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

[IndigoPrime]

And most of that comes down to our electoral system forcing us vs them. When you only need around a third of the vote to rule in an absolute manner, you’re never aiming to bring people together, but instead to shore up your base. It’s notable that countries that have done a lit better than us mostly fall into two camps: those that are effectively dictatorships (and so can do whatever the hell they like, without popular support) or those that utilise a proportional system (thereby forcing everyone to work together for the common good—at least to some degree).

Elsewhere, the idiocy of the rules became starkly clear for me this week. Mini-IP is in Y2. One of the Y2 classes in her school had the two-cases trigger and the entire class is now on 14-day isolation. Siblings are split. Because government guidance states that entire households only have to isolate if someone’s showing symptoms, said siblings legally have to go to school. One is in mini-IP’s class. So there’s now a direct vector into my family, because the government guidance is nonsensical. Surely, _households_ should isolate, not just individuals—doubly so with children. But then that would impact the economy! So: more spread/less containment. I’m just so fucking hollow right now from everything.

[Tjm86]

The 'covid-secure' measures in schools are an absolute joke, more so in secondary than primary.  The idea of bubbles at least works better when the kids are in year groups all day with the same teacher.  In comp the kids stay in one place and the teachers move around except in year 10 and 11 where they have options.

Even so, staggered starts actually mean kids hanging around outside the school gates for different lengths of time and mixing freely.  So those efforts aren't even a joke.  They're beyond laughable.

Then there is this malarkey about how much of a transmission vector school kids are.  "Not likely to get it?"  All of a sudden talk is of comps being one of the main vectors.  Let's just agree that the evidence is not robust enough to state with any degree of certainty.

Not that it matters too much.  It isn't Covid that is going to bring down teachers, it's burnout.

Right now I'm about an inch away from going out and finding someone with this f***ing disease and hoping I'm one of the 1%.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'm in Dublin city centre. Apart from the queues outside shops, you'd think it was a normal December. My god, we are going to pay for this in January.

I also see that the front page of the Irish Mail says that our president will take the vaccine. It's a strange day when it's newsworthy that an elderly man is planning to use the healthcare system to protect himself from getting ill. I know, I know, we haven't seen the longterm effects of the new vaccine, but if the arguments against it are of similar quality to existing anti-vax arguments, I'll be first in line for my jabs (after the essential workers and the vulnerable of course).

[IndigoPrime]

In comp the kids stay in one place and the teachers move around except in year 10 and 11 where they have options.

They never did when I was at school. Right from the first year (now Y7), you’d move to the specialist classroom for any given subject (maths; science; arts; music; CDT; home ec; etc). Has that all gone?

But, yeah, the ‘bubble’ at secondary is even more ridiculous. It’s the entire school and all overlaps.

[Funt Solo]

Just got invited to a whole bunch of family gatherings over Chrimbo - which is nice on the one hand, and head-shaking on the other. Washington State is currently on a no-indoor socializing and only five outdoor (but it's a limit not a target). We're having a post-Thanksgiving surge in the US just now as well. So, planning to repeat that, but even worse, for Christmas, is odd.

I'm looking forward to everyone getting vaccinated.*


* So we can move forward to our ultimate aim of a cashless society controlled by our lizardine masters from Sirius. "Yes, Miss Moneypenny" was just a code phrase! All (sheep) for one master, and one master for all (sheep). The Gates have been opened. The reset begins!

[Tjm86]

On this side of the pond a couple of London based super-spreaders are doing a whistle stop tour of the UK, a-la-Trump.

Somehow someone somewhere actually thought that was a good idea?

 

[sheridan]

On this side of the pond a couple of London based super-spreaders are doing a whistle stop tour of the UK, a-la-Trump.
 

Which London based super-spreaders are they then?  Is this an abstruse reference to something in the news?

[Tjm86]

Yep.

Sturgeon weren't too impressed yesterday, today is Gething's turn.

[sheridan]

Yep.

Sturgeon weren't too impressed yesterday, today is Gething's turn.

So a Scottish and a Welsh MP are criticising someone from London?  Boris Johnson?  Cummings?

[Tjm86]

Cambridge

[shaolin_monkey]

Yep.

Sturgeon weren't too impressed yesterday, today is Gething's turn.

So a Scottish and a Welsh MP are criticising someone from London?  Boris Johnson?  Cummings?

Presumably you mean those Royals?

[Funt Solo]

Sorry to ruin this enthralling guessing game:

Covid: Royal visit during pandemic questioned by minister


Let's play "Which Privileged Person Has Adopted The As I Say Not As I Do Approach This Week?"  Well, if it's good enough for Cummings...


See also: Patel gets rewarded and backed by the Prime Minsiter for bullying her colleagues.
See also: Jeremy Clarkson gets rewarded and backed by Amazon for punching an underling.
See also: Trump gets rewarded by lots of people for locking children in cages and stealing them from their mothers, who he then deports.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I've been back teaching in a classroom this week - all very well distanced, masks, perspex screens, sanitiser everywhere, and very few students. It's hard to describe how mind - blowing it all is - most never turned on their video for the online classes, and people who have been a name on a black square on Zoom for months now exist in 3d.  (One woman I've been teaching for 6 months, it turns out, looks like a 6 foot tall supermodel - but then again she's my student so forget I said that.)

It won't last of course, I expect January will be Zoom city for everyone.

[Funt Solo]

Being invited to some relatively large-scale seasonal gatherings and having to turn them down, my mind turned to the mathematics of communication.

Like, when there are two people, there is one line of communication, and when there are three, it's three lines. But when there are four, it's six lines. And you could map this onto potential Covid transmission vectors during a gathering of n people.

And there's a formula - and it's n * (n-1) / 2

So, our current state limit for groups is five people from outside your household at one outdoor meeting, which gives you 10 vectors of transmission.

But the limit for a wedding or a funeral (indoors, even) is thirty people, which gives you 435 vectors of transmission.

And, because we all fear God, the limit for a religious gathering is two hundred (or twa hunner if you're terribly Scottish indeed), which gives you an astounding 19,900 potential vectors of transmission. God wins!

[M.I.K.]

And, because we all fear God, the limit for a religious gathering is two hundred (or twa hunner if you're terribly Scottish indeed)

Or "twae hunder", allowing for slight regional variations in dialect.