I'd have to ask the wife to fetch some but it wouldn't be before 6pm tomorrow at which point I hope to have the results back
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Honest question guys, as I'm starting to get a little bit pessimistic about the situation: Do you think life will be not as dominated by the virus in say 5 years from now? Before the vaccinations started, I thought it would at least mean serious improvement on a social level. Like people not being anxious about all this shit. But as it turns out, that isn't the case at all judging from my situation. I'm getting tired of it. While I obviously know the benefit of masks and am by no means against using them, I hate them. They feel completely wrong to me. When I was in the Netherlands last week, there's no mandatory mask rule in super markets. I saw that, went inside and felt completely wrong not wearing one, so I put it on anyway. And afterwards, I kind of felt bad for it. It's the right thing, yet it's sad that it actually is the right thing. And I fear this way of living will be standard from now on, no return to the "before normal" ever again in those regards. And I fecking hate it.
Nah I think things will be pretty normal in a year's time, in most places. We'll live a little differently because things change, society's evolve and particular moments - usually tragedies - trigger that, but I don't despair for future normality at all.
Man that would be absolutely awesome and I hope you're right. With delta going around and the vaccination quotas stagnating, though, I feel like there's something coming at us.
No posts in fourteen hours, only six in the last day. Case numbers continuing to fall in the UK.
Is it fair to say the outlook for the UK is pretty positive? And that it now appears that 'freedom day' hasn't had the disastrous impact that most of us expected it would, likely helped by the combined timing with school holidays?
Is it fair to say the outlook for the UK is pretty positive? And that it now appears that 'freedom day' hasn't had the disastrous impact that most of us expected it would, likely helped by the combined timing with school holidays?
Yep , seems that way, the vaccines are doing a great job .
Isn't there a delay of 3/4 week between events and statistics? So we are a couple of weeks out from seeing the effects of 'freedom day' (ridiculous name BTW)
I think the path to "normal" is straight forward. Vaccination. We will get there.
I hope so! I always thought anti vaxxers are mostly an American problem, but that doesn’t seem to be right at all. People in Germany are just the same. Vaccination rate starts stagnating big time. No surprise the eastern parts of Germany have the lowest rate.
At least in my country, we won’t get 80%+ vaccination rate. And considering the politicians, there is no way they will try to boost that rate actively. I think we all are in for one hell of a ride.
Basically for Delta, symptoms (or positive PCR even if asymptomatic) appear about four days after infection. If we're lucky, people who caught it last weekend and developed symptoms didn't go out this weekend and we'll hear about their test results in the next couple of days.
Personally, I suspect the May 19 changes were the big ones for most people. We will hear about lots of super-spreader events (parties, weddings etc) but some of those infection chains will get cut short by vaccines and past infections. That might be enough to keep the national R rate at around/below 1 even if some local outbreaks turn nasty.
I also suspect that whereas some people will be interacting more, others will be reducing contact. There's still time to get more people vaccinated before autumn and schools/colleges restarting and doors/windows being closed against the weather.
That's for hospitalisations - which are obviously still a concern. Cases we are seeing the data from much sooner than that.
Deaths i think, 3/4 week delay on hospitalization is a long lag.
Things getting slightly worrisome again in a couple of parts in India.
Another week another new set of rules from the UK 
@Penna they say Italy could be on this new amber watchlist, if you were hoping to travel back.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...-among-countries-t-could-be-affected-12370547
@Penna they say Italy could be on this new amber watchlist, if you were hoping to travel back.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...-among-countries-t-could-be-affected-12370547
Thanks for this - I think we're staying put for now, the uncertainty is just too complicated for us with our practical and logistical problems. We already missed my nephew's wedding and that was the thing we were aiming to get back for. We're having our bathroom done instead!Another week another new set of rules from the UK
@Penna they say Italy could be on this new amber watchlist, if you were hoping to travel back.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...-among-countries-t-could-be-affected-12370547
Either we get there via vaccinations or infections. Inevitable.
Mutated variants might make a difference here, right? All vaccines are not as effective against Delta as they are against the first version. If there's more evolution going on, we might just never really get there and medication would become even more important.
Infections are nowhere near as good (on average) at creating immunity.
mRNA can be modified relatively easily.
We have a very poor record against viruses wrt medications
Sure but ultimately everyone will either be vaccinated or infected.
yea I know, but production, distribution etc. takes a long time. Here in Germany not everybody was able to get the jab yet and we started vaccination in december. Currently at around 60% van rate, which is awful. so my point is regardless of the ability to modify, there’s a huge challenge to make it available globally, which is kind of the key in a pandemic. National solutions are only nice temporarily.
Regarding meds, yeah, definitely, which is my point.
not impossible at all we might get both no matter what
I love epidemiologists on Twitter. Great thread on increasing vaccination rate vs booster shots.
In the UK it seems like there's a push to get people back into the office, both now (as Sunak is repeatedly saying over the last few weeks) but also as part of a previous campaign that took place immediately after the first wave.
Whereas in Ireland the government leans in the opposite direction, with emphasis being on WFH continuing on post-Covid, as below:
Why the differing approach from even ideologically similar politicians in both countries? I'm assuming they're both pushing these narratives because it suits them but I don't get why WFH seems to suit one group of right & centre-right politicians but not the other.
Whereas in Ireland the government leans in the opposite direction, with emphasis being on WFH continuing on post-Covid, as below:
Why the differing approach from even ideologically similar politicians in both countries? I'm assuming they're both pushing these narratives because it suits them but I don't get why WFH seems to suit one group of right & centre-right politicians but not the other.
Everything about this group of Tories is 1980s. I
Wouldn’t be surprised if they brought back coal mining
Wouldn’t be surprised if they brought back coal mining
So they can shut it down again for the lols
Well-off office workers will be fine with Working From Home. It the lower-paid admin/service staff who'll suffer most if city centre buildings are shut down.
If anything, this is more of a Labour policy.
If anything, this is more of a Labour policy.
Updated graphics on what's happening in the UK. The fall in cases is starting to show through in a fall in hospital admissions and what looks like the start of a fall in numbers actually in hospital. The cases v hospitalisations picture now is massively different to earlier waves - that's the vaccine at work.
Case rates aren't likely to fall back to the low numbers we saw last summer, the R rate now looks like it's wobbling around 1. What happens in the autumn/winter is still anyone's guess, but vaccinations and past infections are continuing to raise the number of covid resistant adults. As long as things remain like this, I suspect the policy will continue to be: get vaxxed or get covid, and if you do get covid try not to give it to anyone else.
Case rates aren't likely to fall back to the low numbers we saw last summer, the R rate now looks like it's wobbling around 1. What happens in the autumn/winter is still anyone's guess, but vaccinations and past infections are continuing to raise the number of covid resistant adults. As long as things remain like this, I suspect the policy will continue to be: get vaxxed or get covid, and if you do get covid try not to give it to anyone else.
Tory's are massively reliant on donations from property management companies, and offices not returning at least partly would hit the industry hard. It's also an industry that London is utterly reliant on having returning in order to aid recovery - knock on impact too on TfL, food and drink sector, events/arts, etc.
He also did make a decent point about the impact remote learning potentially has on young workers/new starters in jobs. As someone who had a career change during the pandemic, I would agree with him on this (although suspect the former is the true reasoning behind this push).
But WFH benefits those who "have" far more than those climbing various life ladders, no doubt.
Well he's talking utter shite saying it will reduce costs.
I'm in a company of 700 people and it will cost more than 1 million to provide people with equipment to set up at home. The about 250k a year to ensure health and safety compliance on ongoing basis.
My internal data tells me that at least 70% of people want to come back to the office at least half of the time. So no savings for the company on lease rent or utilities.
Don't know where these savings are coming from
I'd say it's broader than that, because there's an age component.
A lot of older workers will prefer it, they may like the reduced travel, find it fits better with home life etc. As you say though, that assumes that home is an ok workspace.
For young workers, I can't see much good side to home working. A lot of training programs have collapsed. A lot of informal training and mentoring had gone. In some offices the young ones are in work and the experienced staff are at home, which is leaving some of the inexperienced staff doing the wrong jobs and under increased pressure.
Plus, if you combine it with a year of lockdowns and reduced contact then a lot of people will be missing out on the social side of work as well as the formal business.
It's been a bad time to be a young (office) worker if you've recently moved to a new town, or a new job. Of course, if you've been a young worker doing most other kinds of job - you'll have had a crap year as well - wherever you were or weren't working.
Is that for IT equipment or just desks, chairs etc? I don’t think it’s something you can measure over a period of one year. That equipment that’s purchased is going to last a decent amount of time and will be redistributed when employees leave.
The long term view will surely be downsizing the office and using hot desks, rather than keeping the same amount of space and paying the same rent.
I think it’s industry dependent though. The term “office workers” is pretty broad and obviously it won’t work for all. I would be annoyed if I was competent at my job, could do it just as effectively at home, wanted to be at home, but was forced back.
Yep, reading the reports on this, it felt like what he was really talking about was "what does London need?" I suspect Andy Burnham is feeling the same about Manchester.
Away from those city centre contexts though I'm not sure what we'll see. I'm hoping that we'll finally see more "3 days in, 2 days WFH" etc and flexitime schemes. But so much of it depends on the industry that I'm not sure how they'll reset that balance.
In the computer industry, a lot of the design/development and even the support side can be done in a WFH setup. But I really doubt that it's a good permanent way of full-time working. You lose a lot if people only really know their immediate colleagues, rather than the whole story.
If people want to come back to the office half the time, you can downsize your offices quite comfortably. What has your office done for the last year without spending 1 million?
We can't downsize we're locked into long term leases in all of our offices. Landlords will tell us to feck off.
We've spent a fair chunk on sending equipment to people's homes. This cost alot even in couriers.
But the majority of people paid for themselves as its not a company policy to fund people's home set up.
If it becomes law then we've got to think differently. And I work for a semi state so we are Gov funded.
We've an upfront cost of setting everyone up of over one million. Furniture and docking station with screens etc.
Longer term its health and safety staff to ensure legal compliance etc.
These costs will be prohibitive to us. We have offices all over the country so not paying capital city rent in the majority of locations.
Permanent WFH will cost us money. I've done the sums.
WFH will kill some jobs, once companies start actually logging the time of people working from home through software, they'll realise there's a good portion of office staff who spend half the day doing feck all anyway.
It'll be good for the hard workers, but those lazy buggers will get a shock.
Those wanting to go back to the office half the time are those who only do half the work their supposed to and think they can get it all done in those couple days in the office.
Hats off to those who get away with it though, I'm only jealous because I can't work from home
It'll be good for the hard workers, but those lazy buggers will get a shock.
Those wanting to go back to the office half the time are those who only do half the work their supposed to and think they can get it all done in those couple days in the office.
Hats off to those who get away with it though, I'm only jealous because I can't work from home
How long is your lease?
We've 12 leases around the country and the next one that expires is 2026.
So longer term we can look at that.
It'll all be different in a few years anyway
In my work place the split thus far has been in the opposite direction.
The key point with WFH for younger (and less well paid) staff is that it is a lot cheaper, allowing you to forgo commuting costs and/or having to rent in central locations. For example, the commuting costs I save WFH account for approx. a quarter of my rent every month on their own. The extent of that impact can be seen in the housing market, as house prices in less urban areas spike as people bolstered by Covid-savings and an ability to work further from Dublin try to buy homes.
Whereas (so far at least) the older staff have tended to miss the office more, as they're less comfortable shifting from that way of working and the office is a more central social outlet for them.
In the long-run the impact on career progression is the worry for younger workers, I think. Whereas impact of WFH on social life will be a hell of a lot less extreme once we're not in a pandemic and I'd happily take the boost of fewer costs and more free time in that regard anyway.