Lockdown again again

[Tessa K]

Here in England we are now into the third series of Lockdown and, frankly, the writing isn't nearly as good; the characters are starting to look tired and the plots are getting less and less convincing by the week. The show really need to hire better writers and have a serious recasting of the main actors.

How is it affecting you guys? It doesn't make much of a shift from Tier 4 for me except the flatmate is now working from home.

[TAFKAsoveda]

I’m actually seeing cases of COVID now I; work.
Only difference for me is kids are happy because they are home schooling!

[bagpuss]

I am very much not ecstatic at home-schooling again, especially as work is likely to be busier than it was in home-schooling round 1. The bagkitten is thoroughly miserable about the idea, too.

That said, I am fully supportive of the school closures - numbers round here have been going through the roof and it's come much to close to home for comfort with us all needing to self-isolate over Christmas thanks to the bagkitten's friend's mum going down with COVID on Friday 18th, when we'd all seen her on the Thursday. Thankfully it was only on the school run so outdoors and reasonably well distanced and she didn't pass it on to anyone other than her husband. Plus the fact that the dad went down with it several days later suggests that the mum got it from elsewhere and it didn't start with the daughter, which means that it may have kept out of the school community completely, but only thanks to lucky timing with the end of term.

Other than schooling, it will make no difference to us compared with being in Tier 4, as we've only been going out for exercise in any case.

[JQH]

It won't make much difference to me. TAFKATH will be homeschooling K while looking after K2, which will be fun. K2 is now self propelled and his hobbies include chasing the cats and opening cupboards and pulling the contents onto the floor.

In other news, what happened to all those laptops school kids were promised?

[OneOffDave]

Just before Christmas we moved to an effectively totally remote operation despite have been in the office through out the whole year with just a couple of cases in about 150 people and no workplace transmission. This variant does seem to have them concerned as transmissibility does seem to be higher across the board. The heatmap on the gov.uk page is really interesting

I'm now spending 23 hours a day in one room as I'm not going to the office and not sure how that will pan out mentally. Need to find somewhere close that's accessible for exercise which might be tricky. If it's more than 10 minutes away, I wouldn't be able to get there and back and exercise in my lunch break so it's going to have the be in the dark.

[nezumi]

I've been shielding throughout so it makes absolutely no difference to me. I do think it's a good thing though - I know quite a few people who've had it but nobody close has died, thankfully. One mate, a 6ft something tattooed singer in a very angry band, ended up in intensive care for a few days; never smoked, no underlying conditions but still could have died. I'm staying well clear and carrying on dettolling literally everything that comes through the front door.

[Tessa K]

I'm now living in a major incident area.

The spread of Covid in London is "out of control" according to Sadiq Khan, who has declared a "major incident".

The coronavirus infection rate in London has exceeded 1,000 per 100,000 people, based on the latest figures from Public Health England.

However, the Office for National Statistics recently estimated as many as 1 in 30 Londoners has coronavirus.

This is f.cking terrifying. And entirely preventable. A corrupt, incompetent government + selfish morons have brought us to breaking point.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55588163