Covid-19 Megathread

[Tommy!]

Someone in my office has tested positive, in the days before they were sat with a handful of people for the day training and milling around another small group of us having a chat. 

When asked if we should keep coming in without getting checked, about 8 people were in close contact, given they can work from home we were told they hadn't thought about it and assume yes keep coming into the office for now. 

Am I being harsh in saying that's a poorly thought out approach worth challenging? 

 

[Guest]

Calling it an approach is probably being generous.

[Cod Eye]

19 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

Someone in my office has tested positive, in the days before they were sat with a handful of people for the day training and milling around another small group of us having a chat. 

When asked if we should keep coming in without getting checked, about 8 people were in close contact, given they can work from home we were told they hadn't thought about it and assume yes keep coming into the office for now. 

Am I being harsh in saying that's a poorly thought out approach worth challenging? 

 

That sounds like a real shitarse "approach". If they can work from home, I don't see any point risking an even bigger outbreak and if taken to the extremes, someone suffering from a life changing condition thanks to the effects of the virus, or even worse dying. Even Boris fucking Johnson, who can't give any advice without sitting on the fence in case he upsets his wealthy donators says people should continue to work from home if they can.

[FLips]

2 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Shit man, hope you and your family are all ok. Speaking of which, how you holding up, @FelatioLips ?

We’re good thanks! Sick of being indoors, and despite our best efforts the dog has done a fair bit of damage, though has mostly been good. My wife’s fine, and I think I avoided catching it. She’s allowed to go out Friday but I’m in until Tuesday. 

[neil]

Whats been the cause of this rise in cases in the UK? Are people just ignoring mask wearing and gatherings? From the outside from what I've seen seems like the UK has much stricter rules in place than where I live in the US, but yet seems to be doing much worse with cases.

[BomberPat]

33 minutes ago, neil said:

Whats been the cause of this rise in cases in the UK? Are people just ignoring mask wearing and gatherings? From the outside from what I've seen seems like the UK has much stricter rules in place than where I live in the US, but yet seems to be doing much worse with cases.

Probably a combination of restrictions being relaxed, public fatigue meaning that more people are ignoring what restrictions do exist (there's definitely a sense of everyone seeing masks and physical distancing as an "either/or" decision), and the onset of winter meaning people are spending more time in close proximity to one another.

Then, of course, there's the fact that the government were not that long ago insisting that everyone go out to the pub, eat out to help out, and go back to work. While we're really getting beyond the point where we can talk about individual "hotspots", as there's a significant rise everywhere, my clumsy layman's perspective is that there's been a significant rise in university towns, and in poorer areas where a larger portion of the population are likely to be in public-facing jobs, and/or in manual professions that have been unable to shift to a working from home model, and also more likely to be living in multi-generational homes.

There's also the potentially scarier prospect that the virus is simply changing and adapting and is therefore now able to infect more people than it could in March/April, or that we've been talking in terms of this as a second wave, when we might not have even hit the first true peak yet, and the worst could still be to come.

[Chris B]

11 minutes ago, neil said:

Whats been the cause of this rise in cases in the UK? Are people just ignoring mask wearing and gatherings? From the outside from what I've seen seems like the UK has much stricter rules in place than where I live in the US, but yet seems to be doing much worse with cases.

I reckon it was mainly down to the major push to get people back to the workplace, even when it wasn't necessary, happening at the same time as schools and universities were being rushed back. So there was a sudden, and enormous, change in attitudes towards it all. This was driven by the tories in order to desperately protect property prices for inner-city landlords (and facilitated by HR arseholes talking about how they just felt that it was better for people to be in the office).

This drive also happened long enough after the first spike that some people had begun to get both bored of lockdown and also not see the point in it anymore. While the first wave was bad, there were plenty of people who didn't know anyone who got it, let alone seriously. As an example, a colleague of mine had no idea that another colleague's dad had died of it.

London has been surprisingly lightly hit so far this time around (fingers very crossed that continues). I reckon that's partly because it was badly hit the first time around, but also because there's a larger concentration of office jobs that could be done from home - so there's not the same level of contamination from different areas. And a massive reduction in public transport use means that there's been real change in how people act. In some areas, there's less opportunity to work from home long-term, and still a lot of public transport - that's a pretty dangerous combination, especially with schools and universities in smaller areas.

In some areas, if they weren't widely hit the first time around, there could be some complacency in there that's going to have been a factor. And it's not surprising - if you don't see it, it doesn't feel as real. It's been the same to a large degree in the US where NY hasn't been as heavily affected so far, because they've been scared into being cautious. The issue here isn't the people living in those areas - it's the government messaging being wishy-washy, pushing heavily to get people back to office/workplaces/universities, and literally paying a fortune to get people back used to going to pubs and restaurants again.

 

[Surf Digby]

8 hours ago, BomberPat said:

there's been a significant rise in university towns,

I'm in Nottingham, which is student central, and there's a significant number of them behaving like students traditionally do and ignoring the guidelines. There's already been two house parties that have made the news as they've been fined £10,000 and £40,000 (although these are largely due to them ignoring earlier warnings to shut down and disperse and then causing grief for the Police), but the student accommodation block on the street has also been fined after two parties this last week (the first of which involved the Police helicopter hovering about 200ft above them for ages before the cottoned on to why it was there, and then they scarpered like cockroaches).

We also have a lot of anti-maskers and deniers who seem to be going out of their way to go against guidelines.

One of my girlfriend's classmates died this week from Covid and it only took three comments on Facebook before someone piped up about how we're all so stupid for believing that was the cause.

I'm seeing a lot of people that I would normally consider rational and of at least functional intelligence going over the "dark side" of the conspiracy theories about Covid, posting memes about masks being ways to make us subservient. The piss taking by prominent figures in the government with regards to ignoring guidelines and awarding contracts to their mates, coupled with the back and forth, confusing and inconsistent advice is surely wearing people down and making them more susceptible to these conspiracies.

[Vamp]

The country was already vulnerable. The problems have just been exasperated by the pandemic. 

[quote the raven]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-54602999
 

Belguim taking another hammering they already had the 3rd highest death rate per 100k in the world

Mr Vandenbroucke described the situation in the capital Brussels and in the south of the country as "the most dangerous in all of Europe".

Edited October 22, 2020 by quote the raven

[BomberPat]

10 hours ago, Nostalgia Nonce said:

I'm in Nottingham, which is student central, and there's a significant number of them behaving like students traditionally do and ignoring the guidelines.

Yeah - I just don't think you can expect students, living away from home for the first time, let loose in the world when they're 18/19 to not behave like students always have and always will. Throw in the sense that many of them will quite rightly have of being colossally fucked over this year, and there's probably an added sense of fatalism to it all - if the government and the universities are going to hang them out to dry, they may as well enjoy themselves at the same time. I'm not saying it's right, but I can understand why students would be wilfully ignoring the rules at the moment, even without the usual sense of youthful perceived invulnerability. 

God knows how I'd feel if it became clear that people who knew full well that all of my studies were likely to be delivered remotely had still insisted on cramming me into crowded accommodation in the middle of a pandemic because it was more important to protect the landlords' investment than my health. When people talk about university as leftist indoctrination, they should stop and consider exactly what the right have ever done to endear themselves to students.

 

In terms of the conspiracy theorist lot, I see that as all part and parcel of the fatigue that goes along with just not being able to cope with this. People think that because they're tired of something, it must be close to over, as if there's just a finite timeline on this stuff. And when the grumblings I hear in the pub tend to be variations of, "do you actually know anyone who's had it?", it's not hard to see how people who privilege their personal experience over verifiable data would extrapolate from that - I don't know anyone who's had it, you don't know anyone who's had it, therefore it can't be as big of an issue as it sounds. 

The conspiracies, as always, don't hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny, though. The people who think that the government are tracking their every move and that we're in an Orwellian surveillance culture think that the exact same government also want us all covering our faces, which would make surveillance harder, not easier. It sort of shows the development of conspiracies - I was recently reading Richard Evans talk about the difference between systemic conspiracy (i.e., there's a secret organisation planning everything) and event conspiracy (i.e., the moon landings were faked), and I think that what's happened with systemic conspiracy in recent years is that it's become such a matter of belief/faith that no one's concerned with what the outcome of it all is. "It's to make us all subservient". To what end? For who's benefit? How? How does wearing an extra bit of clothing make me more subservient?

I remember a Facebook post right at the start of lockdown, saying how "leftists and anarchists" had to stop calling the government fascist or pretending to be revolutionaries because now they were all "just doing what the government tells them" and not "standing up for themselves". I don't wear a mask indoors because the fucking government tells me to, I do it because medical experts suggest it's the right thing to do.

[Joe Blog]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

- I was recently reading Richard Evans talk about the difference between systemic conspiracy (i.e., there's a secret organisation planning everything) and event conspiracy (i.e., the moon landings were faked), and I think that what's happened with systemic conspiracy in recent years is that it's become such a matter of belief/faith that no one's concerned with what the outcome of it all is. "

What book was that Pat? Sounds right up my street. 

[BomberPat]

43 minutes ago, Joe Blog said:

What book was that Pat? Sounds right up my street. 

The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and The Paranoid Imagination - the point I referenced is just from the introduction, and drawing on broader conspiracy literature (I'd recommend The Paranoid Style in American Politics, or Conspiracy of Conspiracies, in that respect), the book as a whole is looking at a number of conspiracies that centre around the Nazis, pre-, post- and during WW2. Off the top of my head, it looks at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the "stabbed in the back" myth, and conspiracies of Hitler surviving after the war, plus other stuff in the middle. And there's entirely unsubtle hints about the significance of all of this, and being aware of the mechanisms of conspiracy theories and propaganda, in the present day. 

[Mr_Danger]

What the nobhead conspiracy theorists don’t seem to comprehend is that incredibly rich incredibly selfish people will always look to turn any situation to their advantage. Jeff Bezos making a ton of money isn’t proof that he’s in on the world wide conspiracy to tank the worlds economy and cull the population. He’s just ideally placed to profit from it.

It’s possible for rich influential people to profit from a very real deadly catastrophe. Try telling that to the idiots and they just call you a sheep or compare you to a Nazi without any idea of the irony of Godwin’s Law. As I found out when I tried pointing out that wearing a face covering isn’t the same as anything Anne Frank went through.

[JNLister]

I'm hardly the first person to point this out, but people probably like the idea of conspiracy theories because they imply somebody in authority has a competently organised and delivered plan for something.