UKMT March 2020 - Bojo got the Covo - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT March 2020 - Bojo got the Covo

Who is your first pick in the deputy leadership race? This poll is closed.
R. Allin-Khan	6	1.60%
R. Burgon	80	21.33%
D. Butler	72	19.20%
A. Rayner	35	9.33%
I. Murray	5	1.33%
P. Flaps	177	47.20%
Total:	375 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Barry Foster posted:

I'm going to make a sainsburys run which I'm not wild about but hey ho.

Is there any point whatsoever in wearing a surgical mask? I have some from when I was regularly catching the National Express and getting sick all the time

edit actually it's not like they stopped me getting sick on the bus, lol

If you�re already sick yourself (but asymptomatic) then it makes you less likely to spread it, and it sends a signal to everyone you see that this thing is kind of a big deal. Other than that not really - it�s much more important e.g. to avoid touching your face.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2020 10:58

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:46

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Oh dear me posted:

If you find it hard to get started on anything, tell yourself you only have to do five minutes. Even that will help.

This is an honest-to-god CBT technique that I�ve found pretty helpful as well - often once you�ve started it�s easy to keep going, and if it�s not then at least you got five minutes� worth done which is still better than nothing.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2020 10:47

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Apraxin posted:

https://twitter.com/BBCSimonJack/status/1240698612847218689

I know this is like, The News, and should be reported, but the wording really makes it seem like the Beeb are trying to generate a run on the supermarkets.

If the issues are entirely in delivery and not in supply, why the gently caress are they optimising the manufacturing process? That�s actually quite worrying.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2020 23:32

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

CGI Stardust posted:

I'm wondering if the government has looked at Italy, seen that locking down some time after announcing lockdown only triggers people to leave, and decided to do everything all at once

Italy didn�t announce lockdown though, it got leaked to the press. No way in hell is Boris� government smart enough to prevent leaks.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 11:14

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Darth Walrus posted:

https://twitter.com/markdistef/status/1240979750845321217?s=21

lmao

One parent who's a key worker? That's just taking the piss.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2020 13:41

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Necrothatcher posted:

Sister (GP): Has been worked to the bone by paranoid patients over the last week. Many people suddenly discovering that their childhood asthma has mysteriously returned and are demanding Ventolin, causing a shortage and lot of scared genuine asthmatics as a result. She was worried about childcare for her kids, but has started displaying symptoms so is self-isolating for 2 weeks, while continuing to do videoconferencing GP work.

The silver lining is that I think ventolin is one of the steroids that actually makes coronavirus symptoms worse? Still worth taking if you're having a genuine asthma attack, but anyone who's taking inhalers away from people who need them is going to get what they deserve.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2020 15:18

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Cefte posted:

I feel a visceral anger when people play this game. Yes, it's an unspiced, unsauced meal, widely consumed among the English or Irish working classes in the past few hundred years, as they were squeezed by landlord desire for cash crops, then hammered by rationing. The loss of the historical cucina povera of the British Isles is a tragedy, but here you play it up for laughs at what the unsophisticates eat, in a thread that prides itself on historical leftism.

Those carrots look steamed to me. Since when is it a working-class thing to buy a dedicated piece of cookware to make vegetables taste worse and blander than they would have done roasted, fried, or cooked in any other way including raw?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2020 01:30

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Barry Foster posted:

My partner has broken our isolation a couple of times to go for a walk along the Exe, which is directly outside our flat complex. To get there she only needs to touch the building door handle and the button to get out of the outer gate, and the buttons to get back in, all of which she does with her sleeve or something, which immediately then goes in the wash. When she walks, she'll see maybe two or three other people along our length doing the same thing, and they'll be, like, 200 metres away most of the time (and certainly never close than ten)

I think I already know the answer, but this is probably as close as we get to safety as we can get without absolute, total lockdown, right? I can cope fine, since I'm a fucken goon (haven't left the flat for a week now, and I'm sailing along just fine) but she can't bear it for more than three or four days at a time, despite my gently nudging her to lump it.

Should I nudge harder?

Nah, leaving the apartment to go for a walk occasionally - or even daily - is a good idea as long as you steer clear of others and take precautions around shared surfaces like those buttons. (Antiviral hand sanitiser would be even better than using a sleeve if you have any of that particular liquid gold.) It's technically a non-zero risk, but it's an incredibly low one, and speaking objectively I'd say it's worth it for the boost to your mental health if you'd otherwise be feeling cooped up. The only reason I'm not doing it myself is psychological - if I don't leave at all, then I know that random morning cough isn't the bad roni - and not everyone's brain is broken in that particular way.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 15:09

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

ThomasPaine posted:

oh ffs, good timing.

While a lockdown is obviously the right thing to do I very much hope we're given at least a day's grace period before full enforcement. I really do not want to be stuck here.

That's a loving awful idea, so Boris will probably do it. (But it's just going to send people scattering out of London to the less-infected parts of the country on packed trains, getting infected themselves and/or infecting their previously-uninfected relatives.)

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 19:54

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Jollity Farm posted:

Will have to check to see how many days of Fluoxetine I have left.

Should have set up an online delivery thing, but I didn't.

I hope this doesn't end badly.

You're still allowed out to get medication, and for anti-depressants you very definitely should, especially now. I've got enough sertraline in stock but if I didn't I'd 100% be going out for more. Going cold turkey on those is a bad idea at the best of times, but especially now when the world itself is so depressing and you can't meet friends in person...

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 21:56

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

So I've realised I should get round to voting in the Labour leadership election before it's too late. Keir Starmer strikes me as a competent centrist technocrat with a place in any shadow cabinet but who definitely shouldn't be leading the party. Assuming that's right, who's better out of Rebecca or Lisa?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2020 20:13

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

[This post has been deleted.]

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 25, 2020

# ¿ Mar 24, 2020 22:10

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

[This post has been deleted.]

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 25, 2020

# ¿ Mar 24, 2020 22:22

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

[This post has been deleted.]

pumpinglemma fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 25, 2020

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 01:12

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

I know I'm not really here but I just saw this (linked to from a comment under a Graun article).

I quickly skimmed but not read (too tired just now to take it in). Didn't want to leave it til Thursday before posting

Minutes of 2nd NERVTAG meeting (New & Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group) - 21st January 2020 - Public Health England

https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fapp.box.com%2Fs%2F3lkcbxepqixkg4mv640dpvvg978ixjtf/view/616822606941

The person posting the link said Section 4 illustrated the complacency of the UK.

The minutes for 1st Meeting 13th January are also accessible from that link if you click the back arrow at the pdf name.

Proof that the UK absolutely knew this was coming 10 weeks ago.

Section 4 actually looks pretty reasonable, though? The only point of health screening on inbound flights is if you can stop all infectious people from entering the country. With something like coronavirus where there's a vast number of asymptomatic carriers, you basically either institute full two-week quarantines for literally everyone coming into the country, or you do nothing. Anything else is a useless half measure that makes Number go down without actually saving any lives, because you still get undetected cases spreading in the UK which still leads to a full-blown epidemic. So the question is whether going full Madagascar was justified back in mid-January, which... OK with hindsight it totally was, but I feel like I'd have a hard time convincing myself of that two months ago. (But even with hindsight, I suspect a much better use of time and resources would have been stocking up on masks and test kits for a South Korea-type response.)

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 01:54

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Z the IVth posted:

I do feel that this view is very much 'perfect being the enemy of good'. You may not stop everyone but you can certainly catch the worst off and get them quarantined rather than leaving them free to spread the disease throughout the population. Reading through Section 4 it does seem to me like the group did not want to be seen to overreact and chose to err on the side of caution. This is the same strategy that is being played out by Boris et al now, lots of "please do this" and "please do that" rather than "OBEY OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES".

Nah, even if you catch half the infected people with health screenings then that buys you very, very little extra time - literally on the order of a few days. The additive growth of infected people flying in from overseas is absolutely nothing compared to the exponential growth from the very first infected person who gets through. Meanwhile, to buy those few days you've spent an insane amounts of money on health screenings, on quarantining everyone with a fever (almost none of whom will actually have the coronavirus), and on turbofucking the tourist industry, all of which could instead have gone on buying ventilators or hiring nurses. It's not that health screenings on incoming flights would have been an overreaction, although I agree avoiding "overreactions" has been the government's problem as a whole. It's that health screenings would have been utterly useless, especially compared to the many many other things the government could have been doing to prepare.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 02:22

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

sebzilla posted:

Is there a good takedown of that FT article where they recklessly float the idea that 50% of the population may already have (had) the Roni, based on a study that says nothing of the sort?

Overminty posted:

pumpinglemma posted some strong criticism yesterday about the study itself (I think) but has since deleted it, not sure why. Also if you read this pumping duckmaster quoted one of the posts you deleted so you may wanna pm them.

So what was going on there: me and some of my co-authors spent today drafting an open letter takedown of both that article and the study it�s based on, to be signed by as many researchers as we could get our hands on, published online, and sent it to the offending newspapers. Because the study the article is based on is terribad in several distinct ways, and the reporting of it is worse, and after I got in touch with the authors directly they refused to fix things and disavowed all responsibility for the reporting (despite giving at least one actual interview to the FT). I deleted my posts on it because they�d make it easy to doxx me post-publication, and I didn�t think it would help things if the likes of the Daily Mail were able to do some actual journalism and trace me back to a Known Hive of Marxism and Villainy.

Then we got hold of an actual epidemiologist via the whisper network. That community has a lot more experience dealing with bad studies and worse media reporting than I do as a computer scientist, and it turns out that big public refutations are the last thing you want to do - that can make the story blow up much further than it originally would have. Instead of ten thousand people reading the original article and some of them believing it, you get a million people reading that there�s a big scientific controversy. Also, it�s really easy for big public interventions by researchers other than domain-specific COVID-19 experts to do more harm than good right now. So I�ve backed off on that.

In terms of takedowns, I think one of the authors� own Twitter feeds was doing quite a good job last night. He�s getting dragged in the mentions by everyone who can understand the paper, and is frantically saying that they didn�t mean it that way (while steadfastly refusing to correct the one sentence of their intro that specifically says they did or to add appropriate disclaimers elsewhere). There�s also a piece that recently went up in the British Medical Journal with quotes from some big recognisable experts saying it�s bollocks.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 20:31

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

stev posted:

Sense of taste and smell have gone in the last six hours. gently caress.

Jesus. Good luck, keep us posted.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 21:49

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Actually, the Guardian have put up a really good article about that FT study now too. Some choice quotes:

quote:

Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at Edinburgh University, said the Oxford study set out a hypothesis and nothing more. �It�s like me sitting here and putting into very fancy equations what would change if we had a vaccine tomorrow. I could model how a vaccine would save lives and you would see headlines reading �New vaccine is going to save lives.� But we don�t have a vaccine.�

quote:

In other words, the number of people infected in Britain is either very large, very small, or middling. This may sound unhelpful, but that is precisely the point. �We need much more data about who has been exposed to inform policy,� Klenerman [one of the study authors] said.

quote:

As Prof James Wood, a researcher in infection dynamics at Cambridge University, put it: �The paper does substantially over-speculate and is open to gross over-interpretation by others.�

It doesn't let the study authors off the hook completely, but it doesn't make the article about attacking the study (which would require painful technical discussion that would cause readers' eyes to glaze over and most likely cause the authors to lash out in response). Instead it goes for the much softer target of the media narrative surrounding the story, using expert testimony and surprisingly-accurate metaphors, and pretty much just crushes it, while leaving the academic community to rip the study apart at its own pace. That's the sort of stuff I couldn't actually hope to accomplish by writing an article myself, because I'm not one of those people what write gud, but I can recognise it as a very impressive piece of journalism to the point where it's actually shifted my view on the Graun's scientific output.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2020 21:58

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

I had a massive stockpile of pasta built up long before the coronavirus, just because it's so drat useful as a vessel for sauces and salads, it's cheaper if you buy in bulk, and it never goes off.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2020 16:42

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

learnincurve posted:

Sainsbury�s only offering slots to people on the government list now

That's been true for days now, hasn't it? Is there anyone left doing food deliveries to people not on that list? (Besides all the meal box places if you already had a subscription.)

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 11:57

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Guavanaut posted:

Is that the government list of people who have self-reported as extremely vulnerable, or the NHS list of people who have been told to stay at home for 12 weeks?

I'm guessing the former because the latter probably isn't being made available to J Sainsbury plc, but does being on the latter list automatically make you eligible to go on the former?

The self-reported list, and the first application question is "have you had an NHS letter" so I suspect it does. Also, definitely not saying you were considering this but as a PSA for anyone else reading: it would be very out of character for this government not to vet that self-reported list so heavily they're throwing out half the genuine applicants. So signing up for it fraudulently would not only be an incredibly lovely thing to do but also likely to gently caress you over.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 12:07

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Haaaahahahahahaha. At least that's something.

Weasling Weasel posted:

Can someone explain why the recovery rate is so low on all the supplied stats. My diseased brain keeps coming back to around to it, and I don't understand why it most occasions it's only very slightly above the deaths.

To follow up on what other people have said, here are the stats from South Korea which does decent testing - 139 deaths, 4528 recoveries, which is a 3% mortality rate. That's going to be a bit high because there'll be some recovered cases early on which have gone undetected - this probably accounts for the difference with other estimates that are closer to 2%. The UK stats are purely because of our testing "system".

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 13:15

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Wizard Master posted:

As much as I don't agree with how Boris Johnson has handled everything, I wish everyone with a serious medical condition the best of outcomes and a speedy recovery.

Boris and the other senior tories wish everyone with a serious medical condition to be forced back to work with no disability income, so gently caress 'em.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 13:19

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Nothingtoseehere posted:

Yea the chance of Boris dying from this are minimal, all we can hope is that that it's enough of a blow he still takes the virus seriously. Still, you can degrade rapidly with corona so even if he's mild now might not remain so.

In fact it starts mild for basically everyone, that�s one of the awful things about it. I think the turn for the worse is normally about a week after the first symptoms?

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 13:55

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Oodles posted:

https://twitter.com/bild/status/1243507332065173504?s=21

From the article: "He is currently feeling better and his life is no longer in danger!" Don't trust Bild headlines, they're basically a trash paper from what I've heard.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 17:47

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Ash Crimson posted:

People, look after yourselves whilst you can, I have a horrible feelings things are going to get pretty crazy in terms of the public response to continued self isolation, lockdown and the government's response

If that means preemptively raiding and looting your neighbours homes for tools, food and supplies so be it, make sure you've got a decent bit of wood or maybe a bat to defend yourself against the raiders, seen a couple of them skulking around recently, got me nervous got me hosed up

Whatever you�re on, stop taking it, and for gently caress�s sake don�t go full tory on the poor bastards living next door.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2020 03:42

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Pistol_Pete posted:

In these trying times, it's good to see that the Guardian's got it's priorities straight:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/28/yes-jeremy-corbyn-is-still-here-and-hes-still-right-about-everything

That's right, it's an 'I hate Jeremy Corbyn' article!

The article also finds time for a bizarrely pointless attack on Kim Kardashian and a final whine about how perhaps now people will finally understand how difficult and taxing working from home all the time is (as the author obviously does). Great stuff Guardian, really took my mind off the coronavirus

Oh god, I was sure that was Marina Hyde from the writing style but it�s someone new. They�re multiplying.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2020 10:55

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

twoot posted:

For COVID ICU patients with severe pneumonia the ventilators have to operate at very near the physiological limits of our lungs wrt oxygenation/pressure.

The challenge for manufacturers isn't "can we build a ventilator quickly", it's "can we build a ventilator quickly that behaves within the same precise safety specifications of existing models". A new-design ventilator that accidentally ruptures the lungs of 1/100 patients is a non-starter.

Serious question: Why? If someone's certainly going to die without a ventilator, why isn't it better that they have a ventilator with a 1% chance of killing them than no ventilator at all?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2020 20:27

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Guavanaut posted:

If you look at that Zoom meeting screenshot they're also using Outlook for all of their emails, so if you don't trust Microsoft they're already hosed.

This is supposed to be why government offices were moving towards open source stuff (as well as meaning that charities could correspond with them without needing to buy Office) but I see that's gone well.

I thought the business versions of MS products had privacy policies that actually meant something? Otherwise I'd expect it to break the GDPR for e.g. universities to use it, since student emails count as highly sensitive data.

(God I wish it broke the GDPR, I want to go back to Thunderbird...)

# ¿ Mar 31, 2020 22:39

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Munin posted:

What is the Zoom alternative?

Also, what makes Zoom as a company especially lovely compared to the competition?

As far as I can tell basically nothing. They pass your data to Google Ads (which isn't great but I'm pretty sure every free service does similar), and they have a feature where the host of a meeting can get an alert if you defocus the window for 30 seconds (which is apparently Unacceptable Spying on Your Data).

# ¿ Mar 31, 2020 23:01

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

forkboy84 posted:

It's more spying than I like. Sorry but the whole good thing with conference calls is you can sit on it barely paying attention to bores droing on until someone says something relevant to you. Idea I have to look at your stupid face while you drone on defeats the point.

Things that force you to do your work at your meaningless job are bad.

Have a laptop/tablet on your desk while the call is going on and use that to browse the internet instead. Or put the Zoom window on the left side of the screen and the browser on the right side of the screen and keep the Zoom window focused unless you're scrolling or clicking a link. It's not that I don't hate workplace monitoring in general, but the way Zoom does it sounds utterly trivial to bypass.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2020 23:40

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:46

pumpinglemma: Apr 28, 2009; DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Danger - Octopus! posted:

What's smartphone usage like in the UK anyway? Are there enough people without smartphones that it would be a problem for an app based solution?

I assume it'd be a short step anyway before over-enthusiastic police started fining people if they take the bins out but don't carry their smartphone with them...

As of last year, a literal majority of people aged 75 or over didn't use the internet at all over a span of three months. Smartphones aren't going to work for us by themselves.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2020 23:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > UKMT March 2020 - Bojo got the Covo