Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Moomintroll]

6 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

5000 folk at a trial music festival last night. All tested negative beforehand yet still had to wear masks throughout. What a weird fascination powers that be have with masks 

They pick horses for courses. They're the market forces.

[Have some faith in Magic]

34 minutes ago, Michael W said:

I wouldn't say it was "the oldies" wanting back at my work either. The older employees generally have large houses and sufficient space to work from home in comfort - they aren't the ones at their kitchen tables or working from makeshift desks. 

I haven't heard anyone saying they don't want to go back at all, but I'm sure there are a few happy to do so. We held off on the back to the office plans previously before unveiling them just before the government changed its mind again on working from home. Haven't seen anything in the meantime, so no idea what will be happening. In the mean time we have closed some smaller offices with the staff now on full time home working contracts. I doubt people will be back 5 days a week, but let's see what happens. 

That's the same in my workplace which seems to still be strongly aiming at a largely home based workforce. The ones making the decisions are obviously in the first category you have mentioned. I do feel sorry for the younger ones as the learning opportunities are severely curtailed and as you say flat sharing with 2 or 3 people working from home working for different employers and doing shifts  perched on the kitchen table. 

I work for a govt department so I await the latest u turn after BJ saying everyone at home has been on holiday for the last year. 

 

Personally if someone said 2/3 or 3/2 I would be more than happy, especially if one of the home based days was always a Monday. 

[NotThePars]

Really looking forward to getting the vaccine eventually so I can start calling people who get any other types "low class"

[super_carson]

422 cases (2.6%)

264 in hospital (down 19)

22 in ICU (down 4)

[Wee Bully]

1 minute ago, super_carson said:

422 cases (2.6%)

264 in hospital (down 19)

22 in ICU (down 4)

Great stats again.

[Todd_is_God]

30 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

5000 folk at a trial music festival last night. All tested negative beforehand yet still had to wear masks throughout. What a weird fascination powers that be have with masks 

They are desperate to keep the narrative that masks are essential, despite there being no evidence outwith a laboratory environment that they have any impact whatsoever. Any step back from this would put huge question marks over the real world effectiveness of every other restriction brought in, which is a Pandora's Box best left firmly shut.

I will refer back to my post yesterday - removing a restriction that is viewed by many as little more than a minor inconvenience seems beyond our governments. They "cost nothing" and "we may as well" so they remain "just in case"

Masking will be one of, if not the, last things to go despite having a microscopic, if any, impact at all.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[super_carson]

Great stats again.

Especially when we consider Sunday cases tend to be lower anyway, that's a low positivity rate.

Good to see hospitalisation continue to fall. We are seriously getting to a point whereby there may only be a handful of people in hospital.

[Elixir]

1 hour ago, 101 said:

He really knows how to appeal to the masses

I mean that's valid. Shame Richard Burgon is an absolute nutter, though.

[Wee Bully]

5 minutes ago, super_carson said:

Especially when we consider Sunday cases tend to be lower anyway, that's a low positivity rate.

Good to see hospitalisation continue to fall. We are seriously getting to a point whereby there may only be a handful of people in hospital.

Agreed - although it’s becoming increasingly clear that case numbers are becoming irrelevant now.

The rest of the UK has lower case numbers than us now, but still more than twice the rate in ICU, which shows that we weathered the second wave far better than the first.  

[stumigoo]

422 cases (2.6%)
264 in hospital (down 19)
22 in ICU (down 4)

I’ve got to the stage where I’m pretty much ignoring the case numbers and that I look forward to just the hospital and ICU figures.

The continuous falling in both of those categories is brilliant.

[mizfit]

So long as the % remains under 5% I’m happy enough.

[super_carson]

18 minutes ago, stumigoo said:

 

I’ve got to the stage where I’m pretty much ignoring the case numbers and that I look forward to just the hospital and ICU figures.

The continuous falling in both of those categories is brilliant.

 

100% - I mentioned that the other day, the case numbers really now are only useful in that it's proving there is no longer the same correlation between cases and hospitalisations there was 4 months ago.  

With parliament not in again until after the election, and no daily briefings with ministers taking part, I wonder how the pressure to ease restrictions in light of the fairly rapid decline of hospitalisations might be voiced?  It certainly doesn't appear to be a key policy for any party so far.

[ayrmad]

41 minutes ago, super_carson said:

Especially when we consider Sunday cases tend to be lower anyway, that's a low positivity rate.

Good to see hospitalisation continue to fall. We are seriously getting to a point whereby there may only be a handful of people in hospital.

I do know crosshouse were down to 20 nearly a fortnight ago and seemingly ICU was actually a better destination for you when hospital numbers were at their highest. 

[Ekhibee88]

45 minutes ago, Big Fifer said:

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

Interesting it's the "oldies" who want back. We are the polar opposite. The younger "out after work" crowd are pushing for a return while the more mature types seem to be the ones pressing for more flexibility. My sector has always had a fair WFH element but we interact with umpteen different client groups and the different attitudes are quite stark.

I guess it depends on the company. I would imagine younger graduates at bigger companies would be dying to get into the office, not least of all because it's probably easier to learn but the early years of your career in those companies is about meeting new people and I know the first few years of the graduate culture is a sort of continuation of uni in terms of going out 2/3 times a week. My companies tiny and everyone apart from me has been there for at least 6/7 years so not really the same vibe.

Aye as an older graduate , I want to see more return to the office as I've struggled to find anything since last year. I phoned asking a few companies for work experience and they said they are not doing work experience or hiring. Its construction so an element is site visits etc. Just dying to get my foot in the door and get some experience. 

[Billy Jean King]

100% - I mentioned that the other day, the case numbers really now are only useful in that it's proving there is no longer the same correlation between cases and hospitalisations there was 4 months ago.  
With parliament not in again until after the election, and no daily briefings with ministers taking part, I wonder how the pressure to ease restrictions in light of the fairly rapid decline of hospitalisations might be voiced?  It certainly doesn't appear to be a key policy for any party so far.

An interesting point re election policy. I remember just a few weeks ago several posters saying they would vote for whichever party promised to remove Covid restrictions the quickest. It was widely accepted at that time that the opposition parties would campaign along some sort of quicker easing ticket but it simply doesn't seem to be materialising. It appears there is solid cross party support for what are seen as ott SNP restrictions and that to me is a surprise.

[Paco]

The rest of the UK has lower case numbers than us now, but still more than twice the rate in ICU, which shows that we weathered the second wave far better than the first.  

When the dust settles I think the Scottish Government will receive huge praise for the handling of the second wave. Frustrating to live through undoubtedly, and business might’ve been slightly more upset, but case numbers were lower than the rest of the UK pretty consistently from September until the last couple of weeks and we had significantly less death/hospitalisation when the peak did arrive. It’s all relative of course, and in Asia and much of Europe the words ‘success’ and ‘Scotland’ belong nowhere near each other. But in a UK context, solely on Covid related data, the performance was relatively good.

On the other hand I think Johnson’s persistent dithering from early October to early January will end up getting slated more than the initial inaction last March. It’s maddening to me that even the small areas of critical media appear to skate over this. The second wave was worse than the first, and virtually all of it was the doing of the Prime Minister.

[No_Problemo]

Effectively we should hopefully be looking at basically no one in hospital by the end of April.

[pandarilla]

An interesting point re election policy. I remember just a few weeks ago several posters saying they would vote for whichever party promised to remove Covid restrictions the quickest. It was widely accepted at that time that the opposition parties would campaign along some sort of quicker easing ticket but it simply doesn't seem to be materialising. It appears there is solid cross party support for what are seen as ott SNP restrictions and that to me is a surprise.

Fully agree.

[Bairnardo]

Effectively we should hopefully be looking at basically no one in hospital by the end of April.

Added to the context of stagnant or even increasing case numbers, there will be absolutely no justification for continuing restrictions whatsoever. If the link between the two is demonstrably broken, that's it.

[Guest]

If and when this is finally over, I'm just waiting on some smart alec bringing up the subject of "permanent" mask wearing as this could substantially reduce the number of infections and deaths from winter flu and pneumonia.