Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Japan had a low initial number of cases. They stomped on the virus early with a strong voluntary lockdown.

They wear masks and rarely shake hands, bowing instead. Lastly, the Japanese are fanatics for personal and buildings cleanliness.

Also because they are used to wearing masks potentially their supply was also generally more geared up to support their population compared to some other nations where they went from basically only medical demand through to whole population demand almost overnight.

I suspect the same is also true of cleaning and sanitising products. In general many of the shortages other nations saw was due to a sudden rise in consumer demand. If your population already uses such measures in general, then the rise will be there, but it will be a bit less; plus it means that the back end of supply (ergo production and distribution) is already well established. At which point its more of a case of upscaling what is already there, whilst in many other nations it was creation of new jobs and work setups.

 Overread wrote:
Car repairs are also high because often as not you can't get into components now to fix them. So that 1 loose ball bearing - instead of replacing it at a nominal cost and a few minutes labour; turns into over an hour labour and an entirely new component. Computer design allows for some really space saving designs, but the ethos is all wrong. They don't want you to repair your car easily, they'd instead rather you bought new top end components.

I believe the EU was pushing through some legislation to make this less of a case, esp with a lot of electronic units that require specific tools to open sealed plastic cases. Offering no additional protection against things like water damage, but purely to make it hard to impossible to actually repair unless you go through official repair shops etc...

With my previous wheels, I was given an actual ‘eff off’ price by the garage to replace drop link pins.

Ended up sourcing the parts online, and swapping them out in my mate’s (The Omnisimon) dad’s garage.

Cost bugger all, but Kwik-Fit still claimed all four were worn.....hence my distaste for Kwik-Fit.

This time around I had the money and just couldn’t be bothered!

 Overread wrote:
Also because they are used to wearing masks potentially their supply was also generally more geared up to support their population compared to some other nations where they went from basically only medical demand through to whole population demand almost overnight.

I suspect the same is also true of cleaning and sanitising products. In general many of the shortages other nations saw was due to a sudden rise in consumer demand. If your population already uses such measures in general, then the rise will be there, but it will be a bit less; plus it means that the back end of supply (ergo production and distribution) is already well established. At which point its more of a case of upscaling what is already there, whilst in many other nations it was creation of new jobs and work setups.

Actually my friends noted masks ran out on shops there.

And with trains often being shoulder to shoulder to level where i'm literally carried along maintaining distance is hard. Which is why i was worried

Even when the components are readily available in the aftermarket, some manufactures do everything they can to make it difficult. Ever had to replace a headlight bulb through the wheel arch? Tis not fun. Worst I've seen needed the front bumper removing, we stopped offering bulb fitting after that

So australia seems to have gotten new spike. Wasn't situation at control before?

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Even when the components are readily available in the aftermarket, some manufactures do everything they can to make it difficult. Ever had to replace a headlight bulb through the wheel arch? Tis not fun. Worst I've seen needed the front bumper removing, we stopped offering bulb fitting after that

My manufacturer expects me to lift the headlight unit out to change mine, which means removing the front bumper! It can be done the traditional way, but that still needs the air box taking out and the assistance of a small boy or a delicate handed lady.

Doh. Australia cases are suspected to have started by guards of quaranteed people havinj sex with the quaranteed people(having come from outside australia).

Doh. Well good to know lack of common sense is trait that is still strong

The car repair anecdotes are interesting, but this is the Coronavirus thread.

Maybe make a different thread for car repair horror stories.

The only way I see car maintenance costs relating to covid is if it was about being beter to take a private car during quarantine than to use public transport.

I mean one of Europe's strong points is a better, safer, cleaner public transport system than america has, and i commend them for it. But in the covid time, cars might be safer. I suppose some care requirements could be briefly loosened to keep people from being forced to use public transit for now.

I know people in london love their double decker buses, and i've seen them on Dr. Who, but today they might as well call them "mobile plague distribution centers". BTW I assume they've been parked during the recent months,right? Right?

That’s a valid point. I’ve not stepped on a bus or train since February, but this Saturday I’m riding the train. Will be masked and gloved up to the eye balls. I could, and probably should, take the car but the town I’m heading to has terrible parking and terrible drivers. Plus the station is across the street from where I’m going.

Incidentally, this is to rejoin my gaming club and play AoS again. Last time we meet was...gak, January. The guys are taking all sorts of precautions so hopefully it’ll be safe. We’ve not had any new cases here in what seems like weeks so maybe we’re safe for the time being. Not looking forward to winter though...

So trump backpedalling on masks saying he will use them in tight spot and claims he has been seen with it in public(when?). Though still like a fool he believes it will just magically dissapear. Texas putting face mask requirement. They are getting nervous .

And over 50k cases in a day. Pace keeps increasing and 4th is tomorrow. So much for "warm summer will kill it off like other flu's". Pace just has increased in summer.

If masks makes Trump look like the Lone Ranger, he's going it wrong.
I want pictures!

More like bank robber

You know what else is a Lone Ranger? I’ll give you all a clue; it rhymes with banker.

At least he’s being honest with himself for once in his gakky life.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
That’s a valid point. I’ve not stepped on a bus or train since February, but this Saturday I’m riding the train. Will be masked and gloved up to the eye balls. I could, and probably should, take the car but the town I’m heading to has terrible parking and terrible drivers. Plus the station is across the street from where I’m going.

Incidentally, this is to rejoin my gaming club and play AoS again. Last time we meet was...gak, January. The guys are taking all sorts of precautions so hopefully it’ll be safe. We’ve not had any new cases here in what seems like weeks so maybe we’re safe for the time being. Not looking forward to winter though...

Got the bus for the first time in nearly a year yesterday to pick up my car.

It’s not a massively long walk, but I only had my lunch hour and it’s all uphill!

Wore my face mask, paid contactless. Reduced the risk as far as I could as an individual. Happy to say my fellow passengers similarly behaved themselves. Also used hand sanitiser at the garage when picking up my key.

 Matt Swain wrote:
The only way I see car maintenance costs relating to covid is if it was about being beter to take a private car during quarantine than to use public transport.

I mean one of Europe's strong points is a better, safer, cleaner public transport system than america has, and i commend them for it. But in the covid time, cars might be safer. I suppose some care requirements could be briefly loosened to keep people from being forced to use public transit for now.

I know people in london love their double decker buses, and i've seen them on Dr. Who, but today they might as well call them "mobile plague distribution centers". BTW I assume they've been parked during the recent months,right? Right?

Best covid19 transport, is the motorbike.

I haven't set foot in a bus since OUP shut its doors in mid-March. They are still running, with very few people on them.

I had to drive into Oxford for work a couple of days, early in the shutdown. It was so quiet on the roads, and I was able to park in the OUP premises.

Traffic has noticeably increased in the past few weeks, though.

Been pondering something....

I am a RN...traveling RN specifically.

Working in primarily critical access hospitals (25 beds or less).

As it stands now, every patient admitted to our "floor" gets either a COVID screen (48-72 hr turn around) or if suspected/meets criteria, a rule-out test (24hr turn around).

So if you are admitted for an appendicitis, you are tested. If you have been admitted for a fall...you get tested.

I am all for testing everyone we can.

However.....

The place I am now has a good amount of Skilled Nursing patients come in and go out. These are typically elderly people that (usually) need some kind of physical occupational therapy before returning home.

Maybe...half?...are sent to nursing homes.

Before they go to a nursing home, though, the homes (at least in Iowa) require a negative COVID test within 72 hours.

Now here is where it gets....weird...

Patient Bob lives in a nursing home.
Bob falls and injures himself.

Bob goes to the ER, and gets screened for COVID (72hr results).

3 days go by, and Bov isn't doing well enough to go back to the nursing home...so he stays an extra 4 days.

By day 7, Bob is ready to go back. But the nursing home needs him tested again.

As he isn't suspected, he gets another screening test (72hr). He comes back clean and goes back.

Now....imagine this not uncommon scenario happening dozens and dozens of times a day.

Would this not skew the numbers in an....improper?...way?

When I hear that Iowa has performed 830,000 tests so far....I have to wonder how many of those tests were repeat tests on the same person within just a few days of each other.

At one hospital I was at....they tested a patient *every day* for nearly a week to see when he would test negative to be able to go home.

Just gets me wondering about the veracity of the testing information/statistics.

As I have said though....I am all for testing everyone we can.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I haven't set foot in a bus since OUP shut its doors in mid-March. They are still running, with very few people on them.

I had to drive into Oxford for work a couple of days, early in the shutdown. It was so quiet on the roads, and I was able to park in the OUP premises.

Traffic has noticeably increased in the past few weeks, though.

Were safe in Oxfordshire. The council has padlocked up all the children's swings.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
That’s a valid point. I’ve not stepped on a bus or train since February, but this Saturday I’m riding the train. Will be masked and gloved up to the eye balls. I could, and probably should, take the car but the town I’m heading to has terrible parking and terrible drivers. Plus the station is across the street from where I’m going.

Incidentally, this is to rejoin my gaming club and play AoS again. Last time we meet was...gak, January. The guys are taking all sorts of precautions so hopefully it’ll be safe. We’ve not had any new cases here in what seems like weeks so maybe we’re safe for the time being. Not looking forward to winter though...

Got the bus for the first time in nearly a year yesterday to pick up my car.

It’s not a massively long walk, but I only had my lunch hour and it’s all uphill!

Wore my face mask, paid contactless. Reduced the risk as far as I could as an individual. Happy to say my fellow passengers similarly behaved themselves. Also used hand sanitiser at the garage when picking up my key.

Lucky that you still have bus services.

I'm between jobs, I was before this pandemic hit. I don't drive, probably cannot due to health issues even if I could afford to learn. And I'm reliant on public transport because of those health issues. As of June 30th the unemployed who were shielding are being told to look for work again. That includes me.

However...


...the bus services round my way have been slashed to one an hour and don't exist before 08:00.

It takes 90 minutes, and 2 different operators bus services, on a good "normal" day to get to the nearest town/city where all the work is likely to be. More like 2 hours now looking at the timetables. I can forget even an 09:30 start.

It's not like I can work from home either, even though I'm an office worker by "trade/profession", where I live is not my home, and is not setup for working from home - nor can I afford to make it so.

No employer is even going to give me the time of day - especially when there's 5000+ unemployed people in the area all after the same tiny amount of work!

I haven't been contacted yet by the Job Centre, but I really don't want to have a conversation with them because I know the person I will end up talking to will be like certain people in this thread. They're all right...


The govt. haven't got a clue, all they're worried about is making money on their investments and allowing their relatives to swan off to Greece via other countries!!

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Been pondering something....

I am a RN

RN is some kind of nurse?

Rob Lee wrote:

...
It's not like I can work from home either, even though I'm an office worker by "trade/profession", where I live is not my home, and is not setup for working from home - nor can I afford to make it so.
...

When you say you're not set up for working from home, what do you think you need?

Personally, I've been working from home every other week since lockdown started. I have my work laptop, and my work headset for making Skype calls - and that's it.

If I need peace and quiet, I'll take my laptop off to my painting desk. But generally (and right now in fact) I just sit in the living room on the sofa, with the laptop perched on the arm rest.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 TheMeanDM wrote:
Been pondering something....

I am a RN

RN is some kind of nurse?

Registered Nurse

Crispy78 wrote:

Rob Lee wrote:

...
It's not like I can work from home either, even though I'm an office worker by "trade/profession", where I live is not my home, and is not setup for working from home - nor can I afford to make it so.
...

When you say you're not set up for working from home, what do you think you need?

Personally, I've been working from home every other week since lockdown started. I have my work laptop, and my work headset for making Skype calls - and that's it.

If I need peace and quiet, I'll take my laptop off to my painting desk. But generally (and right now in fact) I just sit in the living room on the sofa, with the laptop perched on the arm rest.

Webcam. Headset. Somewhere to actually work from other than my bedroom where my 5 year old PC that probably needs replacing/upgrading is. Not to mention a reliable phone line.

Like I said, I can't afford all that. I don't have a laptop, or other useful for work mobile device, and even if I did I can't just sit on the sofa, it's not my house and there are other people in the household to consider. I can't, for example, sit on the sofa and answer the phone because other members of the household are watching TV. The house I live in is not at all suited to being a professional environment where one can work.

That's beside the point though.

The point is people are being expected to return to, and resume looking for, work, in many cases/areas without the means to enable them to do so properly.

Fine if you drive, you're all right. Feels to me like the rest of us, outside of London and the other big cities, can just go do one as far as the govt. and various individuals are concerned.

And we're not even properly out of the pandemic yet either! And yet people like me are supposedly no longer at high risk! Yeah right...

I've not once, in 20 years of employment, had a job where I've had to provide my own IT equipment. My current employers have, in extreme cases, even provided office furniture and mobile broadband to workers struggling to work from home.

Good for you.

I have worked for employers where I've had to provide my own IT equipment, even though I worked at their premises, and especially as I was expected to work out of hours. Several of them.

But again, that isn't really the point.

Putting aside the fact that I'm an office worker when I'm employed, there are plenty of people who aren't in my line of work, but still rely on buses to get to work. How are they to do that when bus services early morning don't exist?

The govt. certainly aren't doing anything to make that situation any more workable and it's the govt. who have put us in this situation! The focus is on people who can drive to/from work. Never mind the rest of us.

We can't all work from home, and with furlough ending there's going to be even more unemployment - just hope all of those newly unemployed people are car drivers, for their sake.

But hey - at least I can enjoy a local game of cricket from July 11th. Gotta get the priorities right...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/53276717

well apparently enough bars were planning to open at 1min past midnight on Saturday and were booked up for a solid 24 hours of frantic drinking the government has had to say bars should only open at 6pm

but it's all going to be fine, all those folk who got drunk and got into fights in city centres every weekend before covid are totally going to be responsible now, and the bar staff that didn't cut them off before before they got fighting drunk are going to cut them off even earlier now before they start getting close to folk

poor NHS

Might be an idea to slip a few extra packs of toilet roll in the shopping cart this week. Just in case

This is on FB today.

https://flic.kr/p/2jhPnBk

Some will say it's a troll, it's made to mock stupid people. But the thing is in america today, a lot of people will take it as true. We've reached a point where satire is indistinguishable from reality.