Day of Chaos 2: a.Covid-19 thread.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

(Note: that last wasn't specifically aimed at you, Dr X, in case it sounds horribly patronising. I've only really wrapped my head around the whole bond market thing recently and I just thought, as a general point, it was worth explaining why, in exceptional circumstances, that the government literally can create money out of thin air.)

No offence taken at all.

I do think that my point remains valid, viz: there is no right answer, we need to compromise, we should recognise that, and then have an open debate on what compromises we want to make.

And yes, by compromise I do mean take risk with public health (vs lockdown and consequences, vs economic harm).

This is NOT going away, ever, so we need to find a new way of functioning as a society. I feel the debate is between two extremes when the middle ground is needed. "Stay in to be safe" or "feck it, carry on like before" are not the options.

[Jim_Campbell]

This is NOT going away, ever, so we need to find a new way of functioning as a society. I feel the debate is between two extremes when the middle ground is needed. "Stay in to be safe" or "feck it, carry on like before" are not the options.

There is, as I said: continuous, random, mass-testing and targeted lockdowns. If you can get your data to sufficiently granularity for location, and the speed of test/results and response down to a day or so, then you can lock down practically by street. At any one time, small numbers of people are going to be massively disrupted, but they can be given targetted support and there's no need to disrupt the economy at the macro scale, by shutting down entire cites/regions/countries.

[IndigoPrime]

And that support needs to be global—no exceptions. No more "well, you only started your business last year" or "you earn over £50k per year" or "you run a limited company and so we the government think you're a massive tax cheat for some reason".

[Jim_Campbell]

This is NOT going away, ever, so we need to find a new way of functioning as a society. I feel the debate is between two extremes when the middle ground is needed. "Stay in to be safe" or "feck it, carry on like before" are not the options.

One of my (many) issues with the way the Westminster government is handling this is that their idea of "new normal" is "exactly the same as the old normal, only a lot more people die every year". Charitably, this is a failure of imagination. Cynically, it's typical Tory capitulation to their traditional vested interests.

Consider the move to home-working. Ninety per cent of UK workers would be happy to work from home even if not required to by Covid restrictions. Although not all jobs can be done from home, and not all home environments are suitable for home-working, this is clearly a net good. It improves employees' work/life balance, reduces pollution and fuel consumption from commuting, and there's many a senior manager looking at his company's current bill for office space rental and mentally calculating the potential savings.

The government cries "Oh, noes! Pret A Manger will go bust! Back to your offices, plebs!" I say: fuck Pret A Manger. Imagine, for a moment, that it's simply accepted that commercial office space demand will contract by 75%. All those city centre offices could be repurposed to residential space — you could have people just living in the town/city centres, which would easily replace the footfall lost to absent workers.

You could remake the town/city centre environment. You no longer have to plan and build them around the needs of a transport system that has to move tens of thousands of people into and out of the area en masse, twice a day. Great swathes of public space could be pedestrianised and greened. New businesses will move into the area to service a residential population. We could remake huge chunks of the urban environment.

You know who doesn't want that? The commercial landlords, who don't want the headache of residential tenants, and property developers, who've spent the last 30+ years ensuring that demand for housing exceeds supply in order to inflate their profits. It's basically win-win for everyone else, but the Tories will always support their own, in this case the land and property business lobby.

[IndigoPrime]

Govt: go to work and help save our city centre shops and eateries!

Also govt: why aren't you bastards keeping your local high streets alive?


You mention failure of imagination. That's the Tories all over. They just can't see past how they themselves are, hence the argument that people are slackers unless in the office being watched.

[Dandontdare]

.. and while city centre outlets catering to commuters and office-workers have suffered, the local shops that we have been told for years are in dire straits have been thriving as people shop from local grocers and mini-supermarkets.

[sheridan]

.. and while city centre outlets catering to commuters and office-workers have suffered, the local shops that we have been told for years are in dire straits have been thriving as people shop from local grocers and mini-supermarkets.

The area around my workplace: full of chain caterers (McDonalds, Pret, Costa, etc) plus a few pubs (over-priced and if you tried to have lunch there you'd probably have to go back to work before it arrived).  Never use them, before or after lockdown.

The area around my home: lots of local caterers (cafes, greasy chicken shops) plus a few pubs.  In the first week of working from home used a few of the cafes during lunch hour (none during lockdown).

I know which I prefer.

[Funt Solo]

It is interesting how some companies (e.g. Twitter) have said they'd be keen for their employees to work from home all the time but others have said it doesn't feel right not having face-to-face meetings.

I would have imagined that the decision would be driven by cost and productivity, but it seems more like it's ideological for some.

(Cynically, perhaps they would rather have non-recorded meetings! There are some things my boss will only discuss face-to-face for purposes of deniability, which makes sense in a litigious culture.)

[broodblik]

It is interesting how some companies (e.g. Twitter) have said they'd be keen for their employees to work from home all the time but others have said it doesn't feel right not having face-to-face meetings.

I would have imagined that the decision would be driven by cost and productivity, but it seems more like it's ideological for some.

The company I am working for do not want us to work from office (if you want to go to office you have to get special permission). The strangest think is that we have been more productive since the lock-down started.  I have been working longer hours as well.

[IndigoPrime]

A company I work with found the same. It enforced holiday time to counter this. (Said time was not taken from your allocation — it was provided in addition to it.)

[Funt Solo]

As regards the wider topic of what works better to both combat the spread of the virus whilst keeping the economy (and other wider aspects of society, such as social care) healthy, I'm interested to view the results from Scotland (low spread, schools back) compared with Washington state (low spread, schools online).

Or: I wish my daughter was back enjoying the full school experience ... but I don't want that to cause her older relatives (including me, funnily enough) to die or become terribly ill.

[shaolin_monkey]

My gut feeling on the whole "get people back to the workplace because if the economy suffers we all suffer" is that this is pure Conservative ideology over what we are actually capable of in terms of looking after our citizens, and it always has been - the recent welfare reforms being a great example.

We are the sixth richest nation on the planet FFS. If we can't give everyone a roof over their head and food in their belly AT ALL TIMES, let alone in this kind of crisis, then what is the point of 'the economy'?

Fucking Tories. I wouldn't let my imaginary dog piss on them if they were on fire.

How many more people must die before we forcibly eject them? What is the line we are waiting to be crossed?

[TordelBack]

I drive by several primary schools at junior pick-up time everyday. The areas in front of the gates are as jammed with chatting parents as ever, but at each one the only people I see wearing masks are grandparents. The message that basic masks protect OTHERS, not yourself, still hasn't even begun to get through.

Meanwhile my brother-in-law has his 75 year old diabetic father doing the school run for him, and he won't be told.

This is going to be the most depressing winter of our lives.

[broodblik]

I think governments world-wide are clueless on how the handle the balance between saving lives and not allowing the economy to go up in smoke. 

[IndigoPrime]

School: my wife remains literally the only person apart from staff wearing a mask on the school run. She gets funny looks. A parent recently chatted with her about how masks have now become "second nature" and how great that was. She noted the other parent was not wearing one.

As for "give everyone a roof over their head and food in their belly AT ALL TIMES", it's these days now very obvious we don't do that because we don't want to. (We being on a societal basis.) For some countries, this would be tough. For the UK, UBI would be viable. But that would require everyone to actually pay a reasonable amount of tax.

What is interesting in the UK is that we're now rapidly heading towards the US model. There, you had fairly similar societal tiers to the UK, but the rich got richer and richer, squeezing the 'middle class'. (And, yes, I know that term means something a bit different there, but even so.) Here, we're seeing the same. The Tories never gave a fuck about the less wealthy, but now also don't give a fuck about the middle classes either. Only the rich matter. But without that middle class voting pool, the Tories would be toast. I just hope enough of them see through the bullshit next time round and vote in Labour MPs (or Lib Dems in Con/LD marginals).