Coronavirus Pandemic

[gilesgoat]

Ex had a meeting at work yesterday, they're all working from home for 12 weeks. I've been WFH for almost 5 years now, it's been semi-amusing watching people adapt to this :-)

Biggest issue I can see with the UK so far is the refusal to shut down schools. Of course if they do then there's no way they're going back this academic year, but this is a pretty extraordinary situation.

Did a daily supermarket shop yesterday. Local Asda is getting pretty bare. No meats, loo roll, canned goods. Even the vegan stuff is getting thin on the ground :-/

Still, mildly better than my shopping yesterday where I ended up in a queue and the dirty fucker behind me did a big wet cough onto the back of my neck. I've already been spraying shopping as I get it into the house but I immediately had to use Dettol wipes to bleach my head the moment I got back home

In Italy VERY SUPRISINGLY it would appear that "quite a number of school", in the North at least, were quite more prepared to work from home, they have SW platfoms and stuff to make it possible .. which to me comes like "wow" .. my bro and their kids are still doing their stuff from home.

Yes the "UK approach to all this" is still worrying as feels like "they are still understimating the problem" meanwhile in Italy people are still dying and Milan area is literally "exploding"

Best one can do is isolate and "try to keep an eye on things AND PEOPLE !" and yes some people should be hit with a rock and buried in lime ( those doing wet coughs on your neck ) .. buried in lime to avoid spreading of the virus of course ..

[Dio]

Biggest issue I can see with the UK so far is the refusal to shut down schools. Of course if they do then there's no way they're going back this academic year, but this is a pretty extraordinary situation.

The problem is that about 25% of the country's kids by default go to grandparents when schools are shut and that is the worst possible idea right now, probably worse than keeping them in the schools.

I imagine that's the messaging they're trying to work through. At least, I hope they're building a plan, involving which professions need to stay at work and which should bunk off to look after kids and where the money is coming from in the meantime.

I think we should be announcing that everyone who can't work because of lockdown, parental duties or jobs lost due to closed businesses will get paid at 50% by the government, with an emergency rise of 5% in basic rate tax and 10% in higher rate and capital gains tax for the 20-21 tax year to spread the burden and help pay for it. But I'm a filthy socialist so I would.

[gravy]

Once the dust has settled cvid will be the strongest case for a universal basic income

[Dio]

Yeah. There's going to be societal changes from this. There could be many good ones, especially around climate change - some of these home workers won't go back, and many more companies will become more flexible about home working. There could easily be bad ones too, if we fail to get the feeling of 'all in it together'.

It's almost certainly the event of our lifetimes. It's likely to be at least the third biggest event in human history, after the two world wars (and, probably and happily, vastly less harmful in terms of the casualty count, but that's very much TBD). I have a little bit of awe over the whole thing (which is a good thing - I think if people get just how big this is into their heads, they will settle back and 'enjoy' even the unpleasantness of the moment that won't come again, and be prepared to put up to the months-to-years of disruption a little better).

[gilesgoat]

*snip* the unpleasantness of the moment that won't come again,

.. hopefully .. or this could be really "the beginning of the end of the world as we know it" ..

We don't know if "we'll never see any other virus like that again", we really don't.

[noodles]

Once the dust has settled cvid will be the strongest case for a universal basic income

And banning low cost airlines and oversized cruise ships.

[Little stoned kiwi]

We'll collectively go straight back to doing the same stupid shit.

[gilesgoat]

Once the dust has settled cvid will be the strongest case for a universal basic income

And banning low cost airlines and oversized cruise ships.

What's wrong with low cost airlines ?

You mean because they are overcrowded ?

[noodles]

Once the dust has settled cvid will be the strongest case for a universal basic income

And banning low cost airlines and oversized cruise ships.

What's wrong with low cost airlines ?

You mean because they are overcrowded ?

Because they make it too easy to move from one place to another, ruining the best tourist spots by overcrowding the destinations.
Look at Venice for example. They have brought a curse to the place.

[gilesgoat]

Btw check this graph : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... c_in_Italy

UK at the moment is about 'at 27th' in that graph so let's say has to be seen what's going to be in the next 2 weeks.

[gilesgoat]

Once the dust has settled cvid will be the strongest case for a universal basic income

And banning low cost airlines and oversized cruise ships.

What's wrong with low cost airlines ?

You mean because they are overcrowded ?

Because they make it too easy to move from one place to another, ruining the best tourist spots by overcrowding the destinations.
Look at Venice for example. They have brought a curse to the place.

NO ! SILENCE ! VENICE IS A SPECIAL CASE ! VENICE *LIVES* ON TOURISM !

Venice is "one of the BIGGEST TOURIST TRAPS IN THE WORLD" ULTRA-MEGA-INFLATED PRICES and I've been LIVING in Venice for about 1 year .. "it's weird" some people are about "like some Tories here" they constantly complain "about the bloody tourists" yet "they want even MORE of them because they made FUCK METRIC TONS OF MONEY" from them.

It's like when I was in La Spezia during my army times "everyone in La Spezia *HATES* the army/navy" and yet "they peel the life out of them that have no choice" and make LOADS AND LOADS of money from them !!

Venice cries this and that, Venice received TONS of money from all the world, Venice is always into shit YES "hell knows what they done of that money".

I agree Venice is a bit, in terms of masses of people going there, "over crowded" but yet again "they live on that" and they live VERY well on that !

I am sorry I know how much they squeeze out from tourists and such "I don't have any pity".

And then again "it's NOT about the airlines make it easy to move", hell fuck, "you are the mayor of Venice, you can set out rules and limits so do it if you really think it should be done".

But they don't do that or they do it to a small extent.

There are "far many places in Italy complaining about this and that" and then as soon as "something goes a bit odd with tourism" they start crying all over the places saying "the government should pay for their losses".

Yes maybe Venice has "a bit of a curse" BUT .. it's a curse it brought to itself by itself.

And yeah .. go to San Marco square and buy a coffee .. and see not even in the most expensive place of all London you are going to pay it like that !!!

[edit] also "before to talk about Venice" .. "you don't know how Venetians / Veneto region are/is" .. .. let's say "quite a piece of work" go to live there ( I did ) for some years and you'll see what I am talking about .. if you'll resist enough time there ( which btw rememeber like me too "you are NOT from that area" so you are 'someone foreing' ) .

[KlaxonCow]

Yep. That's a fucking long way from "Herd Immunity".

Now, assuming the Chinese figures are exact, which I personally doubt - they changed the way they count cases at the same time their graph magically inflected - why do they have such a vanishingly small number of infections relative to population size? The answer is because they have locked everything the fuck down. Little or no person to person contact means little or no spread of the virus. But as soon as they relax that lockdown, if there's even a single infectious person out there, they're back to square one, and all but that vanishingly small percentage of people are at risk all over again.

Which implies we're in this for the long haul. Until there's either a cure, a vaccine, or the virus dies out all by itself, which it's not going to do any time soon. It's taken 6 weeks of lockdown for China to get where it (says it) is today.

I don't disagree with this overall assessment. And is pretty much what I was trying to say.

Including, yes, I don't believe the Chinese figures are exact.

But South Korea is a democracy - and, actually, because it went ham on testing, tracing cases and isolating people like no other country has, to jump on the spread immediately and directly, it actually pulled off its "suppression" with less drastic actions, in terms of city lockdowns and such, than most places too - so we do have another more trustworthy measuring stick here, that it can be done within the context of a modern "Western-alike" democratic nation too.

[Rhythm]

What's wrong with low cost airlines ?

*Hugely* environmentally damaging. Travel has been made a key piece of what it's supposed to mean to be "human" in the latter 20th and early 21st century, but the commodification of airlines has come at an enormous environmental cost.

Some people make use of it in good ways (diversification, work, families) but many just use the cheap flight services to extend their drinking prospects or to visit shitty low-rent hotels around the world. Not saying "air travel should only be for the rich" but there has to be a middle ground here somewhere.

[Chontler]

Meanwhile the waters in Venice run clear...

https://twitter.com/FolinAlberto/status ... 0649290758

We should do this every year.

[gilesgoat]

Meanwhile the waters in Venice run clear...

https://twitter.com/FolinAlberto/status ... 0649290758

We should do this every year.

*SSSSH* ! Don't say so .. someone may be listening and ready to release another one .. ..