Here's the problem I have. I am allowed, as the rules stand at the moment, to EXERCISE once a day and SHOP once a day. I do not have access to a car, therefore have to WALK to the shops in order to shop. WALKING is an EXERCISE therefore I have to either SHOP but not EXERCISE or EXERCISE but not SHOP. This is why I have come down in favour of a complete national lockdown with the army delivering supplies because although 95% are following the rules (based on that poll a few days ago) it is the 5% who are not that is ruining it for everyone else.
Is this another attempt at humour?
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
You missed out plenty of tapping the wifey...
I think for a lot of middle class professionals, whose jobs can be done from home and own large-ish houses with gardens, life is probably not that bad at all. More time with the family, no commuting etc.
I really wouldn't fancy being crammed in a one / two bed flat in a tower block for 3 months though, and where you know a significant proportion are going out to work every day and potentially coming back covering every surface with the CV.
Oh, of course. I cant imagine what it must be like for large families in urban flats. Or indeed two young people in a studio flat. Or a wife and a husband trapped in a dead marriage now trapped for real.
And then we might reach an Ecuador situation, where living people are literally trapped with the dead.....
Inshallah the UK does better than that.
If the health system collapses...that means people die who are sick at home...not just the ones with Covid... and we would have countless cadavers in people's homes that need collecting...
That is why the Govt's strategy is to protect the NHS....its not out of any great love for the NHS....it is to safeguard us from an unimaginable social and economic catastrophe....we are not a third world country, but without a functional health system we would quickly be one....
That is why these Nightingales had to be set up....
And that is why we are locked in...
You obviously get this.....but there are plenty of folk around who don't...and I do not want us to fall off the cliff before they do....
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Are you are so senile that you still do not see your beginning-of-March calculation, *even with hindsight,* as something to be even slightly ashamed of?
I followed the government's advice which was to avoid Lombardy. South Tyrol had 3 cases from memory and London had 85. It was a rational decision with no adverse consequences.
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
I would like to a journalist to ask the eggheads do they know why it is that the NHS, despite starting with a lower capacity then many European nations, hasn't crashed, but we are running at the same level of deaths as the likes of Italy whose did.
Isnt it all down to what you measure. We test people I'll enough to get to hospital. So if 20% are I'll enough to go to hospital and 10% of those going to hospital you get our figures. If you test people in the general community you find lots of people that don't need hospital and the ratio of death to cases is much lower.
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
This is very interesting, thanks for posting. However I don't think it undermines the central point. It's not where the Commandments came from, it is what they achieved.
Didn't stop you Christianists from colonising or enslaving people on five continents.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Is it though?
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I'm fortunate I can tell my kids that granddad and grandma have got some sweeties for you.
Why are CH4 news even raising the conspiracy of government death numbers? Does anybody really think the UK government is deliberately fiddling the figures? And the likes of Italy and Spain aren't counting deaths outside of hospitals.
The reality is this is incredibly fast moving, unprecedented rate of deaths and while hospitals are fighting at near max capacity and the rest of us trying to hide away.
And it is also clear, that the ONS is going to pick up the data. There is no China style suppression going on.
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Are you are so senile that you still do not see your beginning-of-March calculation, *even with hindsight,* as something to be even slightly ashamed of?
I followed the government's advice which was to avoid Lombardy. South Tyrol had 3 cases from memory and London had 85. It was a rational decision with no adverse consequences.
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
Funny you should mention Milgram. Obedience to Authority has been on my mind frequently of late. I`ll have to re-read it. Fascinating but disturbing book.
RE: Chinese students abandoning UK Universities and leave a massive financial hole.
I think another risk is potential students realise that they are better off doing some sort of online further education, rather than racking up crazy debts moving away from home and starting a course that doesn't almost guarantee a financial pay off.
Could be tough times in the further education sector, how many people are teaching not very valuable courses at lower end universities, that could simply be replaced by a £9.99 Udemy course?
If so, and I think you are right, then that would improve the the efficiency of post school education, and consistently have overall positive effects to the economy
But the entire reason for sending 50% of to university was to hide young adult unemployment.
Universality education is for the most part a consumption good packaged and sold as an investment good, I.e. the benefit is having 3 or 4 years of fun, while telling yourself that this will help you long term, which encourages people to overpay, it may be fun and slightly improve your salary, but when you include 3 or 4 years when you are not working to the debt that you get at universality, its not worth it for a lot who now go.
Yep - I've got to the point where I can't see the benefit unless you know exactly what you want to do trouble is most 18 year olds don't.
The daughter who is off to university this year wants to do Film Composition and has got onto the best appropriate course. It has still taken her (and me) 9 months to convince my wife that a conservatoire was a better place than a proper (Russell Group) university as she is still thinks things are the same as they were back in the 90's.
Some of the former polys (for example) took the bit in their teeth and really changed. Others turned into degree mills of the worst type.
I have always thought that mandating going to university at 18 is a disaster for many.
I don't think Britons are intrinsically thicker than their peers in international competitors, in which much the same proportion of the population gets tertiary educated. In South Korea it is 70%. In a world where service and intellect industries are the future that level of education is to be expected, and needs paying for.
That many British universities are piss poor at educating students, while ripping off the government for fees is a slightly different issue to whether 50% of Brits should go to University.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
The Govt's role has to get as many people calmly through this crisis before we get a vaccine.....so good on those folk who are doing OK....and if the Govt have to print money, pile on debts for the future...then so be it....because the alternative of a failing state is a bit worse....
RE: Chinese students abandoning UK Universities and leave a massive financial hole.
I think another risk is potential students realise that they are better off doing some sort of online further education, rather than racking up crazy debts moving away from home and starting a course that doesn't almost guarantee a financial pay off.
Could be tough times in the further education sector, how many people are teaching not very valuable courses at lower end universities, that could simply be replaced by a £9.99 Udemy course?
If so, and I think you are right, then that would improve the the efficiency of post school education, and consistently have overall positive effects to the economy
But the entire reason for sending 50% of to university was to hide young adult unemployment.
Universality education is for the most part a consumption good packaged and sold as an investment good, I.e. the benefit is having 3 or 4 years of fun, while telling yourself that this will help you long term, which encourages people to overpay, it may be fun and slightly improve your salary, but when you include 3 or 4 years when you are not working to the debt that you get at universality, its not worth it for a lot who now go.
Yep - I've got to the point where I can't see the benefit unless you know exactly what you want to do trouble is most 18 year olds don't.
The daughter who is off to university this year wants to work in film composition and has got herself onto the best appropriate course. It has still taken her (and me) 9 months to convince my wife that a conservatoire was a better place than a proper (Russell Group) university as she is still thinks things are the same as they were back in the 90's.
The counter argument is what if, 3 years into a film composition career, she hates it
I would like to a journalist to ask the eggheads do they know why it is that the NHS, despite starting with a lower capacity then many European nations, hasn't crashed, but we are running at the same level of deaths as the likes of Italy whose did.
Isnt it all down to what you measure. We test people I'll enough to get to hospital. So if 20% are I'll enough to go to hospital and 10% of those going to hospital you get our figures. If you test people in the general community you find lots of people that don't need hospital and the ratio of death to cases is much lower.
I am talking about the number of deaths as given by the daily stats. For both UK and Italy they are only for those dying in hospital.
There is no evidence at the moment that the NHS aren't taking ill people who need hospital treatment, there is still spare capacity (albeit in London there isn't much headroom). But, we aren't just leaving people to die, because we can't fit anymore people in.
Italy tried to take as many as possible, the hospitals in the North were total warzones, patients everywhere, and system totally crashed.
But despite that, both countries appear to be recording the same amount of deaths of those in hospital.
For those of us stuck in titchy homes, however, things aren't so smart and easy. We're relatively lucky - this is a small flat, but it's only in a little block of six and it's in a nice area - but if you're a whole family stuck on the 15th floor somewhere in a grotty, inner city ex-council estate then this must already be a testing and pretty miserable slog.
Some people are enduring this lockdown OK, perhaps because their lives are quite dull to start with.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Is it though?
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I'm fortunate I can tell my kids that granddad and grandma have got some sweeties for you.
But under normal circumstances the rugrats would be in school.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Not so sure about your last bit. I think lots of people enjoy the social side of going out to work.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I would like to a journalist to ask the eggheads do they know why it is that the NHS, despite starting with a lower capacity then many European nations, hasn't crashed, but we are running at the same level of deaths as the likes of Italy whose did.
Would be interesting to have some other European comparisons.
My wife's niece is working on the front line in Toulon & we get weekly updates. She phoned us three weeks ago asking if we could send her some P2 or P3 respirators, continuous shortages of PPE in the hospitals there . They are receiving patients in the south from other parts of France which have run out of bed capacity. At the beginning of this week they hit 10,000 tests per day.
They have been told that the EU tender for ventilators ,PPE etc.should be signed very soon & they should expect to get new ventlators in July. They currently have 8,000 ventilators.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Is it though?
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I'm fortunate I can tell my kids that granddad and grandma have got some sweeties for you.
But under normal circumstances the rugrats would be in school.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Working from home may be the sort of thing people enjoy for a few weeks or months but get fed up with later on.
For those of us stuck in titchy homes, however, things aren't so smart and easy. We're relatively lucky - this is a small flat, but it's only in a little block of six and it's in a nice area - but if you're a whole family stuck on the 15th floor somewhere in a grotty, inner city ex-council estate then this must already be a testing and pretty miserable slog.
Some people are enduring this lockdown OK, perhaps because their lives are quite dull to start with.
I can't believe anyone is enjoying it.
I need just three nights in Inverness to do those last two trains to Kyle of Lochalsh and to Thurso/Wick to complete the normal weekday National Rail network!
Before Covid, I had been hoping to do that trip some time round about now!
I would like to a journalist to ask the eggheads do they know why it is that the NHS, despite starting with a lower capacity then many European nations, hasn't crashed, but we are running at the same level of deaths as the likes of Italy whose did.
Isnt it all down to what you measure. We test people I'll enough to get to hospital. So if 20% are I'll enough to go to hospital and 10% of those going to hospital you get our figures. If you test people in the general community you find lots of people that don't need hospital and the ratio of death to cases is much lower.
I am talking about the number of deaths as given by the daily stats. For both UK and Italy they are only for those dying in hospital.
There is no evidence at the moment that the NHS aren't taking ill people who need hospital treatment, there is still spare capacity (albeit in London there isn't much headroom). But, we aren't just leaving people to die, because we can't fit anymore people in.
Italy tried to take as many as possible, the hospitals in the North were total warzones, patients everywhere, and system totally crashed.
But despite that, both countries appear to be recording the same amount of deaths of those in hospital.
I think the care system is taking much more pressure off the hospitals in the UK (for once) unlike Italy which doesn't have such a widespread social care system...this means that 100's and perhaps potentially 1000's of geriatrics in the UK are kept out of hospitals..they are still dying of Covid, but at least (importantly) not taking up a hospital bed...and ditto France
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Is it though?
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I am not saying you never go into the office. But every day? You love the office that much that you commute every day for a couple of hours, just to be there is worth it?
I am totally biased, as have WFH for basically ever and love it. When I need to work, I can totally focus and because I have no commute and flexible working hours, I can fit in whatever I want in order to have that social contact.
Here's the problem I have. I am allowed, as the rules stand at the moment, to EXERCISE once a day and SHOP once a day. I do not have access to a car, therefore have to WALK to the shops in order to shop. WALKING is an EXERCISE therefore I have to either SHOP but not EXERCISE or EXERCISE but not SHOP. This is why I have come down in favour of a complete national lockdown with the army delivering supplies because although 95% are following the rules (based on that poll a few days ago) it is the 5% who are not that is ruining it for everyone else.
Is this another attempt at humour?
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
Every time you go out you increase your risk of infection. I am baffled why anyone would try and come up with reasons to leave the house more than they need to.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
Disastrous for on the job training and sharing of experience as well.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Is it though?
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I'm fortunate I can tell my kids that granddad and grandma have got some sweeties for you.
If that's the only remaining obstacle once this is all over, then the working at home parents can keep doing as they must presumably have to do if they're both going out to work anyway, and continue to stick the young kiddies into hideously expensive childcare.
Having to pay for hideously expensive childcare is still a quantum leap forward from having to pay for hideously expensive childcare *AND* even more hideously expensive train tickets, with the soul-destroying horror of thousands of hours every year being wasted travelling on the cattle trucks to boot.
Working from home won't suit everybody, but it'll make living substantially less stressful and less expensive for a great many.
I would like to a journalist to ask the eggheads do they know why it is that the NHS, despite starting with a lower capacity then many European nations, hasn't crashed, but we are running at the same level of deaths as the likes of Italy whose did.
Isnt it all down to what you measure. We test people I'll enough to get to hospital. So if 20% are I'll enough to go to hospital and 10% of those going to hospital you get our figures. If you test people in the general community you find lots of people that don't need hospital and the ratio of death to cases is much lower.
Today Britain's daily death toll has exceeded the worst day in Spain, and is 18 short of Italy's. We havent peaked yet although I do expect the next few days numbers will look lower due to Easter (much like weekend lag)
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
What a weird website. Are they New Agers, or David Icke-ists, or Gnostics, or something?
"Our mission is to unite the scientific and religious ways of thinking, and our ultimate goal is to introduce and prove so called Theory of Everything and Nothing (TEN). This theory can explain all the existing theories and sacred texts, and even more point out their common symmetries and other structures. The first results are already published in Finnish, and hopefully soon we are translating those in English too."
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
It depends how you make friends I suppose. My friends are all people I have met through shared interests and hobbies. I have never* made close friends with work colleagues, I don't have enough in common with them, work is merely a source of relatively low-grade casual contact.
*OK, I did once go out with the work experience girl
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Are you are so senile that you still do not see your beginning-of-March calculation, *even with hindsight,* as something to be even slightly ashamed of?
I followed the government's advice which was to avoid Lombardy. South Tyrol had 3 cases from memory and London had 85. It was a rational decision with no adverse consequences.
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
You don't see a difference between the instructions in that experiment, and the law?
You don't. And you don't see the irony in saying in the same breath that you are a free spirit untrammelled by the rules which bind the little people, and that you are completely shielded from blame if you "follow the government's advice?" What did the government's advice about travel to Lombardy have, that the government's instructions about lockdown lack?
Your decision to go to Italy shows you to be a conceited old fool with a potentially fatal (to others - I am less fussed about you) inability to make a proper assessment of evidence available to you. Do the figures 3300 in a year vs 19,000 in six weeks not bring that home to you? I have no desire to go on about this, but do stop giving large about how much bloody cleverer you are than the little people because the fucking Milgram experiment. You just aren't.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
My employer is due to consolidate 3 offices into 1 by the end of next year. I imagine the desk numbers and floor space required is being significantly reduced.
RE: Chinese students abandoning UK Universities and leave a massive financial hole.
I think another risk is potential students realise that they are better off doing some sort of online further education, rather than racking up crazy debts moving away from home and starting a course that doesn't almost guarantee a financial pay off.
Could be tough times in the further education sector, how many people are teaching not very valuable courses at lower end universities, that could simply be replaced by a £9.99 Udemy course?
If so, and I think you are right, then that would improve the the efficiency of post school education, and consistently have overall positive effects to the economy
But the entire reason for sending 50% of to university was to hide young adult unemployment.
Universality education is for the most part a consumption good packaged and sold as an investment good, I.e. the benefit is having 3 or 4 years of fun, while telling yourself that this will help you long term, which encourages people to overpay, it may be fun and slightly improve your salary, but when you include 3 or 4 years when you are not working to the debt that you get at universality, its not worth it for a lot who now go.
Yep - I've got to the point where I can't see the benefit unless you know exactly what you want to do trouble is most 18 year olds don't.
The daughter who is off to university this year wants to work in film composition and has got herself onto the best appropriate course. It has still taken her (and me) 9 months to convince my wife that a conservatoire was a better place than a proper (Russell Group) university as she is still thinks things are the same as they were back in the 90's.
The counter argument is what if, 3 years into a film composition career, she hates it
The backup plan is that she has a degree and heads back to her current school for teacher training to do either Music / English / RE (it's Catholic) in secondary school. She's been helping out in her free lessons for the last couple of years so knows what to expect and how to keep a class of bored uninterested Year 9's at least quiet during the lesson.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
And how do you explain countries where the death rate is way way lower than 1%? New Zealand for example?
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I'm over 40, and I'm ready to get out the house and (you know) interact with other people.
I want to go to restaraunts again. I want to eat at Killer Noodle in Sawtelle. I want to have friends over for drinks and dinner. I want to go swimming in my local gym again.
I want to fly back to London and to see my family and my friends.
I want to go into the office, and actually meet my assistant. I want to kick my marketing person in the arse. I want to be able to go to Phoenix and meet my new customers.
And most of all, I want my kids back at school.
However, I am also painfully aware that - left unchecked - this could kill a million people and overwhelm the health service, and be utterly horrendous.
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
This is very interesting, thanks for posting. However I don't think it undermines the central point. It's not where the Commandments came from, it is what they achieved.
Didn't stop you Christianists from colonising or enslaving people on five continents.
I am not aware that any belief system has ever stopped people who were more powerful than their neighbours from doing that. However, it may have blunted some of its excesses. It was a Christian campaign that outlawed the slave trade.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I am not saying you never go into the office. But every day? You love the office that much that you commute every day for a couple of hours, just to be there is worth it?
I am totally biased, as have WFH for basically ever and love it. When I need to work, I can totally focus and because I have no commute and flexible working hours, I can fit in whatever I want in order to have that social contact.
I don't think that you're unusual in that respect either. It takes all sorts.
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Problem is that you think you are smart and sophisticated enough not to have a problem.
But what if you are wrong and someone dies as a result? What if someone less smart and sophisticated than you copies you, makes a mistake and someone dies as a result?
This lockdown is shit. But thee Ed government has made an assessment of what is best for society as a whole and has asked us to abide by some simple restrictions on our normal life. For the greater good.
Here's the problem I have. I am allowed, as the rules stand at the moment, to EXERCISE once a day and SHOP once a day. I do not have access to a car, therefore have to WALK to the shops in order to shop. WALKING is an EXERCISE therefore I have to either SHOP but not EXERCISE or EXERCISE but not SHOP. This is why I have come down in favour of a complete national lockdown with the army delivering supplies because although 95% are following the rules (based on that poll a few days ago) it is the 5% who are not that is ruining it for everyone else.
Is this another attempt at humour?
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
Every time you go out you increase your risk of infection. I am baffled why anyone would try and come up with reasons to leave the house more than they need to.
Indeed. I have been out twice since 23 March - once for shopping, once to run an errand for a friend who is self-isolating - other than my daily exercise which I have done every day. A walk or a run. Even if you don't drive, it is unnecessary to shop daily, you can carry quite a lot in a rucksack. And if the shop is not far enough away to constitute suitable exercise, you can visit it on your way back from a longer walk.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I am not saying you never go into the office. But every day? You love the office that much that you commute every day for a couple of hours, just to be there is worth it?
I am totally biased, as have WFH for basically ever and love it. When I need to work, I can totally focus and because I have no commute and flexible working hours, I can fit in whatever I want in order to have that social contact.
I don't think that you're unusual in that respect either. It takes all sorts.
I would be less happy if Mrs U also turns into a full time work from homer...I won't miss the nagging of why haven't I washed up or why haven't I stuck my gym kit in the washing machine straight after exercising.
I normally know I have until at 5.59pm to do all that stuff :-)
RE: Chinese students abandoning UK Universities and leave a massive financial hole.
I think another risk is potential students realise that they are better off doing some sort of online further education, rather than racking up crazy debts moving away from home and starting a course that doesn't almost guarantee a financial pay off.
Could be tough times in the further education sector, how many people are teaching not very valuable courses at lower end universities, that could simply be replaced by a £9.99 Udemy course?
If so, and I think you are right, then that would improve the the efficiency of post school education, and consistently have overall positive effects to the economy
But the entire reason for sending 50% of to university was to hide young adult unemployment.
Universality education is for the most part a consumption good packaged and sold as an investment good, I.e. the benefit is having 3 or 4 years of fun, while telling yourself that this will help you long term, which encourages people to overpay, it may be fun and slightly improve your salary, but when you include 3 or 4 years when you are not working to the debt that you get at universality, its not worth it for a lot who now go.
Yep - I've got to the point where I can't see the benefit unless you know exactly what you want to do trouble is most 18 year olds don't.
The daughter who is off to university this year wants to do Film Composition and has got onto the best appropriate course. It has still taken her (and me) 9 months to convince my wife that a conservatoire was a better place than a proper (Russell Group) university as she is still thinks things are the same as they were back in the 90's.
Some of the former polys (for example) took the bit in their teeth and really changed. Others turned into degree mills of the worst type.
I have always thought that mandating going to university at 18 is a disaster for many.
I don't think Britons are intrinsically thicker than their peers in international competitors, in which much the same proportion of the population gets tertiary educated. In South Korea it is 70%. In a world where service and intellect industries are the future that level of education is to be expected, and needs paying for.
That many British universities are piss poor at educating students, while ripping off the government for fees is a slightly different issue to whether 50% of Brits should go to University.
Well I actually think that 50% (or more) of Brits need some form of post 18 education.
But I think: 1) For the vast majority it shouldn't be delivered in what has in the last 50 years become the right of passage, go to a University in another town and have a party with a load of other 18 year olds. (obviously if they want to do that fine, but they should know there are other options)
2) It is more likely, that people will need lifelong learning, rather than one expensive 3 year course, then that is more or less it.
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
This is very interesting, thanks for posting. However I don't think it undermines the central point. It's not where the Commandments came from, it is what they achieved.
Didn't stop you Christianists from colonising or enslaving people on five continents.
I am not aware that any belief system has ever stopped people who were more powerful than their neighbours from doing that. However, it may have blunted some of its excesses. It was a Christian campaign that outlawed the slave trade.
And another thing: may I ask why you WORSHIP a being that created Coronaviruses?
Now, he might physically exist, in your opinion, but to actively WORSHIP such a being?
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
Not so sure about your last bit. I think lots of people enjoy the social side of going out to work.
Arrange things so that you and the colleagues you get on with all go in on the same day each week. One day to socialise and maintain the team bonds, four lie-ins.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
What a weird website. Are they New Agers, or David Icke-ists, or Gnostics, or something?
"Our mission is to unite the scientific and religious ways of thinking, and our ultimate goal is to introduce and prove so called Theory of Everything and Nothing (TEN). This theory can explain all the existing theories and sacred texts, and even more point out their common symmetries and other structures. The first results are already published in Finnish, and hopefully soon we are translating those in English too."
The 42 Negative Confessions can be found on myriad other websites!
Here's the problem I have. I am allowed, as the rules stand at the moment, to EXERCISE once a day and SHOP once a day. I do not have access to a car, therefore have to WALK to the shops in order to shop. WALKING is an EXERCISE therefore I have to either SHOP but not EXERCISE or EXERCISE but not SHOP. This is why I have come down in favour of a complete national lockdown with the army delivering supplies because although 95% are following the rules (based on that poll a few days ago) it is the 5% who are not that is ruining it for everyone else.
Is this another attempt at humour?
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
Every time you go out you increase your risk of infection. I am baffled why anyone would try and come up with reasons to leave the house more than they need to.
The shopping trip is much the greater theoretical risk, especially if the exercise is taken in relatively quiet streets or open places where there is minimal contact with other people.
Decisions like this always have to be approached in a balanced fashion. Getting into the fitness habit can be very hard for people to do, and equally difficult to re-establish once broken. There will be a lot of folk who sit at home through this episode because they're too afraid to use the opportunities that the Government says we are still allowed, and will end up getting fat and flabby, and dying or becoming chronically ill some years down the line as a result. Most of those probably wouldn't have contracted the virus, let alone been killed off by it, even if they'd kept going out for their daily walks or bike rides or whatever. Moreover, for a substantial minority of older people, loss of physical condition through becoming more sedentary is permanent and can never be recovered.
On the one hand, some increased risk (though not necessarily that much of an increase) of contracting coronavirus. On the other hand, likelihood of significant decline in physical and mental wellbeing. It's not black-and-white.
All this talk of people working from home means I have to fess up to - shall we say - "Chilling from Home" for over 18 months. I left my last job (expiry of fixed term contract at a certain university in the Midlands) in September 2018. I last had an interview in December 2019.
Indeed the rules made sense in the past. They belong to the past, which is what I said originally but for some reason Luckyguy1983 objected to that.
The Ten Commandments still stand up pretty well in the modern world, can’t imagine many people disagree with any of them.
*Raised Hand*
I do. I dislike the 10 Commandments.
People tend to interpret the 10 Commandments in a way that suits them. Or associate it with just the later ones which should be bloody obvious and part of any other moral code too.
I disagree with the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Tenth Commandments. That's half of them.
I consider the Fifth to Ninth to be basic common decency.
They are only 'common decency' because of the 10 Commandments.
Don't be absurd. Societies across the entire world whether they had heard of the Commandments or not have heard have the same basic common decency. The fact that you think it's got anything to do with the Commandments shows an absurd bias and ignorance of other cultures.
Do you think the Aborigines or Native Americans or others had no respect for parents and were thieving murderers until Christians civilised them?
Strange you didn't list the Incans, who were inordinately fond of human sacrifice, or the Romans, who fed people to wild animals in the arena as a form of mass entertainment. Why indeed do you think the Hebrews needed a commandment to stop killing people if they were already not doing it through this 'common decency' that we are magically born with? Your tendency to connect every outdated cultural practise (like first cousin marriage) back to religion, but to completely ignore the link between the Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and the current norms, values and laws that make modern society work, is shallow, hypocritical, and unscholarly.
A rip-off from the 42 Negative Confessions in ancient Egypt! Remember, Moses was brought up in the Egyptian court...
This is very interesting, thanks for posting. However I don't think it undermines the central point. It's not where the Commandments came from, it is what they achieved.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
No, all of my colleagues are bored and can't wait for the office to open up again. Maybe for boring middle aged types that makes sense, but for anyone under 40 the idea of sitting at home all day and not actually having any social contact is depressing. I miss my friends and colleagues a lot. A lot of my friends are my current and ex colleagues, we'd never have been friends if everyone worked odd days in office and mainly from home.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
I'm over 40, and I'm ready to get out the house and (you know) interact with other people.
I want to go to restaraunts again. I want to eat at Killer Noodle in Sawtelle. I want to have friends over for drinks and dinner. I want to go swimming in my local gym again.
I want to fly back to London and to see my family and my friends.
I want to go into the office, and actually meet my assistant. I want to kick my marketing person in the arse. I want to be able to go to Phoenix and meet my new customers.
And most of all, I want my kids back at school.
However, I am also painfully aware that - left unchecked - this could kill a million people and overwhelm the health service, and be utterly horrendous.
For those of us stuck in titchy homes, however, things aren't so smart and easy. We're relatively lucky - this is a small flat, but it's only in a little block of six and it's in a nice area - but if you're a whole family stuck on the 15th floor somewhere in a grotty, inner city ex-council estate then this must already be a testing and pretty miserable slog.
Some people are enduring this lockdown OK, perhaps because their lives are quite dull to start with.
I can't believe anyone is enjoying it.
I need just three nights in Inverness to do those last two trains to Kyle of Lochalsh and to Thurso/Wick to complete the normal weekday National Rail network!
Before Covid, I had been hoping to do that trip some time round about now!
Do the sleeper both ways and you only need one night in Inverness. Plus you'll get some 92s and 73s for haulage!
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
It's funny how all this brings out the school prefect in some people very quickly. "Follow the rules but don't trouble to understand them".
I don't just not make the law, I also am not responsible for the whole social construct within which the laws exist. The speed limit is 70 for reasons of safety. There are patently circumstances where the right driver in the right car is safe doing > twice that late at night on an empty motorway. He can understand the reasons for that till he is blue in the face without it altrring the fact that the law applies to him and is there to be obeyed, irrespective of the (utterly irrelevant for any number of reasons) Milgram thing.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
My employer is due to consolidate 3 offices into 1 by the end of next year. I imagine the desk numbers and floor space required is being significantly reduced.
My office is also digesting the fact that lots of us are quite liking the new arrangements, and I'm certainly expecting an upsurge in working from home after the restrictions are eased, compared with what it was like before.
All this talk of people working from home means I have to fess up to - shall we say - "Chilling from Home" for over 18 months. I left my last job (expiry of fixed term contract at a certain university in the Midlands) in September 2018. I last had an interview in December 2019.
You have my sympathies. I was last long-term unemployed many years ago and hope never to have to repeat the experience. Hopefully once this disaster is under some kind of control things will improve enough economically to give you more chances.
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Are you are so senile that you still do not see your beginning-of-March calculation, *even with hindsight,* as something to be even slightly ashamed of?
I followed the government's advice which was to avoid Lombardy. South Tyrol had 3 cases from memory and London had 85. It was a rational decision with no adverse consequences.
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
You don't see a difference between the instructions in that experiment, and the law?
You don't. And you don't see the irony in saying in the same breath that you are a free spirit untrammelled by the rules which bind the little people, and that you are completely shielded from blame if you "follow the government's advice?" What did the government's advice about travel to Lombardy have, that the government's instructions about lockdown lack?
Your decision to go to Italy shows you to be a conceited old fool with a potentially fatal (to others - I am less fussed about you) inability to make a proper assessment of evidence available to you. Do the figures 3300 in a year vs 19,000 in six weeks not bring that home to you? I have no desire to go on about this, but do stop giving large about how much bloody cleverer you are than the little people because the fucking Milgram experiment. You just aren't.
I am following the government's rules on lockdown. I haven't shopped or got near anyone since the lockdown. I don't object to Matt Hancock's stern instruction to stay home because I understand and accept the reason - not because he said it in a stern voice.
What I object to is the curtain twitchers and school prefects, the proto Stasi, who insist that rules are rules and ignore the purpose of the rules. As a libertarian I am keeping a wary eye on your tribe and hope you are never in a position of power.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - although actually I was initially in the 'well these are mainly people who will die anyway this year or next' camp, as if these could be a million nice clean, good deaths with associated grieving but no real inconvenience. it didn't really hit me at first how messy all this death would be. The inevitability of death doesn't make it any less expensive, particularly when an impractically large amount of it happens at once. I am, though, much more optimistic about final numbers. I reckon now we might get away with around 50,000. I reckon pretty much every country in the developed world will see of the order of around 0.1% of its population killed by COVID19 - however that is recorded in the stats. I have no idea how it will hit the developing world. Demographics, levels of urbanism and healthcare are all so different.
All this talk of people working from home means I have to fess up to - shall we say - "Chilling from Home" for over 18 months. I left my last job (expiry of fixed term contract at a certain university in the Midlands) in September 2018. I last had an interview in December 2019.
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Problem is that you think you are smart and sophisticated enough not to have a problem.
But what if you are wrong and someone dies as a result? What if someone less smart and sophisticated than you copies you, makes a mistake and someone dies as a result?
This lockdown is shit. But thee Ed government has made an assessment of what is best for society as a whole and has asked us to abide by some simple restrictions on our normal life. For the greater good.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health sysytem closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
The herd immunity theory is just bonkers and catastrophic...and really set us back at the start....
This disease could be between 2-5% through the population....but I agree we need to lockdown until community transmission is brought right down (flattening the curve), and then bring people out gradually and carefully...not until we achieve herd immunity which would take years, but until we get a vaccine (or a robust therapy)...
If people adhere to lockdown measures...we should start being able to be bringing them out in June (with widespread testing and contact tracing)....not because of this immunity nonsense theory, but because community transmission is under control....
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
No, I mean my initial prediction was 1m UK deaths but I now recognise I was way up at the pessimistic end of the spectrum. I'm much more optimistic now.
Here's the problem I have. I am allowed, as the rules stand at the moment, to EXERCISE once a day and SHOP once a day. I do not have access to a car, therefore have to WALK to the shops in order to shop. WALKING is an EXERCISE therefore I have to either SHOP but not EXERCISE or EXERCISE but not SHOP. This is why I have come down in favour of a complete national lockdown with the army delivering supplies because although 95% are following the rules (based on that poll a few days ago) it is the 5% who are not that is ruining it for everyone else.
Is this another attempt at humour?
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
Every time you go out you increase your risk of infection. I am baffled why anyone would try and come up with reasons to leave the house more than they need to.
Indeed. I have been out twice since 23 March - once for shopping, once to run an errand for a friend who is self-isolating - other than my daily exercise which I have done every day. A walk or a run. Even if you don't drive, it is unnecessary to shop daily, you can carry quite a lot in a rucksack. And if the shop is not far enough away to constitute suitable exercise, you can visit it on your way back from a longer walk.
What the carless need is a different set of wheels:
Far better than heavy shopping bags or a rucksack, particularly if you're getting on a bit and not great with your balance. Can lug all kinds of stuff, up to a pretty hefty weight, without hurting your back.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
No, I mean my initial prediction was 1m UK deaths but I now recognise I was way up at the pessimistic end of the spectrum. I'm much more optimistic now.
You weren't only "up at the pessimistic end" I think you were the pessimistic end.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
No, I mean my initial prediction was 1m UK deaths but I now recognise I was way up at the pessimistic end of the spectrum. I'm much more optimistic now.
Once we get over this spike...circa- 25-35k die....we should be able to manage Covid 19 with a much better regime in place.....and limit the fatalities...
But...life will not be the same until we get a vaccine...which is going to be over a year away, and maybe longer....
Put it this way....when do you think the next open Premiership league match will be played? That is when we are over this thing.....
I predict not until August 2021- and I'm being optimistic....it could be August 2022....
I think the whole of the next season will be played without the public.....
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
I started out as a big pessimist on this. My initial estimate was 1m UK deaths - ....
Christ alive, there is pessimistic and there is pessimistic...
The purpose of the rules is to reduce transmission. It's the purpose that matters, not the rules themselves. Sunbathing, if you are more than 2 metres from anyone, doesn't cause transmission.
On the blogs there seem to be two tribes. There are the sensible adults who can interpret the purpose of the rules and behave appropriately, and the parent/child types who are proto Stasi.
Sorry, you went to Italy in early March because, ho ho ho, what a lot of fuss about a silly old virus which kills so many fewer Italians than road deaths do (Italian road deaths: 3300 annually) and you are presenting yourself as someone whose independent judgment is such that adherence to the letter of the rules is not for you?
Seriously?
Please just do exactly what you are told to do.
I already know which tribe you are in!
Are you are so senile that you still do not see your beginning-of-March calculation, *even with hindsight,* as something to be even slightly ashamed of?
I followed the government's advice which was to avoid Lombardy. South Tyrol had 3 cases from memory and London had 85. It was a rational decision with no adverse consequences.
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
You don't see a difference between the instructions in that experiment, and the law?
You don't. And you don't see the irony in saying in the same breath that you are a free spirit untrammelled by the rules which bind the little people, and that you are completely shielded from blame if you "follow the government's advice?" What did the government's advice about travel to Lombardy have, that the government's instructions about lockdown lack?
Your decision to go to Italy shows you to be a conceited old fool with a potentially fatal (to others - I am less fussed about you) inability to make a proper assessment of evidence available to you. Do the figures 3300 in a year vs 19,000 in six weeks not bring that home to you? I have no desire to go on about this, but do stop giving large about how much bloody cleverer you are than the little people because the fucking Milgram experiment. You just aren't.
I am following the government's rules on lockdown. I haven't shopped or got near anyone since the lockdown. I don't object to Matt Hancock's stern instruction to stay home because I understand and accept the reason - not because he said it in a stern voice.
What I object to is the curtain twitchers and school prefects, the proto Stasi, who insist that rules are rules and ignore the purpose of the rules. As a libertarian I am keeping a wary eye on your tribe and hope you are never in a position of power.
You are no longer making sense. The Milgram experiment tells us only that some instructions should not be obeyed. So how is it relevant if your claim is now that you think instructions in this instance should be obeyed? It's irrelevant anyway btw because the justification there for following instructions was only "the experiment requires it." Here it's"because it is the law." Different.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
My employer is due to consolidate 3 offices into 1 by the end of next year. I imagine the desk numbers and floor space required is being significantly reduced.
My office is also digesting the fact that lots of us are quite liking the new arrangements, and I'm certainly expecting an upsurge in working from home after the restrictions are eased, compared with what it was like before.
Working from home was sharply on the increase in the 18 months or so leading up to cv19, and I can't see anything but a continuation of this. My great concern about this - and I have a professional interest here - is that this is going to kill the viability of public transport, even if people were theoretically happy to be back on packed trains and trams again. I know this is a small problem in comparison to a global pandemic. But this is my day job so it occupies a lot of my thoughts.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
The problem is that you are dealing with a highly non-linear, lagging system. It's like trying to drive a car with a loosely attached steering wheel and very powerful power steering. The only sensible thing to do is to slow down until you've worked out how best to control it. Now is not the time to take our foot off the brakes.
RE: Chinese students abandoning UK Universities and leave a massive financial hole.
I think another risk is potential students realise that they are better off doing some sort of online further education, rather than racking up crazy debts moving away from home and starting a course that doesn't almost guarantee a financial pay off.
Could be tough times in the further education sector, how many people are teaching not very valuable courses at lower end universities, that could simply be replaced by a £9.99 Udemy course?
If so, and I think you are right, then that would improve the the efficiency of post school education, and consistently have overall positive effects to the economy
But the entire reason for sending 50% of to university was to hide young adult unemployment.
Universality education is for the most part a consumption good packaged and sold as an investment good, I.e. the benefit is having 3 or 4 years of fun, while telling yourself that this will help you long term, which encourages people to overpay, it may be fun and slightly improve your salary, but when you include 3 or 4 years when you are not working to the debt that you get at universality, its not worth it for a lot who now go.
Yep - I've got to the point where I can't see the benefit unless you know exactly what you want to do trouble is most 18 year olds don't.
The daughter who is off to university this year wants to do Film Composition and has got onto the best appropriate course. It has still taken her (and me) 9 months to convince my wife that a conservatoire was a better place than a proper (Russell Group) university as she is still thinks things are the same as they were back in the 90's.
Some of the former polys (for example) took the bit in their teeth and really changed. Others turned into degree mills of the worst type.
I have always thought that mandating going to university at 18 is a disaster for many.
I don't think Britons are intrinsically thicker than their peers in international competitors, in which much the same proportion of the population gets tertiary educated. In South Korea it is 70%. In a world where service and intellect industries are the future that level of education is to be expected, and needs paying for.
That many British universities are piss poor at educating students, while ripping off the government for fees is a slightly different issue to whether 50% of Brits should go to University.
Well I actually think that 50% (or more) of Brits need some form of post 18 education.
But I think: 1) For the vast majority it shouldn't be delivered in what has in the last 50 years become the right of passage, go to a University in another town and have a party with a load of other 18 year olds. (obviously if they want to do that fine, but they should know there are other options)
2) It is more likely, that people will need lifelong learning, rather than one expensive 3 year course, then that is more or less it.
What's the situation in Germany now, 30%ish going to university last time I checked? But with much more vocational education. Other models than the UK one are certainly possible. I believe the proportion attending uni there is rising and it's no longer dominated by Gymnasium/Abitur (to be fair, many PBers would be surprised how A-levels no longer dominate entry at some English unis, with Access and Foundational courses plus BTEC diplomas providing a big proportion of undergrads).
Certainly with people changing career more often these days the model of a big lump of education before you even start work seems in need of a change, but I'd note that professional Masters (or post-graduate diplomas etc) are more common now. I wonder with so much learning material available online whether the size of our "lumps" of education might change - whether it will become more common for people to top up with smaller qualifications, more modular and standalone, rather than tackle whole Masters or similar while juggling job and family.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
My employer is due to consolidate 3 offices into 1 by the end of next year. I imagine the desk numbers and floor space required is being significantly reduced.
My office is also digesting the fact that lots of us are quite liking the new arrangements, and I'm certainly expecting an upsurge in working from home after the restrictions are eased, compared with what it was like before.
Working from home was sharply on the increase in the 18 months or so leading up to cv19, and I can't see anything but a continuation of this. My great concern about this - and I have a professional interest here - is that this is going to kill the viability of public transport, even if people were theoretically happy to be back on packed trains and trams again. I know this is a small problem in comparison to a global pandemic. But this is my day job so it occupies a lot of my thoughts.
Do we still need HS2 if we're all working from home ?
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
The problem is that you are dealing with a highly non-linear, lagging system. It's like trying to drive a car with a loosely attached steering wheel and very powerful power steering. The only sensible thing to do is to slow down until you've worked out how best to control it. Now is not the time to take our foot off the brakes.
Exactly.....once the break's kick in we can decide what to do....
That said...if only 5% of the population have had it...we then need to focus on stopping people getting it, and when they get it isolate them, and contact trace...because herd immunity is a pipe dream.....
If 30-40% of had it- then we can just let rip and go for it....but..I seriously doubt the herd immunity theory stands up......
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plaque in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
A plaque not a plague in Westminster Abbey hopefully!
Ok, my write up on the EU corona mechanism. It's not going to be a critique of what's been agreed, there are plenty of people who have already written that. I want to concentrate on is the approach the EU should have agreed:
A huge, ambitious rebuilding of the European economy to reshore jobs and supply chains from China. The aim of the scheme would be to bring back critical and sensitive manufacturing back from China and rebuild those industries in the worst affected nations. This would be a 10-15 year aim and not related to the emergency funding of €1.5tn that the ECB has recommended. This would be a huge €1.5tn fund of its own for economic stimulus going way, way beyond the patch job the ECB have recommended (which hasn't been met).
The main question is how to fund it. First lets look at the main reason why the Coronabond has been seen as a non-starter - they are, in essence, a debt mutualisation scheme under the umbrella of the EU. It allows poorer nations to benefit from the credit ratings of the wealthier nations, however, and this is the main sticking point, it also mutualises debt servicing costs. For the €1.5tn aim at a 1% annual average interest rate it would cost €15bn per year to service the bonds, this would come out of common EU funds which means the not only are the wealthy nations on the hook in case of default, they're also on the hook for the debt servicing cost. It is a scheme that has little to no support in northern Europe and also has no democratic mandate within the EU, this scheme would require treaty change, which is a whole new can of worms (and one that was avoided even during the EMU debt crisis).
There is nothing in it for the wealthier nations other than this ethereal concept of solidarity. It has been blatantly obvious to anyone watching for the last few years that solidarity was never going to be enough to get any kind of action on this.
The answer is split the difference. The spread on German and Italian debt currently sits at just under 2%, that means Germany can borrow money at an interest rate 2% lower than Italy. On average the nations who want the money need to pay around 1.5% more in interest than the nations who would be doing the borrowing. By splitting the difference both sides gain. Italy is suddenly able to access €400bn in no strings attached money at an interest rate of 0.6%, meaning debt servicing costs of €3.5bn per year vs something closer to €9bn once the increase in yields is taken into account due to new debt issuance.
It is not a fullproof plan and I'm sure there would be a lot of unease in Germany and other nations at giving southern Europe the proverbial national credit card, however, both sides gain. On €1.5tn of issued bonds, the creditor nations would benefit to the tune of €12bn per year and the debtor nations would also benefit by at least the same amount (probably more given the increase in yields were they to add that kind of debt onto their own balance sheets).
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
A plaque not a plague in Westminster Abbey hopefully!
Oh Ben. This age thing is creeping up on me but thanks for correcting me
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
I think this period has already profoundly changed us....the excesses of the last thirty years...CEO's, celebrities, sports people will be replaced by collectivism and an appreciation of the heroes that have risked their lives to protect us...
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
A plaque not a plague in Westminster Abbey hopefully!
Oh Ben. This age thing is creeping up on me but thanks for correcting me
You should take a leaf out of TSE's book and blame it on autocorrect!
A huge, ambitious rebuilding of the European economy to reshore jobs and supply chains from China. The aim of the scheme would be to bring back critical and sensitive manufacturing back from China and rebuild those industries in the worst affected nations. This would be a 10-15 year aim and not related to the emergency funding of €1.5tn that the ECB has recommended.
I think we are going to see this across the developed nations.
For all the screams of sinophobia etc, there is no way a sensible US president will want to get caught out again. In the same way as all developed nations are moving away from dependance on Saudi oil and Russian gas, it is a national security issue not to have a situation like China making 97% of all antibiotics or India making basically all the paracetamol.
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
I think this period has already profoundly changed us....the excesses of the last thirty years...CEO's, celebrities, sports people will be replaced by collectivism and an appreciation of the heroes that have risked their lives to protect us...
I wonder if they'll give the entire NHS a gong (a la Malta) after all this is over.
I expect there will be a commemorative monument in Parliament Square, a service an plague in Westminster Abbey, a special medallion for all NHS workers and carers, and recognition that they must all be paid well for their service to the nation
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
A plaque not a plague in Westminster Abbey hopefully!
Oh Ben. This age thing is creeping up on me but thanks for correcting me
You should take a leaf out of TSE's book and blame it on autocorrect!
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I don't think you quite get the point...the health system collapses, and countless other people will also die with treatable conditions...meanwhile we have dead bodies in people's homes, social unrest and all that entails...
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
I don`t think we are disagreeing Tyson. I was saying in my post - as I keep saying - that some people are underestimating the health consequences. And you clearly agree.
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
Well, being optimistic you can look at it like this.
I reckon perhaps 15% in the UK could be infected in this first wave. If R0 - the reproduction number in normal life - is 2.4, 15% immunity would reduce it to just above 2. So if you can keep enough social distancing in place after the lockdown - in combination with a lot of testing and contact tracing - to halve the value of R from what it would be in normal life, then you can stop the infection rate growing and avoid a second wave. I don't really know whether that's feasible, given that people aren't going to be stopped from socialising in the long run, but maybe it is. And if the effort fails, then I suppose we just have to have a second lockdown to bring the second wave under control. And have another try at the same strategy with 30% or so having been infected, which would bring the R number down to 1.6.
I’m doing loads of long (legal!) walks, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, eating lots of healthy home cooked food, doing exercise in my mini gym, and getting plenty of rest and sleep, and not worrying about work so much
As a result, I now feel healthier and calmer during this plague than I felt for several years before
Other friends of mine report the same
Perhaps you are financiallly secure Eadric.
My neighbour is chuffed to bits with lockdown. He said to me yesterday that he wants it to go on for 2-3 years because that will take him nicely to retirement as long as government continue to pay 80% of his salary.
Yes i am financially secure, also I can work from home. And I am in a very nice property in a pleasant part of the world. I am lucky, I would never deny it.
That said I fully expect this virus, before it is done, to take lives of one or two people I love. Maybe more. They are just too vulnerable.
So this is a kind of early war period when the air war is raging in the blue sunny sky, the Spitfires tackling the Messerschmidts, but the real Blitz has yet to begin.
Remember this virus will come in waves. Like the Luftwaffe
So do you agree with me that the health consequences are still underestimated by some people, and that (almost) everyone will catch it at some point, with a mortality rate of 0.5 - 1%?
I mostly agree with you, tho I think mortality rate may be in the 1-2% range, but I am not sure (no one is)
Yes in the end 50-80% of people will get it.
The trouble with this virus -as we all know - is that it causes so many hospitalisations, that crash the health system, which mean you end up with a much higher rate of fatality. Hence the lockdowns
But we all know all of this.
Now I must go, the wife insists we watch masterchef! Later
And how do you explain countries where the death rate is way way lower than 1%? New Zealand for example?
Most of the evidence now points to about a 0.6% fatality rate, assuming there is ample health service capacity, and once one includes largely asymptomatic infections. Where countries see higher fatality rates it is either because the health service is overwhelmed and/or where only those who are highly sympotmatic are tested.
Quite a few of this 0.6% are people with existing co-morbidities, so this death rate probably exaggerates the number of excess deaths.
That being said... 0.6% of 70 million is still a large number. (Albeit I suspect we will find that people with certain genetic markers are unlikely to get the disease, so the maximum who will get it is probably unlikely to exceed 60%.)
So the question becomes how we improve treatments and minimse spread.
I want to concentrate on is the approach the EU should have agreed:
A huge, ambitious rebuilding of the European economy to reshore jobs and supply chains from China. The aim of the scheme would be to bring back critical and sensitive manufacturing back from China and rebuild those industries in the worst affected nations.
If that were the strategy, I don't think it would be wise to announce it at this time.
I will be genuinely shocked if there isn't a huge change in the middle class professional jobs. Why have massive offices in expensive central locations to house 100s or 1000s of people, when you can have your employees work from home for at least 2-3 days a week and hot desk the other days.
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
My employer is due to consolidate 3 offices into 1 by the end of next year. I imagine the desk numbers and floor space required is being significantly reduced.
My office is also digesting the fact that lots of us are quite liking the new arrangements, and I'm certainly expecting an upsurge in working from home after the restrictions are eased, compared with what it was like before.
Working from home was sharply on the increase in the 18 months or so leading up to cv19, and I can't see anything but a continuation of this. My great concern about this - and I have a professional interest here - is that this is going to kill the viability of public transport, even if people were theoretically happy to be back on packed trains and trams again. I know this is a small problem in comparison to a global pandemic. But this is my day job so it occupies a lot of my thoughts.
Maybe those passenger predictions that meant we need hs2 need revisiting. Personally I think we would better concentrate on more work from home and reducing commuting rather than encouraging it in any case
Comments
If we all relied on the (tiny) Army to deliver our groceries they couldn't possibly keep up and most of us would be dead of starvation in a month.
Traipsing back and forth to the supermarket does not count as your little exercise slot, regardless of whether you have to walk or drive there and back (though, of course, there is nothing to say that you *MUST* use the exercise allowance, so you could choose to regard your shopping walk as sufficient for your needs and not go back out again that day.)
The whole notion that one must count a walk to and from the shops as one's outdoor exercise for the day as well has never been suggested in Government advice and it would be extremely silly if it was.
That is why the Govt's strategy is to protect the NHS....its not out of any great love for the NHS....it is to safeguard us from an unimaginable social and economic catastrophe....we are not a third world country, but without a functional health system we would quickly be one....
That is why these Nightingales had to be set up....
And that is why we are locked in...
You obviously get this.....but there are plenty of folk around who don't...and I do not want us to fall off the cliff before they do....
But that isn't my point. I'm concerned about the proto-Stasi tribe that insists we follow rules because rule is rules. "Please just do exactly what you are told to do"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Its a win win, saves companies money and employees are happier as they have a better work / life balance.
A lot of my colleagues say having (younger) children about means they get distracted.
I'm fortunate I can tell my kids that granddad and grandma have got some sweeties for you.
There is no evidence at the moment that the NHS aren't taking ill people who need hospital treatment, there is still spare capacity (albeit in London there isn't much headroom). But, we aren't just leaving people to die, because we can't fit anymore people in.
Italy tried to take as many as possible, the hospitals in the North were total warzones, patients everywhere, and system totally crashed.
But despite that, both countries appear to be recording the same amount of deaths of those in hospital.
I can't believe anyone is enjoying it.
The workplace dynamic would be irreparably damaged if the lesson learned from this situation is cost cutting of office space.
Not everyone can afford a nursery.
Before Covid, I had been hoping to do that trip some time round about now!
I am totally biased, as have WFH for basically ever and love it. When I need to work, I can totally focus and because I have no commute and flexible working hours, I can fit in whatever I want in order to have that social contact.
Having to pay for hideously expensive childcare is still a quantum leap forward from having to pay for hideously expensive childcare *AND* even more hideously expensive train tickets, with the soul-destroying horror of thousands of hours every year being wasted travelling on the cattle trucks to boot.
Working from home won't suit everybody, but it'll make living substantially less stressful and less expensive for a great many.
"Our mission is to unite the scientific and religious ways of thinking, and our ultimate goal is to introduce and prove so called Theory of Everything and Nothing (TEN). This theory can explain all the existing theories and sacred texts, and even more point out their common symmetries and other structures. The first results are already published in Finnish, and hopefully soon we are translating those in English too."
*OK, I did once go out with the work experience girl
the consequences of a failed health system are so severe that the Govt will do what it takes to prevent that...and rightly so....
Intellectually, I agree with you...we can easily lose perhaps 600,000 oldies without an economic shock, but the consequences of Covid are ever so slightly more complicated than your basic maths.....
You don't. And you don't see the irony in saying in the same breath that you are a free spirit untrammelled by the rules which bind the little people, and that you are completely shielded from blame if you "follow the government's advice?" What did the government's advice about travel to Lombardy have, that the government's instructions about lockdown lack?
Your decision to go to Italy shows you to be a conceited old fool with a potentially fatal (to others - I am less fussed about you) inability to make a proper assessment of evidence available to you. Do the figures 3300 in a year vs 19,000 in six weeks not bring that home to you? I have no desire to go on about this, but do stop giving large about how much bloody cleverer you are than the little people because the fucking Milgram experiment. You just aren't.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8208969/Inside-one-Britains-worst-hit-hospitals-one-four-patients-admitted-not-survived.html
I want to go to restaraunts again. I want to eat at Killer Noodle in Sawtelle. I want to have friends over for drinks and dinner. I want to go swimming in my local gym again.
I want to fly back to London and to see my family and my friends.
I want to go into the office, and actually meet my assistant. I want to kick my marketing person in the arse. I want to be able to go to Phoenix and meet my new customers.
And most of all, I want my kids back at school.
However, I am also painfully aware that - left unchecked - this could kill a million people and overwhelm the health service, and be utterly horrendous.
But what if you are wrong and someone dies as a result?
What if someone less smart and sophisticated than you copies you, makes a mistake and someone dies as a result?
This lockdown is shit. But thee Ed government has made an assessment of what is best for society as a whole and has asked us to abide by some simple restrictions on our normal life. For the greater good.
JFD
Even if you don't drive, it is unnecessary to shop daily, you can carry quite a lot in a rucksack. And if the shop is not far enough away to constitute suitable exercise, you can visit it on your way back from a longer walk.
I normally know I have until at 5.59pm to do all that stuff :-)
But I think:
1) For the vast majority it shouldn't be delivered in what has in the last 50 years become the right of passage, go to a University in another town and have a party with a load of other 18 year olds.
(obviously if they want to do that fine, but they should know there are other options)
2) It is more likely, that people will need lifelong learning, rather than one expensive 3 year course, then that is more or less it.
Now, he might physically exist, in your opinion, but to actively WORSHIP such a being?
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
Lockdown stops the health system from collapsing - also agreed.
But the virus will still be there when we come out of lockdown, so we need as many people immune as possible. Therefore lockdown must only be stringent enough to avoid health system collapse. My understanding is that, though patchy, hospitals are generally under-capacity - well under if you include the new pop-up facility. Therefore it follows, would you agree?, that lockdown should not be made more strict - in fact it should be lessened a touch to bring the health system closer to - but not beyond - capacity.
Decisions like this always have to be approached in a balanced fashion. Getting into the fitness habit can be very hard for people to do, and equally difficult to re-establish once broken. There will be a lot of folk who sit at home through this episode because they're too afraid to use the opportunities that the Government says we are still allowed, and will end up getting fat and flabby, and dying or becoming chronically ill some years down the line as a result. Most of those probably wouldn't have contracted the virus, let alone been killed off by it, even if they'd kept going out for their daily walks or bike rides or whatever. Moreover, for a substantial minority of older people, loss of physical condition through becoming more sedentary is permanent and can never be recovered.
On the one hand, some increased risk (though not necessarily that much of an increase) of contracting coronavirus. On the other hand, likelihood of significant decline in physical and mental wellbeing. It's not black-and-white.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8207543/Summer-WONT-curb-spread-coronavirus-study-finds.html
Then I read it was only conducted on Chinese cities, so we can junk that research then....
What I object to is the curtain twitchers and school prefects, the proto Stasi, who insist that rules are rules and ignore the purpose of the rules. As a libertarian I am keeping a wary eye on your tribe and hope you are never in a position of power.
I mean I bought my father a new laptop and set him up so he could remote work for the GP surgery.
I am, though, much more optimistic about final numbers. I reckon now we might get away with around 50,000.
I reckon pretty much every country in the developed world will see of the order of around 0.1% of its population killed by COVID19 - however that is recorded in the stats.
I have no idea how it will hit the developing world. Demographics, levels of urbanism and healthcare are all so different.
This disease could be between 2-5% through the population....but I agree we need to lockdown until community transmission is brought right down (flattening the curve), and then bring people out gradually and carefully...not until we achieve herd immunity which would take years, but until we get a vaccine (or a robust therapy)...
If people adhere to lockdown measures...we should start being able to be bringing them out in June (with widespread testing and contact tracing)....not because of this immunity nonsense theory, but because community transmission is under control....
https://www.sholley.com
Far better than heavy shopping bags or a rucksack, particularly if you're getting on a bit and not great with your balance. Can lug all kinds of stuff, up to a pretty hefty weight, without hurting your back.
Amazing invention, the wheel.
"US government suspends all research involving bats out of concern that humans could pass coronavirus on and make the pandemic harder to contain"
But...life will not be the same until we get a vaccine...which is going to be over a year away, and maybe longer....
Put it this way....when do you think the next open Premiership league match will be played? That is when we are over this thing.....
I predict not until August 2021- and I'm being optimistic....it could be August 2022....
I think the whole of the next season will be played without the public.....
It's irrelevant anyway btw because the justification there for following instructions was only "the experiment requires it." Here it's"because it is the law." Different.
I know this is a small problem in comparison to a global pandemic. But this is my day job so it occupies a lot of my thoughts.
Certainly with people changing career more often these days the model of a big lump of education before you even start work seems in need of a change, but I'd note that professional Masters (or post-graduate diplomas etc) are more common now. I wonder with so much learning material available online whether the size of our "lumps" of education might change - whether it will become more common for people to top up with smaller qualifications, more modular and standalone, rather than tackle whole Masters or similar while juggling job and family.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/when-will-my-father-wake-from-his-coronavirus-delirium-
That said...if only 5% of the population have had it...we then need to focus on stopping people getting it, and when they get it isolate them, and contact trace...because herd immunity is a pipe dream.....
If 30-40% of had it- then we can just let rip and go for it....but..I seriously doubt the herd immunity theory stands up......
At the same time celebrities, footballers and overpaid CEO's will become the non persona in the nations affections and hopefully heavily taxed
A huge, ambitious rebuilding of the European economy to reshore jobs and supply chains from China. The aim of the scheme would be to bring back critical and sensitive manufacturing back from China and rebuild those industries in the worst affected nations. This would be a 10-15 year aim and not related to the emergency funding of €1.5tn that the ECB has recommended. This would be a huge €1.5tn fund of its own for economic stimulus going way, way beyond the patch job the ECB have recommended (which hasn't been met).
The main question is how to fund it. First lets look at the main reason why the Coronabond has been seen as a non-starter - they are, in essence, a debt mutualisation scheme under the umbrella of the EU. It allows poorer nations to benefit from the credit ratings of the wealthier nations, however, and this is the main sticking point, it also mutualises debt servicing costs. For the €1.5tn aim at a 1% annual average interest rate it would cost €15bn per year to service the bonds, this would come out of common EU funds which means the not only are the wealthy nations on the hook in case of default, they're also on the hook for the debt servicing cost. It is a scheme that has little to no support in northern Europe and also has no democratic mandate within the EU, this scheme would require treaty change, which is a whole new can of worms (and one that was avoided even during the EMU debt crisis).
There is nothing in it for the wealthier nations other than this ethereal concept of solidarity. It has been blatantly obvious to anyone watching for the last few years that solidarity was never going to be enough to get any kind of action on this.
The answer is split the difference. The spread on German and Italian debt currently sits at just under 2%, that means Germany can borrow money at an interest rate 2% lower than Italy. On average the nations who want the money need to pay around 1.5% more in interest than the nations who would be doing the borrowing. By splitting the difference both sides gain. Italy is suddenly able to access €400bn in no strings attached money at an interest rate of 0.6%, meaning debt servicing costs of €3.5bn per year vs something closer to €9bn once the increase in yields is taken into account due to new debt issuance.
It is not a fullproof plan and I'm sure there would be a lot of unease in Germany and other nations at giving southern Europe the proverbial national credit card, however, both sides gain. On €1.5tn of issued bonds, the creditor nations would benefit to the tune of €12bn per year and the debtor nations would also benefit by at least the same amount (probably more given the increase in yields were they to add that kind of debt onto their own balance sheets).
For all the screams of sinophobia etc, there is no way a sensible US president will want to get caught out again. In the same way as all developed nations are moving away from dependance on Saudi oil and Russian gas, it is a national security issue not to have a situation like China making 97% of all antibiotics or India making basically all the paracetamol.
NEW THREAD
I reckon perhaps 15% in the UK could be infected in this first wave. If R0 - the reproduction number in normal life - is 2.4, 15% immunity would reduce it to just above 2. So if you can keep enough social distancing in place after the lockdown - in combination with a lot of testing and contact tracing - to halve the value of R from what it would be in normal life, then you can stop the infection rate growing and avoid a second wave. I don't really know whether that's feasible, given that people aren't going to be stopped from socialising in the long run, but maybe it is. And if the effort fails, then I suppose we just have to have a second lockdown to bring the second wave under control. And have another try at the same strategy with 30% or so having been infected, which would bring the R number down to 1.6.
Quite a few of this 0.6% are people with existing co-morbidities, so this death rate probably exaggerates the number of excess deaths.
That being said... 0.6% of 70 million is still a large number. (Albeit I suspect we will find that people with certain genetic markers are unlikely to get the disease, so the maximum who will get it is probably unlikely to exceed 60%.)
So the question becomes how we improve treatments and minimse spread.