Leodisflyer wrote:eltonioni wrote:Today is day zero for compulsory face coverings so we'll hear about plenty of that sort of thing in the coming days.
Let's see if this encourages people to go back to work but don't hold your breath - not even in an ironic mask wearing way.
Do you mean back to work or back to their previous work location?
Both, so far as is possible, which is to say everyone that's not in a known vulnerable group.
Our economic structure is quite possibly about to collapse if we don't. Very many people don't have the luxury of being able to work at home in any case.. Very many of those that do are will very soon find that they too have no job because Hypertwist WashWipe Corp, the firm that makes the windscreen wiper control motor for the vans of the firm that empties the sanitary bins for the company that does the accounts of the joiner who fitted the staircase of the nursery school where the work-at-homer sends their kids doesn't need the Hypertwist WashWipe servo software update 3.5 that she was working on from the kitchen table instead of the office which has been closed and now doesn't need the ladies bogs servicing by vans with Hypertwist WashWipe servos.
^^That was the opposite of pithy but you know the point I'm making.
HMG have been releasing all sorts of papers and this one should catch the eye from just before lockdown. It formed some of the basis for Project Fear (Covid-19 Edition) that's scared the bejesus out of people but it bears no relation to what's actually happened. And yes, I am using the retrospectascope.
COVID-19 Reasonable Worst Case Planning Assumptions, as at 06/03/2020
SAGE secretariat
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... h_2020.pdf
Highlights include:
Infection fatality rate (IFR) 1%
Age distribution: Age Band / IFR
0–9 0.01%
10–19 0.01%
20–29 0.04%
30–39 0.09%
40–49 0.15%
50–59 0.69%
60–69 2.21%
70–79 5.92%
80+ 8.76%
Infection attack rate (IAR): 80% of the total population
Workforce absences: 21% nationally during peak weeks.Parse that lot into the UK population and we've got panic and understandable overreaction. We know a little bit more now and can adjust accordingly at the macro level.
As a slight aside I took these photos outside and in the car park at John Lewis in Sheffield centre yesterday (Saturday). In normal times this car park has a queue of patient Range Rovers, BMWs and Audis out in the street. Yesterday was the second day of reopening and it was free (FREE!) to park and I was in bay #70. You don't need me to say what's going on here, the emptiness says it all.
Masks aren't building confidence IMO. Our city centres are toast.They certainly won't survive another lockdown. The mask free pubs were curiously busy but the shops not so much. Most pubs / restaurants are toast and they won't survive closing to enable schools to reopen.
It's not unreasonable to say that anyone still on furlough PROB90 hasn't got a job to go back to. That's 9.5 million people as of
26 July.
Anyone who thinks that their lifetime of graft to accumulate pensions, savings and investments are safe is kidding themselves because the Chancellor is coming for them. It's just a matter of how much and when and that depends on how many people go back to work and when.
Nobody is safe. The non income generating public sector from pen pushers to surgeons will be hit as hard as the private sector and very many of those who remain employed will be techologised out of their career as fast as the P45's can be issued.
Basically, it's all a bit Carp and we're going to have to learn to live (and die) with this damned thing. I don't have any clever answers or even bright ideas.
Middle East Peace Expert. Military strategist. Former economist and epidemiologist.
Not always entirely serious.
-Still learning -