I agree that self-medicating is generally not advisable.
However, I don't think the brand here is relevant- Flarin is just a brand of ibuprofen with a gastro-protective coating. The active ingredient is identical and the systemic effects will be the same- the drug will still be reaching the body through the gut and liver the same way as any other oral preparation.
The coating is just intended to reduce any gastric side effects, which are the chief source of issues with NSAIDs. I don't think a reduction in stomach ulcers is why the researchers are using ibuprofen.
Yeah, the problem is someone might read what you've stated and think "oh well, I'll be fine if I have Covid-19 and use over the counter Ibuprofen".
I take an NSAID for arthritis, Naproxen. Given the advice so far I've been very concerned about using it if I have a flare up. It weakens the immune system, or so I've been led to believe by what I've read (funny that the GP who prescribed it never told me that!).
I was quite careful not to say that. People may indeed read that into it, so I'll clarify what I meant.
All I am saying is that the systemic effects of oral ibuprofen preparations are identical regardless of whether they are expensive branded coated capsules or cheap unbranded tablets. The dose of ibuprofen received into the bloodstream via the liver is the same. The capsule is only intended to reduce side effects.
What I am not saying is that ibuprofen improves outcomes for COVID infections. We will have to wait for trial data for that. There are plausible mechanisms whereby ibuprofen and other NSAIDs could improve outcomes, but equally there are plausible mechanisms by which NSAIDs could worsen COVID outcomes, as you mention re. naproxen.
However, if data shows that ibuprofen improves outcomes, then your bog-standard value pack will work just as well as the Flarin stuff for actually reducing systemic inflammation. Likewise, if Flarin proves to be more dangerous than nothing, all oral ibuprofen preparations should be avoided. The systemic effects are directly comparable.
Regarding naproxen- NSAIDs are not classic immunosuppressants by any means, but by their very nature they dampen down part of the inflammatory response. Therefore, there is a plausible mechanism by which healing responses and infection responses may be impaired. This is not well characterised or understood, and NSAIDs are effective at relieving pain, so they continue to be used. Pain itself is also a factor in poor healing so it is quite difficult to unpick. None of this is something you will find in a documented side-effects list, it is too nebulous at present, so it is understandable your doctor wouldn't mention it. (Having said that, NSAIDs can very rarely cause low cell counts, as can many medicines. This is not an intended effect of the drug and is listed as rare to very rare for ibuprofen. Many drugs can rarely cause the same adverse effect).
Azreal13 wrote: My local healthcare trust (which is in the least affected part of one of the least affected parts of the country) apparently hasn't had a confirmed case in a fortnight.
yeah but Im still not sure that what they Druids say is true
I've been deeply worried about India since the beginning - I think it's a disaster in the making. There have been 2 cyclones in the last 2 weeks, exacerbating it.
Easy E wrote: There is a report in the Washington Post(?) about an hour increase in COVID related hospitalizations in several states.
Er, what?
I suspect that's some smart phone auto-correcting going on there, but I can't tell what you're trying to say...
Pretty sure he means that the incredibly predictable spike after reopening happened. Texas and Florida are both showing record case numbers, and given that Texas' numbers are based on hospitalizations, the "we're just testing more" argument doesn't really hold up.
There isn’t much evidence that reopening is what’s causing the spikes again. It’s very localized, with some areas seeing a spike after reopening, and others not at all.
Though the outbreaks come weeks into state reopenings, it’s not clear that they’re linked to increased economic activity. In Georgia, where hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms have been operating for a month and a half, case numbers have plateaued, flummoxing experts.
What baffles me is that every business is arbitrarily apply rules with no rhyme or reason.
I was at my community lake yesterday, and they have everyone going in and out of one entrance, one single toilet open for everyone at the lake to share (how hundreds of people sharing a single toilet is more sanitary is beyond me), and no outside food or drink allowed.....outside, at a lake.
The malls are open now, with no limits on how many people are inside. Yet, people are funneled in and out of a few entrances, and each store has an arbitrary limit to how many people they allow in. How, limiting people in each store, yet not limiting how many are standing in a line outside said store, and still inside the mall makes no sense.
If there are going to be rules for reopening, everyone needs to be on the same page and use some common sense.
Even with inconsistencies the fact remains that anti-spread measures and general caution are FAR more prevalent post-reopening, so it should be no surprise that transmission rates do not surge to match what they were pre-lockdown. Ditto for economic activity.
It is less about raw 'positive test numbers going up', I think, and it is really more all about the hospitalization rate, death rate and number of positives as a percentage rate of overall testing.
Easy E wrote: There is a report in the Washington Post(?) about an hour increase in COVID related hospitalizations in several states.
Er, what?
I suspect that's some smart phone auto-correcting going on there, but I can't tell what you're trying to say...
Pretty sure he means that the incredibly predictable spike after reopening happened. Texas and Florida are both showing record case numbers, and given that Texas' numbers are based on hospitalizations, the "we're just testing more" argument doesn't really hold up.
Not to mention protests that while have legit reasons are giving good opportunity for virus spreading with thousands if not tens of thousands in same area. All it takes is couple virus carrier and same could happen what happened in north italy with single football game in stadium kickstarting the mess.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Excuse whilst I don my LARP kit, ready for the inevitable Marmite Conflict.
I WILL NOT BE DENIED!
Good luck with that one bud, some lad in wales tried that the other week in a beauty spot , next thing the armed police were all over him. Lol.
Saying that though, i wonder how quick I could clear the aisles in Tesco’s if i rocked up in my multicam airsoft loadout. Those pouches on my plate carrier would be great for beer cans. Don’t think the cops would see it that way though.
Bilge Rat wrote: Just cut / shaved my own hair for the first time since I can't go to a barber. Turned out suprisingly well
brave indeed, as The Event drags on the hair trimmers used to keep Father mostly presentable are whispering to me like some demon blade...cmon how bad could it be...
Bit worried about the place going bat-gak loopy-poops come Monday
Easy E wrote: There is a report in the Washington Post(?) about an hour increase in COVID related hospitalizations in several states.
Er, what?
I suspect that's some smart phone auto-correcting going on there, but I can't tell what you're trying to say...
Pretty sure he means that the incredibly predictable spike after reopening happened. Texas and Florida are both showing record case numbers, and given that Texas' numbers are based on hospitalizations, the "we're just testing more" argument doesn't really hold up.
Not to mention protests that while have legit reasons are giving good opportunity for virus spreading with thousands if not tens of thousands in same area. All it takes is couple virus carrier and same could happen what happened in north italy with single football game in stadium kickstarting the mess.
I'd say all the openings and the beach parties with tons of people without masks on is more to blame. The protests I've seen, most people were wearing masks.
Bilge Rat wrote: Just cut / shaved my own hair for the first time since I can't go to a barber. Turned out suprisingly well
brave indeed, as The Event drags on the hair trimmers used to keep Father mostly presentable are whispering to me like some demon blade...cmon how bad could it be...
Bit worried about the place going bat-gak loopy-poops come Monday
It's not so bad, I've done mine myself for about 15 years now. Did my youngest son's for the first time the other day, that was actually a lot scarier!
Bilge Rat wrote: Just cut / shaved my own hair for the first time since I can't go to a barber. Turned out suprisingly well
brave indeed, as The Event drags on the hair trimmers used to keep Father mostly presentable are whispering to me like some demon blade...cmon how bad could it be...
Bit worried about the place going bat-gak loopy-poops come Monday
It's not so bad, I've done mine myself for about 15 years now. Did my youngest son's for the first time the other day, that was actually a lot scarier!
Yeah, the shaver had a guard thing on it so it makes it pretty easy to get everything even as long as you don't miss anywhere. Helps that my appearance is basically a lost cause at this point
Have been cutting my own hair for years now. At least 11 years, didn’t see the point of paying some dude to shave it all off so started doing it myself.
No 1 around the sides. 2 or 3 on the top. Full grown beard , death metal t shirt on and boom job done lol.
Bilge Rat wrote: Just cut / shaved my own hair for the first time since I can't go to a barber. Turned out suprisingly well
brave indeed, as The Event drags on the hair trimmers used to keep Father mostly presentable are whispering to me like some demon blade...cmon how bad could it be...
Bit worried about the place going bat-gak loopy-poops come Monday
If you're just buzzing it all over it's easy enough, just gotta make sure you don't leave any strays. I've been seeing some 1930s style undercuts appearing more and more at work. Most people are trying to get a transition into it. They're scared of going too stark. Ive been getting the mrs to shave mine down to nothing on the sides, long slick on the top, like old Arthur in my avatar. She doesn't do a bad job to be fair.
I think this weekend I'll probably have the wife cut my hair as well. She has never done it so I am sure this will be an amazing experience, but this is as unkempt as I have ever looked and it honestly can't go anywhere but better from here.
Vulcan wrote: Now here's the scary part. Imagine someone infected with this virus working in a fast-food joint. Up to two weeks of working with people's food while being contagous but asymptomatic is scary.
That's how it's going to explode in America, if it gets that far. Just one fast-food worker could infect tens of thousands...
Maybe. But its also quite possible -- even likely -- that one fast food worker won't do that. Social distancing, glove and mask use, frequent handwashing, all make even such a situation far less dangerous than it was 4 months ago. Restaurant air filtiration and venting systems are profoundly good at sucking the air out of the kitchen and blowing it out the top of the restaurant, lest it fill with smoke and cooking smells, and the "hood" vent system also has the happy side effect of clearing the air from inside the restaurant pretty quickly.
Its very rare for one fast food worker to infect tens of thousands of people. To do that, you need something like a chronic carrier case from the 1990s when a pet turtle infested the salad bar (which was not properly cleaned) with salmonella mikurwasa (don't make me remember how to spell that bacterium). Only one worker brought it in with him and he only worked one day a week -- so he constantly re-infected the salad bar (used to make the tacos this particular restaurant sells as more or less its only menu items) which was probably cleaned, carefully, 1 time a week as well Thousands of people were sickened, and multiple levels of government began carefully investigating every single food item that restaurant bought or used (there was much made of a similar bacterium once havingbeen found in spainish olives and speculation that the freezers might be infested in the olive supply, or the trucks, or ... nobody could figure it out. Till one day the helath inspector happened to be there for his daily inspection (it was serious enough that they were going over there almost every day) and saw the salad lettuce move. "What's that?" "That's my pet turtle, I can't leave him at home, I let hiim play in the lettuce." Mystery solved! But...That is a bacterial, not viral pattern -- because the same food recycled in and out ofthe salad bar could grow more bacteria, spread to more food, raise the innoculum of infection for people eating it, get up out of temperature zone and propagate more bacteria, get put back into cooling and wait like a snake in the grass to infect another day. It was food poisoning that could be spread by food -- in a restaurant, and the very poor sanitation of that particular restuarant meant every taco they made ended up with bits of that salad in it. A virus, even if you sneezed it on the salad bar for a week, would be GONE in a week, because that one fast food worker would get over the disease or get so sick he went home, and the virus itself doesn't propagate by eating lettuce and ground beef at room temperature. So yeah, you could infect dozens of people that way, but likely not thousands, from one guy who asymptomatically (or rather, presymptomatically) began sneezing on his food. The food that is cookoed up to higher temperatures, you basically kill the virus, so your only worry is getting int on the packaging, the money, that the food comes with or is used as change back to the person. Many, many people pay only with credit cards now -- and the packaging, I suspect, many people are wary enough to be caustious in restricting what they touch. Even if your infected fellow was in charge of loading the napkin dispenser with napkins, he would only touch 2 napkins out of a stack of perhaps 100, if he was in charge of handing out straws to people, remember those straws are wrapped in paper which tends to keep the straw itself sanitary even if he sneezes. So if people are a tiny bit clever about removing food from the packaging, and THEN washing their hands again before eating? Our mr man in the fast food place may actually be unable to infect anyone at all (coworkers excepted).
Could some numbnuts still sneeze on his gloves repeatedly and wipe them clean on the burgers he is selling? Sure. But its not quite as drastic a situation as the 10,000s of plague victims makes it sound. (Although if oyu infect the RIGHT dozen people, the gift will keep on giving, but even then, we are far more reslient against such spread than we were, and even things normally counted on to spread a plague like wildfire are somewhat reduced in our behavior sets these days.) Cause his viral load is only so high -- the moment he sneezes, it begins to dilute, and the restaurant doesn't spontaneiously create more virus to add to that threat like in the huge food poisoning cases we associate with bacterial infestattions of the food chain.
Finally, and I can't emphasize this enough for the doom and gloom crowd. This disease borders on being harmless to anyone but the quite high risk groups over 60, so much of the population that is currrently eating in fast food joints are going to be the yougner crowd that shake it off as a cold, rather than the stay in the old folks home crowds who gave us such impressive casualty rates in new york and new jersey with the "send in the sick" policies in play. If your man infected 10,000 people, and none of them happened to be over 60, he would have roughly 25 percent chance of killing ONE person, total, so weak is the disease in the young. Sure, they might have to be isolated from old folks homes for 2 weeks, but we are already ata point where we have to treat all strangers as infectious and deadly, in this plague, so its no additional harm, and by immunizing 10,000 people, your brave fast food worker would also be creating the herd immunity that lockdown people often forget is our goal.
The younger crowd is not as safe as early reports made them sound. Even people who experienced very minor symptoms now show lung and organ damage from the virus. It’s far from harmless.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The younger crowd is not as safe as early reports made them sound. Even people who experienced very minor symptoms now show lung and organ damage from the virus. It’s far from harmless.
Which is another issue with the "let it run rampant and get herd immunity" strategy. We have no idea about the long-term effects for those who recover. Down the line that organ damage can have very serious health implications, and potentially be an even larger strain on the health system than the virus itself.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The younger crowd is not as safe as early reports made them sound. Even people who experienced very minor symptoms now show lung and organ damage from the virus. It’s far from harmless.
Which is another issue with the "let it run rampant and get herd immunity" strategy. We have no idea about the long-term effects for those who recover. Down the line that organ damage can have very serious health implications, and potentially be an even larger strain on the health system than the virus itself.
The respiratory department where I work are really worried about the next few years. They are anticipating a massive increase in service load.
nfe wrote: Turns out that PLCs can't pay dividends or management bonuses if they haven't paid back state aid.
If you're going to just lob a loaded statement out there, at least quote in full the person who posted it on Twitter:
So apparently, according to the Financial Conduct Authority, public limited companies aren't allowed to pay dividends to shareholders or provide bonuses to senior management if they've received state aid that they haven't paid it back.
Just sharing that apropos of nothing.
I feel like I should be clear that I'm not saying "neeer, evil company, evil company!", more "come on everyone, big publicly traded companies don't often give away large chunks of money because they're feeling altruistic."
I mean, some do. And they're awesome. But still.
Much like how this is the time of year when GW traditionally does price raises, there usually seems to be a dividend announcement in July as well. It would make sense that now they might try to make sure they can make a dividend announcement on the back of New40k.
I note that there are two very different stories about that incident and the person involved.
Its a good case study of the media handling something during the plague in a very partisan manner on both sides.
Dukeofstuff wrote: I note that there are two very different stories about that incident and the person involved.
Its a good case study of the media handling something during the plague in a very partisan manner on both sides.
Can you expand on this? Because in the posted story, there really... isn't another side.
Jones, who built the state dashboard, says she was fired May 18 after refusing to “manipulate” COVID-19 data to justify reopening. DeSantis said she was fired because “she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors.”
Those two sentences are perfectly in sync with each other. You must have some other source you are drawing from, I think?
Dukeofstuff wrote: I note that there are two very different stories about that incident and the person involved.
Its a good case study of the media handling something during the plague in a very partisan manner on both sides.
Can you expand on this? Because in the posted story, there really... isn't another side.
Jones, who built the state dashboard, says she was fired May 18 after refusing to “manipulate” COVID-19 data to justify reopening. DeSantis said she was fired because “she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors.”
Those two sentences are perfectly in sync with each other. You must have some other source you are drawing from, I think?
I too want to see the 'other side' argument. It is highly relevant to determining the situation in Florida if the 'correct numbers' she is giving are or are not actually correct.
So new zealand declared itself free from corona yet after 3 weeks corona patients appeared. Not unexpected as without vaccines killing virus is all but impossible. It might appear defeated but has habit of resurfacing eventually anyway. And the way modern world works just increases issue.
New Zealand's new cases are people from the UK. They were released early from quarantine under "compassionate" rules to let them visit adying relative.
Or if you're going to do that keep them in isolation whilst they move through the country. This does highlight the difficulty though, even a country that clears itself is still at high risk from anyone from overseas. This will include the whole shipping infrastructure of goods not just holidaymakers and such.
Kilkrazy wrote: New Zealand's new cases are people from the UK. They were released early from quarantine under "compassionate" rules to let them visit adying relative.
It illustrates the dangers of the situation. The patients should have been tested before early release.
Yeah. But unless you lock your country 100% which means no post, no imports, no exports etc you won't be able to keep virus out forever.
How self-sustaining New Zealand is? anything they import that's something they can't produce themselves and can't really just dump? That's instant source of viruses from people transporting it. And all it takes is one person and it can start whole big chain. South Korea got lots of new cases when that were tracked down to ONE person as the source...
And that's why track and trace is the only way to police modern nations with the virus at large. At least until we either hit herd immunity or vaccine or at least gain medical drugs that reduce the worst of the condition.
You can lockdown like crazy, but in the end people move around (this is nothing new even in cave-man days humans moved around a LOT and traded items across vast distances). Goods move, people move and so much of the infrastructure of most countries relies on things from outside.
Overread wrote: And that's why track and trace is the only way to police modern nations with the virus at large. At least until we either hit herd immunity or vaccine or at least gain medical drugs that reduce the worst of the condition.
You can lockdown like crazy, but in the end people move around (this is nothing new even in cave-man days humans moved around a LOT and traded items across vast distances). Goods move, people move and so much of the infrastructure of most countries relies on things from outside.
Yes agree 100%. I think that's why, in part, the UK approach is rather flippant and there is a danger to relieving lockdown while the track and trace system is not working adequately (at least, from the reports I have read about it).
I'm not quite sure who benefits from this approach. Absolutely - open the economy again, get people back to work. But if we now end up with another spike of infections (which, I think going off occurrences in other countries, who saw this happen even with a much lower infection rate, you have to think is likely) then they will end up having to close shop again. Which will cause even more disruption, and with lockdowns arguably far less effective as public confidence will have been eroded.
Hey DukeofStuff, how are you coming on explaining the other side of that "Florida massaging the data" story and why the media was spinning it for partisan purposes? Still interesting in hearing more!
Dukeofstuff wrote: I note that there are two very different stories about that incident and the person involved.
Its a good case study of the media handling something during the plague in a very partisan manner on both sides.
Can you expand on this? Because in the posted story, there really... isn't another side.
Jones, who built the state dashboard, says she was fired May 18 after refusing to “manipulate” COVID-19 data to justify reopening. DeSantis said she was fired because “she didn’t listen to the people who were her superiors.”
Those two sentences are perfectly in sync with each other. You must have some other source you are drawing from, I think?
It's weird. Everybody else is going back to work, I'm finally going home to not work for a month or two after being stuck in Angola away from my family due to Corona for 4,5 months.
As we open up in Alberta, it is becoming more and more obvious that corporations are taking advantage of the crisis to screw over the workers.
My wife’s retail store has opened. Except she has no other staff. Her assistant manager and full time supervisor have been cut to part time hours if they want to go back to work.
Not only is this illegal, it puts the workers in a bad position, as they will lose all employment insurance pay, because they have been offered a job. But they can’t refuse the job, even though their hours are cut, and by refusing reduced hours and pay, they can get fined for not going back to work.
My wife is currently required to work 7 days a week without OT, and no one else to cover the store. It’s been like this for nearly a month.
While retail might be lamenting the loss of sales, they are taking full advantage of their workers to save money while they can still claim there is a crisis situation which prevents them from hiring anyone else back full time.
As usual the only winners here are the big corporations and companies that are able to skirt laws and screw over their workers on the ground.
They do indeed work, and while they aren't 100% effective, they greatly reduce the spread and transmission.
Unfortunately, not everyone wears masks when out and about, even when they should be.
Sadly, it seems to have become a bit of a political issue, among all the other reasons why people choose to not wear one...
Would have been EASY to get everyone to wear them. Call them "Patriot Masks" and encourage them to be made in red, white and blue. Explain how we're sacrificing just as the Greatest Generation did. That by wearing them we're protecting our first responders and our beloved military. Etcetera. Just would have taken a little interest and attention from a certain branch of the federal government, who has the bully pulpit to make that happen. Would likely have boosted someone's approval ratings also. It really goes to show you, on so many levels.
I would be very wary of taking a case of only two examples as scientific proof that masks work.
I think we're all going to be made to wear them anyway.
However, the thing about opening up the shops is that people aren't going to go back to the shops and restaurants until they think it's safe.
UK retailers are reporting footfall down nearly 40% compared to this time last year, despite 10 weeks of pent-up demand and £6bn unspent.
60% of sales sounds a lot better than 0%, but it's low enough to put any retailer underwater once they are paying all their costs of staff and so on again.
I'd wager footfall will steadily rise unless/until there's a major outbreak. Even if its only regional, its report in the media would set things back
We also have to remember that some aspects of shopping will take longer to recover. For example with reduced numbers of people allowed in a shop, right now there's distinct pressure not to brows in shops compared to before. So shops are likely seeing far less footfall and far fewer opportunistic purchases than they normally would.
Similarly some services aren't on offer, like changing facilities in clothing shops. That's going to impact sales directly.
It's removed the "casual" stress free aspect from shopping so people are a bit more on-edge which likely eats into casual buying and also into a lot of shop skills at selling to customers. You can't easily chat your customers up into a sale when you're all hiding behind screens and wearing masks and really not used to such behaviour.
Plus with eateries still mostly shut that also cuts down on a lot of people who used to "go out" for the weekend as an activity - abite to eat at a few places, brows a few shops etc... Until we've a calmer, safer feeling climate (which like as not won't happen until vaccine/herd immunity/next year) I'd wager footfall will remain low, but should steadily increase.
Kilkrazy wrote: I would be very wary of taking a case of only two examples as scientific proof that masks work.
I think we're all going to be made to wear them anyway.
However, the thing about opening up the shops is that people aren't going to go back to the shops and restaurants until they think it's safe.
UK retailers are reporting footfall down nearly 40% compared to this time last year, despite 10 weeks of pent-up demand and £6bn unspent.
60% of sales sounds a lot better than 0%, but it's low enough to put any retailer underwater once they are paying all their costs of staff and so on again.
Yup. I have a trip to London in July. They're mandatory on public transport, so even if, as is usually the case on my slow train back to cholsey, the carriage is empty bar me, I'm still supposed to wear one. Absurd. I'll wear one on the tube, fine, but I will not wear one outdoors.
Kilkrazy wrote: I would be very wary of taking a case of only two examples as scientific proof that masks work.
I think we're all going to be made to wear them anyway.
The vast majority of scientific consensus seems to agree that they work to an extent, in terms of it stopping you infecting someone else - with a lot of the argument seemingly around how much of a difference they make.
Most of the negative advice seems to be behavioural i.e. with people feeling invulnerable while wearing a mask, and in cases (and I think the UK falls into this category) where they didn't want people panic-buying N95 masks when the NHS had a supply shortage.
I also think it has to be a factor in countries, such as Japan and S Korea, which have a very high population density yet lower comparable rates of infection (certainly compared to Europe and the US). There was also some anecdotal evidence of China Town in a city in the US (I can't recall the city unfortunately) which had a much lower rate amongst that area of the city.
So, I think if you were making a cost/benefit/risk analysis of use of masks, it seems to me a fairly low-cost/potential high benefit step to take. Certainly the company I work for is issuing a supply of masks to all staff, which will be based off of a risk assessment made independently of anything that the government here has put forward.
Data for my county is unfortunately showing a notable rise in cases, with the most infected group now 25-34 rather than 65+...
I think this is reflecting folks who aren't taking precautions and don't feel as at risk, resuming their lives without enough social distancing...
I'd love things to be able to stay open, but for that, people need to keep social distancing! Masks certainly help with that, when possible, particularly in places where it's hard to avoid being closer than 6 feet.
RiTides wrote: Data for my county is unfortunately showing a notable rise in cases, with the most infected group now 25-34 rather than 65+...
I think this is reflecting folks who aren't taking precautions and don't feel as at risk, resuming their lives without enough social distancing...
I'd love things to be able to stay open, but for that, people need to keep social distancing! Masks certainly help with that, when possible, particularly in places where it's hard to avoid being closer than 6 feet.
Really? Ontario's been on a downward slide. We've hit our third consecutive day of fewer than 200 cases.
I'm in the somewhat-often-discussed in this thread Florida near Tampa, the site just detects Canada for some reason. There's a lot of awesome things here (Tom Brady just showed off his new uniform, for one ) but the numbers are pretty undeniable. We're going to have a long increasing plateau, if not a second spike, if people don't start distancing better.
RiTides wrote: I'm in the somewhat-often-discussed in this thread Florida near Tampa, the site just detects Canada for some reason. There's a lot of awesome things here (Tom Brady just showed off his new uniform, for one ) but the numbers are pretty undeniable. We're going to have a long increasing plateau, if not a second spike, if people don't start distancing better.
Phew, thought we had joined Florida for a second there....
RiTides wrote: I'm in the somewhat-often-discussed in this thread Florida near Tampa, the site just detects Canada for some reason. There's a lot of awesome things here (Tom Brady just showed off his new uniform, for one ) but the numbers are pretty undeniable. We're going to have a long increasing plateau, if not a second spike, if people don't start distancing better.
Phew, thought we had joined Florida for a second there....
Florida men?
To soon?....
Tbf nice looking place but too many Tourist for my liking.
I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.
I don't think most of the posts from January did, and it's a bit unreasonable to call people out on it when there was so much unknown at the time. I myself also was in the "the flu is worse" camp because, well, we had been through so many false alarms in the States - SARS, MERS, Monkeypox, H1N1, Ebola, and so on. I was totally wrong and so were many other people.
I assume it varies by country and surely by demographics, but in the US, there have been a little over 2 million cases. A 2 percent fatality rate would be 40,000 deaths. We in fact have 116,000 dead, which is closer to 6%.
Sure, there are probably undiagnosed cases out there because our testing sucks, but that cuts both ways - plenty of people that died without being tested that didn't get counted. Add in the states where they are massaging the data for political reasons, and we don't know the true number, but there is no reason to think the fatality rate is less than 2%, unless you're just making up numbers because you don't really care.
I haven't seen anyone suggest these are the actual fatality rate of the virus in the general population, it clearly is at least partially due to the world being caught totally off guard and lacking enough tests... and so those who are getting tested are a self selecting group.
It's bad, obviously... but it's also not 15%+, or anything like that... sucks that we don't have better testing to figure out what it really is.
Ouze wrote: That's only new on the federal level, several states already were massaging the data to some extent, Florida most egregiously.
I do remember seeing an interesting article in the news about the women who was creating the website for one of the states in America was fired after she refused to modify the data for them. Coulda been Florida, this was a month or so back mind you.
I did not read it as that. I read it as 'partisan official asks governors to spin things in a partisan way' which while despicable is pretty normal politics-level of despicable, even if rendered more so because of the lethality involved.
Florida also ordered medical examiners to stop documenting cause of death in public reporting, at least for a while. I think they had to walk that back when the MEs ratted them out to the press.
Ouze wrote: That's only new on the federal level, several states already were massaging the data to some extent, Florida most egregiously.
I do remember seeing an interesting article in the news about the women who was creating the website for one of the states in America was fired after she refused to modify the data for them. Coulda been Florida, this was a month or so back mind you.
Yeah, we were talking about this on the previous page (I don't blame you for missing it though--this thread moves fast). Dukeofstuff said he had read a very different telling of the same story, suggesting that the above had been spun in a very partisan way. Hopefully he will get back to us with a source since it is highly relevant to how seriously we treat the numbers she is putting out.
Ah sorry, my mistake. But yeah, I do have doubts if there is many countries out there who have been 100% honest with their statistics. Either by choosing what to gather or what to publish.
I had intended to let the matter drop, but now feel I have to post at least one source about the woman. Like I said, I think its a better study in media bias on both sides than it is a study in something real inside government data collection and reporting.
I could give a multiple page long analys of what I do and don't believe about this particular case, but I don't want to bring politics into this thread. Suffice to say, its wise to consume multiple viewpoints of media.
Thank you for following up on that, interesting reading. I had searched on my own but had not found this. The second story especially fills in the gaps between what she says she was fired, and why the state said she was fired, which were pretty vague originally. The first one reads more like a hit piece for reasons addressed in the comments on the story, but in any event, the second story was what I was looking for.
I don't think most of the posts from January did, and it's a bit unreasonable to call people out on it when there was so much unknown at the time. I myself also was in the "the flu is worse" camp because, well, we had been through so many false alarms in the States - SARS, MERS, Monkeypox, H1N1, Ebola, and so on. I was totally wrong and so were many other people.
Oh, most certainly. I was reading through the posts back then, it just reminded me how optimistic everyone- myself included- was.
Overread wrote: And that's why track and trace is the only way to police modern nations with the virus at large. At least until we either hit herd immunity or vaccine or at least gain medical drugs that reduce the worst of the condition.
You can lockdown like crazy, but in the end people move around (this is nothing new even in cave-man days humans moved around a LOT and traded items across vast distances). Goods move, people move and so much of the infrastructure of most countries relies on things from outside.
Yes agree 100%. I think that's why, in part, the UK approach is rather flippant and there is a danger to relieving lockdown while the track and trace system is not working adequately (at least, from the reports I have read about it).
I'm not quite sure who benefits from this approach. Absolutely - open the economy again, get people back to work. But if we now end up with another spike of infections (which, I think going off occurrences in other countries, who saw this happen even with a much lower infection rate, you have to think is likely) then they will end up having to close shop again. Which will cause even more disruption, and with lockdowns arguably far less effective as public confidence will have been eroded.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
And in other news Florida has restaurants closing up week after opening. No surprises there when you open up too soon for political reasons.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Surprised theres been no post on dexamethasone yet. Apparently it's a cheap steroid and could reduce deaths of folks on ventilators by a third.
Not posting a link because I'm lazy. Google it yourselves folks.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Surprised theres been no post on dexamethasone yet. Apparently it's a cheap steroid and could reduce deaths of folks on ventilators by a third.
Not posting a link because I'm lazy. Google it yourselves folks.
I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.
Yeah, no kidding! Now I am one of the "true believers" that we are not taking this seriously enough and have completely failed as a Nation to do proper testing and tracing.
Like I have said a few times. I was part of the problem!
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.
I believe the Fatality rate is around 2%, where the 1917-18 Spanish Flu was closer to 18%? Meanwhile, the normal Flu has killed something like 2K people in the US this year and no one is losing their mind.
Yeah, no kidding! Now I am one of the "true believers" that we are not taking this seriously enough and have completely failed as a Nation to do proper testing and tracing.
Like I have said a few times. I was part of the problem!
We all were, and that's because whether we like the individuals involved or not, the messages from our leadership influenced our thinking. Go to any internet cesspool now and you'll still see the same garbage being regurgitated. Just a flu, kids can't get it, will go away in the summer, only old people are at risk, etc. Minds get made up quickly, and when the initial information is bad, it's a real obstacle.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.
I've already made my points refuting it every other time he's posted it. So now I'm just going to point it out and call it the bs that it is.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
I don't think 'calling out' means what you think it means.
I've already made my points refuting it every other time he's posted it. So now I'm just going to point it out and call it the bs that it is.
We have made posts pointing out your flagrant disregard for safety of others and your complete refusal to even try to adhere to safety guidelines.
The promised "world beating" Track & Trace ap the UK govt decided to develop and initially tested out on the Isle of Wight , will now roll out/be ready "for the winter".
TBF they never claimed how it would be world beating ...
What's going to take all those months to develop for a track and trace app? Esp when the likes of Google and such already have tracking technology built into pretty much every single phone. Surely all the back end requires is data collection and distribution, not small feats by any means, but months and months? Especially when several other nations already have such applications running.
Dukeofstuff wrote: I had intended to let the matter drop, but now feel I have to post at least one source about the woman. Like I said, I think its a better study in media bias on both sides than it is a study in something real inside government data collection and reporting.
I could give a multiple page long analys of what I do and don't believe about this particular case, but I don't want to bring politics into this thread. Suffice to say, its wise to consume multiple viewpoints of media.
Thank you! The first article is obviously bias-crap (though I think we all knew that just from the title) but interesting reading nonetheless. Nothing compared to that second one, which makes everyone involved seem more normal and the whole story less sensational... Exactly the sort of thing that viewers aren't interested in, so no wonder media wants to process it into something else for their customer base. Fortunately this is not a facet of a major disaster with large numbers of lives at stake...
reds8n wrote: The promised "world beating" Track & Trace ap the UK govt decided to develop and initially tested out on the Isle of Wight , will now roll out/be ready "for the winter".
TBF they never claimed how it would be world beating ...
We were just discussing yesterday about what had happeneed to the app. Quite frankly I'm almost at the point of complete despair about the absolute shambles that has been the UK response to this.
I mean, it's just an absolute joke. What on earth is going through the minds of the Executive? It's like they've fallen into total panic mode and are just randomly, reflexively reacting to stimuli.
Johnson and his cabinet are pretty far from my ideal to be running the show, but I was willing to give them a fair bit of leeway to deal with this and have been determined to try and keep partisanship out of it, but they're making it very hard to have any faith in them whatsoever.
I've never known anything to be handled this badly, I'm genuinely confused and exasperated by the lack of leadership and clarity. They seem to have completely abandoned any pretence at following the science and have started to openly make decisions based on political expediency.
I think that this thread will start to inevitably become a political one and be closed, certainly wrt the UK. Which is a shame.
There have been some oddities in the UK response - such as not imposing quarantines at the airports. Something that I think most of the population assumed was happening and wasn't until very late. More worryingly was a bit on the news talking about airport firms complaining about the draconian measures for the quarantine and how it would affect trade - even though its now pretty much standard practice the world over in some form or another.
UK has its good points, but over the last weeks the UK government does seem to be doing odd things. Even to the point of trying to cover up bad behaviour with childish excuses (driving to see a castle and trying to say it counted as some form of eye-test). There's almost a feeling that, having hit about the worst the world over in terms of deathrate, the government has almost thrown its arms up and given up.
That said when there's also been the population swarming to the countryside, beaches and raves at every chance they can get, the public are not without blame as well. Then again this seems to be a fairly standard problem for a lot of nations that haven't had SARS or other major outbreaks run rampant through their populations in living/recent memory. I think the early reports of "its not a threat to those under 60" was very damaging and has left an influence on the population where a large portion believe it to be true.
Although thus far the UK hasn't had the huge backlash that the US populations have against lockdowns - if anything I'd say the mood is somewhat that the population in the UK actually expected far more draconian lockdown measures and didn't get them; or didn't get them as swiftly as expected. I think perhaps giving a false impression that it isn't as bad as it might be. Which of course makes people far more lax.
I think the idea that it's our fault is something that is definitely being pushed, but tbh it's to be expected.
If you give people an inch there are some who will take a mile and others who will just blithely ignore the inch and do whatever they want anyway.
QAR is an example of exactly that mentality, railing against any restriction whatsoever and determined to criticise and challenge it, no matter what.
But the Govt hasn't exactly helped itself. They have done almost exactly the opposite of what's required to deal with a pandemic and the results are what we're living through now.
We have now managed to get ourselves into the situation where almost any action we take is futile, have hemorreged our economy and have a huge casualty rate and for what?
On Jeremy Vine today I listened to commentators who said that we should be prepared to live with the virus, just like we did with Polio and comments on conservativehome which say that the old should be prepared to "take one for the team" to allow the rest of us to prosper.
It's like we've just given up, and are just going to lie back and take it.
It’s when autumn and winter rolls around that’s really worrying me. As terrible as everything’s been so far I have this horrible feeling that it’s only the eye of the storm.
I've kept a close eye on what the Government here in the UK has been up to through the entire response. Kept on top of things through a variety of media, from the BBC to Private Eye. And altogether, taking absolutely everything together, I reckon they've done...alright. Alright as in, they've been absolutely cack-handed in some things and pretty quick off the mark in others.
Emergency hospital deployment? Quick off the mark and relatively efficiently done. Funds no issue, army deployed, and the whole thing generally well managed.
Ventilators and CPAP equipment? Their equipment sourcing and collaboration with the private sector to get third party variants designed and rolled out across the NHS was genuinely impressive.
PPE? Much, much less so. They relegated it to third rank priority; believing they had enough when they saw the number 'millions' in stock and didn't realise how quickly hospitals burned through it. So they put some third rankers with no procurement experience in charge of it and it bit them in the arse.
Slow testing limitations was nobody's fault. There was a production bottleneck in the chemical compounds and machines required along with a global shortage. There was nothing any government could do to speed that up if they didn't already have suitable production lines.
Initial lockdown speed was...iffy. They could have locked down a week earlier, but in all fairness, the medical advice at that stage was conflicting enough it wasn't clear cut. They flipped a coin, hoped for the best, and got it wrong. That happens sometimes. To their credit, when fresh modelling emerged from Imperial a week later showing how bad things were going to get, they slammed things down pretty sharpish rather than doubling down on the initial error.
Economic measures have been decent. Sunak has spent more money than anything bar a major war to try and keep the economy pumped up. Frankly, it's an amazingly socialistic response, and demonstrates just how little this government actually cares for Tory ideology as opposed to pure popularism. At the same time, more selectivity could have also been applied to big companies like Tesco or the big 4 consultancy firms who took the money and then paid out huge dividends off the back of it. But hindsight is 50/50 and I think they were more worried about getting money out.
Contact tracing has been a massive clusterfeth. They didn't get round to it until it was too late, it was poorly organised, and largely left to some of the big firms (coughsercocough) who have milked it and provided nowhere near good enough capability. The whole app thing also looks like it'll fall into that category.
Lockdown on the whole was well handled at initial implementation with the law/police. They went a little heavier than I'd have liked at first, but the sheer bloody minded selfishness of some people shows it was probably warranted. When it comes to lifting it, they've a muddier record. They're lifting it faster than some medical specialists recommend, but slower than a lot of other European countries; who I think they're keeping an eye on to see what happens there first. I think it's largely a matter of judgement though, and it's hard to penalise on this one until the results are in.
Quarantining the country has been a bit of a joke. You can see why they want to do it (ala New Zealand) but they're facing such a corporate backlash I don't think they have the backbone to fight it. Too many angry donors.
Shielding and emergency supplies for the vunerable during lockdown was poorly done at first. It picked up a bit as they got their act together, but they implemented poorly initially.
Cash for research into vaccines and collaborative centres/schemes with universities were quick and fast. Points on that score.
Care homes were basically abandoned. A big black mark there. Did they have capacity to do better? Probably not by much, but better attempts should have been made. They basically left those with Alzheimer's and the like to die.
And so on. Things done well, things done poorly. Some stuff was their fault, some stuff wasn't. Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.
I should say that broadly speaking the UK public has been with the idea of lockdowns in theory - I think its practice and personal application and understanding where its lacked - coupled to a lot of youthful ignorance/invulnerability and the issue of everyone having the same bright idea at the same time (eg everyone going to visit the countryside and often the same places in the countryside).
I'd also say that the UK is dragging its heels in regard to masks, but that seems to be somewhat linked to PPE and trying to stop the public hoovering up supplies that should go to the medical teams first. However at the same time mandated government restrictions on sales (heck Amazon already does this for some products) could have allowed the goverment to say "mask up" whilst protecting the higher tier masks for hospitals and the like.
That said masks has been another scientific battleground where there's arguments for and against, esp when considering public reaction and understanding (eg I have mask - I'm safe when in actuality its closer to; I have mask, others are safe from me).
The UK certainly hasn't behaved the worst of nations and our almost abandoning of the aged coupled to an advanced aging population has left the UK (and indeed a lot of EU nations) in a very weak position. At the same time countries like Germany have managed remarkable results.
Ketara wrote: ... Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.
Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.
Raab was the definition of terrified rabbit in the headlights, it was frankly something of a relief to get Johnson back after Raab's brief tenure in the big chair.
I have some symphathy for Hancock, but I'm afraid to say that the results speak for themselves somewhat.
Sunak is yet to be proven as far as many are concerned, a chancellor who makes it rain is always going to be popular.
But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.
I was hopeful that at least with a Govt with a comfortable majority that we might at least have some sound leadership and clear direction, I have been quite frankly horrified by the shambles that has been produced. Some good things, yes I agree, but the fact that we're third for fatalities, only having recently been overtaken by the absolute shitshow that is Bolsano's Govt is absolutely unacceptable.
It seems that we have needlessly made things worse for ourselves, and I'm not entirely sure why. I admit I was never a fan, but this Govt's response is and has been just bloody awful, empirically so.
QAR is an example of exactly that mentality, railing against any restriction whatsoever and determined to criticise and challenge it, no matter what.
You misspelled 'able to think for themself'
Future War Cultist wrote: It’s when autumn and winter rolls around that’s really worrying me. As terrible as everything’s been so far I have this horrible feeling that it’s only the eye of the storm.
See I don't think that will bear out. I think it will continue to fall, then peter off.
I'll never say never obviously. All we can do is wait out.
Ketara wrote: ... Frankly, nobody could have prepared the Government for this. I'm actually mildly grateful the Tories won the last election on that point though, because most of them have some experience at least in running government departments. If we'd had a fresh set of ministers with no experience still learning where their office is and how to order lunch? We'd have been utterly screwed. It takes at least six months in my knowledge to learn how to pull levers and administrate a government department effectively and speed was of the utmost essence in the earlier stages of this whole fiasco.
Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.
Raab was the definition of terrified rabbit in the headlights, it was frankly something of a relief to get Johnson back after Raab's brief tenure in the big chair.
I have some symphathy for Hancock, but I'm afraid to say that the results speak for themselves somewhat.
Sunak is yet to be proven as far as many are concerned, a chancellor who makes it rain is always going to be popular.
But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.
I was hopeful that at least with a Govt with a comfortable majority that we might at least have some sound leadership and clear direction, I have been quite frankly horrified by the shambles that has been produced. Some good things, yes I agree, but the fact that we're third for fatalities, only having recently been overtaken by the absolute shitshow that is Bolsano's Govt is absolutely unacceptable.
It seems that we have needlessly made things worse for ourselves, and I'm not entirely sure why. I admit I was never a fan, but this Govt's response is and has been just bloody awful, empirically so.
Some interesting comments here by both yourself and r_squared.
I think you are both correct. The government has certainly got some things right - Nightingale hospital, the initial communication and instruction around the lockdown (when it did finally come), the economic efforts to help with furloughing and at least allowing the social welfare systems to cope with the additional people that were out of work (although I realise a lot of this leads something to be desired).
However, I think some of the failings have been so utterly egregious, and been responsible for so much death and suffering, that they eclipse any credit that can be bestowed.
- The delay in lockdown. Most commentary now seems to indicate that this has cost possibly an additional 10-20k deaths, if not more. Nearly all of the advice was leading to the necessity of lockdown. Apparently it takes the Premier League and a phone call from Macron about the UK being quarantined to actually force the governments hand. If I was able to come to a conclusion to call my sister, advise her not to take her children into school that week, tell my parents (one of whom is highly vulnerable) to start booking food deliveries a week before the lockdown (based on just a few hours of reading around the internet), why could the government not come to the same painfully obvious conclusion?
Do you blame negligence or incompetence? The input of advisers such as Cummings? The complete lack of transparency is quite telling, I think quite obviously if there wasn't damning evidence involved we would already know about it.
- The care home situation. It seems that there were several sizeable failings at a govnermental and organisational level. The damning element here is not that it happened in the UK, but that other countries, Germany, Singapore, Korea, managed to manage the influx of Covid cases and have almost no additional deaths. Thousands upon thousands of old people forcibly alone in their rooms, gasping for breath and dying, their attendants and family not able to be with them in their final moments. Reading an article about this, it seems a rather personal thing to say about this to people I don't know personally (and perhaps that makes it easier) but for one of the few times in my adult life it reduced me to tears. It is such a horrible thing to contemplate and it feels to me the most horrendous of shortcomings that we are not holding anyone to account for what has happened.
- There are a couple of lessons I remember from childhood; one is that wishing for something does not make it so; the second is that you don't run before you can walk. Were these lessons not learned by the policy makers? We are existing lockdown at a rate of infection that is higher than it was when we entered it (late!) in the first place. The tracking and tracing systems, which have been shown in numerous countries to be an effective foil to spread, we are now told will not be fully operational until for some time and so in the meantime the virus will continue to spread virtually unchecked. Beijing has just shut down over an outbreak of around 30 new cases, while the UK goes ahead with the re-opening of retail and returning people to work.
I don't blame the people for behaving as they have done over recent weeks. I blame a massively confused public message (compounded by the Cummings affair, which essentially translated to 'do what you want') and a media that has largely failed to hold the government to account over the magnitude of its failings, and for serious the situation still is.
As for Hancock, I had some sympathy for him (Charlie Brooker described him as your sister's first boyfriend that owned a car) until I read about the lobbying donations he receives from the horse racing industry - possibly to the tune of around £100k.
Suddenly, the decision to delay lockdown and not stop mass events (when all of the advice was pointing towards their cancellation) and in particular the Cheltenham racing festival to go ahead, gets seriously brought into questin. Note that the racing industry was also one of the first to get going again.
There is absolutely a need to have a transparent enquiry of the conversations and minutes that took place, the advice from the SAGA group at that time, and why the UK was an outlier and lockdown delayed for that key week. If there was a vested interest there, I honestly think he needs putting in a locked room with some of the families of the many additional thousands of people who died as a result of that decision.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
Tough luck. If you can't see the obvious that's your fault. BJ needs scapegoat to divert blame on his actions in about half a year. This provides nice one.
If you are blind then problem is in your eyes. Tough luck and I feel pity on you. Truly. Wouldn't wish for anybody to suffer from what you are suffering from.
Up until this point, I could broadly agree with some of your assessments, but the problem is I'm not sure I could say that Johnson, Rabb, Sunak, Hancock and Patel have handled this any better than a brand new minister. For a start, they're all "brand new " by definition even if some have been previously fired from cabinet positions.
There definitely is something to that as a counterpoint, but it's not quite as bad as that. Johnson as Prime Minister did a stint as Foreign Secretary, and to be honest, Prime Minister isn't so much a departmental affair. Raab's been popping in and out of state office since 2018 (Secretary for Brexit, etc). Priti Patel has also held a number of more junior posts. But Hancock...no, he's fresh, as is Sunak relatively speaking.
That all being said, the rest of the Cabinet (Gavin Williamson, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, etc) does have more than a degree of experience. If we'd had a Corbyn government, the majority of the cabinet would have only been elected in 2017, let alone had any experience working with the civil service or running departments. We're wandering into politics now though, so I'll stop speculating there.
But this is now an additional problem. It's genuinely very difficult to steer away from politics over this now. The fact that our current strategy is absolutely not a scientifically lead one, but a direction favoured by some tory backbenchers to try and ride out the worst effects and get the nation back to work is evidence that the virus is politicised.
The issue is that it is no longer a scientific issue. Science only works so far as you're looking for a simple question and equation. So if the question is 'How do we get minimum possible deaths from coronavirus', the answer is simple. We just maintain strict lockdown for a year or two until coronavirus is gone (then seal the borders) or a vaccine appears.
The problem is that strict lockdown kills other people in other ways. People killing trapped vulnerables in domestic abuse? They go up. Suicides from people losing jobs? They go up. People not taking conditions seriously enough to call medical help and dying? It goes up. And that's just death. Once you throw lesser problems of misery and suffering into the fray which are exacerbated by lockdown, how do those balance? How many people need to be miserable and suffering to equate to one death? And how intense does it need to be? These are the problems where there frankly is no scientific answer. There's no simple clear cut equation, and whatever you do, people are going to die and suffer.
The Government, from what I can tell, has become really quite timid over the whole thing. They're popularists, and the downside to chasing the popular vote is that you don't want to piss too many people off. They only want to take a step when they think it will be successful. So that means that they're following in the wake of everyone in Europe when it comes to lockdown. Some European countries have a 1m distance? Tough. They're doing 2 metres. Other countries are opening stores? Great. Wait two weeks until doing the same here. Their strategy is just to wait for someone else to do what they want to do, watch for a fortnight then follow.
Which is not necessarily the worst path to follow. But it makes them start looking a bit timid and afraid to take any chances or responsibility. Which, I suppose, they are at this stage. They don't want this to turn into anything more of a clusterfeth than has already happened and get blamed for it.
I wonder if the massive backlash in America has made the UK government worried that they can't push for longer lockdowns least they risk similar issues bubbling up in the UK. We've already got copy-cat protesting going on in many European nations which has spilled out from events in America. It wouldn't be a shock to think that anti-lockdown issues could arise as well. Even without the potential risk of outside elements trying to influence the country to encourage such problems.
- The delay in lockdown. Most commentary now seems to indicate that this has cost possibly an additional 10-20k deaths, if not more. Nearly all of the advice was leading to the necessity of lockdown.
According to Private Eye, medical advice was still varied a week before lockdown, and from some relatively eminent people. They erred on the side of economics rather than caution, and lost. It was a mistake, and one with awful consequences, but was it an unreasonable one? I couldn't say, but I don't think most other people could either. Nobody saw how extreme this was going to get. Sometimes when in power you have to make tough calls, and sometimes those calls go bad.
So I wouldn't really blame negligence or incompetence for that one. It's just...life.
- The care home situation. It seems that there were several sizeable failings at a govnermental and organisational leve
From what I can tell, the reason care homes were abandoned was because testing was impossible. The reason there was insufficient testing was because of the supply bottleneck I mentioned earlier. Only three companies make the (heavily copyrighted/patented) chemicals and machines for testing analysis, and they basically supply everyone globally. I read about how they'd effectively tripled their workforces and switched to 24 hour shifts, but they couldn't get any more capacity out more quickly then they did.
So why is it other countries had sufficient testing capacity whilst we didn't? Two factors.
1. The production lines were based there, and
2. Our government initially believed testing was a crock of gak and unnecessary; meaning that when they changed their minds as the evidence to the contrary came in, they were back of the queue for the orders.
Unfortunately, that initial error of misjudgment back at the start absolutely ripped through their entire coronavirus response. It delayed their ability to test people going into hospitals and other key areas at first, swiftly followed by the care home fiasco even as they'd just finished equipping with enough testing capability to cover the former. And there was nothing they could do. The production lines couldn't go any faster, and there was no point to admitting that initial error (it wouldn't produce kits any faster). The worst thing was that it combined with the error of the misjudgment in PPE requirements, meaning that coronavirus spread faster and further and they really struggled to get a grip on it.
In other words, the testing capability decision was one really bad call early on, one which rippled right through the whole affair and is largely responsible for our atrocious death rate.
Overread wrote: I wonder if the massive backlash in America has made the UK government worried that they can't push for longer lockdowns least they risk similar issues bubbling up in the UK. We've already got copy-cat protesting going on in many European nations which has spilled out from events in America. It wouldn't be a shock to think that anti-lockdown issues could arise as well. Even without the potential risk of outside elements trying to influence the country to encourage such problems.
Well, you've got to remember, America's lockdown began as strictly regional, and stayed that way. Our national response was, and continues to be, do what's right for your state. We also had to have a very narrow time frame of lockdown, because we had absolutely pitiful support for quarantine- one 1200 dollar check to encourage people to stay home for 2-3 months.
If as a nation, we'd been told we are all locking down, period. You will get a set amount every month until the lockdown is lifted. These are the safety measures you must take. Then I think we would have had a very sustainable quarantine.
Encouraging a state response, and all of our mixed messages, led to people believing they individually knew better than any safety guidelines, and our numbers continue to tell of the unnecessary toll this is taking on us.
Overread wrote: I wonder if the massive backlash in America has made the UK government worried that they can't push for longer lockdowns least they risk similar issues bubbling up in the UK. We've already got copy-cat protesting going on in many European nations which has spilled out from events in America. It wouldn't be a shock to think that anti-lockdown issues could arise as well. Even without the potential risk of outside elements trying to influence the country to encourage such problems.
i doub that this assumption would fit thoguh, it's just not the same kind of culture, related but not the same.
in the end how people would react is also often more determined by leading figures and we all know why that could lead to a lot of differing behaviours.
Further the anti lockdown crowd was rather small and often extremely fringe over in mainlandeurope (and i mean PNOS fringe, aka fascisct with less than 1% voter basis small fringe groups) aswell as conspiracy nutjobs and other far extrememist groups.
And whilest the discipline has dropped off, and willigness aswell, it certainly is still at large in favour of what was done by the governments as of yet.
Who benefits? Johnson. As it is this is lucky break for him as long as effect to economy continues for at least about a year so that he has the scapegoat in place.
I'm going to continue to call you out on this every time you post it because it is literally baseless nonsense.
Tough luck. If you can't see the obvious that's your fault. BJ needs scapegoat to divert blame on his actions in about half a year. This provides nice one.
If you are blind then problem is in your eyes. Tough luck and I feel pity on you. Truly. Wouldn't wish for anybody to suffer from what you are suffering from.
so ipse dixit and ad hominem is all you have. An assertion without evidence can be rejected without evidence, although I have been graceful enough to provide you with evidence anyway.
- The delay in lockdown. Most commentary now seems to indicate that this has cost possibly an additional 10-20k deaths, if not more. Nearly all of the advice was leading to the necessity of lockdown.
As far as I'm aware, that assertion is based on a very basic mathematics model that suggested that the infection rate was doubling every certain number of days. (3 maybe?) its too basic to extrapolate the idea that simply locking down a week earlier would've saved X number of lives.
if theres anything to suggest otherwise, I am open to being better informed.
I think it's worth bearing in mind that all governments have made problems here. Whilst the UK press might point to things done right by say, the French or South Korean governments and castigate ours for things gone wrong; the press in those other countries will be doing exactly the same pick and mix thing. It's what the press does. Success is not worth much in news terms.
The way I see it, there are two main questions to be answered by the government:-
1. Who was responsible for ignoring/discounting the value of widespread testing at the start of the outbreak? And did they have reasonable, logical grounds for that decision?
2. Who was responsible for relegating PPE production to a lower level of procurement priority and then managing it?
Those are the factors primarily responsible for the larger quantity of deaths, and those are consequently the two facets to be investigated.
The first one, if the person had reasonable demonstrable evidential grounds for that decision? Well, if that can be proven, then much like the lockdown a week too late, it's just one of those things. A bad flip of the coin with conflicting evidence. If it seems the evidence is heavily weighed against it however, then that person should be swiftly removed from public service. They'll have caused many deaths.
The second one is far more clear cut, and a head needs to roll for that cock-up. Whoever it is, they didn't measure consumption rates against production figures and stock in hand, meaning they badly exacerbated an already tricky situation.
I find it interesting to measure the trends of what was done well against what was done poorly when it comes to coronavirus. In a way, it's shown us the strengths and weaknesses of the current incumbents better than anything.
They're good at:-
- Liasing/networking efficiently with the private sector in an emergency.
- Mobilising effectively the resources of their own departments and the (very muscular) power of the State.
- Making large-scale strategic decisions and following them through (May just used to fiddle whilst Rome burned).
- Being willing to re-evaulate those decisions when evidence stacks up against them rather than doubling down.
They're poor for:-
- Accountability after internal cock-ups (Cummings, PPE, the list goes on...)
- Subcontracting things that really shouldn't be subcontracted.
- The fine detail and resulting downsides to those large-scale strategic decisions mentioned above.
- Being overly dependent on Johnson.
I would add 'expedient with the truth when convenient' to the 'poor' section above, but just about every government ever has that one.
Dukeofstuff wrote: I had intended to let the matter drop, but now feel I have to post at least one source about the woman. Like I said, I think its a better study in media bias on both sides than it is a study in something real inside government data collection and reporting.
I could give a multiple page long analys of what I do and don't believe about this particular case, but I don't want to bring politics into this thread. Suffice to say, its wise to consume multiple viewpoints of media.
Thank you! The first article is obviously bias-crap (though I think we all knew that just from the title) but interesting reading nonetheless. Nothing compared to that second one, which makes everyone involved seem more normal and the whole story less sensational... Exactly the sort of thing that viewers aren't interested in, so no wonder media wants to process it into something else for their customer base. Fortunately this is not a facet of a major disaster with large numbers of lives at stake...
Yeah, that second article is similar to one I'd read on it. Makes it all a little less sensational, but still quite a mess...
She raised a lot on GoFundMe and has her own site now, but I'm honestly not sure what that can really accomplish. It wouldn've been best if she'd kept working on the official site, but it also seems reasonable of a data scientist to be asked not to be posting information on other channels, while she was working on the main site.
Ketara wrote: Raab's been popping in and out of state office since 2018 (Secretary for Brexit, etc).
Mmm, famous for his 'hey guess what you guys? I just found out Dover is pretty important for our cross-channel trade' comment. Not sure it's experience that should really reassure anyone.
Ketara wrote: I think it's worth bearing in mind that all governments have made problems here. Whilst the UK press might point to things done right by say, the French or South Korean governments and castigate ours for things gone wrong; the press in those other countries will be doing exactly the same pick and mix thing. It's what the press does. Success is not worth much in news terms.
Yes, although it's definitely quite obvious which country has done 'well' in each case and how big the failures are? South Korea has < 300 reported deaths, the UK has over 40,000. That much must be apparent to voters in Korea, who backed their incumbent party to a landslide victory recently when (apparently) they had been on the ropes before the Coronavirus hit. Reading some of the international press reports from Reutes, Al Jeezera, La Republica etc they are looking on to the UK (and presumably US) with horror.
I have to say the UK press has been pretty awful through most of this. With the exception of the Guardian and the Independent (occasionally the Times) how often have editorials been asking hard questions of policy decision? The Murdoch-owned papers and the Telegraph I think have been complicit in not reacting with horror at what this country is going through, and screaming blue bloody murder at some of the policy decisions being made. Especially so when you consider that the government has u-turned on a number of key decisions only when public opinion moved with sufficient weight against them (most recently on the free school meals issue etc.) you have to think that a questioning, rather than complicit, media would help push decision towards things which should be quite straightforward (like the saving of lives).
Ketara wrote: Raab's been popping in and out of state office since 2018 (Secretary for Brexit, etc).
Mmm, famous for his 'hey guess what you guys? I just found out Dover is pretty important for our cross-channel trade' comment. Not sure it's experience that should really reassure anyone.
Today he thought taking a knee was borrowed from Game Of Thrones. A lot of these characters' abilities begin and end with their backstabbing. Everything else is advisors and civil servants. Few modern, young politicians really have any experience beyond trying to to answer a question on telly. Unless they did a lenthy service as a junior minister in a data heavy department, they're bringing very little to the dealing-with-a-crisis table.
Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC suggesting that Apple and Google might have been "less than helpful" when dealing with (but not limited to) the UK government.
So there might be more to the app debacle than the UK government being snowflakes.
But I do struggle with the concept of Apple or Google being anything but altruistic, so who knows?
An app like this has insane data harvesting potential. It might be that Apple/Google were wanting to have potential monetizing aspects built into it for the future. Say having the offer once Corona was gone to use the app for other things; or to sell data etc....
Essentially being able to track your population's movements is very powerful marketing wise - you can attach that to major retailers data on purchases and card processing and suddenly you can map your customers exact specific buying habits.
Granted they already do many of these things ;the app would allow even more data harvesting and pooling and processing.
Or various governments may have asked for backdoors in the software so security services can use it to track certain individuals they're interested in and the tech companies have said no
(probably more down to how bad it would look if they said yes and it came out)
I don't really care about the detailed differences are between the UK.gov app and all the others.
All I know is that everyone else has a functioning app and ours, which back in April was the crowning pinnacle of a 'world-beating' TTI system, failed its trials and now is going to be 'ready' some time towards the end of the year.
The whole thing is beyond farce. Living in the UK now is like being the protaganist of a Kafka novel.
Matt Swain wrote: Could this have a backlash effect of people stopping carrying cellphones as a protest if this is forced on them?
No. People won't give up their high-tech phone toys. It just isn't in the psychological makeup.
We've long since passed the point where technology determines the shape of our society, not the other way around.
Probably not. Smartphones are too massively useful to stop carrying them.
More likely mass disobedience will force the government not to implement the system.
They need at least 40 million people to get their gakky app. If 10 million people react with "You know what, feth you UK.gov" there's nothing they can do. So far, half the people have refused the app.
Even if it was made a crime, the police will refuse to arrest or fine so many people. Cases would clog the courts. Perverse juries would hand down Not Guilty verdicts in defiance of the evidence.
I'd like to say I agree with you, but things are changing so rapidly that I'm now questioning my own faith in our system. We seem to be moving from 'you must not do that' to 'you must not do that, and also you must do this'
I would absolutely stop using my smartphone if something like this was enforced by legislation.
Azreal13 wrote: Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC suggesting that Apple and Google might have been "less than helpful" when dealing with (but not limited to) the UK government.
So there might be more to the app debacle than the UK government being snowflakes.
But I do struggle with the concept of Apple or Google being anything but altruistic, so who knows?
I might dislike her even more than Morgan with her one woman crusade against the BBC's lefty bias by dutifully repeating BoJo edicts without question
I suspect its another case of the usual IT fupwittery of government minions not really knowing whats needed trying to bullgak the coders in the vain hope theyll do the required work because wishy thinking
Normally this would work as the Whitehall shuffle means theyll move to another department before any blame can be assigned, but this time the urgency has caught them out
Kilkrazy wrote: Probably not. Smartphones are too massively useful to stop carrying them.
More likely mass disobedience will force the government not to implement the system.
They need at least 40 million people to get their gakky app. If 10 million people react with "You know what, feth you UK.gov" there's nothing they can do. So far, half the people have refused the app.
Even if it was made a crime, the police will refuse to arrest or fine so many people. Cases would clog the courts. Perverse juries would hand down Not Guilty verdicts in defiance of the evidence.
I liked Australia's approach of 'do this for the cause' and to help people, which I think was a better approach from a psychological perspective.
We know that the App isn't the be-all and end-all, most of the reports are that they just aren't reliable enough (with the blu-tooth not connecting to other phones reliably) but it is another tool in the arsenal of trying to track and contain infection spread.
As for personal data.. I'm of the view that that boat has long since sailed, and TBH I don't trust Google or Apple any less than our own government in terms of how it will be protected (probably more so in fact)
BBC reporting a study showing that black and south Asian men have 40-50% higher mortality rates than the reat of the populace (with black women seeing similar rates but not south Asian women) even when adjusted for economic and demographic variables. A worry.
Sorry, no link - I've just heard it as a breaking story on BBC news and I don't see anything on the website yet.
nfe wrote: BBC reporting a study showing that black and south Asian men have 40-50% higher mortality rates than the reat of the populace (with black women seeing similar rates but not south Asian women) even when adjusted for economic and demographic variables. A worry.
Sorry, no link - I've just heard it as a breaking story on BBC news and I don't see anything on the website yet.
nfe wrote: BBC reporting a study showing that black and south Asian men have 40-50% higher mortality rates than the reat of the populace (with black women seeing similar rates but not south Asian women) even when adjusted for economic and demographic variables. A worry.
Sorry, no link - I've just heard it as a breaking story on BBC news and I don't see anything on the website yet.
Why the Asian Women not ?
That is ,kinda wierd?
Well, it's kind of weird that it seems to be more deadly for certain BAME groups. Maybe whatever is the reason it is more deadly to those 3x profiles happens to not be apparent in south asian women. I think we won't know the answer to this though for a very long time, it could be something as simple as hormone response to inflammation (it probably isn't that simple to be honest though).
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just to add to the above, I am super super interested to see if this trend is replicated globally also.
It's even MORE weird if it is a UK thing. At which point I would suggest the model they used may be flawed, as it would almost certainly be explained by socio-economic reasons (which was my personal running hypothesis).
nfe wrote: BBC reporting a study showing that black and south Asian men have 40-50% higher mortality rates than the reat of the populace (with black women seeing similar rates but not south Asian women) even when adjusted for economic and demographic variables. A worry.
Sorry, no link - I've just heard it as a breaking story on BBC news and I don't see anything on the website yet.
Why the Asian Women not ?
That is ,kinda wierd?
Well, it's kind of weird that it seems to be more deadly for certain BAME groups. Maybe whatever is the reason it is more deadly to those 3x profiles happens to not be apparent in south asian women. I think we won't know the answer to this though for a very long time, it could be something as simple as hormone response to inflammation (it probably isn't that simple to be honest though).
Well it would be a point against socioeconomic issues beeing a Main factor...(kinda?)
Wasn't there something about genetics and resistance torwards inflammations by certain groups ?
Genes do/can influence inflammation response, but then it not being as deadly for south asian women would potentially occlude that theory as why would they have the gene(s) but the men did not?
Sorry, what do you mean switzerland don't count separately? As in they are not reporting deaths by race or other demographics?
The hypothesis in regards to southern asian men is the high levels of diabetes in the asian male population in the country. Makes absolute sense really, as diabetes damages internal organs and makes you more susceptible to infection.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Genes do/can influence inflammation response, but then it not being as deadly for south asian women would potentially occlude that theory as why would they have the gene(s) but the men did not?
Sorry, what do you mean switzerland don't count separately? As in they are not reporting deaths by race or other demographics?
Race, we ignore that , multiple reasons for that but no we don't differenciate seemingly .
Tbf most foreigners are europeans, most of those are our "relatives" alot of the others are people from yugoslavia,before it broke up ,(one of the more silent groups tbh, contrary to those that came in during the breakup for obvious reasons.)
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Genes do/can influence inflammation response, but then it not being as deadly for south asian women would potentially occlude that theory as why would they have the gene(s) but the men did not?
Sorry, what do you mean switzerland don't count separately? As in they are not reporting deaths by race or other demographics?
Race, we ignore that , multiple reasons for that but no we don't differenciate seemingly .
Tbf most foreigners are europeans, most of those are our "relatives" alot of the others are people from yugoslavia,before it broke up ,(one of the more silent groups tbh, contrary to those that came in during the breakup for obvious reasons.)
Interesting. I suppose the numbers don't need to be circulated publicly as long as they are recorded, and the data is accessible to medical professionals and scientists for the purposes of the above.
On a tangent, is that a fairly uniformed approach to reporting on domestic matters in Switzerland (race isn't made a factor). Do you think it perpetuates institutional racism or is progressive? What is the current situation on the ground in Switzerland in regards to the BLM movement?
Answer via DM if you prefer so as not to take the thread off topic. I'm fairly in deep with the BAME community in the UK, and I would like to learn as much as possible in regards to others perspectives about how it is been handled differently in other countries, and what nuances those countries have?
I was going to start a thread on this topic separately but well, it may have got far too politically ingrained a discussion for dakka.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: The hypothesis in regards to southern asian men is the high levels of diabetes in the asian male population in the country. Makes absolute sense really, as diabetes damages internal organs and makes you more susceptible to infection.
there were also people over here suggesting that bloodtype could have an impact, with B beeing better off if infected then A.
which would however be a bit of an issue considering how hard it hit russia which has one of the highest B blood type rates in europe.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: The hypothesis in regards to southern asian men is the high levels of diabetes in the asian male population in the country. Makes absolute sense really, as diabetes damages internal organs and makes you more susceptible to infection.
there were also people over here suggesting that bloodtype could have an impact, with B beeing better off if infected then A.
which would however be a bit of an issue considering how hard it hit russia which has one of the highest B blood type rates in europe.
Whilst I'm aware of the base functions of blood types from my (very minimal) background in physiology from my sport science background, I have absolutely zero understanding of how that would actually influence infection resistance...
Something new to go and learn about today.
With large analysis of data sets such as what is actually happening though, I'm fairly skeptical of claims like that. How much is the data filtered at the moment, and/or how many variables are they taking into account that could filter the data and adjust it.
It could just so happen to be that certain ethnicities tend to have a certain blood type over other ethnicities, now if that ethnicity happened to also have high rates of diabetes... Different rates of blood types based on ethnicity is something I have read about before, donkeys years ago so it would need to be something I would have to go back and look into again, but you get my point.
Again, this is something that will become far more clear in the years that follow.
I also actually think some of it could be certain individuals/organisations chasing some element of fame/pr at the moment... Blasphemy in regards to scientific/medical ethics I know, but its what it seems like with the amount of theories that are actually being published, how are the media latching onto so many of them, you need to consult with other researchers... Especially with the constant need to be REDUCING miss information in regards to the virus.
Somewhat concerned that if you look at the 7 day average on number of new cases we seem to be not reducing any more but levelling off at over 1K new cases a day.
Which kind of makes sense considering we are relaxing lockdown measures at this state. So whilst the rest of the world aims for 0 to low hundreds the UK is appearing to be aiming higher - which of course means any spike already starts off from a high position.
Which is worrying when you consider that our track and trace has apparently failed to work and the app that was going to be central to it falls apart. II'm still confused on why the government isn't trying to do more. Even at its most basic they could be getting retailers to take peoples telephone contact number at the till and logging the number and time of shopping. At least then if the retail outlet gets a case within its population they have contact details to be used to contact shoppers to self isolate.
Work places and schools already collect and have this basic information. If we extend it to retail and food outlets and the like its within practical means to allow a greater contact reach. Public transport would be ideal as well, though might not be as practical to enforce considering the pickup and drop off speeds - though heck a simple policy of "print and hand over your phone number on a card" could be performed and collected at your entry point onto the service (at the very least allowing a per-day logging of who got onto the service).
We don't need an app to do those things and they could be done with some basic organisation of the current structure of staff in the country.
I envy your faith in people being willing to give their phone number to some 17 year old kid working at a supermarket, or a random bus driver. I'll pass.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I envy your faith in people being willing to give their phone number to some 17 year old kid working at a supermarket, or a random bus driver. I'll pass.
Eh with loyalty cards the supermarkets already have most of your contact details - same for if you've ever bought travel card online or bought a season ticket. Heck if you've got an Oyster card they've got your bank details.
This isn't about providing more information than you otherwise would have, its about providing a means to communicate to people who have used a service/facility in public on a known date. Right now if someone enters a supermarket with Corona there's almost no way to track and trace all the other potential users of that supermarket except the staff. Customers might not learn of the infection unless it makes major news outlets; or if notice is placed in the window - at which point they might only learn about it the next time they go shopping (meaning they could be spreading for 7 days for a weekly shop or longer if they are not regular customers of the store). Which basically defeats the point of track and trace.
That's why the app (which collects far more data) was important.
Plus note I only said phone number; the don't need name and address at the point of contact - only a means to communicate. Track and Trace services can collect further information on an individual when contacting them directly. So the spotty teenager only has your phone number. If you're super security weary then a simple dirt cheap mobile phone can be used so long as you keep it charged and in reception range.
Fair enough, although I personally have none of those things. It also still requires people to essentially carry a stack of business cards with them and hand them out to people. And then do you have to prove you have some before you enter the supermarket or get on the bus?
Well entering public transport yes you'd have to carry a card - or a bit of paper etc... For supermarkets sure you could carry or they can write it down (the process is much slower and you're not rushed).
Just like how right now if you want to use public transport you have to wear a mask.
I have a ‘points’ card for my main grocery store, which has my personal details in the account. Each time I shop, I generate points for free groceries.
This is the means by which that same grocery store contacted me twice when staff were presumptive COVID cases.
While neither followed up with a confirmed case of the illness, it was very easy for them to send me an email stating when i shopped, there was a possible contact.
I don’t know what’s it’s like elsewhere but almost every major retailer has a points program which can easily be used for contact and tracing. All that’s required to log your shopping is indeed a card (I have about 6 of them for different stores) or you can use your email or phone number.
So I don’t how or why this would be such a big deal anywhere else, as stores have had these types of programs for marketing in NA for years. It’s makes contact tracing very easy, and it’s not like I have to give a stranger my information every time I shop. I scan a card, ring stuff through and get free stuff.
Now i can also be warned of exposure.
Why would something like this be so hard to implement when I’ve been doing so for almost a decade so far?
Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
DalekCheese wrote: Don’t other countries already have a working track&trace app?
Yes, exactly. There are countries successfully using the Apple and Google apps, and there are countries successfully using their national app.
Then there is the UK not succeeding with either method.
It reinforces the impression that we are gak, now.
To think that the UK invented computers, programming, the WWW and loads of the world's important chips and we can't even get a crappy little app to work.
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
App, storecards, giving a contact number/email at point of transaction/use. If you want Track and Trace to work then tracking and tracing are integral parts of it, well, working. Whilst you might be able to opt out of some schemes, in the end if it is going to work then the majority have to use such methods at least in the short term.
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
In addition to that, I am not being stopped from buying food by my refusal to write down and hand someone I do not know my phone number (it would have to be hand written due to the software on a till, it's not so easy to throw in a 'customer information' section on a lot of tills, you also usually need some sort of training to do so - your average till worker won't have this).
That's the first issue anyway, the second is GDPR...
The third is who on earth is going to input all of this hand written data? And to where? How is that data then going to be uploaded to a database? How will they know when the people were actually in the store? It basically defeats the object of a track and trace as it will be virtually impossible to narrow down the persons, before you know it you'll have thousands upon thousands (if not more) having to self isolate, totally unnecessarily.
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
In addition to that, I am not being stopped from buying food by my refusal to write down and hand someone I do not know my phone number (it would have to be hand written due to the software on a till, it's not so easy to throw in a 'customer information' section on a lot of tills, you also usually need some sort of training to do so - your average till worker won't have this).
When I worked retail we had promotions and charity drives all the time where the system would pop up an additional screen asking the customer if they wanted to donate to whatever cause was going on. These changed often enough that there's obviously some way to update point of sale systems centrally. I doubt anyone is saying checkers should manually program the tracking system themselves.
I'm not familiar with the tills in the UK, but if they're anything like the US customers have to type in a PIN anyway for their debit transactions so it's not a weird out of this world experience for customers to be putting in information.
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
This card is not a credit card, nor is it used to pay.
It is merely a customer points card, which rewards you points for buying certain items, which those points can then be used to pay for things.
It’s more like an Airmiles card for a specific store.
All of my information is entered online, and put in a central database for all of that company’s stores.
As long as I scan the card to collect points, the store knows where and when I shopped.
It’s completely voluntary and used to track shopping habits, with the caveat that if you volunteer, you are rewarded with free stuff.
Most stores in Canada at least, have this type of program. We operate our tills in every store on a computer with software, and a central database for each franchise/company.
This isn’t about a payment card at all, but a marketing tool being used for contact tracing through a centralized database.
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
In addition to that, I am not being stopped from buying food by my refusal to write down and hand someone I do not know my phone number (it would have to be hand written due to the software on a till, it's not so easy to throw in a 'customer information' section on a lot of tills, you also usually need some sort of training to do so - your average till worker won't have this).
That's the first issue anyway, the second is GDPR...
The third is who on earth is going to input all of this hand written data? And to where? How is that data then going to be uploaded to a database? How will they know when the people were actually in the store? It basically defeats the object of a track and trace as it will be virtually impossible to narrow down the persons, before you know it you'll have thousands upon thousands (if not more) having to self isolate, totally unnecessarily.
Anyway...
What on earth is going on in Germany?
Issues with Hygiene in butcheries.
Hardly surprising compared to what we knew was happening in China and the US with the meat industry beeing hit Hard , it was kinda forseeable that it would eventually reach those locally.
I'd however thought that the Balkans or eastern Europe would be hit that Hard first that way however.
Excluding of course russia from which we know nothing reliable except medical Staff getting defenestrated.
At the same time we know that once Corona gets into a population it can spread very fast. Even in a meat processing plant with good hygiene protocols you only need one slip-up in the system. Most likely happening before and after work. Lobbies, carparks, transport, toilets, etc... (6K staff in a meat processing plan I wonder how many are bussed back and forth daily rather than taking their own cars). Infection might not have happened on the meat processing floor, but in all the areas that surround it where workers might encounter each other.
Simple fact is that people are not wearing hazmat suits as soon as they get out of their homes. Even simple things like proper glove and facemask wearing are not trained into people for safe dressing practice. Eg I'd wager a lot of people using hand gloves to avoid contamination don't take them off without touching the outer surface with their fingers. I've also yet to see any wash all their food before they place it into the car etc...
Overread wrote: Exactly, all you'd need is a blanket policy for people to use a store card or leave their details and you've got a basic track and trace that works through every store. There's more than enough time to pass on your details during the payment phase and then they've got date, time and location and a means to contact you.
Costs almost nothing to put into place; provides decent accuracy of data and can be used in contact track and trace. Sure a mobile phone app works faster, but if you've not got one that works at least such a system would work in the mean time.
Except some people don't want to use store cards. Its already unethical that some places are making card/contactless mandatory for purchases
In addition to that, I am not being stopped from buying food by my refusal to write down and hand someone I do not know my phone number (it would have to be hand written due to the software on a till, it's not so easy to throw in a 'customer information' section on a lot of tills, you also usually need some sort of training to do so - your average till worker won't have this).
When I worked retail we had promotions and charity drives all the time where the system would pop up an additional screen asking the customer if they wanted to donate to whatever cause was going on. These changed often enough that there's obviously some way to update point of sale systems centrally. I doubt anyone is saying checkers should manually program the tracking system themselves.
I'm not familiar with the tills in the UK, but if they're anything like the US customers have to type in a PIN anyway for their debit transactions so it's not a weird out of this world experience for customers to be putting in information.
Some of the tills in some super markets are absolutely ancient. I suppose promotions could flag but then you are working with multiple different till software suppliers, and working with them to collate the data that is inputted...
You may as well spend the time working on getting the app working and/or doing whatever the hell needs to be done to get the apple or google one off the ground and working.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
This card is not a credit card, nor is it used to pay.
It is merely a customer points card, which rewards you points for buying certain items, which those points can then be used to pay for things.
It’s more like an Airmiles card for a specific store.
All of my information is entered online, and put in a central database for all of that company’s stores.
As long as I scan the card to collect points, the store knows where and when I shopped.
It’s completely voluntary and used to track shopping habits, with the caveat that if you volunteer, you are rewarded with free stuff.
Most stores in Canada at least, have this type of program. We operate our tills in every store on a computer with software, and a central database for each franchise/company.
This isn’t about a payment card at all, but a marketing tool being used for contact tracing through a centralized database.
No I know that. I still don't want to be required to have one to shop though. If for no other reason than I don't want millions of cards in my wallet.
DalekCheese wrote: Don’t other countries already have a working track&trace app?
Yes, exactly. There are countries successfully using the Apple and Google apps, and there are countries successfully using their national app.
Then there is the UK not succeeding with either method.
It reinforces the impression that we are gak, now.
To think that the UK invented computers, programming, the WWW and loads of the world's important chips and we can't even get a crappy little app to work.
How far have we fallen?
Can't or won't.
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Overread wrote: At the same time we know that once Corona gets into a population it can spread very fast. Even in a meat processing plant with good hygiene protocols you only need one slip-up in the system. Most likely happening before and after work. Lobbies, carparks, transport, toilets, etc... (6K staff in a meat processing plan I wonder how many are bussed back and forth daily rather than taking their own cars). Infection might not have happened on the meat processing floor, but in all the areas that surround it where workers might encounter each other.
Simple fact is that people are not wearing hazmat suits as soon as they get out of their homes. Even simple things like proper glove and facemask wearing are not trained into people for safe dressing practice. Eg I'd wager a lot of people using hand gloves to avoid contamination don't take them off without touching the outer surface with their fingers. I've also yet to see any wash all their food before they place it into the car etc...
Yep. South Korea had restart due to one guy. All it takes is one person intermingling with enough people and it can be rocket launch of new cases.
The problem with the meat packing plants is partly just that they have to keep going or there will be food shortages. We aren't seeing outbreaks in car planst because most of them are shut down or part time working with lots of social distancing.
Meat cutting and packing is a labour intensive industry which can't really be automated the way canning tomatoes is.
There probably are issues around hygiene, PPE and so on too.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying.
This card is not a credit card, nor is it used to pay.
It is merely a customer points card, which rewards you points for buying certain items, which those points can then be used to pay for things.
It’s more like an Airmiles card for a specific store.
All of my information is entered online, and put in a central database for all of that company’s stores.
As long as I scan the card to collect points, the store knows where and when I shopped.
It’s completely voluntary and used to track shopping habits, with the caveat that if you volunteer, you are rewarded with free stuff.
Most stores in Canada at least, have this type of program. We operate our tills in every store on a computer with software, and a central database for each franchise/company.
This isn’t about a payment card at all, but a marketing tool being used for contact tracing through a centralized database.
No I know that. I still don't want to be required to have one to shop though. If for no other reason than I don't want millions of cards in my wallet.
If you have an email and/or phone number on the account, no card is required.
There's an app that lets you combine a gazillion membership/club/points cards on your phone - I too hated carrying all those cards.
As for the butcheries, a similar thing happened/is happening in the Netherlands. I don't know that it's a hygiene thing, as I imagine most workers already wore substantial PPE what with all the blood and all.
I suspect those animal fluids are the problem; it's an established fact the virus can infect various animals
Bran Dawri wrote: There's an app that lets you combine a gazillion membership/club/points cards on your phone - I too hated carrying all those cards.
As for the butcheries, a similar thing happened/is happening in the Netherlands. I don't know that it's a hygiene thing, as I imagine most workers already wore substantial PPE what with all the blood and all.
I suspect those animal fluids are the problem; it's an established fact the virus can infect various animals
The 'real' problem seems to be that work at a slaughterhouse in the NL, Germany and I assume Wales amongst other countries, is heavily reliant on Eastern European migrant labor. The nature of that type of migrant labor usually involves living and travelling in conditions that don't really allow for social distancing outside work. Once one has it, it can rapidly spread in such localized cases.
Labor intensive agriculture seems to be another potential local outbreak hazard in that sense.
Really? I had no idea. I mean, I knew there are eastern europeans being exploited like that in Germany and the Netherlands. I just didn't know slaughterhouses were among the industries that did so.
Bran Dawri wrote: Really? I had no idea. I mean, I knew there are eastern europeans being exploited like that in Germany and the Netherlands. I just didn't know slaughterhouses were among the industries that did so.
Slaughterhouses fit in the dirty/hard/difficult line of work for which the pay isn't very high. In the Netherlands alone the union FNV estimates that 80% of slaughterhouse personnel is migrant labor. The company that was in the news here, Vion, says over half of their personnel is migrant labor. The same applies to Germany, over half their workers are from Eastern Europe too:
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-german-slaughterhouse-outbreak-crosses-1000/a-53883372
Its right there in Laughing Man's article on the US too:
But the physical conditions inside these plants probably aren’t the whole story. Social and economic factors likely play a role, too. Meat processing is an exhausting, dangerous, labor-intensive job done primarily by underpaid, undocumented workers and recent immigrants to the US. Out of necessity, many of them live in multigenerational homes or other crowded housing environments. They may also ride company-operated busses for an hour or more each day to and from the plants—usually located in very rural areas—which again puts them in prolonged close contact with other people. Other types of farmworkers, including those who pick fruits and vegetables, face similar challenges when it comes to social distancing at home, in the fields, and in between.
You can get all the work floor PPE you want, but that gets removed once they leave it. Ig you still ride home and sleep in the same room/house together, that work floor PPE won't do anything to really stop the spread.
Yeah, that makes sense. I'd just never thought of those conditions applying to what is often essentially set up as a factory, albeit a rather grisly one.
Florida's spiked up to about 3,000 new cases a day. Before last week, we'd never broken 2,000. Mandatory mask orders for all businesses in Hillsborough go into effect on Wednesday.
According to the site you actually hit 4K on the 20th plus looking at the rate of infection there's a massive spike over the last week or two.Honestly looking at the numbers I'm surprised they aren't imposing lockdowns again right now. Or at least making masks mandatory over the whole state and perhaps locking down several of the major urban areas going through a rapid rise.
Political reasons will keep Florida from doing the right thing - unfortunately.
In Florida, and the US overall, we can only hope that the average age of those contracting the virus continues to go down and that younger people really are better equipped to handle this, and that the loss of life won't be too great.
Alpharius wrote: Political reasons will keep Florida from doing the right thing - unfortunately.
In Florida, and the US overall, we can only hope that the average age of those contracting the virus continues to go down and that younger people really are better equipped to handle this, and that the loss of life won't be too great.
My state is currently opening back up. The 26th, Illinois can do dine ins again. I am not looking forward to it.
Alpharius wrote: Political reasons will keep Florida from doing the right thing - unfortunately.
In Florida, and the US overall, we can only hope that the average age of those contracting the virus continues to go down and that younger people really are better equipped to handle this, and that the loss of life won't be too great.
Pretty sure the strategy is no more Quarantines and damn the torpedoes! Whoever dies, dies.
England has just announced a reduction of the 2m distancing rule to 1m. Wales and Scotland maintaining 2m for now. From the data we're currently getting it does seem that the infection rate has dropped quite considerably and the feared spike from the hot weather in May hasn't happened. I think the big test will come once pubs and restaurants re-open.
Yup. No VE day spike, no school reopening spike, and so far, no idiotic protest spike. I'm standing by my prediction that we will have no 'second wave'.
A little annoyed that the tattoo shops have been given no direction as to when they can re-open though.
I'd wager we won't see economic return for a year if longer. Heck we won't see any return until food outlets are open and when you can properly browse in shops again. Right now, esp for smaller stores that might only fit one or two customer at a time, there's pressure to be in and out quick. No changing rooms open to try on clothes; no time to sit in a chair and read the first three chapters of a book; no holding two products or more in hand and swapping then back and forth; no more using toy shops as short term day-care for half an hour etc...
All perfectly normal things that won't return until such time as when we can more safely socialise with each other without the fear of corona.
Slipspace wrote: England has just announced a reduction of the 2m distancing rule to 1m.
The new guidelines start on July 4th. And its 1m+ if 2m is not possible. 2m should still be considered the default safe distance, but people are only going to hear the 1m part. Already had one guy in the shop this afternoon complaining that we should change our 2m distancing signs. So be prepared for people to get way closer because if the last few months have shown me anything, its that most people have no idea how far a meter actually is
The biggest issue for me from all the recent announcements and "advice" is that on July 30th aid is being withdrawn from those who are shielding.
There are 2.2m people shielding. Many of those 2.2m people are vulnerable in normal times.
And yet, the govt. is effectively saying "we're telling you that you don't need to shield any more, go get on with it".
Never mind the fact that many of the services these people rely on, including public transport, and social services, have been effectively decimated.
It's exactly the same as when the lockdown was enacted. It was a case of "we're locking you down, get on with it".
No plan for getting aid to people who would need it. Took 6 weeks in many places for aid to start filtering through.
Forget your pubs, your social distancing signs - people have been put through real hardship through no fault of their own and are going to be put through it again due to a complete lack of a coherent exit plan!!
In addition to the above, and I don't mean to sound crude, but when these vulnerable people are back out in society, if they start dropping like flies then what?
You either go full lockdown... Again, as at that point you would assume the general population is back at risk as well as the NHS being under strain, or you just weather it?
I fully don't understand the decision to open pubs and not gyms to be honest, I get it with equipment transfer etc in gyms, but if they think people aren't going to go overboard when allowed out and in pubs and bars again then the government are ridiculous... Pub owners are not going to tell people to go home after 3x drinks if they are willing to pay, they will be wanting to recoup as much money as possible... Drunk people in urban areas will be all over each other in no time.
Either fully open or keep measures in place, this half arsed approach is ridiculous. And lets face it, its because the government want HMRC to have a pay day that pubs are open, that and nothing else.
DalekCheese wrote: Don’t other countries already have a working track&trace app?
Yes, exactly. There are countries successfully using the Apple and Google apps, and there are countries successfully using their national app.
Then there is the UK not succeeding with either method.
It reinforces the impression that we are gak, now.
To think that the UK invented computers, programming, the WWW and loads of the world's important chips and we can't even get a crappy little app to work.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: In addition to the above, and I don't mean to sound crude, but when these vulnerable people are back out in society, if they start dropping like flies then what?
You either go full lockdown... Again, as at that point you would assume the general population is back at risk as well as the NHS being under strain, or you just weather it?
I fully don't understand the decision to open pubs and not gyms to be honest, I get it with equipment transfer etc in gyms, but if they think people aren't going to go overboard when allowed out and in pubs and bars again then the government are ridiculous... Pub owners are not going to tell people to go home after 3x drinks if they are willing to pay, they will be wanting to recoup as much money as possible... Drunk people in urban areas will be all over each other in no time.
Either fully open or keep measures in place, this half arsed approach is ridiculous. And lets face it, its because the government want HMRC to have a pay day that pubs are open, that and nothing else.
I pretty much agree about pub landlords not being able to control their customers.... after all if they could we wouldn't have so many drunken idiots in the streets every weekend (sure they might be loading up before going out, but that just means the landlord shouldn't be serving them at all)
and as to a return to lock down I just can't see it happening no matter how bad it gets, they're going to be desparate to keep it local (and therefore the blame gets passed to local councils)
although on the plus side the NHS is now much better aware on how to isolate and treat patients and we've got a drug that actually helps recovery, plus we've probably lost those vulnerable to the virus in all the care homes that have had infections so things may not be as bad as they were before,
fingers crossed as I've got to venture to the vet for medication for my cat this week, the first time I've gone anywhere (as opposed to random walking for exercise) since the lockdown started
I can see local lockdowns taking effect, but it will have knock on effects, especially once major urban areas get hit. The real risk being how far you draw the limits. Do you lock down just the major urban area, or large chunks of the surrounding countryside too - since the first thing all those lockdown people will do is start wanting to use those facilities whilst those from outside might still want to use the rural facilites (eg small town shops, tourist sites, zoos, etc....)
Local lockdown also requires a working track and trace and if that isn't working then we might well end up with "local lockdowns" that cover most of the country at the same time.
Alpharius wrote: Political reasons will keep Florida from doing the right thing - unfortunately.
In Florida, and the US overall, we can only hope that the average age of those contracting the virus continues to go down and that younger people really are better equipped to handle this, and that the loss of life won't be too great.
Pretty sure the strategy is no more Quarantines and damn the torpedoes! Whoever dies, dies.
Yes and no.
On the 'macro' level, that is absolutely the "strategy" (such as it is).
Alpharius wrote: Political reasons will keep Florida from doing the right thing - unfortunately.
In Florida, and the US overall, we can only hope that the average age of those contracting the virus continues to go down and that younger people really are better equipped to handle this, and that the loss of life won't be too great.
Silver lining; less people displaced as most of the state goes underwater over the course of the century!
Bran Dawri wrote: Really? I had no idea. I mean, I knew there are eastern europeans being exploited like that in Germany and the Netherlands. I just didn't know slaughterhouses were among the industries that did so.
Absolutely. Slaughterhouses employ mostly first generation migrant labour. Exploitation is a strong word but truely isn’t far off the mark. The EU is built on moving cheap labour to wealthy countries. People think the free movement of the EU is to allow little Jimmy to have his gap year in France or not to have to queue at customs when holidaying in southern Italy but actually it’s designed to allow cheap labour to float unrestricted into factories and jobs our youth will no longer do. It’s modern slavery, but stays under the radar as so few people ever see into the world of migrant labour and they don’t really want to as it facilitates our lifestyles. Many of these jobs are critical to our physical survival, the jobs are difficult (mentally and physically) dangerous and dirty and and yet the rewards are paltry.
To be fair, I think it goes a bit far to say that the EU is build on that, given that these countries were only entering the EU in the 2000's and big agriculture/industry are already looking outside of the EU to countries such as Ukraine for even cheaper labor. Before the EU took its current form they just got them by importing people from countries such as Turkey and Morocco. Its a global issue, which can be seen in the US also. Its the lack of regulations and government oversight in how these recruitment offices/business operate to extract the most by doing the least for these workers.
In other news, the NYT is reporting that the EU will likely keep blocking travellers from the US over their handling of the coronavirus outbreak, that's not going to go over well with the US government...
The super markets and us as consumers are to blame also though... How much money can these people be paid when the cost of purchase is driven right down to just above the overheads.
Food should be more expensive if you want high standards, if you don't want to pay more, you are part of the problem yourself.
A few years back several of the major UK supermarkets got caught fixing prices on milk products - raising the price to the customer and lowering the price they paid to producers. It only worked because there's only a few major names in the business and once your farmer is producing in large volumes they are tied into the business model that can only sell to major purchasers.
It's illegal, but at the same time very profitable for the supermarkets and very hard to prove/catch them in the act.
Sometimes the consumer isn't the issue, its the middleman in the whole system that can cause problems.
In theory developed countries should use farming subsidies to allow for lower food prices at the till so that farmers can be paid less directly, but then subsidised so that they earn a more modern wage. That way you keep the system working rather than have higher food costs which impacts on purchasing habits of the population. In short they'd rather you were buying products than food with your money.
Of course these things are insanely complicated in knock on effects and influences.
As for Corona and travel I'm not surprised that the EU is blocking the US travel. Time will come that nations in general will block Corona heavy nations - heck New Zealand already has fresh cases which were directly attributed to a couple from the UK travelling there and getting out of quarantine early (though my impression of further details of that case is that they didn't spread infection and travelled in a safe manner to prevent infectious spread).
Moving forward I can see a point in the future where the USA won't be alone - I can imagine other hot-bed countries like the UK etc.... will also have sanctions against travel from those nations - at least until Corona cases in those nations are heavily curtailed.
But we are still part of that issue as we choose to still shop there (and I did mention supermarkets in my first post). There's actually enough choice in the UK to no longer need to shop at some supermarkets (Tesco being one of the worst for bullying practices with producers).
Perspective...
For countries with a significant population (not Andorra or SAn Marino etc)
The worst affected country in the world is Chile with 1.4% of the population having had the virus.
USA is second with 0.72% of the population infected.
For a supposedly rampant pandemic this is spectacularly weak given it has been spreading since late December or early January.
It's weak because of lockdown measures in most countries. Even without lockdowns there's an increase of hand washing, mask use, social distancing etc...
Even with all those measures its still hung around since it began.
You only need one person to enter a dense population like a train, nightclub, factory workspace etc... and it can spread to many of those present. They then take it home and their kids take it to school and then they take it home. All easily done in a few days to a week before the first person even knows they had it to start social isolation.
Sure if we let it run rampant without any measures it would have spread FAR faster and further through the population. If you consider that most countries have seen intensive care units overwhelmed or at least put right to their limits; then imagine if it had been let to run rampant without any limits.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: The super markets and us as consumers are to blame also though... How much money can these people be paid when the cost of purchase is driven right down to just above the overheads.
Food should be more expensive if you want high standards, if you don't want to pay more, you are part of the problem yourself.
Of course. This is incredibly difficult from the consumer point of view though, because shopping responsibly is a figurative minefield. Even all those responsible labels and stickers aren't always entirely truthful, some being just industry powered to give the impression something is done instead of actually doing something. Plus the fact that food corporations and such are absolutely massive, while one branch might be doing well and acting responsible, the other branch might be gak. But even if you avoid buying the bad brand, the good brand's money still flows to the same corporation at the top.
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Overread wrote: It's weak because of lockdown measures in most countries. Even without lockdowns there's an increase of hand washing, mask use, social distancing etc...
Additionally, those are numbers that we know of. That number is probably far bigger given that testing is only now really ramping up to a good level in most countries. 4 months after it broke out. Those official percentages hide a lot of statistical sorcery.
Well, in my building we finally got our first confirmed case of Covid-19.
And what is management's response? Close the building for a day or two to do a deep clean?
Nope, none of that.
Instead, they're finally going to actually enforce the agency's rules that have been in place for awhile now that they haven't been bothering to enforce all this time. Make people wear masks when away from their desks, do a temperature check before coming into the building, actually mark off some of the tables in the breakroom as off-limits, etc. To use the same word's from our building's boss "we're going to change the 'should' guidelines to 'must' rules". Even though those "guidelines" were, in fact, required rules all this time.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Well, in my building we finally got our first confirmed case of Covid-19.
And what is management's response? Close the building for a day or two to do a deep clean?
Nope, none of that.
Instead, they're finally going to actually enforce the agency's rules that have been in place for awhile now that they haven't been bothering to enforce all this time. Make people wear masks when away from their desks, do a temperature check before coming into the building, actually mark off some of the tables in the breakroom as off-limits, etc. To use the same word's from our building's boss "we're going to change the 'should' guidelines to 'must' rules". Even though those "guidelines" were, in fact, required rules all this time.
That is how much of the RED States in the US have handled it as well.
As cases are rising in my area, mask use is requested, as is social distancing, etc.
The opening up of the economy following the COVID-19 outbreak is being supported by NHS Test and
Trace. You should assist this service by keeping a temporary record of your customers and visitors for
21 days, in a way that is manageable for your business, and assist NHS Test and Trace with requests
for that data if needed. This could help contain clusters or outbreaks. Many businesses that take
bookings already have systems for recording their customers and visitors – including restaurants,
hotels, and hair salons. If you do not already do this, you should do so to help fight the virus. We will
work with industry and relevant bodies to design this system in line with data protection legislation, and
set out details shortly.
uh huh, that'll be fine eh ?
We will
work with industry and relevant bodies to design this system in line with data protection legislation, and
set out details shortly
given the dates does this seem likely/plausible ?
I guess we throw another XX million to another one of Cummings mates before then perhaps ?
Disciple of Fate wrote: Of course. This is incredibly difficult from the consumer point of view though, because shopping responsibly is a figurative minefield. Even all those responsible labels and stickers aren't always entirely truthful, some being just industry powered to give the impression something is done instead of actually doing something. Plus the fact that food corporations and such are absolutely massive, while one branch might be doing well and acting responsible, the other branch might be gak. But even if you avoid buying the bad brand, the good brand's money still flows to the same corporation at the top.
Well, I have been considering buying more of my groceries directly off the farmer where and when possible. There's a number of farms around here where you can. Bread I already go to an actual baker for rather than supermarket stuff; it's expensive but oh so much better.
Meat is more difficult though - not a whole lot of farmers kill their own pigs anymore. Still, getting it off an actual butcher rather than a supermarket should help.
Matt Swain wrote: There was a low budget scifi comedy called "Galaxina" made along time ago in which a character says "I'm always right and no one ever listens to me."
I just couldn't help thinking of that line and how many scientists and epidemiologists must be feeling that way now.
Quality food is taking a bad hit. I do free range corn fed chickens and orders have collapsed. Usually I do 30000 birds every 8 weeks but last cycle I had to lie out for 4 weeks as there was such poor demand. Indoor fast grown birds are selling really well those guys are turning cycles in around 10 days. I’m back in now but if I have another month sit out next crop it’s going to start to make the farm sweat.
Another interesting one that I hadn’t thought about was wool. After shearing this year I rang the depot and they told me there was just no market at all. Nothing. That depot alone still have 750 ton sitting from last year. The wool usually gets shipped to India and China throughout the year to be made into clothes to then be shipped back to the west. (get that for environmental stewardship) But due to the garment trade all but stopping wool has stoped completely. In fairness it’s pretty worthless most years so I’m not waiting on the money but this year it’s likely to end up as a disposal cost.
We had another death today, which while unfortunate was our first in a while. And we’ve had no new cases in a while either. The second wave is still the danger but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.
I'd feel more optimistic if we had a working track and trace system and app. At least then there would be potential to identify and shut down local spread at an effective rate. I'm just not sure right now if we've got that system good enough to correspond to the relaxed lockdown measures.
Heck the other day they were saying something like 15-20%* of those who recover might well have lifelong lung damage as a result. Granted with better understanding and drugs we might reduce that value, but that's still a scary value.
*going from memory here - though I think that was the value the news agent said; the doctor they interviewed then bumped it up to his local impression being closer to 35%
Knockagh wrote: Quality food is taking a bad hit. I do free range corn fed chickens and orders have collapsed. Usually I do 30000 birds every 8 weeks but last cycle I had to lie out for 4 weeks as there was such poor demand. Indoor fast grown birds are selling really well those guys are turning cycles in around 10 days. I’m back in now but if I have another month sit out next crop it’s going to start to make the farm sweat...
Is that due to restaurant drop in demand?
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Overread wrote: I'd feel more optimistic if we had a working track and trace system and app. At least then there would be potential to identify and shut down local spread at an effective rate. I'm just not sure right now if we've got that system good enough to correspond to the relaxed lockdown measures.....
I'm not even sure how a localised Lock down will work tbh. The logistics when you start to look at it are mind boggling, coupled with the reopening of virtually everything and the seeming free for all in relaxation of rules and a reliance on "common sense", alongside willful obstructionism and beligerence means that we may as well just feth it all off.
Great news for the "libertarians" amongst us, but not so great for everyone else. I mean even the sheltered are being encouraged to join in. For some it's tantamount to a death sentence.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: ...A little annoyed that the tattoo shops have been given no direction as to when they can re-open though.
Considering the levels of PPE and fluid protection regimes in place already in these places I'm inclined to agree, but then the Govts relaxation priorities and guidelines don't seem to stand up to much scrutiny anyway.
It continues to be a confusing, illogical shambles. It genuinely feels like this is what it must feel like to live inside Johnson's head.
Well on my personal covid front I had a surprise today.
(First I do live in america, even tho I really feel like moving to western europe,. I use a proxy for personal security. I don't want my home attacked by extremists.)
I went to my local CVS to pick up prescriptions for a relative and yes they require masks and distancing. They have clear shields at the counter.
I stated the name of the person I was picking up for (they know me fairly well by now) and birthdate.
I was handed the 'scripts and asked about signing for them, which i'd done EVERY SINGLE TIME i'd picked them up for years.
I was told I didn't have to sigh due to covid. I mean, i was like "Saywhut?"
The lady way behind the counter said it was because it was picking up again and they were eliminating signing as a precaution, which they had not done during the last few months.
I mean, they're actually intensifying their anti covid policies now, So I'm wondering if some mysterious "they" know something "they're" not telling us. I'm a little concerned about what happened today. Not panicking, not putting on a tinfoil hat, but just a little concerned.
You'd have to tell us where you live - generally, not specifically, as we don't want to inadvertently get you probed - as that might help figure that out for you.
I mean, they're actually intensifying their anti covid policies now, So I'm wondering if some mysterious "they" know something "they're" not telling us. I'm a little concerned about what happened today. Not panicking, not putting on a tinfoil hat, but just a little concerned.
There are roughly 10 states that are seeing a dramatic rise (more than 50% increase) in cases since (roughly) Memorial Day which also overlaps a lot with those states opening (too early). Another 16 are rising not-quite-as-fast. So half the country is up, and a lot of the ones that are down are geographically small (New England) or loosely populated (Dakotas, Alaska), or coming down from an initially high rate (Illinois, New York) or places no one wants to be (Alabama)
I suspect Montana and Idaho are suffering from a major cases of 'Why should we take precautions, it couldn't happen here,' and their initial low numbers makes even relatively small increases in case numbers big in percentage terms.
If you're in one of those states, more precautions is merely the least they could do. At this point, sadly, quarantining new outbreaks seems something this country is completely unwilling to do.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: The super markets and us as consumers are to blame also though... How much money can these people be paid when the cost of purchase is driven right down to just above the overheads.
Food should be more expensive if you want high standards, if you don't want to pay more, you are part of the problem yourself.
And at least there's minimum wage. Outside eu countries are more free to skip those. One big reason for certain political event. Even cheaper workforce. Good if you would then be paid equilavent of 2 euros or so per hour.
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Disciple of Fate wrote: Additionally, those are numbers that we know of. That number is probably far bigger given that testing is only now really ramping up to a good level in most countries. 4 months after it broke out. Those official percentages hide a lot of statistical sorcery.
Yeah. That's why trump publicly asked for less testing. Easier to play it out less worrying if you test less resulting in less official cases.
I was told I didn't have to sigh due to covid. I mean, i was like "Saywhut?"
The lady way behind the counter said it was because it was picking up again and they were eliminating signing as a precaution, which they had not done during the last few months.
Don't know how it's with med's here but from the start of precautions in march pretty much all signing i have had to do has been stopped.
Bran Dawri wrote: Really? I had no idea. I mean, I knew there are eastern europeans being exploited like that in Germany and the Netherlands. I just didn't know slaughterhouses were among the industries that did so.
Absolutely. Slaughterhouses employ mostly first generation migrant labour. Exploitation is a strong word but truely isn’t far off the mark. The EU is built on moving cheap labour to wealthy countries. People think the free movement of the EU is to allow little Jimmy to have his gap year in France or not to have to queue at customs when holidaying in southern Italy but actually it’s designed to allow cheap labour to float unrestricted into factories and jobs our youth will no longer do. It’s modern slavery, but stays under the radar as so few people ever see into the world of migrant labour and they don’t really want to as it facilitates our lifestyles. Many of these jobs are critical to our physical survival, the jobs are difficult (mentally and physically) dangerous and dirty and and yet the rewards are paltry.
It's a side product. EU free movement really is equal parts about middle-class holidays, white collar immigration, and the ideal of travel-equals-friendship. The EU specifically makes it more difficult to import really cheap labour. Alas, it's also helped rattle coronavirus around the continent.
endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Food should be more expensive if you want high standards, if you don't want to pay more, you are part of the problem yourself.
I now know another person with Covid. She's a paramedic in the US.
She had a scare with it a couple of months ago, and now she's got it for real, and her husband at the same time. Obviously one of them infected the other.
It killed her sense of smell for a couple of days. That's come back, but she's had shortness of breath and general low energy.
Alpharius wrote: You'd have to tell us where you live - generally, not specifically, as we don't want to inadvertently get you probed - as that might help figure that out for you.
Trust a guy named Alpharius?
Duz I lookz like an ork ta yer?
On the covid matter, this came across my feed, it's a sadly accurate portrayal of the situation in 'murca. I hope it's not too political, bu it is a fair image of what's going on here that explains why so many countries have flattened or dropped the curve while we're still going up. . God help us....
According to who rate of new infections in europe has started to increase again. Not particularly surprising. Hopefully doesn't start going up too fast again
I've been out of the loop for a few dozen pages and don't want to get sucked into typing another litany by reading through all the posts. Have the "usual suspects" accepted that reopening was a bad idea and social distancing measures are impactful yet after seeing the massive spikes that are occurring in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere after reopening?
chaos0xomega wrote: I've been out of the loop for a few dozen pages and don't want to get sucked into typing another litany by reading through all the posts. Have the "usual suspects" accepted that reopening was a bad idea and social distancing measures are impactful yet after seeing the massive spikes that are occurring in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere after reopening?
Always baffled by those pictures. Even without the pandemic, why would you want to subject yourself to that mess?
I really don't get beach obsessed people.
Police last night were assaulted by groups of people drinking in a historic area of Plymouth that doesn't allow outside drinking while trying to administer first aid to a member of the public.
Voss wrote: Always baffled by those pictures. Even without the pandemic, why would you want to subject yourself to that mess?
I really don't get beach obsessed people.
Aye, even at the best of times the beach is just dull. Those pictures look like some kind of special hell
Police last night were assaulted by groups of people drinking in a historic area of Plymouth that doesn't allow outside drinking while trying to administer first aid to a member of the public.
I can't process the meaning of those words. Is it because I am drunk?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Terrifying indeed. But if it follows the pattern of the last few weeks, I doubt we have much to worry about.
Yes and no - see the issue isn't just that one beach, that might be the worst case situation. However if people are doing it at one beach, they will be doing it at others. So whilst one example might not bring the country to a halt, the population all going on holiday to the beach as normal might well bring about huge problems. That's why its so worrying because you know its not just happening at that beach. Furthermore all it takes is one infected person to spread it to others and it jumps person to person - then all those people go home to different corners of the country.
Heck in the UK you can quite easily drive by car one end to the other in a day. So a major event at one end of the country could infect families who travel home to any other corner of the nation.
Local lockdowns only work if the population isn't being highly mobile.
Of course on the flipside all those beach kiosks, food outlets, rental firms etc... should all, in theory, be at the height of their season. This week should be record temps and attendance and them making bulk profits to cover them the rest of the year. Instead they've lost all income up till now and even now many won't be able to function (eg food outlets).
Voss wrote: Always baffled by those pictures. Even without the pandemic, why would you want to subject yourself to that mess?
I really don't get beach obsessed people.
Aye, even at the best of times the beach is just dull. Those pictures look like some kind of special hell
Yeah. Hot and crowded...Seriously UK is island country. Aren't there more beaches so everybody don't have to cram into same beach?
I would have thought beaches is one thing UK wouldn't be in short supply.
Voss wrote: Always baffled by those pictures. Even without the pandemic, why would you want to subject yourself to that mess?
I really don't get beach obsessed people.
Aye, even at the best of times the beach is just dull. Those pictures look like some kind of special hell
Yeah. Hot and crowded...Seriously UK is island country. Aren't there more beaches so everybody don't have to cram into same beach?
I would have thought beaches is one thing UK wouldn't be in short supply.
Most of them are rocky, bleak, stony, cold, windy, not all that big, or being washed steadily away due to multiple elements including unregulated off-shore deep sea aggregate dredging.
So when we have a warm sandy beach it gets all the attention. That and years of victorian "the beach is good for you" propaganda which I'm pretty sure that aside from hayfever sufferers, is pretty much not true.
Knockagh wrote: Quality food is taking a bad hit. I do free range corn fed chickens and orders have collapsed. Usually I do 30000 birds every 8 weeks but last cycle I had to lie out for 4 weeks as there was such poor demand. Indoor fast grown birds are selling really well those guys are turning cycles in around 10 days. I’m back in now but if I have another month sit out next crop it’s going to start to make the farm sweat...
Is that due to restaurant drop in demand?
[
No. The vast vast majority of chicken in restaurants are indoor cheaply produced birds. In the U.K. most will be imports from Holland, which incidentally has some of the lowest welfare codes anywhere.
High welfare poultry is sold primarily through the supermarkets, in low volume. You might find some sold in local butchers or farmers markets but these are unlikely to be accredited as free range or organic, your only accepting them on the honesty of the butcher, but knowing the numbers produced, the vast majority of these smaller retailers have got to be lying about the standards.
In fairness to the fools on the beach today after seeing the mass gatherings over the last few weeks it was pretty obvious no one would stick to any form of distancing. It might not be popular to say it but the protests pretty much finished any societal approach to combat Covid.
Weren't the minorities in America being hit disproportionally hard by Covid? And was there claims of racial profiling in regards to the virus in USA? I know there was in China but didn't hear anything similar from America.
Weren't the minorities in America being hit disproportionally hard by Covid? And was there claims of racial profiling in regards to the virus in USA? I know there was in China but didn't hear anything similar from America.
They're not doing it because anything actually happened. They're doing it because "Minorities don't feel safe wearing masks in public because they're worried cops might attack them" or some BS like that. So they feel they should have free reign to ignore the rules because of that.
At times I wonder if american advertisers and businesses are to blame in some way. They've spent nearly 50 years drilling into americans, practically from cradle to grave, that everything should be "convenient". That somehow if something isn't 'convenient" it's wrong and bad. That somehow 'convenience" is just something we're all entitled to and should expect as a matter of course.
So an inconvenient plague comes along and suddenly waay too many americans just can't deal with it like adults.
Well somebody bothered to investigate fairly obvious. While non-compliance doesn't mean you are psychopathic the persons with those are rather likely to rail against limitations.
tneva82 wrote: So us gets highest reported cases of corona since this started. Not looking like it's getting under control any time soon
There is a very dark irony buried in these numbers. Summer was touted by some as likely to slow down the virus. But reading up on Arizona, without a lockdown, the incredible summer heat makes people congregate indoors (AC) and that this is assisting the spread.
Weren't the minorities in America being hit disproportionally hard by Covid? And was there claims of racial profiling in regards to the virus in USA? I know there was in China but didn't hear anything similar from America.
They're not doing it because anything actually happened. They're doing it because "Minorities don't feel safe wearing masks in public because they're worried cops might attack them" or some BS like that. So they feel they should have free reign to ignore the rules because of that.
POC worrying about getting the cops called on them, or much worse, for wearing DIY face coverings is pretty reasonable.
nfe wrote: POC worrying about getting the cops called on them, or much worse, for wearing DIY face coverings is pretty reasonable.
As much as this might be worth discussing, that comment from Grey Templar is serious politics bait and certainly going to bring down the hammer on this thread.
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Future War Cultist wrote: My Dad’s friends dad died yesterday. The damage covid did to him was too great.
Sorry for your loss, that is sad to hear after what happened over the last few months of the process.
Weren't the minorities in America being hit disproportionally hard by Covid? And was there claims of racial profiling in regards to the virus in USA? I know there was in China but didn't hear anything similar from America.
POC worrying about getting the cops called on them, or much worse, for wearing DIY face coverings is pretty reasonable.
Yep, especially because there were a few instances of people being told to remove their masks at a Wal-Mart back in March or April as they were "making others uncomfortable".
Hehheh. Bbc seems to know more about uk finland travel restriction lifting than Finland's goverment.
And sweden acting like petulent child. You put economy over controlling spread of virus, don't expect countries allow travel to dnd from freely while virus is spreading with no sign of respite. (indeed in finland around border of sweden there's been spike and many cases related to visits there...yet sweden insists ：it's not risk country)
On an off shoot to the thread but still related as mentioned about the uk beaches yesterday being packed out, it seems not only did the mass of lemmings jam the area up at Bournemouth to dangerous levels but left behind a massive 22 thousand tonnes of rubbish and crap.
Nice one people, how much of your rubbish is now floating in the channel. So much for the keep Britain tidy campaign huh.
The news from America in there is scary, Texas estimating a 12% infection rate now. That's over a 1 in 10 chance that, if you're in Texas, you've got it.
The US stats are in general scary and it seems that Worldometers might have slightly different/updated data because it looks like the USA has now hit 47,000 cases a day, the worst rating its had thus far. Looking at the chart I think that rapid increase is going to keep going up very quickly. Especially if the USA keeps having issues with a lack of proper unified lockdowns; protests; and even pushback from the population on some safety measures (I think the videos of people arguing against wearing masks in government meetings have gone viral around the net so I'd wage many of us have seen them by now - if not they are easily found).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Also some anger at the recent UK issues with parties that have been happening - sports parties, drinking parties, beach parties etc... The stats for the UK that he brings up on infection rate you can see here if you click on the 7 day average option under the charts:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Again one can see our numbers getting stable at new infections per day. He's estimating by July we'll start to see a rise so the question is really how much and how fast of a rise - a small blip or a steadily shooting up value. I think if we could have reduced lockdown and NOT had the parties and beach events and other mass gatherings we might have gone up a bit but at least being steadier for longer. Sadly mass gatherings are likely to make the growth faster which means an increased chance of lockdowns. Personally I don't think testing is good enough nor fast enough* nor is the app/track and trace ready to do effective regional lockdown.
Personally I wish the UK would impose mask wearing as a general "anywhere in public" mandate. Not only to help reduce accidental spread, but to get some sense of the remaining seriousness of the situation into people's minds. Like the video above, I'm still confused why we are imposing mask wearing in public transport, but not public places as well. I'd also like to see something in the relaxing process get firmed up again - something really simple like rejecting the 1m and going back to 2m enforced social distancing. Even though the government "relaxation" was more of a "well if you can't keep to 2m you can go to 1m if necessary" which is basically how most people were acting anyway.
I've a feeling that come late July we'll be seeing daily infections going up and if we get back to hitting 3K a day or greater I can see lockdowns hitting most of the country once again. Certainly in the northern and midland regions where it seems to be getting a tighter hold at the moment.
That said I'm not sure if the government has got it in them to do lockdowns again; that or they are saving it for when infections continue to spike and then have a more rapid rise as we leave summer and slip into autumn and winter. Personally I'd have liked to be well below 1K perhaps even 500 a day infections before even considering ending lockdown (I mean we could aim for 0 like some other nations as well). Being at 2K its only just below half of our worst rate at 5K.
*I'm not going to say the government is to blame on this entirely. Testing is a minefield of demand and if you look at the world stats right now the UK is testing pretty well.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries If you look at tests per million of population the UK is only behind much smaller nations. In fact there's no nation with more than 10million people higher than the UK. If you look at total tests we are in the top 4, only now behind nations vastly bigger than ourselves in population.
To me this suggests that whilst there is improvement to be made, the UK is at least not bottom of the barrel here.
Sadly the only sane one was the firearms shopkeeper who did raise a legitimate argument against masks. Whilst its likely a point that would be countered by other means - eg show your face outside the window then place mask on to enter shop; or serve at the door only etc... There are ways around the issue of course. But it was one of the few in that video that shows a legitimate argument and concern.
What's more worrying is all those people who were anti-mask would likely sue their doctor if they had an operation performed on them and the doctor was operating with a mask.
Skip to the end - logging of entry and leaving a store using an app. You have to scan a code to enter using your phone and it logs you going in. Store then if it gets an infection notice has got all the details and the phone has you logged as having entered - app can send you the notice to self isolate.
Hehheh. Bbc seems to know more about uk finland travel restriction lifting than Finland's goverment.
And sweden acting like petulent child. You put economy over controlling spread of virus, don't expect countries allow travel to dnd from freely while virus is spreading with no sign of respite. (indeed in finland around border of sweden there's been spike and many cases related to visits there...yet sweden insists ：it's not risk country)
Conversely, stop backing nonsense. The Skåne region has less deaths per capita than the Copenhagen region, and yet the Danish authorities ban Swedes from visiting Denmark (while letting their own citizens travel to Sweden freely without reprecussions). It's so blatantly populist that it's incredible that anyone is falling for it, and yet...
Skip to the end - logging of entry and leaving a store using an app. You have to scan a code to enter using your phone and it logs you going in. Store then if it gets an infection notice has got all the details and the phone has you logged as having entered - app can send you the notice to self isolate.
Compulsory? Sounds unethical to me. Can't see it taking off here.
Numbers don't lie. Sweden has lot more cases per population than denmark and finland for example.
Sweden took it's route. Fine. But bear the effect with pride rather than complain. Because sweden's policy there's now fresh corona wave in north-west finland. That's why swede's are not welcome. Get the corona into control and then you are. But as long as you put economy first that's not happening.
Sweden CHOSE to have their people not be able to go to many countries and many countries blocking sweden as country go. Sweden's choice. Don't complain about your own decisions
That's like complaining you are broke after throwing everything to roulette and losing. Your choice, don't complain about results
Skip to the end - logging of entry and leaving a store using an app. You have to scan a code to enter using your phone and it logs you going in. Store then if it gets an infection notice has got all the details and the phone has you logged as having entered - app can send you the notice to self isolate.
Compulsory? Sounds unethical to me. Can't see it taking off here.
Well you can shop from home. At some level if the track and trace is going to work then know on what day, what time you were certain places is going to be critical to that actually working
There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
We've all been shopping in supermarkets this whole time without any of this nonsense in place, and the world hasn't ended.
We've all been shopping in supermarkets this whole time without any of this nonsense in place, and the world hasn't ended.
Correct, at the same time we still have over 2 thousand people catching the disease every single day. And that's after months of lockdown. Surely you can appreciate that if you are able to inform everyone you've been into contact with to self isolate if you are found to be a carrier - or if someone else in the shop is - then clearly that means all those people and their families have a chance to self isolate. Thus blocking the potential further spread of the virus. In theory the quicker and more wide spread we adopt such a policy the sooner we can abandon it. Because once you can isolate the main body of those infected you can stop further spread. This disease spreads by human to human contact for the vast majority of cases (there are a few conditions passed by pets ,but this is very abnormal and in general the animal isn't the carrier itself, its fur etc...) So if you prevent the infected and the potentially infected from socialising then you shut down the virus's ability to spread.
If we'd put stricter lockdown measures and quarantine measures into place when this all started as a global reaction; then we could have shut down the virus's spread dramatically. Sadly we didn't and even if nations had there are many nations that don't have the structure to effect reliable lockdowns (though I'll be the first to admit I didn't expect the USA to be in that bracket as badly as they appear to be - then again the protests were a wildcard that has made the situation worse)
And as I said if you don't want to be tracked then simply isolate at home and shop online. The UK has a mature delivery system - you can get food, supplies whatever you want online and the system has adapted since the early weeks. It's more robust now than it was and whilst you might have to wait a bit longer, we are talking days not weeks or months.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I will shop in stores, as is my right...... I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
You know shops are private property right? You have no right to enter them. They can set any requirement they like as long as it's not discriminatory. If they say you can't enter without a mask, or without giving contact details, or without using an app or whatever that's up to them.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
We've all been shopping in supermarkets this whole time without any of this nonsense in place, and the world hasn't ended.
If you've been giving them a rewards card or phone number or something, then for years you've already effectively been tagging your shopping and datestamping purchases. Hell, local game stores have been doing this for as long as as I can remember, the only difference was they did it at the counter by asking for your info instead of the door by having you swipe your phone.
If stores choose to adopt such policies, then as private entities they very much can dictate whether you can go into the shop or not.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I will shop in stores, as is my right...... I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
You know shops are private property right? You have no right to enter them. They can set any requirement they like as long as it's not discriminatory. If they say you can't enter without a mask, or without giving contact details, or without using an app or whatever that's up to them.
I'm absolutely aware of that. I said it was unethical and impractical, not illegal. It will lose them sales from people who don't want or can't use mobile phones, and they would be effectively holding those people and others who don't want to use the app hostage lest they go hungry. It's staggering that people would even entertain the idea of supporting that.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
We've all been shopping in supermarkets this whole time without any of this nonsense in place, and the world hasn't ended.
If you've been giving them a rewards card or phone number or something, then for years you've already effectively been tagging your shopping and datestamping purchases. Hell, local game stores have been doing this for as long as as I can remember, the only difference was they did it at the counter by asking for your info instead of the door by having you swipe your phone.
If stores choose to adopt such policies, then as private entities they very much can dictate whether you can go into the shop or not.
I've said before but, I don't have any of those cards. See above for the rest.
If you don't have a phone chances are they can take your name and address. If you refuse to give any contact information for track and trace they can refuse you entry.
You'll then have to order food online for home delivery if you refuse to give your details (I mean the store has your details then anyway).
If you refuse to enter a shop with track and trace and you refuse to home deliver then I'd make sure you've got stocks for half a year or more because chances are you'll be unable to get any food at some point in the near-future. That is at least if the government is serious about track and trace and isn't just going to go for herd immunity and/or national lockdown once again.
Also, cases this week have topped out about 1000 per day average. (6800 this week) last time it was close to 2000 per day was 31st of may.
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Overread wrote: If you don't have a phone chances are they can take your name and address. If you refuse to give any contact information for track and trace they can refuse you entry.
You'll then have to order food online for home delivery if you refuse to give your details (I mean the store has your details then anyway).
If you refuse to enter a shop with track and trace and you refuse to home deliver then I'd make sure you've got stocks for half a year or more because chances are you'll be unable to get any food at some point in the near-future. That is at least if the government is serious about track and trace and isn't just going to go for herd immunity and/or national lockdown once again.
Well, I'm not worried yet, as I think the UK is smart enough to realise how pointless such a system would be.
Oh wait I got my numbers wrong earlier - yeah we are closer to the 1K mark rather than the 2K mark. I still think that is scary high when you consider that its still measuring in the thousands. This is also with things relaxing so it is very unlikely to improve much and I suspect will start to turn the other way. I just hope we see small shifts - though that's very wishful thinking.
Maybe. But the death numbers are still going down. Maybe now it's only really hitting all the folks who are just shrugging it off. I don't know. It would help if they followed through on publishing the recovery rates that they promised a month ago I guess.
True, but even without recovery data they've been saying for a while about values such as 20-30% of those who recover having potential long term to life long lung damage, even in younger people.
Granted improvements in treatment will hopefully reduce that value, but its still a very scary value.
The numbers are still going down, but not as fast as they were going down earlier. The numbers are slowing and at some point I'd imagine a reversal and a steady rise once again - steady if we are lucky -stagnation if we are very very lucky.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not...
My wife is abused 2 to 3 times a day by people who refuse to even use the hand sanitiser before entering the little charity shop she works in. Standing by the door for 10 hours a day politely asking people to perform the simplest and most ridiculously obvious method to preserve her and their health and she gets abuse for it. Vile, shouty, indignant, self-important, deluded, bombastic, ignorant abuse. She's had to resort to calling the police on one occasion because the absolute arsehole worked himself up into such a state that she feared for her own, her staff and her customer's safety.
All to sell second hand bric-a-brac to support a local hospice. The general public can be absolute scum on occasion.
So I'm sorry if your arguments cut absolutely no ice with me whatsoever. If you can't abide by the most basic requests, shop online and save everyone the hassle of dealing with you and risking themselves on your behalf.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not...
My wife is abused 2 to 3 times a day by people who refuse to even use the hand sanitiser before entering the little charity shop she works in. Standing by the door for 10 hours a day politely asking people to perform the simplest and most ridiculously obvious method to preserve her and their health and she gets abuse for it. Vile, shouty, indignant, self-important, deluded, bombastic, ignorant abuse. She's had to resort to calling the police on one occasion because the absolute arsehole worked himself up into such a state that she feared for her own, her staff and her customer's safety.
All to sell second hand bric-a-bracelet to support a local hospice. The general public can be absolute scum on occasion.
So I'm sorry if your arguments cut absolutely no ice with me whatsoever. If you can't abide by the most basic requests, shop online and save everyone the hassle of dealing with you and risking themselves on your behalf.
And your appeal to pity cuts no ice with me. That shouldn't be happening to her. Those people are in the wrong. It has no bearing on me, or my point however.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not...
My wife is abused 2 to 3 times a day by people who refuse to even use the hand sanitiser before entering the little charity shop she works in. Standing by the door for 10 hours a day politely asking people to perform the simplest and most ridiculously obvious method to preserve her and their health and she gets abuse for it. Vile, shouty, indignant, self-important, deluded, bombastic, ignorant abuse. She's had to resort to calling the police on one occasion because the absolute arsehole worked himself up into such a state that she feared for her own, her staff and her customer's safety.
All to sell second hand bric-a-bracelet to support a local hospice. The general public can be absolute scum on occasion.
So I'm sorry if your arguments cut absolutely no ice with me whatsoever. If you can't abide by the most basic requests, shop online and save everyone the hassle of dealing with you and risking themselves on your behalf.
And your appeal to pity cuts no ice with me. That shouldn't be happening to her. Those people are in the wrong. It has no bearing on me, or my point however.
I feel that it rather does. Your argument is all about the infringement of your personal freedoms, regardless of the reasoning. These people who abuse my wife feel the same way. Whilst I'm sure you would not do the same as them, they are unable to fathom any infringement on their liberty and react with aggression when denied.
It's a theme of self entitlement and the elevation of the self above all others which is the problem here.
I agree that the Govts app that based on centralisation was an absolute disaster in terms of any data protection and I would have had difficulty using it, but to dimiss all apps and basic attempts to track and trace based on your own personal belief in freedom is extremely selfish.
So I re-iterate, you are not compelled to comply, you can stay home and do your shopping if you can't bring yourself to provide basic information, or attempt to protect others. Please do, if others who thought like you did so, perhaps my wife wouldn't have to face so much abuse.
Stores are private property, people don't have a right to enter them? If the store posts Masks/Sanitizer required, then Masks/Sanitizer are required and you aren't allowed in if you don't follow those rules.
It's mind boggling that people have such a hard time with such simple things.
There is always Amazon or other online retailers if you want to be a barbarian about this.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not...
My wife is abused 2 to 3 times a day by people who refuse to even use the hand sanitiser before entering the little charity shop she works in. Standing by the door for 10 hours a day politely asking people to perform the simplest and most ridiculously obvious method to preserve her and their health and she gets abuse for it. Vile, shouty, indignant, self-important, deluded, bombastic, ignorant abuse. She's had to resort to calling the police on one occasion because the absolute arsehole worked himself up into such a state that she feared for her own, her staff and her customer's safety.
All to sell second hand bric-a-bracelet to support a local hospice. The general public can be absolute scum on occasion.
So I'm sorry if your arguments cut absolutely no ice with me whatsoever. If you can't abide by the most basic requests, shop online and save everyone the hassle of dealing with you and risking themselves on your behalf.
And your appeal to pity cuts no ice with me. That shouldn't be happening to her. Those people are in the wrong. It has no bearing on me, or my point however.
Watch the two videos I posted recently - both reference that according to research from America up to 40% of infections are the result of catching the disease from people unaware that they have it and showing no overt signs of suffering. That means that you've a very strong chance of contracting the virus from someone without either of you being aware of the possibility. This is why we are all supposed to wash our hands; to socially distance; to reduce time spent indoors in close proximity to others; reducing the number of people in shops and workspaces; wearing masks; washing down surfaces etc...
Track and trace is simply another part of that system which enables us to at least identify as many people an infected person has been in contact with and have those people (and those they have come into contact with) self isolate. It's all about shutting down the virus's potential to spread whilst you're in a neutral state. When you could potentially have been exposed to it and thus could have picked up the infection without realising.
I've yet to really hear you come up with a valid argument against this; or a counter option in how people could be contacted and traced or otherwise vectors of infection shut down in practical terms (eg we are not about to equip the entire nation with bio-hazard suit and mandate their wearing at all hours outside of the home). It's one thing to dislike it and there are options to dislike it and not partake whilst also not putting others and yourself at risk; but in the end its one of the better ideas that can allow effective communication en-mass to the nation whilst also allowing for effective tracking. Especially in a modern world where we are travelling and meeting people sometimes from over vast areas. We think nothing of a 20 or 40 minute drive to a cheaper supermarket or to a specific store. Yet that can mean we have travelled far from our homes and as a result the circle of regions we can potentially directly infect is so much greater.
Skip to the end - logging of entry and leaving a store using an app. You have to scan a code to enter using your phone and it logs you going in. Store then if it gets an infection notice has got all the details and the phone has you logged as having entered - app can send you the notice to self isolate.
Compulsory? Sounds unethical to me. Can't see it taking off here.
Iv been reading your gak for over 100+ pages of this thread and to me you are part of this problem we have at the moment in the UK, you are not willing to help other people out as you are to selfish.
Why are you so against anything that will help track and trace or prevent the spread of this disease? and your usual excuse of "My liberties/freedom" doesnt cut it as your freedom isnt worth a fraction of someones life so get over yourself
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not...
My wife is abused 2 to 3 times a day by people who refuse to even use the hand sanitiser before entering the little charity shop she works in. Standing by the door for 10 hours a day politely asking people to perform the simplest and most ridiculously obvious method to preserve her and their health and she gets abuse for it. Vile, shouty, indignant, self-important, deluded, bombastic, ignorant abuse. She's had to resort to calling the police on one occasion because the absolute arsehole worked himself up into such a state that she feared for her own, her staff and her customer's safety.
All to sell second hand bric-a-brac to support a local hospice. The general public can be absolute scum on occasion.
So I'm sorry if your arguments cut absolutely no ice with me whatsoever. If you can't abide by the most basic requests, shop online and save everyone the hassle of dealing with you and risking themselves on your behalf.
US customers like to say they support the rights of private business while simultaneously demanding (loudly) socialist policies to trample them. Just look at QAR, or rather the viewpoints QAR puts up here.
I work where I have to wear a mask, and deal with customers. I have yet to have anyone "abusive" about it, not one, at all, and I cannot really imagine how many people must be going out in the plague to shop for "charity shop" products (what is that the british equivalent to our thrift stores?)
She should probably work (I don't mean this as an insult to her, really) on her persuasion skills -- because if you frame it one way (body language aggressive, angry, defiant, dismissive, bordering on rude, looking a bit scared that the customer is probably unclean and probably not your sort) you are going to engender defiance where it was unnecessary, if you however, pitch yourself and your request another way "gosh, its a pain for me to, but my husband, he is higher risk, and management won't let me work here if we don't use this gak on all the customers, I know it dries my hands out too, but what can we do? I just want to be able to keep the store open so you can get a little normal shopping in!")
Its the difference between creating alliance and animosity in your customer, and remember, people are very at the edge of their own pscyhological window with all that's going on. (In the USA, with our pervasive revolt/riot running couple weeks, the most terrified customers I see are wives of policemen, who universally have reported attacks on (and attempted murder on) their husbands. "Its just part of being a cop now, there are organized groups trying to kill you." one said, she was in tears. I pointed out the sanitizer and said "yeah, I can't fix that, but I can give you a little sanitizer so you know you don't track some virus home." She took it.)
Point I am making is, people are WAY at the edge of their envelopes. (That's where they cancel the postage, baby) .. .they have families home in lockdown times many months that usually are in school or at work, they have had to renegotiate their personal space and relinquish authority within their own spheres of home influence in a series of compromises with FAMILY. Nothing in western culture is more hard fought. Many of them are simultaneously being falsely accused (if widely and unspecifically) of racism, or or "killing grandma" or of daring to go for a walk with their dog and bring down the government. Many are terrified of the plague beyond reason (having watched the media's mounting toll and having forgotten that 90 percent of those cases are already over and resolved and that something like 99 percent of them resolved without bad events)
So yeah, you get all up in someone's face, or YOU be nervous, you create a situation that isn't needed or necessary, which could easily be de-escalated. Doing so isn't rocket science, but there is a science to it -- and if your wife is repeatedly having this sort of trouble, it may be an intersocial skillset or training point she has yet to internalize appropriately.
Please consider this as friendly advice -- god knows if I wanted to be a dick in here, I would have plenty of chances -- but maybe the exercise of seeing this through the angry customers' eyes can give her some verbal ammunition to defuse a tense situation or two. Cheers!
I dunno, that may be giving people way to much credit. There are many people of many ages and backgrounds who use retail as their vent for negative emotions and will take any excuse to do so. Take the average Karen as a infamous example. While interpersonal skills is important when you're the person who has to give people bad news or give them instructions you're likely to run into a few people who will use that as an excuse to be confrontational or abusive.
Overread wrote: If you don't have a phone chances are they can take your name and address. If you refuse to give any contact information for track and trace they can refuse you entry.
You'll then have to order food online for home delivery if you refuse to give your details (I mean the store has your details then anyway).
If you refuse to enter a shop with track and trace and you refuse to home deliver then I'd make sure you've got stocks for half a year or more because chances are you'll be unable to get any food at some point in the near-future. That is at least if the government is serious about track and trace and isn't just going to go for herd immunity and/or national lockdown once again.
Yep, that's how a 'soft" fasicst state works. They don't imprison you or execute you for refusing to do what they think is best. The just make it impossible to live any sort of life if you don't. Sure, you're "free" to refuse t be tracked everywhere and have every purchase tracked, but the new mantra is that "You have freedom to choose, you're not free from consequences of your choices!"
So yes you have a right to privacy, it's just that if you act on it you will suffer consequences carefully calculated to be impossible to live with.
But hey, "FREEDOM!"
Yes, yes, I know, COVID!! I know it's "necessary" to "Protect the public!" I also know that necessity and the public's welfare have been used by nearly every totalitarian regime in history. So even in cases where these might be valid issues i can;t help looking at them with extreme discomfort. Look at all the "security" laws passed after 911, the patriot act which pretty much wiped out most people's rights and any restraints of government power. It's been 19 years since the attacks on 9-11, those laws have not been rescinded, not been repealed, not been weakened, they have been strengthened time and time again.
Even tho a big part of me sees the right and need of most of these covid measures, I just can't make myself to believe they'll go away once the threat is gone. More privacy permanently eliminated, more rights overruled. More power to the police and surveillance state. Sure,. they're not taking 'your right to refuse" away from you, they're just setting it up so you can't live if you exercise that right. 'm really of two minds on it all. I really do see both sides and agree that both have some validity. I think the ro restriction side is just a bit more valid, for now. I'm not so sure if they'll turn out to be right if/when none of these new surveillance powers hang around long after covid is gone. The restriction favoring side is right, for now, i don't know if it will be later.
On the lighter side of covid today, Mike Pence blamed the new surge in covid cases on all those selfish spoiled entitled undisciplined young people who went out as soon as the restrictions were lifted. This coming from a guy who refused to wear a mask to a hospital.
If you’ve never seen retail customers abuse staff, I don’t know what to tell you. Even before the pandemic, even before the advent of culture war nonsense, retail workers were inundated with abuse.
There is absolutely no way the global pandemic and economic uncertainty reduced the abuse.
Overread wrote: If you don't have a phone chances are they can take your name and address. If you refuse to give any contact information for track and trace they can refuse you entry.
You'll then have to order food online for home delivery if you refuse to give your details (I mean the store has your details then anyway).
If you refuse to enter a shop with track and trace and you refuse to home deliver then I'd make sure you've got stocks for half a year or more because chances are you'll be unable to get any food at some point in the near-future. That is at least if the government is serious about track and trace and isn't just going to go for herd immunity and/or national lockdown once again.
Yep, that's how a 'soft" fasicst state works. They don't imprison you or execute you for refusing to do what they think is best. The just make it impossible to live any sort of life if you don't. Sure, you're "free" to refuse t be tracked everywhere and have every purchase tracked, but the new mantra is that "You have freedom to choose, you're not free from consequences of your choices!"
Eh, I mean capitalists have been using the "or you're free to starve instead" cudgel for a long time now and we generally seem to accept that.
At least with this it's actually about public health and safety, instead of something like justifying unlivably low wages.
Skip to the end - logging of entry and leaving a store using an app. You have to scan a code to enter using your phone and it logs you going in. Store then if it gets an infection notice has got all the details and the phone has you logged as having entered - app can send you the notice to self isolate.
Compulsory? Sounds unethical to me. Can't see it taking off here.
How does wearing a mask in order to prevent the spread and further unneeded deaths go against peoples morals?
Unless it is way different where you live, I don't think you have the right to go out and shop. The shop has the right to let you shop there, but you have no rights to actually go out and shop. That isn't a thing.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: There's no way they can introduce mandatory tagging in with mobile phones for shopping. its unethical and completely impractical, so I will shop in stores, as is my right. I've said from the start that an app is just useless window dressing. I'm not going to be dictated to as to whether I can go into a shop or not.
We've all been shopping in supermarkets this whole time without any of this nonsense in place, and the world hasn't ended.
Yes, they can. I don't think you know what unethical means at this point. Unless it is way different where you live, I don't think you have the right to go out and shop. The shop has the right to let you shop there, but you have no rights to actually go out and shop. That isn't a thing.
You have said from the start this is all fake and you don't believe it. So really what you have to say about an app means nothing. Also, a lot of us are actually following the rules in supermarkets. Do not lump us in with you, the world hasn't ended because some of us have common sense.
It's curious how ethics and morals is brought into question. What's more ethical in an emergency situation? To perform actions or bring in laws that may force people to act in a slightly different way in the name of protecting more vulnerable people? Or to do nothing and simply let the vulnerable die or be injured while maintaining freedom for others?
Personally i'd prefer the former. Not for my own safety as i'm unlikely to become one of the fatalities of covid, but for members of my family and community that aren't as likely survive. Yes there's a possibility laws and regulations brought in could be stretched or used in ways not intended but with any law, plan or scheme put in place to help people there are those who will abuse it.
near Tampa, the site just detects Canada for some reason. There's a lot of awesome things here (Tom Brady just showed off his new uniform, for one 
