Coronavirus - the new strain XVII

[Deejay]

What about the payment of £500 isn’t that still available?, I appreciate like everything to do with benefits the Government don’t make claiming easy and you have to possibly be in receipt of a passport benefit of some sort no doubt to claim some of these payments?.
The issue with people not self isolating is never ok on principle, if your a one man self employed type working outside in the fresh air installing telecoms equipment for example, then maybe the risk of transmission is less. But if like many do around where I live manufacture caravans in close proximity to 100s of others and share a confined workspace, then this is were problems spiral and transmission also.

Yes, I believe the payment of £500 is available, but that isn’t enough alone. What really needs to happen is a reforming of the statutory sick payment system so people can afford to be off work.

I do agree with you though that people not self-isolating is a massive problem. If you make it financially affordable to do so, many more folk will do it.

 

[Deejay]

They need to stamp on this hard, 6 months hard lockdown. Nobody allowed out whatsoever, shopping delivered by armed forces. Medicines etc to be delivered to door , like what China had in Wuhan. Any breaking of the rules instant execution. All internet activity halted. I'm certain there's dark forces at work in spreading new variants. No more virus chitchat, spreading of rumours etc. This could be the end of the human race. The complete banning of pink salt or any other weird salt, table salt and gritting salt only. Malt vinegar to be made the only vinegar sold. Anybody even thinking about anchovies, sloe gin or olives should be turned into glue. Weetabix cornflakes porridge only none of this weird honey nut clusters lark. No more crinkle cut chips ! Straight cut only.

Think you’re being too soft! 6 years hard lockdown will do it.

 

[John Phillips]

This is just a comment on the debate about releasing lockdown.

The issue to me starts by making a mature assessment of what a new normal should look like; a sufficiently well-informed assessment of the risks and our risk tolerance (individual and societal); a plan for mitigating those risks; and a plan for dealing with them if things don't turn out as well as we can tolerate. And then acting according to that.

However, from my professional experience:

• Professionals (lawyers, scientists, etc.) tend to be well-informed and risk-averse, through their training to identify and deal with risk.
• Politicians and businessmen tend to be ill-informed and well towards the risk-taker end of the spectrum.

But IMHO this is not the time for such polarization.

We do need to proceed towards some new normality according to a well thought out risk tolerance and plan. That cannot be for zero risk to individuals or society; and it cannot be gung-ho & bury our heads in the sand.

I spent some years in risk management for information security and privacy. I have seen both ends of the spectrum. What I was trying to do was make sure the right point was identified between these extremes. In this case I doubt that many people will have enough information and understanding to make a sensible assessment. Certainly not me. So I choose to remain silent on what I think should happen in any detail.

 

[gavreid]

This is just a comment on the debate about releasing lockdown.

The issue to me starts by making a mature assessment of what a new normal should look like; a sufficiently well-informed assessment of the risks and our risk tolerance (individual and societal); a plan for mitigating those risks; and a plan for dealing with them if things don't turn out as well as we can tolerate. And then acting according to that.

However, from my professional experience:

• Professionals (lawyers, scientists, etc.) tend to be well-informed and risk-averse, through their training to identify and deal with risk.
• Politicians and businessmen tend to be ill-informed and well towards the risk-taker end of the spectrum.

But IMHO this is not the time for such polarization.

We do need to proceed towards some new normality according to a well thought out risk tolerance and plan. That cannot be for zero risk to individuals or society; and it cannot be gung-ho & bury our heads in the sand.

I spent some years in risk management for information security and privacy. I have seen both ends of the spectrum. What I was trying to do was make sure the right point was identified between these extremes. In this case I doubt that many people will have enough information and understanding to make a sensible assessment. Certainly not me. So I choose to remain silent on what I think should happen in any detail.

CV isn't mature enough to be able to make such an assessment in the cold light of day. 20 000 deaths (100 000 ICU cases) in a bad winter from flu cripples the nhs - could we afford the same again for covid on current hospital infastructure / medic and staff numbers - I don't think we could. That is why caution necessary at this point in time.

 

[John Phillips]

CV isn't mature enough to be able to make such an assessment in the cold light of day. 20 000 deaths (100 000 ICU cases) in a bad winter from flu cripples the nhs - could we afford the same again for covid on current hospital infastructure / medic and staff numbers - I don't think we could. That is why caution necessary at this point in time.

You make my point exactly. The relative immaturity of our knowledge of CV goes into the risk assessment and informs the risk mitigation plan - in the direction you say.

 

[Seanm]

What about the payment of £500 isn’t that still available?, I appreciate like everything to do with benefits the Government don’t make claiming easy and you have to possibly be in receipt of a passport benefit of some sort no doubt to claim some of these payments?.
The issue with people not self isolating is never ok on principle, if your a one man self employed type working outside in the fresh air installing telecoms equipment for example, then maybe the risk of transmission is less. But if like many do around where I live manufacture caravans in close proximity to 100s of others and share a confined workspace, then this is were problems spiral and transmission also.

I think in one study (Liverpool?) 80% of applications were rejected: you wouldn’t take the risk if you needed it that badly. And also immediately. But even if the money itself isn’t an immediate concern job security will be: with zero hours work the hours go to those who turn up whatever. Lots of stories about managers instructing workers to do just that, or else.

Work in the UK is dog****, and that’s how employers and Conservatives like it. Much of the government’s handling of the crisis, by which I mean their mass murder of the old and vulnerable, has less to do with incompetence than their determination not to raise expectations WRT work: decent sick pay, job security, renters’ rights - no bloody way. Where would it lead?

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I think in one study (Liverpool?) 80% of applications were rejected: you wouldn’t take the risk if you needed it that badly. And also immediately. But even if the money itself isn’t an immediate concern job security will be: with zero hours work the hours go to those who turn up whatever. Lots of stories about managers instructing workers to do just that, or else.

Work in the UK is dog****, and that’s how employers and Conservatives like it. Much of the government’s handling of the crisis, by which I mean their mass murder of the old and vulnerable, has less to do with incompetence than their determination not to raise expectations WRT work: decent sick pay, job security, renters’ rights - no bloody way. Where would it lead?

Yes, exactly.

There seems to be an assumption that people can't be trusted to do a proper job unless they are under the cosh; that the default position of the British worker is fecklessness. So if you pay them generous sick leave, they'll milk it and not return to work promptly; if you pay a living unemployment benefit, they'll stop looking for work; if you improve working conditions, and pay, people will take advantage of your good nature. All these things seem to me to be 180 degrees out from reality, but that's the belief of those who hold the levers of power, so we're screwed and things'll never improve, bar a bit of fiddling around at the margins.

 

[gavreid]

Yes, exactly.

There seems to be an assumption that people can't be trusted to do a proper job unless they are under the cosh; that the default position of the British worker is fecklessness. So if you pay them generous sick leave, they'll milk it and not return to work promptly; if you pay a living unemployment benefit, they'll stop looking for work; if you improve working conditions, and pay, people will take advantage of your good nature. All these things seem to me to be 180 degrees out from reality, but that's the belief of those who hold the levers of power, so we're screwed and things'll never improve, bar a bit of fiddling around at the margins.

That's been the mood music for all of my life. Productivity, for example, is always discussed in terms of laziness rather than the levels of investment that it realy measures. Benefits are too generous so people become work shy, unions are too strong, and all the rest of it.

 

[Tony L]

Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine research ‘was 97% publicly funded’
- Analysis rebuts claim by Boris Johnson that jab was developed ‘because of greed’

"Less than 2% of the identified funding came from private industry, the researchers said, a finding they said posed a challenge to the views of people such as Boris Johnson, who has said that the record-fast development of Covid-19 vaccines was “because of capitalism, because of greed”."

https://www.theguardian.com/science...covid-vaccine-research-was-97-publicly-funded

The one thing we know with certainty about Johnson is everything he says is a lie. He is a confidence trickster, a fraud, a charlatan and in any sane country would be in jail for the wilful destruction his lies and greed have left behind on everything he has had any responsibility for throughout his privileged elitist life. The man is a 100% integrity-free zone. The worst internet scammer, high-street mugger or pickpocket has more dignity than this grasping self-interested corrupt prick.

 

[Deejay]

I’m actually in the strange position of agreeing with a lot of the comments on here today. Yes people should self-isolate but they need the financial support to do it, which sadly is not there for too many. That is a big problem in keeping cases under control.

Although it’s maybe people on the left who are seen as the biggest supporters of lockdown and those on the right a lot of the critics, I too am a Labour voter through and through and just happen to have a different opinion sometimes on the issue of lockdowns. It just shows political alignment isn’t a precursor to ones views on this issue.

I’m absolutely all for workers rights though being a union man myself and wages and benefits are often wholly inadequate for too many people. The Tories as usual turn a blind eye to it.

 

[Seeker_UK]

So if you pay them generous sick leave, they'll milk it and not return to work promptly; i

Only my experience and anecdotal at best but I know of a couple of 'older generation' workers who believe that sick leave was, essentially, extra holiday and more fool you if you didn't take it.

 

[Seanm]

Only my experience and anecdotal at best but I know of a couple of 'older generation' workers who believe that sick leave was, essentially, extra holiday and more fool you if you didn't take it.

Well, we've built an entire political and economic system around the fear that people like this might be getting away with it, and looking at the results I'm not sure it wouldn't have been better all round if we'd just let them do their thing.

 

[tonerei]

Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine research ‘was 97% publicly funded’
- Analysis rebuts claim by Boris Johnson that jab was developed ‘because of greed’

"Less than 2% of the identified funding came from private industry, the researchers said, a finding they said posed a challenge to the views of people such as Boris Johnson, who has said that the record-fast development of Covid-19 vaccines was “because of capitalism, because of greed”."

https://www.theguardian.com/science...covid-vaccine-research-was-97-publicly-funded

That deserves a bump every day.

 

[mandryka]

Only my experience and anecdotal at best but I know of a couple of 'older generation' workers who believe that sick leave was, essentially, extra holiday and more fool you if you didn't take it.

I think this attitude is rational if you're in a profit driven organisation, and you're not remunerated by a significant profit share. I don't think it has anything to do with age, except that younger people may have a distorted view of reality. It is just a question of acting like rational benefits-maximising agents.

Well, we've built an entire political and economic system around the fear that people like this might be getting away with it, and looking at the results I'm not sure it wouldn't have been better all round if we'd just let them do their thing.

It's a sort of theft, I suppose, taking a sickie because you can get away with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if non trivial sums of money were involved.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I think this attitude is rational if you're in a profit driven organisation, and you're not remunerated by a significant profit share. I don't think it has anything to do with age, except that younger people may have a distorted view of reality. It is just a question of acting like rational benefits-maximising agents.

[...]


It's a sort of theft, I suppose, taking a sickie because you can get away with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if non trivial sums of money were involved.

These two sections seem inconsistent. You appear to be arguing, first,that it's a rational thing; but, second, that it's a kind of theft.

Personally I think that as business is, essentially, amoral and will always seek to maximise its own advantage in any given situation, it is not unreasonable for everybody associated with such businesses to adopt the same approach for their own circumstances. I might go further and suggest that it's the most rational approach.

 

[Seanm]

It's a sort of theft, I suppose, taking a sickie because you can get away with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if non trivial sums of money were involved.

[Gazes around at the wreckage left by austerity, Windrush, Brexit, Covid]

Define non-trivial.

 

[TheDecameron]

I’ve got antibodies to Covid. Whether this is due to first vaccine dose or naturally acquired immunity can’t be certain. Biobank information said that even two doses of vaccine may not show up as a positive.

 

[mandryka]

[Gazes around at the wreckage left by austerity, Windrush, Brexit, Covid]

Define non-trivial.

Very good. I need you.

 

[mandryka]

These two sections seem inconsistent. You appear to be arguing, first,that it's a rational thing; but, second, that it's a kind of theft.

.

No, I was thinking that sometimes theft is rational . . . .

Personally I think that as business is, essentially, amoral and will always seek to maximise its own advantage in any given situation, it is not unreasonable for everybody associated with such businesses to adopt the same approach for their own circumstances. I might go further and suggest that it's the most rational approach.

Immoral in the present context of global free markets, no worker mass movements and IT for controlling labour, possibly, because it treats people as a means (to profit) rather than ends in themselves . . . but this is a big discussion and an issue which I'm not very clear about -- work in progress.

 

[gavreid]

2 672 cases, 30 deaths and 173 admissions (12th).