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 ValentineGames wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I know that there’s bigger things to worry about atm (I know some people on death’s door ) but I wonder, will GW survive this?

Quite a few tears will not be shed..

Why the Heck is the UK recovery rate so low? Its hardly moved compared to constantly rising deaths.

Where's your screen shot from? Until recently the PHE dashboard had an asterisk next to the 135 figure explaining they are reviewing the methodology for calculating that figure, so weren't updating it.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I know that there’s bigger things to worry about atm (I know some people on death’s door ) but I wonder, will GW survive this?

Well, looking at their financial releases? They should be pretty much fine. They’ve no debt to speak of, and quite a lot of cash in the bank.

Of course, that info is only a snapshot for a given time, and we know they’ve been establishing their second factory in Nottingham.

Overall, I’d say there’s a very, very low risk of them not emerging from this. They can pay their landlords (for the shops), and will likely be getting that Government assistance for staff wages.

In terms of Design Studio output? Depending on whether their software needs a specialist level of equipment or not, there could be delays on projects in the works. If not, I suspect the sculptors will be digitally sculpting from home.

How this might impact smaller war games companies? I know Mantic remain in operation (having seen their facilities firsthand, social distancing really shouldn’t be a problem, as it’s really quite spacious). Any others? They could be in for a rough ride if they can’t physically sell any units.

I must confess to being a little relieved to hear that. Obviously there’s bigger things going on atm but sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Would hate to have the makers of my favourite stuff killed off by something as ‘out there’ as this.

Work’s getting better too. No longer working with the robot (I didn’t even have to ask!) but we are down to a skeleton staff and it shows. The hardest part is...everywhere is now closed. So trying to grab a drink or something to eat or chewing gum or even somewhere to go to the toilet is very difficult.

Gee dubs won't go under. Even if they did, there's plenty of demand, and huge potential profits, that someone would take up the mantle and get it running again.

I spoke too soon about work.

And yeah, GW would live on regardless. I have to say, with what I know now, they’re a very well run company. They had issues in the past but they’re really on top of things and not getting into debt is clever. Why couldn’t the British car industry have been like that.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I must confess to being a little relieved to hear that. Obviously there’s bigger things going on atm but sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Would hate to have the makers of my favourite stuff killed off by something as ‘out there’ as this.

The little things do matter. I'm worried for a lot of the little UK craftspeople from whom I try to buy most clothes, for instance. A lot of them are gonna go under. Also: PUBS. GW are a powerhouse though, have a pretty substantial captive market, big profit margins and aren't hugely reliant on any other precarious businesses or industries. They'll be fine.

The FLGS and venues that host a lot of gaming clubs, though, a lot of them will be in trouble. So the gaming landscape could change for a fair old while, even after the social distancing relaxes.

The mismanagement of the UK response is really gaining traction in the UK press, even amongst the staunch pro-government outlets (only really the Express left backing them on CV strategy). Hopefully this sees the PPE and testing that NHS facilities are screaming for across the board finally getting fulfilled.

I still think the initial approach was legitimately following expert advice, but since that expert advice changed (or different advice was accepted and the advisors retained, which, given how much Vallance and Whitty have been sidelined since the ICL publication, seems likely) there's been an appalling level of obfuscation, especially on testing.

pubs will always be around. it will be trying for owners for a while, but as soon as things get back to normal they will be booming as people flock back to them.

FLGS's that also have a webshop and/or sell things like puzzles will be fine, I think. People bored in quarantine will want something to do, and smart ones will jump in that gap.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
pubs will always be around. it will be trying for owners for a while, but as soon as things get back to normal they will be booming as people flock back to them.

Obviously pubs as a sector will be, and will boom as soon as people are allowed to frequent them again. Lots of individual pubs, especially independents, are going to collapse because they can't afford to sit it out until then.

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
pubs will always be around. it will be trying for owners for a while, but as soon as things get back to normal they will be booming as people flock back to them.

Obviously pubs as a sector will be, and will boom as soon as people are allowed to frequent them again. Lots of individual pubs, especially independents, are going to collapse because they can't afford to sit it out until then.

This. What happens if all we're left with is Wetherspoons? *shudders*

Hopefully they’ll see enough drop off in custom due to the owner’s vile behaviour.

I would not miss my local town’s Alky Alley going away, permanently.

Meh, I have nothing against wetherspoons. I prefer a traditional pub, but they're alright enough for a lunch when were out with our daughter.

More ridiculous measures being called for in the UK. Hearing calls for FPNs for people wearing masks in public, because it means the NHS doesn't have them.

Also seen a news story where people have been warned that they could be in trouble for buying 'non essential' items.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/30/overzealous-police-use-coronavirus-powers-charge-shoppers-buying/
It's preposterous... Its like people actually want to have any prospect of fun or entertainment taken away from everybody else.

No country has correct numbers both in infected (They just don't test enough people) but specially, deaths, thats the most important one . From France that isn't counting the deaths of old people outside hospitals (In geriatrics for example), from Spain (You only need to see how this pandemic has aumented the number of "Non covid" deaths in the same period compared with the same period the year prior) from China or Iran (lol who believes they aren't fabricating the numbers), and cases like Germany that no one believes has so few deaths with so many infected.

Well, quitting my job. Tried to help but not only have I been screwed over for 7 days in a row now, with my dumb ass coworkers constantly coming to within 2 feet of me, but they also failed to pay me. So, I’m out. I’m done. Going into isolation with all the rest of you.

Deaths in the U.K. of patients tested positive for Covid-19 up 569 since Wednesday.

Why the italics? Seems we may not have been testing as thoroughly as we should. The reason why isn’t relevant to this specific post.

Makes you wonder how many more deaths are occurring in people that haven’t been diagnosed.

 gorgon wrote:


https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

You do realize the numbers you need for real herd immunity, right?

I just knew that someone was going to read the words 'herd immunity', and rush to assume I was saying something other than what I actually am. Although in all fairness, I should have inserted the phrase 'begun kicking in' rather than 'kicked in'.

I'll restate for you. Once we hit 50% or so of the population having had it and thus being immune (not impossible six months from now judging from infection rates, the risks will be substantially reduced. Not eliminated. Not non-existent. Not 'Wahey, back to work everyone, party at mine'. Reduced.

Why? Because if half the population has had it, there is no risk of them spreading it through coughs, sneezes, saliva, or any of the numerous other body fluid related methods of transmission. They can stil carry it on surfaces, but there will be far less vectors for infection, and that segment of the population will thus be fit to resume employment (albeit with suitable hand washing and disinfection routines still in place).

In short, it becomes more of a game of 'stay home until you've had it' whilst the country begins shifting gear into partial lockdown (rather than full). After another three or four months, we'll start approaching 70-80% in terms of immunity, at which point it just becomes easier to initiate total lockdown and support measures solely for the vulnerable instead and let the rest of the country get on with things.

 Ketara wrote:


In short, it becomes more of a game of 'stay home until you've had it' whilst the country begins shifting gear into partial lockdown (rather than full). After another three or four months, we'll start approaching 70-80% in terms of immunity, at which point it just becomes easier to initiate total lockdown and support measures solely for the vulnerable instead and let the rest of the country get on with things.

I'd suggest that's a REALLY dangerous game to start playing. You essentially create a new class system, and encourage people to deliberately catch a virus so they can start living and earning again.

nfe wrote:

 Ketara wrote:


In short, it becomes more of a game of 'stay home until you've had it' whilst the country begins shifting gear into partial lockdown (rather than full). After another three or four months, we'll start approaching 70-80% in terms of immunity, at which point it just becomes easier to initiate total lockdown and support measures solely for the vulnerable instead and let the rest of the country get on with things.

I'd suggest that's a REALLY dangerous game to start playing. You essentially create a new class system, and encourage people to deliberately catch a virus so they can start loving and warning again.

So long as a vaccine is a year or more off, it's the natural end result.

And frankly, there's really no good reason once more than half the population has recovered to keep a full lockdown. That half of the population is fit, healthy, able to work, and immune to the virus. People are restive now, give it six months of being cooped up and guaranteed immunity? They'll be champing at the bit and nothing beyond draconian 'We'll shoot the lot of you' is going to keep them at home. Given the financial strain on the country by that point, it'll make good fiscal sense to start relaxing (not ending!) restrictions somewhat. Keep the social places closed, but start opening up the places of employment, etc.

Good news on the personal front - I tested negative! Finally can stop worrying about who we might have infected, and at least go to the grocery store again . Stay safe and healthy everybody

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Well, quitting my job. Tried to help but not only have I been screwed over for 7 days in a row now, with my dumb ass coworkers constantly coming to within 2 feet of me, but they also failed to pay me. So, I’m out. I’m done. Going into isolation with all the rest of you.

That sucks FWC, hope you get your money soon and find something better! For now, enjoy hiding inside with us, I guess!

Its business as usual for us here.
I've been starting to climb the walls not being able to pick up heavy things in the gym for 2 weeks, so i've been searching for solutions. today I've found some disused stropping chains at work.. tons of them. the box was heavy as hell, so I'm borrowing them. going to leave a load of them in my daysack for when I walk to and from work, then take the rest home to use for squats and loaded carries and whatever else I can figure out with them. if I can find a good branch on a tree for pull ups, and dig out my TRX handles for pulls, I should be able to cover most movements. cant be getting sedentary during this period.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I know that there’s bigger things to worry about atm (I know some people on death’s door ) but I wonder, will GW survive this?

if any minis/games company does they will because they don't have a huge pile of debt dragging them down, no borrowing and owning almost all of their own kit puts them in a very strong position

if the economy tanks badly enough that nobody has enough disposable income for fun stuff then we'll have far too much to worry about just surviving to care

 Ketara wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Ketara wrote:


In short, it becomes more of a game of 'stay home until you've had it' whilst the country begins shifting gear into partial lockdown (rather than full). After another three or four months, we'll start approaching 70-80% in terms of immunity, at which point it just becomes easier to initiate total lockdown and support measures solely for the vulnerable instead and let the rest of the country get on with things.

I'd suggest that's a REALLY dangerous game to start playing. You essentially create a new class system, and encourage people to deliberately catch a virus so they can start loving and warning again.

So long as a vaccine is a year or more off, it's the natural end result.

And frankly, there's really no good reason once more than half the population has recovered to keep a full lockdown. That half of the population is fit, healthy, able to work, and immune to the virus. People are restive now, give it six months of being cooped up and guaranteed immunity? They'll be champing at the bit and nothing beyond draconian 'We'll shoot the lot of you' is going to keep them at home. Given the financial strain on the country by that point, it'll make good fiscal sense to start relaxing (not ending!) restrictions somewhat. Keep the social places closed, but start opening up the places of employment, etc.

Assuming it doesn’t mutate into yet another strain?

From my incredibly limited understanding of such things, it’s a genuine concern.

So today's grimdark fashion accessory is a crafts project -- that being, a bandana with a hepa filter (if I can pull this off technically) because I have as yet not got sick, far as I can tell, and I have to move to and from my job every day through public spaces.

So my current "protective posture" (civilian) mix is just that, an intake filtering mask and a pair of swim goggles. ( I REALLY trhink nobody is talking about putting on swim goggles to stop aerosol transmission to the eyes of something that floats in the air.)

My thought is that I will (once mask complete, and I may not get through that before work today) have a working barrier for eyes, ears, nose, that leaves my usual routine of paranoid handwashing as the only add on required.

Since this is a crafter guild forum, really, I will say the bandana is pure cotton and the hepa filter is planned to be ripped from the inside of an air filter replacement pack. I have a second bandana (in a very loud red white and blue pattern) to line the back of the mask with, in the hopes it can be flipped aroudn front to back or back to front.

I will be regenerating it between uses with 160 F heat at 20 minutes in the oven -- I have a spare oven I essentially don't use that is also self cleaning so I can allways set it to self clean a bit and make sure nothing remains in that environment. I am not sure yet how one would clean the goggles, which are plastic, optimally. It will be a likely experimental test using a wipedown with pure ethanol (purchased, as I always do and did, from the paint aisle of a store. If you folk are desperate for sanitizer, consdier looking in that section for something like "denatured pure ethanol".

Hopefully this gives me adequate protection against either incoming virus or (if I am asymptomatic and infected) adding anything to the problems of the world at large. Also hopefully, it gives me a chance to test if n100 is a good standard for brief use masks. (I will likely just break down and use the n95 till I get a chance to put this together, but I am definiete in moving to a higher ready/protect standard as things are on the more serious side.

N95 can also be regenerated at that temp range, so I am not worried about my current mask crapping out today or tomorrow.

Anyone have experiences building a similar mask? I am going for the "cowboy bandana" outer look, basically, some kind of cross between the masks you might imagine in the old west dust storm and the anime version of warhammer 40k.

 Ouze wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Interesting article on how some of these models that show social distancing can greatly reduce infections are actually burying the lede, at least somewhat.

For the lazy, a model showing this:

Spoiler:

Looks great, but artificially ends in October. The model is javascript and runs in a browser, so you can actually edit to to run past October - which gives you this:

The argument is that until there is a actual vaccine, all social distancing is doing is kicking the can down the road.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but this reads like a 'They're lying to you! They're just putting off the problem!'

That's exactly the point. No institution advocating social distancing says that's going to seriously reduce (and certainly not stop) the infections, it's entirely about reducing the infections at any given time.

But no one is seriously suggesting (yet) that the country-wide lockdowns continue until a vaccine is developed - which is probably a year out, right? Unless that is the plan, and I don't think it's been said it is, then what difference does it make whether we overwhelm hospitals and spike fatalities now, or in October?

I mean, the chances I am missing something are pretty good. Maybe the idea is to dramatically ramp up healthcare availability in parallel? Even with no vaccine, that would make sense.

The plan isn't to spike infections in October. These measures will continue until such time that the chance of the spike is severely reduced or eliminated entirely (i.e. a vaccine or a treatment which can be handed out like candy to everyone without the need for medical supervision is developed) or such time that medical systems are able to handle the spike. The model shows the spike in October because the model was only programmed to keep the social distancing efforts in place until then. The author contends that this is a case of dishonesty because the infections are being hidden in the future, there is an argument to be made there but they aren't intentionally deceitful - the models are largely developed by professionals for use with other professionals that understand the reality of the situation and how this all works, if the models are misleading its because the general public does not understand them. This is not a 2 week problem, its not a 2 month problem either, its a problem that will last as long as it takes us to implement a solution, and that solution is still many months away from implementation.

Not to mention the other advantage of limiting infection vectors helps mitigate the risk of it mutating into yet another iteration.

Fighting one is bad enough, but a second strain would only compound matters.

Not necessarily, if the second strain turns out to be significantly less lethal but generates antibodies that are equally effective against the current strain then that second strain could prove to be a godsend. You could basically intentionally infect a sizable chunk of the population with the second strain in order to create herd immunity to the first.

Ketara wrote:It may well do if herd immunity has kicked in by that point. Estimates of infection in London are already at 5% or more of the population. If that keeps up, enough people will be probably be immune towards October time that the risk will be substantially reduced and the country beginning to function again. If half the population has had it and recovered, then that's half the population which can go back to work without fear of infection or being super-spreaders, or anything of the like. Sure, they can still spread it on their hands, but they won't be coughing or anything.

This is painfully optimistic. The 5% herd immunity rate in london is the result of an early spike in measures as a result of a lack of measures to contain the virus. Flattening the curve via social distancing is a double edged sword - it drastically cuts down the rate of spread and the impact on the healthcare system, but it also drastically reduces the rate at which herd immunity develops. Herd immunity for coronavirus doesn't begin setting in until ~50% of the population gets it, or in more visible terms until cases peak - not the artificially suppressed peak that will result from social distancing, but the overall peak of all potential infections, the peak that we will probably only ever see if we abandon all social distancing efforts before a vaccine becomes available. With social distancing/curve flattening, assuming we dont develop a vaccine first, herd immunity is 2-3 years away at a minimum, and you still need to ride the curve up to ~60-70% for the continuing risk to the remaining uninfected population to be effectively mitigated.

I think you will turn out to be wrong but hope you turn out to be right.

Without getting into the specific thread-locking political weeds, I think it's pretty self evident to literally everyone at this point that some of the things we do in the US are simply unsustainable and well past their sell-by date.

Unfortunately, I think the US populace is just as likely to bend hard to the right in response to Coronavirus and blame external factors (China, immigration, etc.) for raining on our exceptionalist parade as we are to skew left and rework our policies so that a social safety net can protect us from some of the worst outcomes that will result from a repeat scenario.

Why the Heck is the UK recovery rate so low? Its hardly moved compared to constantly rising deaths.

Average recovery time is 14-21 days. Thats why. The recoveries are low because the number of people infected 14-21 days ago was low. The recoveries will always lag the cases reported.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Assuming it doesn’t mutate into yet another strain?

From my incredibly limited understanding of such things, it’s a genuine concern.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. We get new strains all the time. A new mutation could make it less lethal, less infections. and so on. From what I've read, mutations usually make viruses less harmful rather than the reverse.

If a new strain emerges which previous infection grants no immunity to, and which is much worse however; then yes. That definitely would be a bad point to re-open the country!

But that's a very hypothetical scenario.

 Ketara wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Assuming it doesn’t mutate into yet another strain?

From my incredibly limited understanding of such things, it’s a genuine concern.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. We get new strains all the time. A new mutation could make it less lethal, less infections. and so on. From what I've read, mutations usually make viruses less harmful rather than the reverse.

If a new strain emerges which previous infection grants no immunity to, and which is much worse however; then yes. That definitely would be a bad point to re-open the country!

But that's a very hypothetical scenario.

Viruses mutate all the time, because of the extremely short generational cycle. When we talk about 'the virus has mutated' it means something bad because actual change of itself is pretty much a daily occurrance.
Think of it like the term 'side effects'. There is no such thing as a 'side effect', there are only 'effects' but those 'effects' we find unwanted or harmful we refer to as 'side effects'. In both cases the nomenclature is based on how we relate to the medical product or virus rather than the underlying realities.

 RiTides wrote:
Good news on the personal front - I tested negative! Finally can stop worrying about who we might have infected, and at least go to the grocery store again . Stay safe and healthy everybody

Good news

 RiTides wrote:
Good news on the personal front - I tested negative! Finally can stop worrying about who we might have infected, and at least go to the grocery store again . Stay safe and healthy everybody

This is good news, but I wonder how many other cases involving allergies, psychosomatics, hypochondriacs, etc are also getting tested and skewing reported results...

It must be a nightmare trying to sort, analyze and use this data.

The only person I know who is in a position to answer that in the local area (close to washington, DC) reported that the drive in checkpoints operating in falls church, virginia, had a 99 percent negative to 1 percent positive rate of results.ire as chicoms.