General > General Technical Chat
Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus
tom66:
A major newspaper here has reported that the government expects that people who can work from home will be requested to do so until at least the end of the year.
DrG:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on June 27, 2020, 06:58:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: DrG on June 27, 2020, 04:45:22 pm ---I think that localities, including as large as countries, can be meaningfully compared by the measure of positive rate, toward understanding how the infection can be controlled in one place and yet be so out of control in another.
The strategy of identification by testing and quarantine, contact tracing (and testing) is a sound one. Add to that social distancing, sanitary practices, and yes, face coverings, and we (everybody) have the means to control the infection until more effective treatments, including effective vaccines become available. We WILL have effective treatments like plasma-based and monoclonal antibodies and we WILL have vaccines.
--- End quote ---
Yes, testing, contact tracing and quarantine are effective, as well as social distancing but I'm cynical about how well people will cooperate, especially in areas where people don't trust the authorities. Most people in the UK have complied with the social distancing so far, but recently it's started to deteriorate, with the disgraceful no lives matter chaos and this week people crowding the beeches on the first 90°F day of the summer. Even if people do comply with contact tracing, large crowds can quickly lead to greater infection rates, than any contact tracing system can cope with. Hopefully the increase in infections will be mitigated somewhat by the fact that most gatherings have been outdoors, which carries a low risk. The test will be during the run up to Christmas, when everyone will want to party indoors, when it'll be pouring with rain.
--- End quote ---
Yes, re: cynicism. The usual response to that is to point to the leadership, or lack of leadership. In the US, the messaging is so incredibly divisive that to wear a mask, means that you are a Democrat and refusing to wear a mask, means that you are a Trump Republican. I know that is simplistic, but mask wearing has become just that in the US. The same divisiveness holds true for re-opening - how soon and how much. Rather than using evidence-based decisions, it was too often made along political lines, at least to a some extent.
A tipping point may result from the new hot spots. That is, the US is now entering a new stage of "cooperation", as you put it. where many states have had to pause their reopening schedules and some have rolled back restrictions to some degree, e.g., the Texas Governor admitting that maybe he opened up the bars too soon...and in other news, water is wet.
I should also clarify my earlier post a bit. I do think that we (all of us) have only the strategy of identification by testing and quarantine, contact tracing (and testing), social distancing, sanitary practices, and yes, face coverings, to successfully control the virus. That will change at some point, but for now if any of those pieces are failing, the whole circuit will suffer. I view testing as the CPU of the circuit. If the testing component fails, the circuit will fail.
rstofer:
Any reasonable person, viewing the latest US data, would come to the realization that we are losing the battle. The number of cases is continuing to grow without bound (Florida had 5000 new cases yesterday) and in my backward county we are similarly out of control at a smaller scale.
We closed the country in early March when the new cases per day (nationwide) was around 2000. Now that the new cases per day is around 40,000, people are whining about wearing a mask and the government is scrambling to open things back up. People are stupid! Not just ignorant, that could be cured but factually stupid for which there is no cure.
Anybody notice the spike in cases within 2 weeks of Memorial Day? Nobody will attribute the newest outbreaks to the protests but it is happening anyway.
i don't know if masks are effective and we sure got mixed messages early on re: whether to wear masks but at this point I think the health care people are unanimous: Wear a mask!
If you look at the US data, you can see where daily cases start to pick up on June 12th, just about 2 weeks after Memorial Day.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
In some ways, it is Karma. That bunch of kids that simply had to spend their spring break in Mexico brought back 64 cases of Covid-19. I wonder if it was worth it...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6926e1.htm
Maybe Covid-19 is Mother Nature's way of adding Chlorine to the gene pool. In the meantime, I'll continue to wear a mask when I'm out and about. It may not protect me but it might prevent me from infecting someone else. If everybody worked the same way, masks would suddenly become effective. Everybody protecting each other!
Not going to happen! We have to remember: We are all in this separately!
james_s:
Yes it's not looking good, and it's frustrating how poorly we have done as a nation. It didn't take long for it to become extremely politicized and partisan which makes no sense at all to me, a virus doesn't care about anyone's political views. The complete lack of coordination between states and lack of coherent leadership is appalling. The utter failure of the USA to deal with a pandemic that is far less deadly than a virus could be is disappointing, in fact it's massively embarrassing. It's the sort of thing I'd expect to see in some 3rd world dump run by an inept and self serving dictator. The protests strike me as absolutely stupid when there's a virus spreading around killing thousands of people, especially when that virus is hitting those the protests claim to advocate for the hardest. Then the political rallies are equally stupid and arguably far less necessary. I don't really understand the point of those at all, we've already narrowed down the field to the two final contenders, anyone who is going to go to a Trump rally during a pandemic is obviously already going to vote for him anyway so what's the point of a rally? Is he hoping to kill off as many of his fans as possible?
At this point my view is that we failed, the war is lost. All there is to do now is look out for ourselves as best we can and watch the body count climb.
tom66:
That seems to have been the worst thing about the pandemic in the USA.
Responses to the crisis have varied considerably across states, with certain states not locking down anywhere nearly as seriously as others, and the President refuses to wear a mask in public which would set a good tone for the rest of the country.
I have no idea why it has become so politicised but I suspect by the time it has torn through the country it will be easily 500k deaths, ICUs will be overloaded and there will be nearly a million other "related" deaths as the consequences of lockdown, family/business breakdown due to loss of key members/staff, and economic stress take their toll.
I also don't see transatlantic flights resuming any time soon if the USA does not control the epidemic.
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