Life after the virus

[Sour Mash]

56 minutes ago, Voice of Doom said:

Life after the virus...when exactly will that be?

Not sure which thread is best to post this on but this FT data guy is worth following on Twitter. 

Basically, as many of us have been wondering, how do you leave lockdown before the virus can be nullified by treatment or a vaccine? This is shown via cinema revenue in China.

 

 

Path ahead :

Antibody test showing who has been infected and is now immune, therefore free to work unrestricted.

Better and widely available antigen tests to show current infections.  Tracking and tracing implemented and used for localised lockdowns.

Widespread availability and mandatory public use of masks for ALL.

Working from home for anyone who can work from home.

Flexible workarounds adopted by businesses to enable people to work with sufficient safety.

Better treatments and adequate medical equipment for those unfortunate enough to catch a serious case of the virus.

Maybe a vaccine this time next year.  If not, wait for 70-80% to be infected and herd immunity.

 

Even then, economic activity will be severely screwed and we'll be stating global economic recession in the face anyway as a result of the bubbles being burst.

 

[The Preacherman]

We can't make any prognosis about what the economy is going to look like in the months ahead until we understand the extent of infection in the general population. This is why antibody testing is so important and I hope that there are already sampling studies underway in the UK. 

The problems for a return to normal set in if there is a low spread in the general population. Anybody who is antibody positive has a superior social and economic status to anyone who is antibody negative. Will the antibody negative be happy to be treated as second class citizens? 

[cbathpc]

On 04/04/2020 at 20:03, GregBowman said:

Never hits asset owners hardest - always earnt income earners since Norman times won’t change 

Capital gains tax 20% income tax highest rate 45% 

They will tweak it but they won’t reverse the basic concept 

Normally I would agree, but I don't think PAYE have much more to give. Especially people under 35~ who are paying student loans. Higher rate tax earners paying into their pensions are on for 43p for each £ they earn? How much more can you take

[giesahoose]

18 hours ago, Speed1987 said:

 

It needs one key worker to introduce the virus to a nursing home and they'll drop like flies.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-52165397

[GregBowman]

36 minutes ago, cbathpc said:

Normally I would agree, but I don't think PAYE have much more to give. Especially people under 35~ who are paying student loans. Higher rate tax earners paying into their pensions are on for 43p for each £ they earn? How much more can you take

I think the higher rate tax loophole will be closed and should be 

Agree re under 35’s 

The trouble is earnt income easy to see 

 

[longgone]

15 hours ago, Gigantic Purple Slug said:

Apparently there is some sort of internal war going on between the treasury and the health department to lift/impose more restrictions.

Which is as it should be of course.

Hopefully when we are in a better position re testing, PPE, beds and ventilators they will at least lift some of the restrictions.

not much use to me if the restrictions are still in place for over 70`s as i live with one.  until a vaccine is available there will be risk but tapered down once we get over the peak. 

[Speed1987]

10 hours ago, Sour Mash said:

 

You really seem to have difficulty adjusting to reality, don't you?

It's not going to be 'sorted' in 3 weeks, not even close. 

Even if you are dumb enough to believe that only the elderly/sick are at risk and sociopathic enough not to give a f--k about their lives (which you apparently are) , over your desire to somehow get right back to your life before the crisis, that's not going to happen for a number of reasons.

1  - The medical system would be in collapse so even people not with the virus but requiring urgent care would be screwed ... car crash victims, workplace accident victims, heart attack victims, people with serious chronic conditions requiring ongoing treatment (like cancers) and anyone needing surgery.

2  - The enormous 'everything bubble' has been well and truly burst and we are likely heading for an economic recession of cataclysmic proportions.

3 - The situation is so unstable that even war can't be ruled out.  Certainly governments around the World are at risk of falling.

I know younger people are also at risk, that's clear however it's extremely low. That's demonstrated by how the kids were all in school together, however there have been hardly any deaths.

I appreciate, I might sound sociopathic, however this cannot go on long term, it benefits nobody. I do not want older people to die, who does?

Right now the goverment are saying, no social time or leisure however you can still go to work, construction sites, factories, supply chains, supermarkets, buses, trains are running and most workers are still active...

That is only to reduce the rate of spread to support the health service.

Last night a local business man contacted me, stating his returning to work monday as he needs money... that's the reality, he has two mortgages to pay.

Even if it's not sorted for a long time, does it have a significant change on the outcome? 

Are we just isolating, to merely slow down the herd immunity process once we have increased capacity to manage covid, theres not point. Most vaccines take years to produce in reality. You can have 100k people die in a year or over 3 years, the outcome is the same.

[simvastatin]

https://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/calling-out-racists-in-usa-and-in-chinas-party,19022?

The same analysis listed several incidents of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans across the country during the last month. In one particularly awful episode, noted the FBI analysis, on March 14 in Midland, Texas, “three Asian American family members, including a 2-year-old and 6-year-old, were stabbed. … The suspect indicated that he stabbed the family because he thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.” 

[winkie]

 

[Confusion of VIs]

On 05/04/2020 at 12:19, Fromage Frais said:

Cannot say I disagree with the above.

They said to vulnerable stay indoors for 12 weeks

The furlough scheme is 3 months

but ominously they gave hospitality businesses 12 months no rates.

 

Germany is saying that the hospitality sector will be the last to reopen.

 

 

[Andy T]

On ‎04‎/‎04‎/‎2020 at 13:01, regprentice said:

Not so sure about working from home. Some employers, including hmrc, reporting a 50% drop in productivity. In fact my employer (another govt agency) has been issuing comms telling people not to worry, we understand you can't work as effectively at home, this is a phase we will get through and we will all get back to productive work in the end. 

All the virtual solutions I've been using have been buckling under the weight of the network load. Skype is now only for using with groups of up to 6, and video is to be disabled by default to protect the network. We've gone back to using dial in conference call numbers, which we haven't used in years. 

I'm sure if they looked at productivity of those that are still in the workplace, they would see that it has dropped sharply anyway - no one really has their mind fully focused on work at the moment (unless of course you are a health worker or similar) and work load has generally reduced. a bit like a never ending run up to the Christmas holidays where people are winding down for something, in this case it being furlough, which isn't coming for some sectors.

One guy at our place is working from home - a throwaway comment from an IT tech was that 'he wasn't working very hard, because he was only active on the company systems 30% of the time.' what many IT types don't realise is that there is a paper/drawings element, a thought element, even a notepad scribbling element to our work  - you can't monitor that by counting key presses or mouse clicks.

[spyguy]

12 minutes ago, Andy T said:

I'm sure if they looked at productivity of those that are still in the workplace, they would see that it has dropped sharply anyway - no one really has their mind fully focused on work at the moment (unless of course you are a health worker or similar) and work load has generally reduced. a bit like a never ending run up to the Christmas holidays where people are winding down for something, in this case it being furlough, which isn't coming for some sectors.

One guy at our place is working from home - a throwaway comment from an IT tech was that 'he wasn't working very hard, because he was only active on the company systems 30% of the time.' what many IT types don't realise is that there is a paper/drawings element, a thought element, even a notepad scribbling element to our work  - you can't monitor that by counting key presses or mouse clicks.

Computers are cheap; corporate IT are very fallible.

For my contracts, I just branch off the code base in mercurial and work on it off line from the clients system.

My home backs up - a combination of a ZFS disk pool and a dropbox account are much better than my clients file system archive

[Riedquat]

20 minutes ago, Andy T said:

One guy at our place is working from home - a throwaway comment from an IT tech was that 'he wasn't working very hard, because he was only active on the company systems 30% of the time.' what many IT types don't realise is that there is a paper/drawings element, a thought element, even a notepad scribbling element to our work  - you can't monitor that by counting key presses or mouse clicks.

Way to kill trust (and hence morale and hence productivity) by monitoring people like  that.

[Andy T]

17 minutes ago, spyguy said:

For my contracts, I just branch off the code base in mercurial and work on it off line from the clients system.

My home backs up - a combination of a ZFS disk pool and a dropbox account are much better than my clients file system archive

I understood the dropbox bit

[richmondtw]

On 4/6/2020 at 7:44 AM, cbathpc said:

Normally I would agree, but I don't think PAYE have much more to give. Especially people under 35~ who are paying student loans. Higher rate tax earners paying into their pensions are on for 43p for each £ they earn? How much more can you take

if you are Labour - the lot

[dpg50000]

2 hours ago, Andy T said:

I'm sure if they looked at productivity of those that are still in the workplace, they would see that it has dropped sharply anyway - no one really has their mind fully focused on work at the moment (unless of course you are a health worker or similar) and work load has generally reduced. a bit like a never ending run up to the Christmas holidays where people are winding down for something, in this case it being furlough, which isn't coming for some sectors.

One guy at our place is working from home - a throwaway comment from an IT tech was that 'he wasn't working very hard, because he was only active on the company systems 30% of the time.' what many IT types don't realise is that there is a paper/drawings element, a thought element, even a notepad scribbling element to our work  - you can't monitor that by counting key presses or mouse clicks.

Maybe for some people. I'm in I.T. and we were already very busy before the CV pandemic. We're manic now as everyone is WFH where possible - a lot of these people have never worked remotely via a laptop before. Systems essential to keep ing remote working going are being hammered, and a lot of time and effort is being put into making sure they have adequate capacity (there were never specced for the entire business to WFH) and are reliable.

[Biggus]

On 04/04/2020 at 08:46, winkie said:

Will life ever be the same again??

A while back I read a book about the effect of parasites on human behaviour. It suggested that cultures that had been exposed to parasites and diseases tend to become xenophobic. Not necessarily racist, but less welcoming to outsiders. On the other hand when a society has few diseases and parasites it becomes much more open to foreigners. This is supposedly a general trend in the ethos of the culture. There are good evolutionary reasons for the behavioural changes.

Not really sure how true this or what effects the China flu will have on culture. But it's something to look out for.

[Warlord]

Life after the virus? 

It's going to be painful. The amount of debt the government is taking on to pay for their various schemes coupled with a reported 30-40% drop in GDP means we're going to be feeling this for decades to come

Remember we're STILL running an £60-70bn annual deficit BEFORE the coronavirus hit and that was from the last recession !

Those complaining about 'austerity' the last 10 years ain't seen nothing yet ! 

It's time politicians levelled with the people and admit we're BROKE and cut the size of government and balance the books It's the only way.

Of course, they won't because politicians are dishonest. They plan on monetising the debt through inflation The £ is going to fall in value and us Brits are going to have to cope with a lower standard of living along with underfunded public services because there's quite simply no money. 

 

[winkie]

1 hour ago, Biggus said:

A while back I read a book about the effect of parasites on human behaviour. It suggested that cultures that had been exposed to parasites and diseases tend to become xenophobic. Not necessarily racist, but less welcoming to outsiders. On the other hand when a society has few diseases and parasites it becomes much more open to foreigners. This is supposedly a general trend in the ethos of the culture. There are good evolutionary reasons for the behavioural changes.

Not really sure how true this or what effects the China flu will have on culture. But it's something to look out for.

I think when people feel vulnerable and fearful they are more aware of what they see as  threats from the outside, what could threaten to change their existing way of living negatively, feel they have no control over....they do not like the thought that someone else might take away what they have.....

[Riedquat]

10 minutes ago, winkie said:

I think when people feel vulnerable and fearful they are more aware of what they see as  threats from the outside, what could threaten to change their existing way of living negatively, feel they have no control over....they do not like the thought that someone else might take away what they have.....

In some cases it's what ARE threats from the outside. Not all "fears" are ungrounded prejudice.

[winkie]

3 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

In some cases it's what ARE threats from the outside. Not all "fears" are ungrounded prejudice.

Nobody wants to do you harm.

[PeanutButter]

On 04/04/2020 at 16:42, Simhadri said:

Will be interesting if Chinese govt has any sense of regret.

?

[PeanutButter]

Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus

https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times. 

[Riedquat]

20 minutes ago, winkie said:

Nobody wants to do you harm.

Right.. No-one's ever harmed anyone else, either deliberately or accidentally, and no-one's ever done anything at all, either deliberately or accidentally, that's had a negative impact on someone else. Are you staying 2m away from people?

Edited April 22, 2020 by Riedquat

[Mikhail Liebenstein]

On 06/04/2020 at 08:24, GregBowman said:

I think the higher rate tax loophole will be closed and should be 

Agree re under 35’s 

The trouble is earnt income easy to see 

 

They will remove the triple lock. Long overdue.