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

Started by TordelBack, 05 March, 2020, 08:57:13 PM

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Rately

Another nothing update from Management this morning.

Contingency plan in place to keep Office open, regardless of members of staff going off sick and hopes that "It isn't as bad as we are expecting..."





TordelBack

My employers emailed me a couple of posters to print and put up in the site office, added a bit about hand washing and self-isolating to the Safety Statement and suggested I buy some hand sanitiser (and keep the receipt).

Clearly we are prepared.

paddykafka

Quote from: TordelBack on 11 March, 2020, 10:14:22 PM

And the lad himself: I'm trying to imagine a single day in my school career where I would have turned down an offer from my Dad to not go in in te morning, just so I can finish setting out a month of homework...

Honestly, young people these days, eh?  ::)

Potentially, some good news on the horizon, as suggested by Professor Luke O'Neill in the clip from yesterday's The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk. And apparently, there's an Anti-Inflammatory drug - normally used to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis - that is proving to be effective in tackling the lung symptoms. Perhaps a small chink of light shining into these dark times? Worth a listen to, anyway.

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-pat-kenny-show/race-find-coronavirus-vaccine




Jim_Campbell

The missus, who works in the support office of a very well-known high street company, has been told that effective as of tomorrow she, and literally everyone else they could get a laptop for, will be working from home for at least two weeks.

Meanwhile, we are now at the point of begging her mother to take this seriously. The mother-in-law's in at-risk group and her partner is older, has diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition — there is a very real chance that COVID-19 will kill him and no amount of blitz spirit and upper-lip-stiffening will change that simple fact.
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Professor Bear

The UK government has made its policy clear: it wants people to become infected and thus create "herd immunity", and given that they got away with killing 150 thousand (and counting) through austerity measures, I don't see them being held to account for this by our venal media class, either.

Lots of people will recover from this and they'll be young, workers, scared into a reactionary worldview, and meanwhile the victims will  be freeing up welfare money, homes, and even jobs - you have to ask what the downside is for a political class that has already doubled its wealth through a quiet genocide of the most vulnerable.  It's not that these bastards are incompetent, it's that they've been given the numbers by people who know what they're talking about and decided it's worth rolling the dice on letting us die.

Tjm86

Quote from: Cyberleader2000 on 11 March, 2020, 12:49:22 PM
so I live in Tewkesbury ... ~I need to go out today to a meeting and have to take a bus or a 50 minute walk since the bus I need to take passes through Cheltenham,

Buses running then are they?  Considering the weather I'd have thought a boat would have been better?  We moved out about 30 years ago (bugger, that long ago! Paper round from Smiths .... Making fishing tackle at Ryobi Masterline ... ) and flooding was bad enough then.  Now some lunatic has built a supermarket and massive housing estate on the fields that were flooded every year and people are surprised to find their homes regularly flooding?  That's got to do wonders for the health of local residents!

TordelBack

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 12 March, 2020, 10:58:30 AM
Meanwhile, we are now at the point of begging her mother to take this seriously. The mother-in-law's in at-risk group and her partner is older, has diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition — there is a very real chance that COVID-19 will kill him and no amount of blitz spirit and upper-lip-stiffening will change that simple fact.

We've tried everything with my 92-year old aunt, to no avail. The threat of no funerals scared her briefly, but then some Dept of Health prat came on radio and said that was an overreaction and out she toddled to M&S.

So we had a long talk about it last night and we've decided we've done all we can to keep her safe have to let her go her own way - after complications from a fall and a dose of flu she ignored the doctors and discharged herself from hospital on Christmas Day, forcing us to drive an hour each way and deliver her back to her shitty home, she rejected the home care package it took us weeks of work to arrange, she refused her landlord's offer of hand railings, an accessible shower and modernised kitchen (it's rotting yellowed chipboard straight out of the 1950s, it's horrific)
and a staircase lift etc etc  - and now she won't take any C-19  precautions.

So after years of trying to persuade her to move closer to/in with us, and running ourselves ragged running up and down to her, we've now given up: so that's probably that for her, and we can concentrate on keeping our parents alive. Family triage, it's fucking heartbreaking.

I hope your MiL sees sense, Jim.

Rately

Christ. Prayers and hopes for the best to you and yours. Nothing as hard as family.


TordelBack

#83
And that's that.  In Ireland, all schools, colleges and childcare facilities to close tonight at 6, until 29 March - which will inevitably be extended until at least 20 April. This alone will take out about a sixth of the workforce. Next it's the pubs, then government services, public transport, then... what?

I'm increasingly convinced that it's really not a good thing to have read so much SF: each one of these stages and announcements has been done a hundred times, and they echo in my ears.  The bit where they close the schools is usually the end of the chapter right before the President reveals they have no plan, and we should all stay at home and try to die with dignity. If the protagonist is lucky they'll get to spend a chapter wandering around outside marveling at the quiet streets and empty playgrounds, as an unusually large flock of birds banks and twists in an unfamiliar fashion overhead. 

Pyroxian

Sounds like Ireland's doing the sensible thing to reduce transmissions and let the virus die out, as opposed to the UK which is basically just 'Carry On, Nothing's Wrong' (Which is still better than the US's response...)

TordelBack

#85
Quote from: Pyroxian on 12 March, 2020, 02:10:36 PM
Sounds like Ireland's doing the sensible thing to reduce transmissions and let the virus die out...

That isn't going to happen, by all accounts. If we're very very lucky, we might reduce overall infections somewhat, but the plan (such as it is) is now in the 'Delay' phase: we've accepted that some huge proportion of the population are going to catch this thing, but we're trying to spread that inevitability out over as many months as possible so there is some slim hope of providing health services to the worst affected, and some form of society keeps ticking on. The alternative is that literal hell comes to visit all at once sometime later this month and 1000s die without care in horrible circumstances over a matter of weeks.

And I'm not making this shit up.  That's what the numbers, all the numbers, say.  And they've been saying the same thing for over a month now. I haven't slept much lately, as may be evident.

IndigoPrime

People in Italy are referring to "wartime triage". In other words, save whoever you can – and whoever is most likely.

Mrs IP's now considering whether to jack in her part-time job and take mini-G out of school, and screw the consequences. (She has a school trip tomorrow, which is apparently still going ahead.)

Meanwhile, my parents (late 60s) are in Spain. They have a place there, and it's quite isolated. They could wait this out. It's the low-risk option. But my mum can't/won't drive out there, and they don't speak enough Spanish and so would need a translator if hospitalised. So they were asking what they should do – and what I would do. And I... don't know. The might be able to get a flight back on Saturday, but Gatwick is of course a massive infection vector.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson seemingly thinking the smart move is to kill 2.5 million people is fucking insane.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: TordelBack on 12 March, 2020, 02:01:28 PM
And that's that.  In Ireland, all schools, colleges and childcare facilities to close tonight at 6, until 29 March - which will inevitably be extended until at least 20 April. This alone will take out about a sixth of the workforce. Next it's the pubs, then government services, public transport, then... what?



Well, that's me off for two weeks. And probably more.  We tried to teach our classes after the announcement but it was ridiculous trying to pretend things were normal and the students knew it.  So we cancelled everything and sent them home. 

On the plus side, my colleague who was off with a temperature and restricted breathing turned out only to have a throat infection. 
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

paddykafka

Glad to hear that your colleague's illness wasn't as bad as you feared, Jayzus. Checked to see why you didn't get my reply to your PM and realised that I failed to spot the "Do Not Reply to this email" notice. Doh! Will send you a PM soon.

In other news, I'm already hearing reports of Panic buying going on in shops and supermarkets around the country. Some of the lyrics from "Life During Wartime" by Talking Heads seem scarily appropriate at the moment.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now

Heard about Houston? heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody might see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones
Ain't got no records to play
Why stay in college? why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time?
Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard
I can't write nothing at all
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
I'd love to hold you, I'd like to kiss you
I ain't got no time for that now




Tjm86

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 12 March, 2020, 02:49:43 PM
(She has a school trip tomorrow, which is apparently still going ahead.)
....

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson seemingly thinking the smart move is to kill 2.5 million people is fucking insane.

Been chasing up with an upcoming trip our girls have at the end of the month to Disneyland Paris.  At the moment the trip organiser is trying to figure out which is the worst of the two evils: losing the money or putting the kids at risk.  My argument is that:
a) it is not exactly the kids that would be at risk, rather elderly and at-risk relatives;
b) if they do end up with self-isolation of someone while they are on the trip / Europe pulls a Trump and closes borders then that is likely to be a nightmare.
We'll take the hit on the money.  Sorry, consequences for others is just too much to think about.

As for Johnson, a couple of things occurs to me:
- he and other minister's have spent a lot of time talking about 'following the science'.  I hope those scientists realise what that could mean for them.
- he hasn't said what 'science' he is following.  Given Cummings' propensity for behavioural science and oddball thinking ...

Not good!