Covid19

[Davetrials]

What took us so long, shouldn't we have been arguing about this weeks ago?

So whos off work, whos sick, whos scared, whos not bought toilet paper and is bitter about everyone else getting there first?

[Ali C]

I'm just down at the Winchester waiting for it to all blow over 

[Wrayvon]

Working from home as of today  

[bikeperson45]

I started self-isolating this weekend so just trying to make the most of that recently. I've refrained from any panic buying but have stocked up my cupboard rather than buying food almost every day, got a lot of laundry done too so that's a tiny win. 

I have found the whole thing to be pretty stressful, from watching other countries facing it, to realising it was over here, to speculative office discussions and now finally deciding to stay in my room as much as possible. I'm finding it hard to not get caught up in the thousands of articles and news things but I reckon it's doing me more harm than good now. Just going to try and get as much work and little indoor projects done as I can. 

I have found my thoughts spiralling a lot thinking about what might be different when it's all said and done, wondering if cinemas will be something kids read about in history textbooks and all that... Who knows though.

 

 

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

Not that bothered personally but it's obviously having a big impact. Holiday's cancelled at Easter but need to try and get the money for flights back of Ryan air.

Students told today that there won't be any further contact teaching this academic year and all teaching and assessment will be distance. Not sure how that works for exams but we'll see. Does mean the final year undergrads have unknowingly had their last every lecture and exam without knowing it.

We've cancelled the last few student tests for this week but were due to have a planned shut down and refurb now but that's all been thrown into question now.

Booked Tesco delivery slots for the next few weeks last night after our glorious leader's statement but have yet to panic but anything. Really after a freebord following my snowboarding holiday and really hoping to get hold of one before the world ends...

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

3 minutes ago, bikeperson45 said:

I started self-isolating this weekend 

Because you've got it or for shits and giggles?

[MadManMike]

Been working from home for a week and a half, boss predicts at least another 12 weeks... Fun stuff.

As of today, all the office staff have been told to work from home too, given laptops etc.

[bikeperson45]

1 hour ago, monkeyseemonkeydo said:

Because you've got it or for shits and giggles?

A guy at work's sister tested positive so I'm just being cautious for now, no one in the office has had symptoms but I don't want to be a super spreader when it's easy enough to keep to myself for a while. 

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

Ah fair enough. One of the guys at work has RA and one of the meds he takes reduces his immune system effectiveness so he's in a higher risk category but is being surprisingly laid back about it (can be a bit of a hypochondriac at other times!).

[Mikee]

I've been avoiding news about this, thinking "Here we go again. Another virus that is going to wipe humanity out, that goes around every 3-5 years". But there seems to be more of a cancel everything, batten down the hatches attitude this time. What's different?

[marg26]

From what I understand outdoor exercise is encouraged* provided it's away from other people. We're on holiday in Wales at the moment and visited botanical gardens - open because of the wide spaces allowing people to distance themselves. It might change on s he days time but until it does I'll still be out on my bikes... Might take the option to work from home too so could swap the cycle commutes for trials practice so win win... kinda. *encouraged might be too strong a word.

[MadManMike]

Because it's more of an unknown, I think.

And it's spread further and faster than previous viruses, so they're trying to limit the impact on the NHS.

[Rusevelt]

I'm kinda disappointed that humanity is potentially getting wiped out again by a f**king bug you can't see, when I was hoping for an invasion of little green men, or some zombie like virus and London looking like a scene from 28 Days Later.

Cough, cough, and your out for the count, bloody cheap way to go.

Work wise, workforce with my daytime job is down approx 50% today (many saying f**k it, and take sick leave) and we were advised today to keep our distance from each other. Work situation is under review with regards to the max number of staff the company wants on site on a week by week basis inline with gov updates.

As far as my part-time evening work with Deliveroo in Canary Wharf, a new feature has been added to the existing app where a customer can request non contact with rider, where we basically leave the order outside the customer's doors and stand a required distance for he/she to collect their order. Orders last Sat/Sun were usually busy for orders from Off License and convenience stores.

Supermarket shelves are still empty since last week, and so I will have to turn up early over the weekend and queue up like everyone else.

I guess if I can't get my food of choice, I'm pretty sure I can nip down my local Off License and grab a couple bottles of Corona beer to take the pi** as well as actually getting pi**ed.

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Rusevelt

[forteh]

Mrs wife has had it on her radar for the last three months and has surreptitiously stockpiled all the stuff we need already since the beginning on the year, freezers are full, pasta and rice buckets are full and we're stocked with instant noodles should shit come to bust
Potatoes and carrots are going to be planted in the garden shortly, sourdough cultures will be developed for bread making (mainly because our yeast is expired and it's hard to find right now) so should be largely set.  Nappies are all reuseable and we also use washable nappy wipe cloths so we can even use those in place of toilet roll.

I'm still working in the office but anyone over 60 has been sent home (about 50% of the office staff) but I've set them all up with RDP access so should be able to work from home.  Also managed to get the solidworks vaults working nicely over the vpn so the cad workstations can always be taken home to be used (SW doesn't play nice with RDP), infact one of the draughtsman is in isolation right now because he's over 60, compromised imune system and his son has picked it up - I delivered his computer to his drive this afternoon!

We homeschool 75% of the kids and adding another one to the list isn't too much hassle so we're very fortunate that I can work (from the office, home and with full sick pay for the duration) and we're not going to incur any additional costs.

The uncertainty is a bit of an arse but we're about as sorted as we could be so just got to wait it out and hope we don't lose too many on the way through.

Edited March 17, 2020 by forteh

[Luke Rainbird]

 

 

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9 hours ago, forteh said:

Nappies are all reuseable and we also use washable nappy wipe cloths so we can even use those in place of toilet roll.

Ed Emuss - putting the "cheeky" in cheeky wipes since 2020 

 

We're pretty realistic about it all, but with a 1 year old plus Soph 8 months pregnant we're just erring on the side of caution. I couldn't care less if I get it on the most part, but the thought of passing it on to someone who's properly at risk is pretty scary so we'll be doing what we can for #TheGreaterGood.

Skeleton staff in the office from Monday onwards, so I'll be working from home 3 days a week. We've cancelled/postponed all in-person client meetings, and are doing them all either by phone/email/post in the interim. Financial markets are having a fun time anyway, so we'll only end up having similar conversations with each person daily anyway, although most of that has been mitigated by decent comms before now anyway.

Hoping for some reasonable weather to make progress on the car to be honest...

[MadManMike]

I'm showing all symptoms other than fever... could just be a cold, or very minor Corona, who knows. Now they're not testing, I'll never know!

Already in isolation naturally anyway, worked from home for almost two weeks so far and no contact with family as they're all spread across the world, miles from Bristol.

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

7 minutes ago, MadManMike said:

Already in isolation naturally anyway, worked from home for almost two weeks so far and no contact with family as they're all spread across the world, miles from Bristol.

How are you working that? Still going out on bikes etc. but keeping away from people or just locking yourself away from everyone and ordering stuff in?

[MadManMike]

1 minute ago, monkeyseemonkeydo said:

How are you working that? Still going out on bikes etc. but keeping away from people or just locking yourself away from everyone and ordering stuff in?

I have some supplies, I didn't panic buy but usually have a healthy stock of stuff like noodles, pasta, cereal etc. I've probably got about a weeks worth of food left and friends locally that can drop stuff round if I need it.

I went for a walk yesterday, I live near a big park that's mostly empty so I was able to head out for some fresh air without interacting with anyone. Currently feel too rough to go out on the bike, but once better I'll do the same as my walk, head out and avoid contact with people.

[Matt24.]

I work in London for large international corporate so feels like I have been in it for 2 weeks already. Been working from home for 2 weeks with a fair few colleagues having likely got it and with some that now have family very ill in Italy and Spain, I think like most I am more worried about people I know are vulnerable rather than myself. My brother has got it at the moment and was feeling pretty rough for about 3 days but coming out of the other side now (caught it on a stag doe in Spain at the weekend, so his own fault!). My wife is a teacher and has had 2 incidences at school yesterday of kids showing symptoms but parents still sending them in. Both my parents sit in the high risk category so we are having no contact with them whilst Annabel is still teaching. I got a bit caught up in it more than I should with my 1 year old son starting to show symptoms which you would associate however after a triage with a GP this morning over the phone they have reassured me it is likely just a cold. As a relatively new parent I am finding my anxious side going into over drive even reading all the evidence which makes it clear that younguns are at far less risk than anyone else. My wife is quite surprised as normally she is the nervous one and she has been completely calm about it all!!

[Tom Booth]

I'm with @Mikee, I'm struggling to understand the lockdown mentality. I'm not saying its wrong, I just don't understand it, surely living your life with caution is how to handle this? Wash your hands more often, be more careful around populated areas and generally just be more aware. Life can't stop because of a virus, obviously we need to be more mindful towards the elderly and vulnerable, but this mass disruption is gonna cause so much harm in my eyes. I think it shows how much we distrust our neighbours and the rest of society to not be taking the precautions necessary.

Futures a scary thing in my opinion if we carry on down this path. 

 

 

[J.KYDD]

I think i should be more concerned about it, but I'm really just not. 

[J.KYDD]

I still raced MTB enduro at the weekend with a turnout of over 250 riders, and I'm still heading off to Wales for a riding weekend with 10 guys.
The Mrs has a sore throat but no other symptoms. I work for the waterboard out on reactive work so have no option from working from home and regardless of how serious this outbreak gets i'll still have to be out working so long as i'm healthy 

Edited March 18, 2020 by J.KYDD
Double post

[forteh]

9 minutes ago, J.KYDD said:

 I work for the waterboard out on reactive work so have no option from working from home and regardless of how serious this outbreak gets i'll still have to be out working so long as i'm healthy 

Yup, all the water authorities are still working on site and demanding their new equipment to be installed!
You're largely lone working aren't you as a jetter driver?

[Mark W]

33 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

I think it shows how much we distrust our neighbours and the rest of society to not be taking the precautions necessary.

Futures a scary thing in my opinion if we carry on down this path. 

It's more that people don't know if they have it until it's too late.  There are plenty of stories out there of people who don't really have the headline symptoms associated with it who have tested positive for it - they can pass it on without knowing about it, and it's those infections that can become more problematic.  South Korea managed to contain the virus at first with the first 30 patients, but patient 31 wasn't quarantined and became a 'super spreader' who passed it on to thousands of people.

The 'problem' as well is that although the percentages of fatalities among younger age groups are low, if it's as contagious as it seems to be then the actual numbers of people who die could still be high.  0.5% of 1,000 people is quite a bit different to 0.5% of 1,000,000.  

Something else to consider is mutation:

"Perhaps the most important thing people should realize about such epidemics, is that the spread of the epidemic in any country endangers the entire human species. This is because viruses evolve. Viruses like the corona originate in animals, such as bats. When they jump to humans, initially the viruses are ill-adapted to their human hosts. While replicating within humans, the viruses occasionally undergo mutations. Most mutations are harmless. But every now and then a mutation makes the virus more infectious or more resistant to the human immune system – and this mutant strain of the virus will then rapidly spread in the human population. Since a single person might host trillions of virus particles that undergo constant replication, every infected person gives the virus trillions of new opportunities to become more adapted to humans. Each human carrier is like a gambling machine that gives the virus trillions of lottery tickets – and the virus needs to draw just one winning ticket in order to thrive .

This is not mere speculation. Richard Preston’s Crisis in the Red Zone describes exactly such a chain of events in the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The outbreak began when some Ebola viruses jumped from a bat to a human. These viruses made people very sick, but they were still adapted to living inside bats more than to the human body. What turned Ebola from a relatively rare disease into a raging epidemic was a single mutation in a single gene in one Ebola virus that infected a single human, somewhere in the Makona area of West Africa. The mutation enabled the mutant Ebola strain – called the Makona strain – to link to the cholesterol transporters of human cells. Now, instead of cholesterol, the transporters were pulling Ebola into the cells. This new Makona strain was four times more infectious to humans."

That's taken from here, which is worth a read.

Totally agree that the lockdown systems being put in place are going to (and already are) f**k the shit out of everything, and that it's unlikely we'll go back to life as it was a few months ago, but I think it's just because there isn't really any other way of dealing with it.  China tried to do nothing - despite several doctors warning them months ago - and that's why we now have a global pandemic.  Washing your hands is going to help, but it's not going to magically stop it on its own. 

EDIT:  Oh, btw - if you want to read the report that's been cited as directly affecting the decisions taken by the US/UK governments to move to lockdown/suppression, this is it. 

[JT!]

I've been practicing social isolation for about 7 years now so I'm good with staying home. I leave to go to work, overnight at a gas station / convenience store, and come home. I've never had the urge to go out biking as much as I do now, but it's still too cold.

At work we've closed all the self service food, condiment bar, roller grill etc. But we're far from closing.

My wife got really sick, but she felt non of the viruses major symptoms which seem to be severe muscle and joint pain, I also haven't caught it from her so I think she got the common cold, but who knows.

Schools are closed here, all restaurants bars etc are all closed. We're still coming out of winter and temps above freezing are still a rarity so it hasn't effected people too much. I feel it's only a matter of weeks before we start to figure out which already available medications will help with treating people are we'll all become much more relaxed about it.