Politics Coronavirus

[Job]

Never homeworked, but a friend who did recited thise exact problems.
Extra digital leash coupled with family who think youre always available for errands or to pop around for a chat, down to asking if he could paint a room and pick up stuff from argos in one day.

I did push for it when I was office based because I lived alone and the only people knocking were pisshead mates and hopefully horny women.

My present part time work obviously cant be home based, but it quite often is when a 3hr job takes 10 mins

 

[Aoami]

If you are working from home, how are we finding it. Do you think you could go back to the office humdrum or happy with the remote working?

Until Lockdown #1 I was in the office maybe 1-2 days a week and working from home for the rest. For me not much change other than having the house full which poses it's own challenges. One bored 1st year Uni Student + One bored first year high school student + one wife who is out to work at 4.30 to be home at 11.00 (who despite her best efforts, is like a heard of elephants in mating season in the early hours) + one doggo who is used to having a nap with Alpha at lunch time and that 'Quality Time' has now gone.

One thing I have found is that the psychological barriers of specific times have now gone. Pre lock down there was a lot more 'respect' for things like lunch times and end of the working day. Now it is just a free for all on 'Important Team's Call's'. I dunno, maybe it's on me to set more boundaries, turn teams off etc.

Same as you, I was working home 2-3 weeks anyway, so it wasn't much of a shock to me. When everything is back to normal I expect I'll only be in the office when I need to be for a client meeting.

It's been good and bad for me.

Good:

I work as a technical/data consultant at a digital marketing firm, and my job can be quite stressful. A lot of that stress comes from people thinking you're there solely to help them and no one else matters, and they'll make that known by coming up to your desk. Now, I can just ignore their phone calls.

I've always hated commuting. I live in South London, zone 2, 5 miles from my office Holborn - yet it was still over 2 hours on public transport every day. Don't miss that at all.

I've found myself spending my extra hours doing worthwhile things, like online courses, I've been teaching myself piano, was running for a bit but I hate it, reading, DIY etc.

My dog has enjoyed it.

Bad:

I was on the social committee at work and definitely miss that side of it, especially beers after work on a Thursday/Friday. However, I've been at my place for about 6 years so I have good mates there who I regularly talk to on teams/WhatsApp.

I live in a one bed flat with my wife, no garden. We had it sold before the pandemic, and then the buyer lost his job, and interest in properties with no garden has been dead ever since. It's been tough to be honest. I don't have room for a desk so I work on my bed. It was novel for the first week or so, but got old quickly. Hoping with a more settled housing market due to Brexit we can get the place sold soon and upgrade.

 

[Job]

The Mail has posted this for world vaccine rollout , not clear where they got the data from, reporting Israel is running 24/7 vaccine centres.

 

[dysfunction]

They prob got it from here:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations

Explore data on COVID-19 vaccinations across the world.

ourworldindata.org

Total COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people

All doses, including boosters, are counted individually.

ourworldindata.org

 

[Job]

John Travolta wearing his mask at the grocery store today.

 

[Scouse]

lol - you can only imagine how the anti-vaxxers and microchipping conspiracy theorists are going to react to this!

Covid: Swansea Uni develops 'world's first' vaccine smart patch

Swansea University researchers say the patch both administers a vaccine and monitors its effect.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Deebs]

Fixed it for you.

Blaming infections on people not following the rules is incredibly dodgy imo. Considering the amount of infections that come from Care Homes and Hospitals, the extension of that thought is that carers and NHS staff aren't following the rules either.

Virus gonna virus, and the less we victim-blame people for getting ill the easier the tail end of this nightmare will be.

Just been to the local shop in the 4th most infectious place in England and here is what happened:

Followed a hag into the shop, she was wearing a mask as well as me. She entered a good 20 seconds before me and was at the till paying for some stuff. I am at least 2m behind her, she then finishes and turns toward me and starts approaching, so I begin back peddling to keep the distance.

The the fucking creature says "What you moving away for, I don't have the fucking disease". I respond "Following advice" and then manage to move around her and pay for my stuff.

How THE FUCK is this the virus gonna virus? How does she know she is asymptomatic? Can I trust this vile fucking creature.

 

[Bodhi]

If you are working from home, how are we finding it. Do you think you could go back to the office humdrum or happy with the remote working?

Until Lockdown #1 I was in the office maybe 1-2 days a week and working from home for the rest. For me not much change other than having the house full which poses it's own challenges. One bored 1st year Uni Student + One bored first year high school student + one wife who is out to work at 4.30 to be home at 11.00 (who despite her best efforts, is like a heard of elephants in mating season in the early hours) + one doggo who is used to having a nap with Alpha at lunch time and that 'Quality Time' has now gone.

One thing I have found is that the psychological barriers of specific times have now gone. Pre lock down there was a lot more 'respect' for things like lunch times and end of the working day. Now it is just a free for all on 'Important Team's Call's'. I dunno, maybe it's on me to set more boundaries, turn teams off etc.

I worked from home before the world went batshit, so adjusting wasn't too bad. Already have my own office / man cave, had to kit it out with some better monitors and a decent chair but has been otherwise OK. Wife has been WFH from the beginning also - luckily having a 3 storey house and more space than we really need we've been able to spread out a bit - although she has set up in the kitchen and has quite a few more concalls than I do, so getting lunch can be challenging at times.

Really missing the variety and chat with colleagues though. My typical week used to be Office Monday, WFH Tuesday, off abroad Wednesday/Thursday and back home Friday. Can't say I miss the 4am drives to the airport, but seeing other places/cultures and meeting new people always made up for that, and I definitely feel life is poorer without it. Admiitedly it was one of those trips where I picked up COVID last Xmas after spending a week round Schiphol on a training course, with a trainer who'd just come back from China, but then getting ill has been one of those facts of life that's never bothered me too much, so still doesn't in this case.

Not sure we'll be going back to the office full time - current chat is around turning offices into "Social Centres" a la Google, where we just go in for meetings, chats etc, probably one or two days a week. Works for me, as I struggle to get too much done in the office, but the limitations of doing everything via Hangouts are becoming quite clear. You can have the conversation you booked in, but most of the interesting projects I got pulled into got spoken about round the coffee machine or out in the smoking area - yelling "You're on mute" for 30 minutes gets a bit dull after a while.

 

[Scouse]

The the fucking creature says "What you moving away for, I don't have the fucking disease". I respond "Following advice" and then manage to move around her and pay for my stuff.

How THE FUCK is this the virus gonna virus? How does she know she is asymptomatic? Can I trust this vile fucking creature.

If she'd given me that lip I'd have said "how do you know you haven't got it?" - but at least she had a mask on.

I'm glad I live in a low incidence area and rarely even bother going shopping.

 

[Bodhi]

Just been to the local shop in the 4th most infectious place in England and here is what happened:

Followed a hag into the shop, she was wearing a mask as well as me. She entered a good 20 seconds before me and was at the till paying for some stuff. I am at least 2m behind her, she then finishes and turns toward me and starts approaching, so I begin back peddling to keep the distance.

The the fucking creature says "What you moving away for, I don't have the fucking disease". I respond "Following advice" and then manage to move around her and pay for my stuff.

How THE FUCK is this the virus gonna virus? How does she know she is asymptomatic? Can I trust this vile fucking creature.

Sorry but that's not entirely normal behaviour - and I don't mean from the hag. Ignoring the fact that the chances of catching anything from someone after a brief encounter in a shop are incredibly small (otherwise the news would be full of Tesco checkout assistants who caught it at work), trending to zero if they are asymptomatic, I've found the best way to get on with people out there is not to treat them as infected bags of germs that should be avoided, but human beings. I'm guessing it's working as well as I have never had a similar encounter in a shop all the way through this - and I'm in one most days buying cigarettes.

I have seen someone with a similar attitude in Stafford however, who saw someone on a scooter riding towards them on the other side of a wide pavement, and decided that the safest thing to do in that case was to jump into a main road. Good job the lane to the right of me was free and I was paying attention, otherwise she would have traded an infinitessimally small chance of getting the Rona for a guaranteed chance of getting hit by a 1 Series.

Seems a massively hysterical overreaction to me, but then we've been there since March so hardly surprising. The mental health impacts of this are going to be visible for years.

 

[Deebs]

Sorry but that's not entirely normal behaviour - and I don't mean from the hag. Ignoring the fact that the chances of catching anything from someone after a brief encounter in a shop are incredibly small (otherwise the news would be full of Tesco checkout assistants who caught it at work), trending to zero if they are asymptomatic, I've found the best way to get on with people out there is not to treat them as infected bags of germs that should be avoided, but human beings. I'm guessing it's working as well as I have never had a similar encounter in a shop all the way through this - and I'm in one most days buying cigarettes.

I have seen someone with a similar attitude in Stafford however, who saw someone on a scooter riding towards them on the other side of a wide pavement, and decided that the safest thing to do in that case was to jump into a main road. Good job the lane to the right of me was free and I was paying attention, otherwise she would have traded an infinitessimally small chance of getting the Rona for a guaranteed chance of getting hit by a 1 Series.

Seems a massively hysterical overreaction to me, but then we've been there since March so hardly surprising. The mental health impacts of this are going to be visible for years.

The hag was the one breaking advice not me. My behaviour was entirely normal in wanting to protect myself and maintain social distance in a full lockdown.

 

[Moriath]

The hag was the one breaking advice not me. My behaviour was entirely normal in wanting to protect myself and maintain social distance in a full lockdown.

You should have told her that you do though lol

 

[Jupitus]

May contain some bad language.....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zx3DFXqxa8

 

[Wij]

The hag was the one breaking advice not me. My behaviour was entirely normal in wanting to protect myself and maintain social distance in a full lockdown.

I find rubbing my willy makes them back off.

 

[Moriath]

I find rubbing my willy makes them back off.

Willy (EastEnders) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Raven]

werasd fdsddf

May contain some bad language.....

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zx3DFXqxa8

Pretty much spot on, teachers are pulling their hair out, complete shit show.

Still, Tories, eh?

 

[Zarjazz]

Lockdown is zero hassle for me since central London becomes a ghost town so I rarely bump into anyone to pick up food shopping. Work though is turning out to be kind of weird. I got hired during one of the previous lockdowns, not a senior job but I thought it would pay the bills. But like some of you have described 100% remote working and never meeting your new work colleagues is weird and an endless series of conference calls that result in nothing is just tedious. Honestly thinking about jacking it in, buying somewhere cheap outside of London and maybe, possibly even retiring early if I can stretch my finances.

 

[Raven]

1041 deaths, not a good record.

 

[Scouse]

Lockdown is zero hassle for me since central London becomes a ghost town so I rarely bump into anyone to pick up food shopping. Work though is turning out to be kind of weird. I got hired during one of the previous lockdowns, not a senior job but I thought it would pay the bills. But like some of you have described 100% remote working and never meeting your new work colleagues is weird and an endless series of conference calls that result in nothing is just tedious. Honestly thinking about jacking it in, buying somewhere cheap outside of London and maybe, possibly even retiring early if I can stretch my finances.

Things might not be tedious after lockdowns end. I think that making big decisions during wierd times might not be the best idea.

Having said that, if I thought for a second my finances could stretch to early retirement I'd do it yesterday

 

[Bodhi]

Some interesting stuff coming out about the origin of the Rona:

The Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis Goes Mainstream | National Review

And if the theory’s true, no doubt some people would prefer that the virus’s origins always remain a mystery.

www.nationalreview.com

Add in China refusing access to the WHO to conduct their investigations, it's starting to look incredibly suspicious.

 

[Scouse]

Some interesting stuff coming out about the origin of the Rona:

The Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis Goes Mainstream | National Review

And if the theory’s true, no doubt some people would prefer that the virus’s origins always remain a mystery.

www.nationalreview.com

The problem I have with that @Bodhi is that Nicholson Baker isn't a scientist - he's a novelist and a part-time Quaker with a B.A in English.

If this was an op-ed by a respected geneticist who wasn't given to flights of fancy then it's a theory that perhaps I could think worth considering. But he goes out of his way to diss this open statement published in the lancet.

We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife

And this, importantly:

We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture

His story is totally conjecture.

Even if true, right now it doesn't help. And there's nothing we can do about it even if it was true - if the governments of the world are sat on knowledge that the scientific research under their control produced this that won't make them stop. It'll make them beef up security at labs, nothing more.

We're very stupid animals on all fronts...

 

[Aoami]

Lockdown is zero hassle for me since central London becomes a ghost town so I rarely bump into anyone to pick up food shopping. Work though is turning out to be kind of weird. I got hired during one of the previous lockdowns, not a senior job but I thought it would pay the bills. But like some of you have described 100% remote working and never meeting your new work colleagues is weird and an endless series of conference calls that result in nothing is just tedious. Honestly thinking about jacking it in, buying somewhere cheap outside of London and maybe, possibly even retiring early if I can stretch my finances.

I'm fairly keen to move on from my place, but the thought of starting somewhere new and not being able to meet anyone is all that is putting me off.

 

[Raven]

Same, I was going to move in 2020 but that got torpedoed. Not sure I would want to go elsewhere and work remotely with people I had never met.

 

[Tay]

Awesome news on the Oxford vaccine!


View: https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1346038472566571008?s=20


100% effective against death! Not even Jesus managed that.

However this does mean that after getting your shot we all have to meet up one to one on a Scottish heath and have a sword fight to the death, until only one remains.

I'll be the Scotsman playing a Spaniard, do we have any Frenchies to play the Scotsman?

Erm, what a load of shite she is spouting nobody can make those assertions with a straight face. I know they desperately want people to get the vaccine, but making shit up like this doesnt help the cause.

For starters there is the small case of the vaccines efficacy, which when delivered in the correct dosage and timeframe can offer up to 95% (best case scenario) , to my untrained eye that means 5% wont have immunity. so, a million get the shot, 50k wont get any discernible benefit from it.

Thats a far cry from 100%

That has got to be a wind up or piss take.

 

[Tay]

Local Welsh Tory chairman Gareth Baines resigns after tweeting this about German hospitals.

“A&Es in Germany aren’t full of fat mums in pot noodle stained leggings/pjs taking their kids for a day out at A&E to harvest Facebook likes because their darling little snot covered ASBO fell over”, he wrote, adding “Happy New Year”.

He just needs to move over the border (at night obvs) and run for PM, he'd have a good chance of getting voted in.

 

[Tay]

Shame that they're not following the science. It might stop you dying of covid for a month, but after that it's all just guesswork

In the govts greenbook published several days ago, they talked about efficacy values and they were nowhere near what is now being claimed. The Oxford/AstraZenica one was as low as 60%.

I'm not sure how they are able to give some of these numbers but I have read that the vaccine could offer up to 2-3years of 'resistance' - I guess that is covered in waivers, if's, buts and maybes but even so, seems pretty good.

 

[Scouse]

Thats a far cry from 100%

That has got to be a wind up or piss take.

Could be that it confers a level of immunity in that 5% which doesn't stop you getting ill but stops a fatal illness.

 

[Tay]

I just saw a document in Nature about mutations, scientists have already documented over 30000 mutations in cv19, in fact its now mutating quicker than they can sample it.

We've seen the uk variant that makes it more transmissible in maybe 5-6 million cases, I wonder how long it will take to trigger something really nasty?.

So, maybe the message should be "Stay at home and stop this fucker mutating!!"

 

[Tay]

Could be that it confers a level of immunity in that 5% which doesn't stop you getting ill but stops a fatal illness.

Dextramethazone (sp?) administered early enough 'should' stop that too, but it could be.

But I it would take a far braver man than I to make claims like this woman though.

 

[Job]

It is amusing that given the death rate, 99.4% of people dont personally need the vaccine protection to prevent death.