COVID-19

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shpalman
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:06 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sat Aug 01, 2020 6:42 pm
Germany has had one of the lowest death rates but some people are disappointed with this and wish it were higher.
protests against the too-low numbers of deaths again
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Brightonian » Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:06 pm
shpalman wrote:
Sat Aug 01, 2020 6:42 pm
Germany has had one of the lowest death rates but some people are disappointed with this and wish it were higher.
protests against the too-low numbers of deaths again
And in London: "thousands" in Trafalgar Square according to an Express headline (but "hundreds" in the body of their story, and "hundreds" according to the Standard).

Hungary are closing their borders from Tuesday. I'm due to fly back from France to the UK on Monday: hope they don't start getting ideas - I do like France, just not in excessive portions, and I do need to get back anyway.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:48 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
Hungary are closing their borders from Tuesday. I'm due to fly back from France to the UK on Monday: hope they don't start getting ideas - I do like France, just not in excessive portions, and I do need to get back anyway.
"Closing the borders" only means "Not letting people in, apart from citizens and permanent residents". They absolutely won't mind if foreigners f.ck off back home.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:51 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
according to the Standard).
In related news, Piers Corbyn remains a massive thunderc.nt.
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What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Brightonian » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:28 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:48 pm
Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
Hungary are closing their borders from Tuesday. I'm due to fly back from France to the UK on Monday: hope they don't start getting ideas - I do like France, just not in excessive portions, and I do need to get back anyway.
"Closing the borders" only means "Not letting people in, apart from citizens and permanent residents". They absolutely won't mind if foreigners f.ck off back home.
Maybe I'm over-thinking, but I've been worrying recently whether in all my travelling I'm going to get stuck somewhere, like in that Tom Hanks in an airport film, if say the UK refuses all flights at the drop of a hat, what with the ever-increasing covid cases in France.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Brightonian » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:30 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
shpalman wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:06 pm
shpalman wrote:
Sat Aug 01, 2020 6:42 pm
Germany has had one of the lowest death rates but some people are disappointed with this and wish it were higher.
protests against the too-low numbers of deaths again
And in London: "thousands" in Trafalgar Square according to an Express headline (but "hundreds" in the body of their story, and "hundreds" according to the Standard).
And a demo in Paris too: "There is no scientific proof of the usefulness of wearing a mask outside," said Anais, a sociology student. "Covid-19 is not so dangerous, it mainly kills people over the age of 60." Charming.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Sat Aug 29, 2020 10:20 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:30 pm
Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
And in London: "thousands" in Trafalgar Square according to an Express headline (but "hundreds" in the body of their story, and "hundreds" according to the Standard).
And a demo in Paris too: "There is no scientific proof of the usefulness of wearing a mask outside," said Anais, a sociology student. "Covid-19 is not so dangerous, it mainly kills people over the age of 60." Charming.
TBF in London they brought out the big guns such as solipsistic musical journalist and Working Men’s Social Club-style Katie Hopkins tribute act, Sonia Poulton.

So they’ve obviously got SCIENCE! on their side, if by science we mean “person who writes the occasional articles in lifestyle magazines about why she absolutely had to send her daughter to private school”.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Sun Aug 30, 2020 3:47 pm

Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:28 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:48 pm
Brightonian wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 5:47 pm
Hungary are closing their borders from Tuesday. I'm due to fly back from France to the UK on Monday: hope they don't start getting ideas - I do like France, just not in excessive portions, and I do need to get back anyway.
"Closing the borders" only means "Not letting people in, apart from citizens and permanent residents". They absolutely won't mind if foreigners f.ck off back home.
Maybe I'm over-thinking, but I've been worrying recently whether in all my travelling I'm going to get stuck somewhere, like in that Tom Hanks in an airport film, if say the UK refuses all flights at the drop of a hat, what with the ever-increasing covid cases in France.
Even during the March-April lockdown there were still flights and trains between major cities. People went from Mallorca to the UK via Madrid, or in a few cases by ferry to Barcelona and then up through France on the TGV.

Also, I don't think there will be another full lockdown. The ones in March/April were justified because hardly anybody in the population was taking the disease seriously --- most of the people who died or were hospitalised had become infected by the middle/end of March (or lived with those who were) and there was exponential community spread. I think that enough of the at-risk people self-shielding now that we're not going to see ICUs overflowing. We'll probably end up with the "kids can go out, gran needs to stay at home" situation as a de facto thing.

The schools are the big unknown. Dutch schools have been back for a couple of weeks and I don't think there has been any reported transmission, so maybe there is a chance that this won't be a problem. Of course, the first few cases of school transmission in any country will be treated as their own sub-Armageddon. (That said, the numbers from US colleges are pretty amazing - does everyone there snog everyone else in the first week?)
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Sun Aug 30, 2020 4:55 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 3:47 pm
... I don't think there will be another full lockdown. The ones in March/April were justified because hardly anybody in the population was taking the disease seriously
Well, there was an element of "we're not going to let this scare us" in the north of Italy, which was a mistake.
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 3:47 pm
--- most of the people who died or were hospitalised had become infected by the middle/end of March (or lived with those who were)
The infection got into hospitals early on and was deliberately/negligently sent into care homes. I'd hope that lessons have been learnt from this. For example, that the people who arrive at a medical facility with an illness might have something contagious. And that we need much more testing, for those with mild symptoms and anyone with suspected exposure, not just those with a red-flag travel history or who are being carried into hospital with a dangerously low SaO2.

But really I'd hope that the incidence of non-covid-19 cold/flu would be greatly reduced by the anti-covid-19 precautions. If you're going around with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu you're still being irresponsible, if you're going to work with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu either you or your boss is being irresponsible (we really need to change the take-an-ibuprofen-and-get-to-work-you-f.cking-slacker mentality), if you manage to catch non-covid-19 cold or flu anyway then you have either failed to follow the instructions on how to not to catch covid-19 and you're just lucky that it wasn't covid-19 in this case, or you've unfortunately had to deal with a person behaving irresponsibly.
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 3:47 pm
... and there was exponential community spread.
In that early phase there would have been an order of magnitude more cases than the ones which were officially counted. (With the exponential rate we had, an order of magnitude more only corresponds to starting a week or so earlier.)
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 3:47 pm
I think that enough of the at-risk people self-shielding now that we're not going to see ICUs overflowing. We'll probably end up with the "kids can go out, gran needs to stay at home" situation as a de facto thing...
... but the kids won't be allowed to see gran?
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Re: COVID-19

Post by AMS » Sun Aug 30, 2020 6:02 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 4:55 pm
But really I'd hope that the incidence of non-covid-19 cold/flu would be greatly reduced by the anti-covid-19 precautions. If you're going around with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu you're still being irresponsible, if you're going to work with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu either you or your boss is being irresponsible (we really need to change the take-an-ibuprofen-and-get-to-work-you-f.cking-slacker mentality), if you manage to catch non-covid-19 cold or flu anyway then you have either failed to follow the instructions on how to not to catch covid-19 and you're just lucky that it wasn't covid-19 in this case, or you've unfortunately had to deal with a person behaving irresponsibly.
On this point, yes. I'm quite pleased that my workplace has instigated a rule that you don't come into the building if you have any cold/flu type symptoms, regardless of what might be the cause, but then we are able to work from home. The problem will be the places that can't do this, and especially for staff who can't afford not to be in work.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:45 pm

AMS wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 6:02 pm
shpalman wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 4:55 pm
But really I'd hope that the incidence of non-covid-19 cold/flu would be greatly reduced by the anti-covid-19 precautions. If you're going around with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu you're still being irresponsible, if you're going to work with symptomatic non-covid-19 cold/flu either you or your boss is being irresponsible (we really need to change the take-an-ibuprofen-and-get-to-work-you-f.cking-slacker mentality), if you manage to catch non-covid-19 cold or flu anyway then you have either failed to follow the instructions on how to not to catch covid-19 and you're just lucky that it wasn't covid-19 in this case, or you've unfortunately had to deal with a person behaving irresponsibly.
On this point, yes. I'm quite pleased that my workplace has instigated a rule that you don't come into the building if you have any cold/flu type symptoms, regardless of what might be the cause, but then we are able to work from home. The problem will be the places that can't do this, and especially for staff who can't afford not to be in work.
Likewise for my place of work, and it was interesting that it was a lot of the graduate engineers who were most concerned about it, so the return to work is voluntary.

Given the size of the site (it's a manufacturing site with a cleanroom so most people are used to wearing masks and gowns all shift) and the precautions, I think the risk is pretty low compared to going to the supermarket, for example.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:58 pm

The supermarket is a good example of where working from home makes no sense. But it's also a good example of the sort of place in which you don't want staff with symptoms.

What's the reasoning behind staff not having to wear masks in UK shops? I've seen some staff wearing masks anyway.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by headshot » Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:00 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:58 pm

What's the reasoning behind staff not having to wear masks in UK shops? I've seen some staff wearing masks anyway.
I dint think there is any...

What I think is crazy is that serving and kitchen staff don’t have to wear them in restaurants.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:57 pm

headshot wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:00 pm
shpalman wrote:
Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:58 pm

What's the reasoning behind staff not having to wear masks in UK shops? I've seen some staff wearing masks anyway.
I dint think there is any...

What I think is crazy is that serving and kitchen staff don’t have to wear them in restaurants.
See the links I posted upthread about the Korean Starbucks and the Swiss resturant

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... sk-wearing

https://www.thelocal.ch/20200715/only-t ... e-shields/
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:57 am

jimbob wrote:
Sat Aug 22, 2020 2:34 pm
The raw positive cases they have are also pretty small.

Image
New map
Annotation 2020-08-31 075713.png
Annotation 2020-08-31 075713.png (52.88 KiB) Viewed 3592 times
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Mon Aug 31, 2020 11:39 am

Sadly, it looks as though Herman Cain's legacy Twitter account has deleted the tweet that this was quoting, but I guess it does indeed seem to be continuing his work:
Annotation 2020-08-31 123343.png
Annotation 2020-08-31 123343.png (491.38 KiB) Viewed 3541 times
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Mon Aug 31, 2020 1:43 pm

The dead Herman Cain is even more amazing than the alive Herman Cain. It's pretty good to be a Covid denier, refuse masks, go to a Trump superspreader rally, then catch it and die. But this steps it up.

However, is it real? Or someone playing an amusing prank? If I had access to his twitter account, this is what I'd do.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:28 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 1:43 pm
The dead Herman Cain is even more amazing than the alive Herman Cain. It's pretty good to be a Covid denier, refuse masks, go to a Trump superspreader rally, then catch it and die. But this steps it up.

However, is it real? Or someone playing an amusing prank? If I had access to his twitter account, this is what I'd do.
It was real. I clicked on the tweet at first before it was presumably deleted.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:23 pm

Numbers in hospital in Italy have actually been increasing steeply over the past few days, and numbers in intensive care are increasing too. So much for the peak in new cases all being young and mild/asymptomatic.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:52 pm

jimbob wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:28 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 1:43 pm
The dead Herman Cain is even more amazing than the alive Herman Cain. It's pretty good to be a Covid denier, refuse masks, go to a Trump superspreader rally, then catch it and die. But this steps it up.

However, is it real? Or someone playing an amusing prank? If I had access to his twitter account, this is what I'd do.
It was real. I clicked on the tweet at first before it was presumably deleted.
But that doesn't mean it was him. It could be him, but it might have been the relatives, or some prankster.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Mon Aug 31, 2020 9:13 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:52 pm
jimbob wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:28 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Aug 31, 2020 1:43 pm
The dead Herman Cain is even more amazing than the alive Herman Cain. It's pretty good to be a Covid denier, refuse masks, go to a Trump superspreader rally, then catch it and die. But this steps it up.

However, is it real? Or someone playing an amusing prank? If I had access to his twitter account, this is what I'd do.
It was real. I clicked on the tweet at first before it was presumably deleted.
But that doesn't mean it was him. It could be him, but it might have been the relatives, or some prankster.
Look, the GOP like Russia, and if being dead didn't stop Brezhnev from ruling, why should it stop Cain from tweeting?
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by badger » Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:54 pm

Sorry if this has been trailed already, but MIT are offering a new course on “COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and the Pandemic” for free, streamed and open to all. 14 lectures, some interesting speakers (Inc Fauci). Starts today! (but catch up available)

https://biology.mit.edu/undergraduate/c ... -pandemic/

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Re: COVID-19

Post by PeteB » Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:38 am


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Re: COVID-19

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:36 am

A couple of weeks ago, Mrs BoaF's best friend's mum went to a rosario, a kind of indoor Catholic funeral thing they do in Mexico. Her daughter (the best friend), who's just done her finals for medical school, told her not to go and refused to drive her there, so she got a lift with a friend instead.

A week later, she collapsed, was hospitalised with pneumonia, full ventilator, heart drugs, the works.

There will now be another rosario.

It's the first fatality in somebody I've met.

The situation is really bad in Mexico still. Half a million cases and 6000 daily cases recorded, despite lack of testing. Health infrastructure was already weak. The populist government has been useless. https://m.dw.com/en/mexico-coronavirus- ... a-54615046

Given that background, it seems massively irresponsible of the church to be running indoor funerals, where by definition all the people closest to somebody who's just died come together. The Catholic Church has an enormous presence throughout developing countries, many of which continue to be very hard hit. It's often the strongest, best organised and most trusted institution - but it sounds like there has yet to be any top-down instructions to local priests on how to keep their congregation safe. It's natural that people will be turning to the church for comfort during a crisis, but churches need to accept responsibility in that role.

Obviously I'm sad on a personal level, more so for my wife who knew her well, and even more so for Alejandra who's been through the ringer in the last year for all sorts of reasons, and has just been orphaned at 25. But I'm also sad at how unnecessary so many of these deaths are - individuals relying on old habits during a new crisis; institutions refusing to adapt; failures of leadership.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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