Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Thereisalight..]

7 minutes ago, RH33 said:

There’s been a looming mental health crisis due to persistent cuts for years. It’s just becoming an ever worsening situation.

Cuts yes, but when have we ever been dictated to about leaving town or visiting family and friends? When have those suffering mental health issues ever not had distractions to help them through, things like sports, concerts, cinema. When have entire industries had to shut up shop? Making those who work in said industries feel bored, anxious if they’re going to have a job to return to etc

[Gaz]

10 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

A little.

Trig is about circles, pythagoras and "sohcahtoa" and really very little else. 

I would have expected things like north and south to appear when they learn rudimentary vectors. I can imagine that mixing those two things up would confise a lot of kids. I remember watching kids at uni fucking about with CAST as well. They couldn't remember where the C went and whether it went clockwise or anti clockwise. Showing them circles with a rotating stick allowed them to work it out for themselves in seconds.

Anyway, you just surprised me with that post.

[Sergeant Wilson]

2 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

When have those suffering mental health issues ever not had distractions to help them through, things like sports, concerts, cinema. 

Aye, they didn't know they had it so good! Well they've got something to moan about now!

[invergowrie arab]

10 minutes ago, Gaz said:

Part of the National 5 course is to teach the sine rule and cosine rule with three-figure bearings. It's pretty hard to teach three-figure bearings without using the words "North" and "South" and so on.

From there, it leads to conversations about what "North" means and so on. Some pupils are genuinely surprised that the concepts of North, South etc. aren't natural but are human constructs to explain direction - same as up, down, left and right.

Surely all words are human constructs to explain things.

[tamthebam]

10 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Willie, all you have to do is stand on your head or bend over and look at the picture through your legs, and it will all become clear, like it did for Archimedes with his eureka moment in the bathtub. 

If Archimedes had farted in the bath would he have invented the Hubble bubble pipe instead?

[Gaz]

5 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Surely all words are human constructs to explain things.

Yes. You'd be amazed how many people don't realise that.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Gaz

[Gaz]

5 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

I know what you're getting at here. This is combining trig and vectors in a single question and will undoubtedly cause confusion to those learning both subjects for the first time.

Students need to be rock solid on trig before thinking about vectors. Then questions like this are  trivial.

Are you introducing both concepts to them at the same time?

This type of question would be taught at the end of the trigonometry topic once they'd done sohcahtoa, sine rule, cosine rule.

[RH33]

18 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Cuts yes, but when have we ever been dictated to about leaving town or visiting family and friends? When have those suffering mental health issues ever not had distractions to help them through, things like sports, concerts, cinema. When have entire industries had to shut up shop? Making those who work in said industries feel bored, anxious if they’re going to have a job to return to etc

That’s why what was already looming will be so much now with this situation.

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, Gordon EF said:

I think society has generally taken some kind of collective responsibility to make things like racism, homophobia, sexism much smaller problems than they have been in the past. We're generally moving towards taking more responsibility for things like climate change. These things improve through a fairly slow and painful evolution of how society thinks and functions, not because some charismatic person with a great idea comes along and tells everyone how wrong they've been.

I don't disagree but I think government intervention/ leadership in these areas is necessary to make a significant and immediate impact and prevent it taking far longer than it should to resolve whether it's discrimination or climate change. A lack of intervention/ enforcement from the government after Reconstruction in America for example or on climate change is why these issues persist. 

^^ any anarchist reading this would be kicking off.

[welshbairn]

15 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Surely all words are human constructs to explain things.

Apart from Stainrod. Then he said let there be light, and there was light.

[pandarilla]

You’re correct of course, the underfunding of the NHS caused by a decade of austerity is irrelevant in this crisis.
The decision to recognise a global pandemic as the single greatest threat to the U.K. in theory but treat it as far less importantly in practice is irrelevant in this crisis.
The decision to ignore the findings of Operation Cygnus is irrelevant in this crisis.

You've completely misrepresented my post.

I made it clear that it was generally agreed by all rational folk that the lack of preparation and the slow response were huge errors, and both are completely political in terms of right wing ideology.

But the argument is about what to do now, and how much we strive to either keep the lockdown in place, or start to find a way to ease it.

The phrase 'even a stopped clock is right twice a day' comes to mind. Just because boris and his tory pals want to get the country back to normal quickly doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't the right thing to do for society as a whole, and especially the most vulnerable.

But all too often you seem incapable of having a mature and rational conversation about these topics. I find that particularly baffling because i agree with your opinion so regularly.

Surely all words are human constructs to explain things.

You've just blown my mind.

[tamthebam]

9 hours ago, madwullie said:

There is speculation that they very rarely if at all infect adults, but afaik there has been no proper studies and it's mainly guesswork or based on small samples. That woman (v v wid) on QT 

I haven't seen any nurse photos for a while so v v wid QT woman pics or...

[Gordon EF]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

No to the first paragraph.

What your now admitting is not possible is what you claimed we should be doing, that is what started this exchange.

FWIW I am sympathetic to the concept of collective responsibility, what we need at this moment is strong, clear and decisive government action.  We not had that from Westminster, Holyrood have done better given their limitations.

Of course had we been better prepared...

I don't think I ever claimed it was possible or probable to do it in the short term. 

I don't disagree with you at all about leadership from government. I think the WM government in particular have handled it mostly extremely poorly.

[Granny Danger]

22 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

You've completely misrepresented my post.

I made it clear that it was generally agreed by all rational folk that the lack of preparation and the slow response were huge errors, and both are completely political in terms of right wing ideology.

But the argument is about what to do now, and how much we strive to either keep the lockdown in place, or start to find a way to ease it.

The phrase 'even a stopped clock is right twice a day' comes to mind. Just because boris and his tory pals want to get the country back to normal quickly doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't the right thing to do for society as a whole, and especially the most vulnerable.

But all too often you seem incapable of having a mature and rational conversation about these topics. I find that particularly baffling because i agree with your opinion so regularly.
 

If I misrepresented your post it certainly wasn’t deliberately.  Maybe you expressed yourself poorly.

Making derogatory references about someone’s maturity seems a little self defeating.

[Gordon EF]

34 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

I don't disagree but I think government intervention/ leadership in these areas is necessary to make a significant and immediate impact and prevent it taking far longer than it should to resolve whether it's discrimination or climate change. A lack of intervention/ enforcement from the government after Reconstruction in America for example or on climate change is why these issues persist. 

^^ any anarchist reading this would be kicking off.

Yep. I don't disagree with any of that.

I'm not for one minute making any kind of anti- or small-government argument. Any government has an enormous responsibility and should always have. Responsibility is not a zero sum game. By saying maybe people should take more collective and individual responsibility for things, it is absolutely not trying to absolve governments or diminish the role they need to play.

I agree particularly on climate change. It's probably mostly the case that government lags behind society on a lot of social / discrimination issues, barring a few particularly bold examples. Gay marriage would never have passed in any part of the UK without an electorate that had grown to become generally supportive or at least ambivalent about it. Climate change requires effort from all sides as all the recycling and compost heaps in the world won't mean a thing if our infrastructure isn't being geared towards low or zero carbon and that takes government to do.

[madwullie]

6 hours ago, Gordon EF said:

Surely you'd have to concede you're just as guilty of creating you're own false argument there? I've not seen one person here suggest that.

But that's what England have done. Really. What is different now, what is in place that wasn't all those, what, 8 weeks ago? They've started testing TTI and that's about it. But it's not ready. They opened without having the TTI  ready the purpose of which wa sto allow them to open more safely. Absolute bonkers. 

The only weapon(s) they have if cases spike again (and there's no reason to believe they won't) are further lockdown or take it on the chin. All their lockdown has been used for is slow the spread and given time to build capacity - all reactive solutions, nothing at all proactive. 

Other countries used their lockdown to prepare. Scotland *seem* to be although the jury is firmly out. 

 

Edit: I've just read a report from SK that said x number of cases had occurred due to the opening of exercise classes, especially high intensity ones had infection issues (they had absolute numbers). However, classes with less than 5 participants had zero cases. This is useful data brought about by TTI that can help shape future policy and ensure public safety. Can you imagine anything similar being posted about the UK now? We don't have anything in place that let's us evaluate this stuff to that level of detail, so it seems we/they actually have opened up with no plan beyond hoping for the best and seeing what happens. 

Edited May 18, 2020 by madwullie

[Jacksgranda]

8 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

You’re correct of course, the underfunding of the NHS caused by a decade of austerity is irrelevant in this crisis.

The decision to recognise a global pandemic as the single greatest threat to the U.K. in theory but treat it as far less importantly in practice is irrelevant in this crisis.

The decision to ignore the findings of Operation Cygnus is irrelevant in this crisis.

Is that ever going to get looked at? And how much input/knowledge of the results did the devolved governments have?

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, Jacksgranda said:

Is that ever going to get looked at? And how much input/knowledge of the results did the devolved governments have?

Both important questions.  The possibility that the answer to the second may embarrass the devolved government’s might be why the opposition parties have kept so quiet about it, although they might just be waiting their time.

The only media reference I can see is in The National: “Similar reports went to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments and the Scottish Government says the report was acted upon.”

[Jacksgranda]

7 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Both important questions.  The possibility that the answer to the second may embarrass the devolved government’s might be why the opposition parties have kept so quiet about it, although they might just be waiting their time.

The only media reference I can see is in The National: “Similar reports went to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments and the Scottish Government says the report was acted upon.”

Maybe will never get investigated, everybody at fault. The only party who might raise it over here are the TUV, as everyone else would have been in the Executive, so "culpable" in not implementing the recommendations. (Although SG say it was "acted upon". What does that mean, exactly?)

[Granny Danger]

Just now, Jacksgranda said:

Maybe will never get investigated, everybody at fault. The only party who might raise it over here are the TUV, as everyone else would have been in the Executive, so "culpable" in not implementing the recommendations. (Although SG say it was "acted upon". What does that mean, exactly?)

The Lib Dems should be all over it.