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Covid-19 #18: Everything Old is New Again!


Fragile Bird

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7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

O wow!  That's unexpected on my part for Germany.  Panic buying again?

 

Obviously. But not unexpected given the recent spike in new infections. The state of Bavaria has just imposed a lockdown on the Berchtesgarden area. There's lot more to come...

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18 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Jeepers! Over 200 people in Victoria Covid-19 quarantine potentially exposed to HIV, Hep B and Hep C because of blood glucose testing re-using the thumb pricker. How re-use of a thumb pricker could happen is one obvious question, but the other one is why are so many people in quarantine needing blood glucose testing? The article I read didn't explain why people were getting the test. Were all of those people diabetics?

So just to be clear here it seems they were changing the needle between uses. But there's still some low level risk if the device wasn't properly decontaminated as well.

Literally 10s of thousands of people have been through hotel quarantine in Victoria. Its quite likely there were several hundred diabetics.

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52 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

So just to be clear here it seems they were changing the needle between uses. But there's still some low level risk if the device wasn't properly decontaminated as well.

Literally 10s of thousands of people have been through hotel quarantine in Victoria. Its quite likely there were several hundred diabetics.

Right, thanks. The article I read was a bit vague on those details. It also seemed like these 200+ people were exposed within a relatively short period of time, but that again might be due to the vagueness of the detail in the article.

There have been 10's of thousands of people going through quarantine in Vic, I suppose, but all 200+ of these diabetics going through the same hotel? Maybe they send all diabetics to the same hotel because they have specialist care onsite at only one location?

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2 hours ago, Loge said:

Obviously. But not unexpected given the recent spike in new infections. The state of Bavaria has just imposed a lockdown on the Berchtesgarden area. There's lot more to come...

Ya, I know. And damned sorry that has to happen. 

Having concluded this huge project that ate all the time, and it being a very nice day, I spent a lot of the afternoon walking to different places and bringing home food that stores well in dry, air tight containers, and other things like olive oil, and so on.  Even managed some things for the freezer (which is way too small for a long haul so I do my best to keep it packed).  Tomorrow we'll take delivery of a lot of paper goods.  My storage closet is still very full of such things, but this last 2 months when we weren't replacing what we used every week, it is very depleted.  Ya -- worried about what we're going to go through this winter too, you bet.  On top of that we here in the USA are The Worst, We R #1 at not dealing with the pandamic.  Only the UK can give us a run for that spot!

 

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The curfew turns out to be a huge bummer. Lack of social activities at a time when the workload and work-related stress have increased dramatically is really tough. I know everyone is struggling to cope (with the anxieties and fears), and I'm starting to wonder what consequences this is going to have if it goes on. Can people really carry on like this for months or years? We're basically allowed to work, but not much besides. Daily life slowly devolves into an absurd routine in which one needs to keep face - we do it for the kids I think. Folks at work tend to be unusually cheerful to compensate, which only adds to the absurdity. At times it feels like living through the sick brainchild of kafkaesque bureaucracy (with a bazillion new procedures to follow) and beckettian tragi-comedy.
I fear that I'll become addicted to every kind of drug I can get my hands on before this is over.

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6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The curfew turns out to be a huge bummer. Lack of social activities at a time when the workload and work-related stress have increased dramatically is really tough. I know everyone is struggling to cope (with the anxieties and fears), and I'm starting to wonder what consequences this is going to have if it goes on. Can people really carry on like this for months or years? We're basically allowed to work, but not much besides. Daily life slowly devolves into an absurd routine in which one needs to keep face - we do it for the kids I think. Folks at work tend to be unusually cheerful to compensate, which only adds to the absurdity. At times it feels like living through the sick brainchild of kafkaesque bureaucracy (with a bazillion new procedures to follow) and beckettian tragi-comedy.
I fear that I'll become addicted to every kind of drug I can get my hands on before this is over.

Speak of children, what are we going to do (assuming Europe is like the US in this regard) when daycares just go out of business en masse? It creates a terrible work/parenting balance, and the end result is already showing up: women are disproportionately having to leave the work force.

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22 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Well, so much for the notion of pre-departure testing as a way to reduce or eliminate quarantine on arrival:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/123150584/covid19-major-outbreak-at-christchurch-isolation-facility-housing-dozens-of-international-fishermen

All eleven positive tested people tested negative on departure from their home country.

In my opinion this is going to show the importance of pre-flight checks. In this case they were clearly bogus. You do not quarantine for 14 days, return a negative test, catch a charter flight, and then have 11 of them develop the virus. I strongly suspect it will have already been passed to a lot more of them who will develop symptoms later. Flying is dangerous and if you have to do it you do not want to be sitting inside a can for 20+ hours anywhere near someone who has it. While genuine pre-flight tests are not going to be perfect it keeping it out, if you return a false negative test before departure it at least means you should be in the early stages and less contagious.

If you were genuinely serious about stopping the spread of the virus, I don't believe you should be allowed in an airport without a negative test.

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7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Speak of children, what are we going to do (assuming Europe is like the US in this regard) when daycares just go out of business en masse?

Daycares and schools are mostly public here. In fact, keeping them open has obviously been one of the government's priorities - at the expense of teachers and caretakers tbh.
The main problem is the huge number of people on sick leave, either because they have symptoms or because they can't deal with their anxieties anymore (one of my colleagues snapped a couple of weeks ago and is on leave for a month). Every single person that has to stay at home puts extra pressure on the system as a whole. And the virus is still spreading. In a way, it's not a matter of if anymore: you just know that, at some point or the other, you'll end up on sick leave too, whether you want it or not.

I guess a different way to answer your question is to say that European countries have greater potential to rely on public services and government welfare - for now at least. I'm tempted to say socialism obviously works (eh!) and contributes to this being somewhat bearable. But even that has its limits, and there's no telling how it'll turn out in the next few months. We'll probably endure (because humans are tough bastards after all), but shrinks and dealers are going to have a lot of work.

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26 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Daycares and schools are mostly public here. In fact, keeping them open has obviously been one of the government's priorities - at the expense of teachers and caretakers tbh.
The main problem is the huge number of people on sick leave, either because they have symptoms or because they can't deal with their anxieties anymore (one of my colleagues snapped a couple of weeks ago and is on leave for a month). Every single person that has to stay at home puts extra pressure on the system as a whole. And the virus is still spreading. In a way, it's not a matter of if anymore: you just know that, at some point or the other, you'll end up on sick leave too, whether you want it or not.

I guess a different way to answer your question is to say that European countries have greater potential to rely on public services and government welfare - for now at least. I'm tempted to say socialism obviously works (eh!) and contributes to this being somewhat bearable. But even that has its limits, and there's no telling how it'll turn out in the next few months. We'll probably endure (because humans are tough bastards after all), but shrinks and dealers are going to have a lot of work.

Interesting to know, and I guess I should have assumed they'd be public services. You're right though that teachers and caretakers are gonna take an L there though. 

Find me something more emblematic of socialism than the United States Military! :commie:

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6 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

@Makk - either someone cut corners on the required 14-day quarantine beforehand, or a member of their household did.

And sounds like no one wore a mask on the damn charter plane, either.

I don't have any confidence the pre-flight tests were even done. It was in Russia if that makes any difference. It seems a little too early for a single one of them to have infected so many others and have them all test positive already. I'm worried there will be many, many more some time next week.

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2 hours ago, Makk said:

In my opinion this is going to show the importance of pre-flight checks. In this case they were clearly bogus. You do not quarantine for 14 days, return a negative test, catch a charter flight, and then have 11 of them develop the virus. I strongly suspect it will have already been passed to a lot more of them who will develop symptoms later. Flying is dangerous and if you have to do it you do not want to be sitting inside a can for 20+ hours anywhere near someone who has it. While genuine pre-flight tests are not going to be perfect it keeping it out, if you return a false negative test before departure it at least means you should be in the early stages and less contagious.

If you were genuinely serious about stopping the spread of the virus, I don't believe you should be allowed in an airport without a negative test.

The whole problem with pre-departure requirements is the need to have well developed systems operating in every departure location being paid for by...someone, and not under the direct legal authority / enforcement of the country of arrival, so slacking off even with an agreement in place is always a risk. Unless you are going to limit pre-departure controls to just a handful of airports in only a few countries that you trust to a high degree, it's not really a viable control strategy that is better than putting people in quarantine hotels for 2 weeks (I prefer 3 weeks, but 2 weeks seems to have more or less managed the risk so far). And then you have the international relations problem of country A asking why we don't trust them but we do trust country B?

It's up to the individual to decide if the risk of hopping on a plane with potentially infected people to come to a country that is hopefully going to remain mostly COVID-19 free until there is widespread deployment of an effective vaccine is better than the risk of staying in a country where infection is flowing freely through the population, and the govt are a bunch of anti-science dunces failing to take any effective control measures. If a country from which people are fleeing wants to put in pre-departure control measures to minimise the risk of exporting COVID-19 that would be laudable, but I suspect most countries from which people are fleeing (due to COVID-19) are, if they are doing anything at all, prioritising their COVID control resources into managing the disease inside their border.

Pre-departure controls are great in theory, but a nightmare to formulate and implement in practice, unless the disease in question has a reliable vaccine as a control point.

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6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Speak of children, what are we going to do (assuming Europe is like the US in this regard) when daycares just go out of business en masse? It creates a terrible work/parenting balance, and the end result is already showing up: women are disproportionately having to leave the work force.

All nurseries in the uk are open pretty much. As far as I can tell. 

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1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

All nurseries in the uk are open pretty much. As far as I can tell. 

Yeah. Some never closed due to keyworkers (my kid’s nursery closed a couple of Glasgow nurseries during lockdown and merged into one, but fully reopened in August).

Even with working from home, if you needed a nursery, you still will if you’ve a pre-school kid.

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Nurseries are also ridiculously expensive, especially in London, and I been told by numerous friends, stories of Nurseries locking families into paying for set numbers of hours, even during the crisis, even if the kids aren't going. I really don't think nurseries will be going out of business. 

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14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Nurseries are also ridiculously expensive, especially in London, and I been told by numerous friends, stories of Nurseries locking families into paying for set numbers of hours, even during the crisis, even if the kids aren't going. I really don't think nurseries will be going out of business. 

My sisters childminder charged a 'retention fee' even for kids that stopped going during first lockdown, then decided to retire when lockdown was over. 

Sky news are now saying gyms in liverpool can reopen, this government really is weak as shit (regardless that it's the right decision).

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16 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Sky news are now saying gyms in liverpool can reopen, this government really is weak as shit (regardless that it's the right decision).

This is the worst part of all of this. It would be easier to go along with the rules (if we knew what they were) if there seemed to be some overall plan behind them. Rather it seems like the gov throw shit at the wall and then just roll back on things if there is any pushback. It's pathetic. There doesn't appear to be any sort of strategy here, unlike the first few weeks, which at the very least suggested a plan.

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On 10/19/2020 at 4:01 PM, Denvek said:

Testing time for me today as my sense of taste has gone. The (UK) government seems to have got its act together since the shambolic news a month or so ago - I got a test booked at the nearest centre with an appointment time just over an hour after I booked it.

Still could be waiting up to 72 hours for the results though.

Test came back positive this morning, but no further symptoms.

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Nurseries are also ridiculously expensive, especially in London, and I been told by numerous friends, stories of Nurseries locking families into paying for set numbers of hours, even during the crisis, even if the kids aren't going. I really don't think nurseries will be going out of business. 

It’s pretty much a second mortgage. We put our daughter in 4 days a week. It’s not too bad for us as our parents help out plus  thr government contributes roughly 20%, but it’s a big part of why we decided against more kids.

One of my wife’s colleagues was asked to pay full fees even though that nursery was shut. Rip1off; at the very least salaries should have been deducted due to furlough, and gas/electricity too. Don’t know if they paid to keep the place or told the nursery to shove it.

 

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