Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[scottsdad]

5 minutes ago, Theyellowbox said:

It's not the masks that I think will cause the issue, it is the lack of requirement to isolate.

What we should be saying is that while it is not a legal requirement, you should still be minded to isolate where possible. Not just with this, but with any virus.

What also slightly gives me a fear is that we don't really know how many positive cases are out there now. If you do test positive, I'd imagine not everyone will register it. Aside from collating the numbers, there is nothing that registering a positive test helps you with. 

In some ways we are now treating Covid like any other respiratory virus.

Feel ill? Stay at home (but some won't). 

I had a cold in January. I didn't test myself but, like I have done for the last 40-odd years, I stayed at home. Didn't want to pass it on to anyone. Didn't feel like going out. Without government guidelines I did pretty much self isolate. 

This shouldn't give you the fear. This is the new - and very much the old - normal. What we are losing is the theatre of daily figures.

[Michael W]

44 minutes ago, Theyellowbox said:

It's not the masks that I think will cause the issue, it is the lack of requirement to isolate.

What we should be saying is that while it is not a legal requirement, you should still be minded to isolate where possible. Not just with this, but with any virus. 

There are plenty other infectious diseases out there. If you have norovirus or the flu for example, you wouldn't go to work and likely won't go to.the shops etc. If you are unwell, that seems pretty basic and I think a lot of people miss that. 

The guidance at my work is now that you are advised to work from home for 5 days (provided you are well enough to) if you have Covid. However, it is accepted that you can't be prevented from coming in. 

For me, this is an area where attitudes genuinely do need to change. How many of us have gone in coughing and spluttering because we felt well enough to work but also felt we couldn't work from home because this would be viewed by management as A Very Bad Thing, or it simply wasn't allowed? Or we watched our colleagues do the same. In the end, everyone else got the cold or whatever it was. If you're unwell but not too ill to work then you should really be working from home if you are able to. 

The culture of presenteeism needs to change. You can be unwell, but well enough to work. In which case you should work remotely rather than either take a sick day or go in and give everyone else the sniffles. There is of course a counter issue here in that some employers might try an coerce genuinely unwell employees to work from home when they shouldn't be working. I think it's a separate point, but nevertheless one that has to be monitored. 

We don't have to have management fearing remote work the way they did previously any more. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Michael W

[Lofarl]

Those of us who can’t work from home are in a predicament.  My work will advice us not to come in but will give no guarantees that staying off won’t count as an absence.

So if I catch the Rona.  I’ll be phoning up and telling them I have it.  I’ll be coming in and if they don’t want me in fine.  I’ll not be having it counted as an absence.

[Theyellowbox]

51 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

They ARE saying that.

Not sure how not knowing numbers of positive cases is a cause for fear. Surely it's only a cause for concern if hospitalisations go up?

But people still get very ill and don't necessarily require hospitalisation. I'd say that given it is still a new virus, it would be better to have all the info at hand. If anything, the ability to test for a certain virus at home and have assess to the correct information regarding it should be rolled out to other viruses given we have now both the knowledge and technology. 

You say they are saying that, but let's be honest, the government and many employees are signalling quite the opposite. In the eyes of them, Covid is done and old news. That's before you get onto the lack of knowing how many people or infected equals a lack of knowing where there will be additional pressures on services coming and also whether there is new strains out there that could be more harmful than the current. 

 

19 minutes ago, Michael W said:

There are plenty other infectious diseases out there. If you have norovirus or the flu for example, you wouldn't go to work and likely won't go to.the shops etc. If you are unwell, that seems pretty basic and I think a lot of people miss that. 

The guidance at my work is now that you are advised to work from home for 5 days (provided you are well enough to) if you have Covid. However, it is accepted that you can't be prevented from coming in. 

For me, this is an area where attitudes genuinely do need to change. How many of us have gone in coughing and spluttering because we felt well enough to work but also felt we couldn't work from home because this would be viewed by management as A Very Bad Thing, or it simply wasn't allowed? Or we watched our colleagues do the same. In the end, everyone else got the cold or whatever it was. If you're unwell but not too ill to work then you should really be working from home if you are able to. 

The culture of presenteeism needs to change. You can be unwell, but well enough to work. In which case you should work remotely rather than either take a sick day or go in and give everyone else the sniffles. There is of course a counter issue here in that some employers might try an coerce genuinely unwell employees to work from home when they shouldn't be working. I think it's a separate point, but nevertheless one that has to be monitored. 

We don't have to have management fearing remote work the way they did previously any more. 

Exactly this. In the past we all went into work knowingly unwell but did so because a) the risk of death or serious illness was low and b) it was expected of us. We are now in a world that many (although not all clearly) have the ability to work from home. We need to be smarter in the way we all work going forward, but slso smarter in the data that health authorities have on illnesses in the population. We have the technology today to save the NHS billions in early detection of not just covid, but all sorts of other illnesses. By default, the pandemic has given the population a crash education in virology and general virus control. We should be building on that knowledge. 

 

[jimbaxters]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

So if he has consistently got stuff wrong about covid, what gives you confidence that he knows what he's talking about?

 

Firstly, he has consistently got it right, not always but close. Also, he backs it up with available data. In fact, most of the time, he is just interpreting and analysing it. 

Again, not everyone is just banging their gums on the subject...except on this thread.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

1 hour ago, Michael W said:

There are plenty other infectious diseases out there. If you have norovirus or the flu for example, you wouldn't go to work and likely won't go to.the shops etc. If you are unwell, that seems pretty basic and I think a lot of people miss that. 

The guidance at my work is now that you are advised to work from home for 5 days (provided you are well enough to) if you have Covid. However, it is accepted that you can't be prevented from coming in. 

For me, this is an area where attitudes genuinely do need to change. How many of us have gone in coughing and spluttering because we felt well enough to work but also felt we couldn't work from home because this would be viewed by management as A Very Bad Thing, or it simply wasn't allowed? Or we watched our colleagues do the same. In the end, everyone else got the cold or whatever it was. If you're unwell but not too ill to work then you should really be working from home if you are able to. 

The culture of presenteeism needs to change. You can be unwell, but well enough to work. In which case you should work remotely rather than either take a sick day or go in and give everyone else the sniffles. There is of course a counter issue here in that some employers might try an coerce genuinely unwell employees to work from home when they shouldn't be working. I think it's a separate point, but nevertheless one that has to be monitored. 

We don't have to have management fearing remote work the way they did previously any more. 

Presentee-ism and the expectation of it from boses is probably down to a not insignificant amount of absentee-ism in our culture, every place i've worked has had someone who earned the nickname bob geldoff due to their habbit of feeling "poorly" on a monday. i know of several people who have been chronically unable to hold down a job , not because they are addicted dependent alcoholics, but because they can't pull up the handbrake on a sunday afternoon

[Michael W]

8 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Presentee-ism and the expectation of it from boses is probably down to a not insignificant amount of absentee-ism in our culture, every place i've worked has had someone who earned the nickname bob geldoff due to their habbit of feeling "poorly" on a monday. i know of several people who have been chronically unable to hold down a job , not because they are addicted dependent alcoholics, but because they can't pull up the handbrake on a sunday afternoon

That's a management issue and should be directly addressed with said employee. I do however think it feeds down into management thoughts and clouds their judgement. 

My previous employer had a very bad culture of presenteeism. Working from home (before covid) was begrudgingly tolerated one day a week, but any more than that and it was immediately called out. I very rarely worked from home, but thought the attitude to it was pretty strange. 

My employer before that (a Government department) instituted a policy after I left where staff could work one day a week at home. Except in one particular region because the Deputy Director didn't like it. National policy ignored because of one person, an utter nonsense. 

I think it's largely a control thing.

[scottsdad]

27 minutes ago, Michael W said:

That's a management issue and should be directly addressed with said employee. I do however think it feeds down into management thoughts and clouds their judgement. 

My previous employer had a very bad culture of presenteeism. Working from home (before covid) was begrudgingly tolerated one day a week, but any more than that and it was immediately called out. I very rarely worked from home, but thought the attitude to it was pretty strange. 

My employer before that (a Government department) instituted a policy after I left where staff could work one day a week at home. Except in one particular region because the Deputy Director didn't like it. National policy ignored because of one person, an utter nonsense. 

I think it's largely a control thing.

Back in 2007/8 I was in the civil service and we moved to allow compressed hours. Old school flexitime was there before I arrived (core hours 10-4 and all that jazz) but the idea that someone could work 4 long days per week and have the fifth off was new. Our Director was aghast - the idea that he could pick up the phone for someone and they're not at their desk was utterly alien to him. His deputy convinced him of the merits though. 

It all seems so twee post-Covid. Haggling over half an hour here and there. 

Since I moved to the uni, I always worked a mix of from home and on campus. All they cared about were outputs - was I publishing research? Was I delivering teaching? Was I applying for grants? If so they couldn't care less if I was in the office, at home or on the moon. It was very liberating. For me I guess the big move to WFH wasn't much of a gap to cross. 

Interesting listening to the wife. Her office are all going back 2/3 days per week for now and there is a lot of managing rotas going on to see who is in the office and when. 

[Dawson Park Boy]

1 hour ago, jimbaxters said:

Firstly, he has consistently got it right, not always but close. Also, he backs it up with available data. In fact, most of the time, he is just interpreting and analysing it. 

Again, not everyone is just banging their gums on the subject...except on this thread.

Campbell has been a true hero during this Covid period just like vDesmond Swayne, JHB, Mark Harper, GBNews and many more.

Thank god for them.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

16 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

Back in 2007/8 I was in the civil service and we moved to allow compressed hours. Old school flexitime was there before I arrived (core hours 10-4 and all that jazz) but the idea that someone could work 4 long days per week and have the fifth off was new. Our Director was aghast - the idea that he could pick up the phone for someone and they're not at their desk was utterly alien to him. His deputy convinced him of the merits though. 

 

office staff tried that at our work, what they found was that it was so popular, a few cynical people decided not to bother doing the longer hours thro the week since they realised that come Friday there was nae c**t there to keeps tabs on them and they could f**k off by 11. 

Anyway, heres todays update. it is certainly true that hospital numbers have went up a fair bit, we still dont have much breakdown in the for/with area.  perhaps it could be down to many more people either not testing or not reporting results and the official figure are more a reflection of those who are unwell rather than simple positive tests. it would paint a picture of community transmission being quite high at the moment. ICU has stayed pretty flat tho

• 8,656 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 0 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive (noting that Register Offices are generally closed at weekends)
• 18 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,360 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, jimbaxters said:

Firstly, he has consistently got it right, not always but close. Also, he backs it up with available data. In fact, most of the time, he is just interpreting and analysing it. 

Again, not everyone is just banging their gums on the subject...except on this thread.

On here that would get you labelled a "moonhowler"

[Ross.]

Just about recovered from some seemingly non covid virus. Felt rough on Wednesday and like death warmed up Thursday until yesterday afternoon. Tested negative every day from Wednesday through until this morning. A bit disappointed to be honest. I only took Friday off on the sick and the constant negative testing means I couldn't justify not being in the office today.

[Lyle Lanley]

4 hours ago, TheScarf said:

Aye there definitely seems to be an upturn in cases at the moment.  Right in time for Sturgeon to reverse the masks wearing turning to guidance a fortnight today.

Don't think NS will reverse the decision for the 21st of March. 

 

[TheScarf]

3 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

Don't think NS will reverse the decision for the 21st of March. 

 

No, but she would definitely want to.

[razamanaz]

Why are the covid numbers so much higher up here - have the English and Welsh cut back on the testing?

[Left Back]

3 minutes ago, razamanaz said:

Why are the covid numbers so much higher up here - have the English and Welsh cut back on the testing?

anti-social c***s imo

[TheScarf]

20 minutes ago, razamanaz said:

Why are the covid numbers so much higher up here - have the English and Welsh cut back on the testing?

That and getting on with life probably.

[Dawson Park Boy]

37 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

See, this is the problem. People are just picking their heroes based on whether they are saying what they want to hear.

They are all attention seeking charlatans, some of whom got a bit lucky with their predictions - like all the best charlatans.

Nobody. Absolutely nobody called covid correctly.

There are no "experts" in covid and there never have been.

Campbell isn't a hero and GB News certainly aren't.

 

I disagree.

Probably you haven’t followed Campbell and I only did so after a poster recommended him as a neutral commentator on the plethora of data and opinions being delivered on the main topic of our times as it impinged so much on our civil liberties. I agree there are no ‘experts’ on Covid but I found Campbell to be someone who I could relate to in his very unassuming and humble approach to the topic unlike so many others who had an obvious agenda.
Regarding GBNews they consistently challenged the mainstream views on Covid and, through their presenters, gave a libertarian viewpoint which I found coincided with my own. I appreciate it is probably not to the taste of most on here but, on this subject at least, I found it a ‘breath of fresh air’.

Anyway, hopefully we won’t be hearing too much more on Covid as there are more important things going on in the world at the present time.

[Dawson Park Boy]

54 minutes ago, razamanaz said:

Why are the covid numbers so much higher up here - have the English and Welsh cut back on the testing?

Masks are still legally enforceable up here.

Filthy bits of cloth.

[gav-ffc]

5 minutes ago, Dawson Park Boy said:

Masks are still legally enforceable up here.

Filthy bits of cloth.

How long after masks are dropped will they say they weren’t law but only guidance just like self isolation was?