|
Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes |
|
126 | 44.21% |
| No |
|
39 | 13.68% |
| I'm Scottish |
|
120 | 42.11% |
| Total: | 285 votes | ||
|
XMNN posted:idk I basically think that optimism is fine and makes people happy so is good, and pessimism is obviously not particularly productive but its also a perfectly natural reaction to observing current events and is often borne out in the course of them Then stop getting bent out of shape from people trying to make the best of a lovely situation. You're literally in this thread complaining about people being irrationally optimistic of the situation while simultaneously saying it's normal to think the world might end. The fact you care so much about how positive or negative other people see current events should be a hint that you need to take a step back and go for a walk or something.
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2021 23:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:27 |
|
|
Back in spring 2020 I lightly joked that the 1918 pandemic had lasted two years and got a lot of "haha, don't say that!" responses from people. Even the swine flu pandemic lasted 18 months. Three weeks always felt too short, but I would never have imagined lockdown would still be happening 16 months in. Some of our managers are somehow getting even worse for micromanaging. Junior grades are expected to be in the office the bulk of the week, but senior management are still almost completely WFH. I think they're worried because we're clearly not falling apart without their benevolent and wise presence. And yet still a senior manager rolled in for the first time in three months, wearing a Hawaiin shirt, sandals, and the sort of tan normally reserved for reality TV stars, without realising how that would come across to staff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2021 23:32
|
|
|
NotJustANumber99 posted:i dont think its dumb to think a thing will be over soon when weve never had to deal with it like ever.... we have tho. It wasn't the first, or second, or even third deadly coronavirus outbreak of the last few decades. This was the first that made the Chinese government, nonchalant with the predecessor SARS viruses, publicly poo poo themselves in panic. For normal people (not politicians, nor epidemiologists, nor addicted to doom porn), that doesn't mean much. But it'll go down in history as a point of no return for the idea of european liberal governance.
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2021 23:32
|
|
|
Spangly A posted:we have tho. It wasn't the first, or second, or even third deadly coronavirus outbreak of the last few decades. ok but im talking about humans who go for a pint mate pal
|
|
#
?
Jun 14, 2021 23:46
|
|
|
NotJustANumber99 posted:ok but im talking about humans who go for a pint mate pal yeah I'm agreeing with you. The politicians across Europe were doing a negligence and the experts just lied to the public until they could work out what to do. I went for a pint with a regional health officer after he got back from Arrowe Park on feb 1st, cleared my calender when I got home. Flukey bullshit, not really much help. But apart from people whose job it is to know, who cares about chinese public health announcements? The only point I'm making is that the "unprecedented" line is an excuse for a global fuckup of lazy liberal governance that's killed nearly 4m people. Not betting your life on whether Dave down the Fondled Sack is up to date on his of pandemic response courses is supposed to be why people bother having governments at all
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 00:15
|
|
|
I don't entirely remember what I thought before poo poo really kicked off, but I know that once I saw how half-arsed the response was in Canada, the UK, etc. that it was gonna go on for a long time. I remember once we were like a month or two into lockdown, seeing music gigs and people's weddings and stuff being rescheduled to "Spring 2021" and thinking "Seems a bit optimistic", as I'd realised that we weren't going to unfuck things until vaccinations were done - and at that point who knew how long that would take. I'm basically alright in lockdown, but I'm still absolutely loving livid about how terribly the whole thing has been handled in the West. Just thought I'd look at how Wuhan has been doing with it for a laugh and they've basically been completely free of it since March 2020.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 00:17
|
|
|
qhat posted:Then stop getting bent out of shape from people trying to make the best of a lovely situation. You're literally in this thread complaining about people being irrationally optimistic of the situation while simultaneously saying it's normal to think the world might end. The fact you care so much about how positive or negative other people see current events should be a hint that you need to take a step back and go for a walk or something. I literally said it was fine for people to be optimistic? My entire point was that I had never complained to people about them being optimistic so I don't think it's reasonable to complain about people being pessimistic? why is it ok for someone to post that they don't like people being pessimistic but suddenly I need to go outside because I said that people should be allowed to be pessimistic or optimistic? like could you point out where exactly I got bent out of shape about anything e: actually, just gently caress off XMNN fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jun 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 00:19
|
|
|
Failed Imagineer posted:I left work on Wednesday March 11th 2020, packing my computer peripherals, and told people I'd see them next year. They chuckled as if I was joking, even though we were all biologists. I have never yet got on the tram that stops just outside our flat.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 00:30
|
|
|
Hi all, can anyone (Ronya?) recommend any deep/ academic reads or starting points on immigration to the UK over the last century or do?
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 00:42
|
|
|
I've been thinking about a few things recently: 1. Really we're just very fortunate to live in a time when effective vaccines for viruses as complex as covid can be developed, and actually reasonably quickly too. I wonder how long this would have gone on in a pre-vaccine world - epidemics never do last forever after all, but maybe we'd just have to get used to intermittent waves of mega-flu knocking us all on our arses every couple of years and killing off a whole bunch of people. 2. The accelerated vaccine development does show what can be done when you throw all your time and resources at doing something. Imagine how much easier this would have been if Pfizer and AZ and Moderna and all the rest had pooled their resources and expertise. Or better yet, if the lot of them had been nationalised to that end. 3. How are the chinese + russian vaccines comparing to the western ones? You don't hear much about them anymore. I hear Cuba has its own domestically produced ones too. Absolute hero country. Hope they work. 4. I'm relatively optimistic about the UK but even if we all get vaccinated here covid is far from over globally. I wonder when international travel etc will resume as it used to be. We are going to get a saturation of vaccinations in Europe and North America then forget about the whole thing and leave the rest of the world to die, of course.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 01:05
|
|
|
From what I've heard, the Cuban vaccine works just as comparably well as everyone else's. Because of course it does, Cuban healthcare is a loving miracle.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 01:24
|
|
|
here's a cbc article talking about them: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/what-we-know-about-cuba-s-homegrown-vaccine-campaign-1.5429347
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 01:55
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:I've been thinking about a few things recently: Yeah, stuff like the Black Death didn't happen all in one go: you got wave after wave; sometimes there'd be a few quiet years and then, just as people were starting to relax, it'd come roaring back once more. In more modern times, I guess it would have been like the TB or Polio epidemics of pre-vaccine, pre-penicillin times: lots of motivational posters reminding you to wear a mask on buses and to keep washing your hands, posher people carefully keeping their children away from dirty environments like public swimming baths where germs could spread, sanatoriums full of people suffering from long Covid and an overall reduction in life expectancy as whole cohorts of older people were wiped out each winter. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 05:03
|
|
|
The other concern is staff burnout within the NHS. There were some warnings about it only a couple of weeks ago, but if we're looking at another peak it's going to hit staff hard. There's only so long you can ask physically and mentally exhausted staff to maintain a (literally) extra-ordinary workload and the end having been in sight for a while now was a motivator. I'd be surprised if there isn't a wave of staff leaving the NHS once Covid is 'done'; the Govt's treated NHS staff with contempt throughout and no-one gets paid enough for the poo poo they've had to deal with in the last year. Plus, there's that wonderful part where everyone will be expected to muck in to sort out waiting times, with no additional resources made available to help that happen. It's not going to be good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 06:38
|
|
|
Uh how were you not in paranoid survivalist mode in February 2020. I remember I was getting weird looks when disinfecting my desk and laptop at least 3 times a day and wearing a mask on the train.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 07:19
|
|
|
In February 2020, I was telling myself that the shocking scenes in China and Italy could never happen in the UK, while being uneasily aware that they could, and very likely would.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 07:38
|
|
|
In Feb 2020 i remember saying to my boss "I'm just looking forward to 2 weeks in the house" lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:13
|
|
|
Btw everyone should watch Bo Burnhams new Netflix special Inside, which is a beautiful/hilarious/melancholy production about living in a room for a year with worsening mental problems while capitalism destroys everything. Seriously, the dude is a comrade and the songs are bangers
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:24
|
|
|
Oh god i hadn't thought of Bo Burnham in years, will have to check that out
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:28
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:In February 2020, I was telling myself that the shocking scenes in China and Italy could never happen in the UK, while being uneasily aware that they could, and very likely would. I had a northern Italian housemate at the time, who was talking to her parents every day and passing the situation on to me, and I still thought we'd just be washing our hands and not going to the pub/gym for a bit. The switch from naïve to doomsaying pessimist happened pretty quick, when people decided to WFH before the government were arsed to make any decisions.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:36
|
|
|
kingturnip posted:I'd be surprised if there isn't a wave of staff leaving the NHS once Covid is 'done'; the Govt's treated NHS staff with contempt throughout and no-one gets paid enough for the poo poo they've had to deal with in the last year. This. Future sis-in-law (Dr) has been happily giving up every single Saturday to do vaccinations at various sites in exchange for I think 1/4 of a day in lieu each time (which can’t be taken on a Monday or Friday because no extending the weekend for you). If the end isn’t actually in sight then I don’t know how long that goodwill can last.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:36
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:3. How are the chinese + russian vaccines comparing to the western ones? You don't hear much about them anymore. I hear Cuba has its own domestically produced ones too. Absolute hero country. Hope they work. Cuba is looking good but the Sinovac and Sputnik vaccines are not. The Chinese vaccines work quite poorly compared to the others and the Sputnik vaccine that is getting distributed has only a vague relationship with the one that actually got tested because of disastrously bad quality control in the manufacturing process.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 08:37
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:Yeah, stuff like the Black Death didn't happen all in one go: you got wave after wave; sometimes there'd be a few quiet years and then, just as people were starting to relax, it'd come roaring back once more. Speaking of the black death that's another thing: this has revealed how utterly, utterly fragile our society would be in the face of any genuine existential crisis. Covid, in reality, shouldn't be such a big deal. It has a very low actual death rate and even serious illness is uncommon except amongst very specific vulnerable groups. It spreads easily only indoors and specifically in areas of poor ventilation. It shouldn't take much to mitigate it through effective government action and behavioural adaptation, and we've seen this happen this in certain states that have bold central government strategy combined with a cultural sense of broad collective responsibility (China being the big one). The west, however, has completely shat the bed and failed to do and of that (with a few notable exceptions like New Zealand). Our governments are run by a a collection of right wing weirdos who don't care enough to do anything or terrified liberals too scared to. Maybe more importantly we've become so drunk on our own hubris that literally any slight inconvenience will get huge swathes of the population wailing like infants and crying that its not fair because quite honestly if it doesn't affect them they don't give a poo poo. But it could have been so much worse. What would we have done if covid had that dreaded long incubation/high fatality combo? What if we were looking at a third or a quarter of everyone infected just dying, like in the black death? If whole towns were depopulated and it wasn't rare for an entire family to be wiped out? Mass graves all over the shop and the sight of corpses being collected from houses an everyday occurance? We could easily have been looking at that, and I genuinely don't think we would have had the facilities - organisational or ideological or emotionally - to deal with it. I think it would have led to genuine social collapse and the end of our society as we know it. It's genuinely scary to think about.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 09:27
|
|
|
Well you probably won't have to wait long to find out. Some people could consider that a doomer position or whatever, but it's just extremely likely that there will be a much worse pandemic in the medium-term, and there's gently caress all in place to stop it and no lessons have been learned. The one bright spot is mRNA vaccine technology really saved our asses and may well do so again.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 09:41
|
|
|
Saros posted:Cuba is looking good but the Sinovac and Sputnik vaccines are not. The Chinese vaccines work quite poorly compared to the others and the Sputnik vaccine that is getting distributed has only a vague relationship with the one that actually got tested because of disastrously bad quality control in the manufacturing process. The interesting thing is even the crappiest vaccine that's been widely approved (Sinovac) has better efficacy than most vaccines (and in particular better than all of the regularly-used vaccines used in the eradication campaigns against polio, TB and smallpox). In a world where *only* Sinovac were available we'd still be able to reach herd immunity fairly easily, and the political and business shenanigans that have gone on around this rollout - meaning multiple countries have turned down perfectly good, available right now, vaccines in favour of others that might not be available for months - have undoubtedly killed people.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 09:43
|
|
|
In Feb 2020 I watched Sonic the Hedgehog
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 09:44
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:But it could have been so much worse. What would we have done if covid had that dreaded long incubation/high fatality combo? What if we were looking at a third or a quarter of everyone infected just dying, like in the black death? If whole towns were depopulated and it wasn't rare for an entire family to be wiped out? Mass graves all over the shop and the sight of corpses being collected from houses an everyday occurance? We could easily have been looking at that, and I genuinely don't think we would have had the facilities - organisational or ideological or emotionally - to deal with it. I think it would have led to genuine social collapse and the end of our society as we know it. It's genuinely scary to think about. good morning 
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 09:53
|
|
|
In an all-staff meeting in early February 2020 I asked what our COVID plans were if it hit us hard and whether there could be arrangements for us to work from home. The boss brushed it off with a joke and everyone laughed at me. Well who's laughing now? Who's laughing now?
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:00
|
|
|
crispix posted:good morning Mornin' 
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:02
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:
The Black Death is a fascinating case study in just how many fatalities established societies can handle before collapsing. France and England (the 2 medieval states that I know the most about) went through all sorts of social changes as a result of the plague but both their societies survived fundamentally intact, despite death rates of around a third of the population overall. You can contrast this with any number of native American nations, where they suffered death rates of 90%+ due to repeated waves of European diseases and where their existing complex societies tended to disintegrate, with the survivors forming simpler, 'post-apocalyptic' groups. So if some epidemic carried off a third of us, we'd be left reeling, but our society would probably ultimately regain balance in a form that we'd be able to recognise as being continuous with what had come before. If 95% of the population died, all our existing systems - law, government, logistics, utilities etc would fall to bits completely and the survivors would likely return to some sort of collective subsistence farming. Cheerful stuff!
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:03
|
|
|
HMRC have introduced this 'webchat' thing. SO much better than hanging on the phone or trying to ask questions on twitter! Not sure if you can use it without signing in to your personal tax account to use it for which you will either need to set up a 'verify' or get a government gateway ID. (I use Post Office verify. I have so many government gateways over the years I have lost the plot with those). Been on emergency tax for 3 months now so needed to give them a boot up the bum to send my employer the tax code (it's not my sole income so it's not totally simple). Hopefully now sorted, inshallah! (Might be useful info for someone!)
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:04
|
|
|
Dystopian future where 95% of the population dies and the remainder turns to HMRC Webchat.Failed Imagineer posted:Well you probably won't have to wait long to find out. On the other hand, Moderna has a candidate mRNA vaccine for HIV-1 and it doesn't kill people or give them HIV so that's good.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:14
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:The Black Death is a fascinating case study in just how many fatalities established societies can handle before collapsing. France and England (the 2 medieval states that I know the most about) went through all sorts of social changes as a result of the plague but both their societies survived fundamentally intact, despite death rates of around a third of the population overall. You can contrast this with any number of native American nations, where they suffered death rates of 90%+ due to repeated waves of European diseases and where their existing complex societies tended to disintegrate, with the survivors forming simpler, 'post-apocalyptic' groups. That said, didn't France and England evolve in an environment where plagues were not unheard of? Certainly not on the scale of the Black Death, but structurally their realms had to be able to absorb periodic waves of disease that carried off some significant proportion of their population from time to time. That may not hold true for our own society built on just in time logistics and massive global trade networks, we may be unable to absorb a shock like that to the same degree a Feudal society can.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:16
|
|
|
ThomasPaine posted:2. The accelerated vaccine development does show what can be done when you throw all your time and resources at doing something. Lots can be done with heavily directed effort, but that's more on the manufacturing and distribution side. The vaccines were all pretty quick to be developed, but the difficulty with vaccines (and what normally makes them super expensive) is that if you're trying to vaccinate against something rare, you have to do tests for a very long time before you get good enough statistical proof. A pandemic is, oddly enough, the perfect time to do vaccine development because the number of cases in the control group is going to be super high so you get good evidence really quickly.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:21
|
|
|
I don't think so: all societies lacking antibiotics and good sanitation have had to grapple with regular disease outbreaks: there was nothing special about Medieval France and England in that regard.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:32
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:The Black Death is a fascinating case study in just how many fatalities established societies can handle before collapsing. France and England (the 2 medieval states that I know the most about) went through all sorts of social changes as a result of the plague but both their societies survived fundamentally intact, despite death rates of around a third of the population overall. You can contrast this with any number of native American nations, where they suffered death rates of 90%+ due to repeated waves of European diseases and where their existing complex societies tended to disintegrate, with the survivors forming simpler, 'post-apocalyptic' groups. *not fun Statue of Labourers 1352 posted:It was lately ordained by our lord king, with the assent of the prelates, nobles and others of his council against the malice of employees, who were idle and were not willing to take employment after the pestilence unless for outrageous wages, that such employees, both men and women, should be obliged to take employment for the salary and wages accustomed to be paid in the place where they were working in the 20th year of the king's reign [1346], or five or six years earlier; and that if the same employees refused to accept employment in such a manner they should be punished by imprisonment, as is more clearly contained in the said ordinance. How far* we've come, eh? *not far (e: if it's not entirely clear from the passage above, both statutes were passed owing to mass-death-related labour shortages, so the peasants were all like "hey if you're losing money on all this work not getting done why don't you just pay us properly and then we'll do the work", and Thym Maertyne was like "verily, nay") Borrovan fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Jun 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:36
|
|
|
Reveilled posted:That said, didn't France and England evolve in an environment where plagues were not unheard of? Certainly not on the scale of the Black Death, but structurally their realms had to be able to absorb periodic waves of disease that carried off some significant proportion of their population from time to time. That may not hold true for our own society built on just in time logistics and massive global trade networks, we may be unable to absorb a shock like that to the same degree a Feudal society can. Yeah, awareness of mortality was a much bigger part of life in the middle ages than it is now, where death happens behind closed doors and the only time we really see it is when a close family member gets sick or injured. Back in the 1100s or whatever a particularly cold winter had a very much non zero chance of doing you in. To add to this I'd also say you can't understate the importance of the church in maintaining order. If you genuinely believe in God and the immortal soul you are going to be far better equipped ideologically to deal with these kind of crises. You cannot compare black death-era Europe to modern Europe, it's apples and oranges. I think we as a society now would struggle with any kind of unavoidable mass death event far more than they would have done. We're very different societies.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:39
|
|
|
London in Ye Olden Days was a melting pot of Extremely Dangerous diseases. Plague gets a bad rap because well it kills lots of people all at once, but this was also a time when people were also being wiped out in the tens of thousands by cholera, small pox, measles, tuberculosis, and many more. People dying in swathes from disease was not unheard of back then.
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:40
|
|
|
Borrovan posted:A fun* fact about the Black Death that I like to drop on my students when it's relevant is that it gave us our first two recognisable pieces of employment law, centuries apart: Priti Vacant Patel is salivating at the prospect of sending unemployed to jail
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:27 |
|
|
Lol https://twitter.com/leftiestats/status/1404734186129330179?s=21
|
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2021 10:48
|
|
