply can not survive if the cafe is closed as it is the biggest revenue driver of the airfield.
What would be the point of keeping an airfield open and run-in it into insolvency so that a developer can buy it and convert it into a great mall …
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The way Covid has paralyzed society since now more than a year comes at an enormeous cost, not only monetary. It is imperative that this plague gets dialled back to at least a managable disease, and there is no other way than the vaccination at the point it is now.
I get really upset when I hear talk of “COVID killed the economy” because this is absolutely NOT the case.
Politicians and Government restrictions are entirely responsable for this.
I too look at what China has done over the last year or so and cant help but think that if this virus had come from somewhere else (say Sweden) we might not have dealt with it in the same way.
Regards, SD..
Malibuflyer wrote:
It even more depends on the economic situation of the airfield itself. Some airfields (at least in Germany) simply can not survive if the cafe is closed as it is the biggest revenue driver of the airfield.
Surely the biggest revenue stream by far is aircraft hangarage / parking?
But the cafe is generally the biggest ‘operational’ revenue stream, i.e. the part that makes the most money as a result of people turning up for work and doing something for customers. Income from landing fees and fuel sales, while helpful, is nowhere near enough to sustain the business model of the average small GA (i.e. no turbine) field.
So the model that was followed by a lot of places in the UK was to close at the first opportunity (and remain closed for as long as possible), furlough all the staff at the taxpayer’s expense and suck up various government and local authority aid payments while continuing to collect the bulk of their revenue – charging full hangarage/parking to aircraft owners. Depending on how much aid they were able to claim (there has been much fraud in quickly setting up multiple associated companies to claim the same grant again and again, with little chance of anyone being caught) many airfields will never have been more profitable than they were during lockdown closure.
Has it been the same in Germany?
Malibuflyer wrote:
One of the biggest potential drivers of difference: Coffein seems to cause false positive cases so does phosphoric acid (as in Coke). Therefore the fine print clearly says that you should not eat and drink anything in the 30 minutes before the test – but who reads the fine print?
Now that is a nice tidbit of information, now that self tests are available here…. funny where you get that. This kind of stuff needs to be in big print, not small, all over the place rather than panic generators about vaccines…
skydriller wrote:
I get really upset when I hear talk of “COVID killed the economy” because this is absolutely NOT the case.
Politicians and Government restrictions are entirely responsable for this.
I too look at what China has done over the last year or so and cant help but think that if this virus had come from somewhere else (say Sweden) we might not have dealt with it in the same way.
I hear you and if you quote China as a way how the pandemic was dealt with (once they admitted it was there) what is there left to say.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The 18% seem to be in line with experience we have over here and they are not in conflict with your 1%.The difference is between “test specificity” and “testing specificity”.
The 1% refers to the test itself if administered perfectly on “lab samples”. The 18% to what happens in real life.
I am not sure this is what you mean – but the 1% is a completely different number from the 18%
Specificity = [False Positives] / [Number of Tests] = 1%
??? = [False Positives] / [Number of positive Tests] = 18%
From this one can calculate that around 1 in 20 tests was positive, which is in the right ball-park, so these numbers are consistent.
