Lockdown - affected badly, a bit, not much or better off

[ik9000]

Lost one holiday this year. Booked another for July and now have to worry again. If these idiot protesters and so on and so on could just behave we could get our our life's together. I am now worried I'm going to lose July's as well now.

if the only way you're impacted is losing a holiday you're not doing too badly. Sympathise with the frustration, but there is far worse going on out there.

[Saracen999]

if the only way you're impacted is losing a holiday you're not doing too badly. Sympathise with the frustration, but there is far worse going on out there.

That's true, but Kovoet's answer did directly answer my question, and while one view is certainly that more is going on, I'd be a bit .... irked .... at losing one holiday, let alone two.

Then again, booking number 2 right now might be seen as a bit of a gamble.

[ik9000]

That's true, but Kovoet's answer did directly answer my question, and while one view is certainly that more is going on, I'd be a bit .... irked .... at losing one holiday, let alone two.

Then again, booking number 2 right now might be seen as a bit of a gamble.

yeah as I said I sympathise I was meaning "look on the bright side" rather than trying to have a dig sry if it didn't come across that way

[Kovoet]

if the only way you're impacted is losing a holiday you're not doing too badly. Sympathise with the frustration, but there is far worse going on out there.

I agree, I run a bicycle shop and the sales have been unbelievable but so glad I have a job. Not had any time off since it started just exhausted at the moment. Batteries are flat.

[Domestic_Ginger]

We bought my son a hamster for his b'day. I think our life style is identical although my tube run doesn't need washing every couple of days.

[Jonatron]

I agree, I run a bicycle shop and the sales have been unbelievable but so glad I have a job. Not had any time off since it started just exhausted at the moment. Batteries are flat.

Do you still have stock? I heard a lot of shops have sold out

[spacein_vader]

I've been lucky. Nobody we know has died or even been hospitalised. My job is VERY safe (in the NHS,) and my wifes is too as a teacher. We've saved no end of money on commuting, pre/post school childcare and swimming lessons & brownie subs for the kids which has meant we have been able to pay off the £5k of emergency credit card debt (soffits and facias replaced at short notice in November due to serious leaks into the house through the rotten ones,) and via working from home. In the long term it seems I'll be able to continue working at home 60-80% of the time as there's almost none of it I can't do from here.

The garden is looking as good as it ever has and we're eating more scratch cooked meals (and learning new recipes,) than ever, though we were keen cooks anyway. The only downside is that we have put on a little weight.

As I said, we've been EXTREMELY lucky, and are trying not to take any of it for granted. Many friends & family are likely to have their jobs put at risk in the near future and it's not too late for someones health to fail.

[Kovoet]

Do you still have stock? I heard a lot of shops have sold out

Barely any stock We are slowly replenishing. I have done my years target already, it's been crazy.

[PC-LAD]

Fun one for me this thread, I've not really been active on the forum since march. Because I lost my job, I started doing work as an uber eats delivery driver full time instead of just the weekends. The big up to it all is my fitness but that's about it

[Saracen999]

Fun one for me this thread, I've not really been active on the forum since march. Because I lost my job, I started doing work as an uber eats delivery driver full time instead of just the weekends. The big up to it all is my fitness but that's about it

So sorry to hear that.

One of the things that worries me is that I expect unemployment to go up, a lot, when furloughing is phased out. Even today, we've seen announcements of thousands more. The more that happens, the harder getting any work at all is going to get as competition increases.

We might be seeing the end of the worst of the health risks, assuming we avoid second, third, etc., waves but we've barely seen the outlines of the economic damage so far.

[Saracen999]

I'm not going to get into "purposefully" or otherwise, because it seems to me to require speculation as to motivation, for which there is no hard evidence.

I said we might be seeing the end of the first wave. I doubt any level of testing would give the full extent, not least due to limitations of the tests themselves. However, most hospitals are currently scaling back Covid provisons, releasing quite a bit of wards, ICUs and other facilities back to pre-Covid uses, and resuming a more normal level of service (allowing for a mountain of backlogs) for less than really urgent (which have been dealt with right through the lockdown) cases, and even elective surgery like joint replacement is picking up again.

That is not to suggest we're fre and clear. Or that it's all sunlit uplands. Not by a large margin. But the both the testing we do have, and the somewhat relaxing stance of the NHS strongly suggest the feared disaster has backed off (at least for now) and that things are currently heading in the right direction. In most places.

We could still yet reverse that trend if eing the lockdown goes to far, or too many people take stupid risks, and we likely will see some sort of second wave come winter, unless an effective vaccine is found.

Even then, even if one or more of about 150 current vaccine candidates does "work", a lot will depend on how "work" is defined. A vaccine could, for example, have a Covid-sterilising effect, preventing the virus from infecting the inoculated. That's the best-case scenario ..... sterilising, and shipped world-wide.

But a "vaccine" could also have the effect of rendering the disease effects minimal or zero, while leaving the inoculated persons till infectious to others.

At the moment, we're still learning about Covid and quite how it works. We've learned a lot, but also still have quite a long way to go and we won't really know the true extent of wave 1 until we understand C19 the way we understand smallpox or measles.

Another complex aspect of the "true extent" is the degree and nature of effect on those unlucky rough to have had a nasty case of C19 but lucky enough to have survived. some have spent weeks in induced comas in IC, and they are going to have weeks or more likely months more of quite intensive physiotherapy to get full body function back. After all, muscles start to atrophy in as little as a few days, never mind weeks, and they still don't know to what extent some damage, may be irreversible.

We also don't know yet why some people get C19 and don't notice symptoms, even when they are medically trained, and others are put in ICU by it. Many theories abound, but little hard fact on that.

[Domestic_Ginger]

I don't think our testing has been purposely this bad. Its more a case of the contracts being handed out to the usual culprits. Wrt our 'whack a mole' strategy I'm not really sure is going to work without tracing or testing. Our benevolent leader already has the 'common sense of the British people' to blame for fail. By whack a mole I do mean the Oxford dictionary definition.

1.1Used with reference to a situation in which attempts to solve a problem are piecemeal or superficial, resulting only in temporary or minor improvement.

Deleted rant.

[spacein_vader]

While this is serious thread drift given the OP is one of the drifters I'll join in!

The NHS isn't really worried about a second wave, not in isolation and not in July-September. It's worried about next winter. That's when all the flu cases and usual winter pressures come to bear, plus any 2nd wave (or just long tail from the first wave,) COVID cases, plus the backlog that has been built up due to normal services being closed/reduced or patients being unwilling to attend during lockdown.

It only just copes in a normal winter, I struggle to see how it will keep its head above water from this October-March even if we have a fairly mild flu season.

[Saracen999]

Why has our response been sooo much worse than the rest of europe? Why did boris discuss herd immunity as a theory as to how to deal with it? Why degrade the threat of corona when we knew from other countries that it would be devastating? The tories wasted soo much time persuing the stupidest of solutions. Remember the british consortium to build ventilators instead of simply who ventilators up to spec? which they then ended up doing? Honestly it feels like you're being a little naive. The tories have repeatedly lied about soo much. I mean it was revealed there was 22 days where the deaths exceeded 1000 people but they lied.

Also because of how bad we are doing with our covid response in contrast to the rest of the world we have caused fresh infections in places like new zealand where efforts where winding down due to lack of cases.

If we magically had a vaccine with a 100% cure rate the tories would mess it up and people would die.

:....

Please don't take this wrong, but I have no interest in dealing with an anti-Tory rant, because neither of us are going to change minds. And by the way, for clarity, I'm not a Tory .... except when it comes to the alternative being Corbyn (or his -ism). So I'm not going to waste any more of my life on it. Done it, got the t-shirt, and it was a waste of time then, too.

Also the tories have refused to extend brexit while all this is happening....

Good. Just about every Brussels regular admits there is a tendency for prevarication, positioning and posturing until the "last minute". Of course, last minute is not literal as the process (ratification) takes a while but minds won't be concentrated until "last minute".

And that's on both sides.

All extending the deadline will do is extend the prevarication phase and the two sides will continue to repeat/parrot their position ad-nauseum, just like up until now.

I don't agree the pandemic affects that. Both sides are capable of dealing with more than one thing at a time and, in large measure, those dealing with Brexit and those dealing with the pandemic are different people, and for that matter, different ministries.

If we want a deal, either it'll come last minute or, conceivably, neither side is prepared enough to get there. And should that ultimately proved to be the case, the quicker we get on with it, the sooner businesses know what we're dealing with and the sooner we remove the uncertainty.

Delay is really only code for not Brexiting at all, and the country has already passed it's verdict on that.

[ik9000]

Both sides are capable of dealing with more than one thing at a time and, in large measure, those dealing with Brexit and those dealing with the pandemic are different people, and for that matter, different ministries.

ok I'll bite. If one thing has become apparent during this crisis it is that our government are not capable of dealing with one thing at a time, nevermind two.

I know people involved in the Covid response and in the Brexit negotiations. It sounds like utter chaos. Negotiating by zoom is not a way to get this done. It's of significant national importance FFS. Saying they're a different department is nice in theory but in reality there is a limited pool of skills within the Civil Service, and a dearth of solid ministerial acumen and what there is can only be devoted to so much at any given time.

[Smudger]

<Brexit> A deal isn't and never has been the target for the Tufton Street massive, it was always going to be No Deal </Brexit>

The narrative for the pandemic has now shifted, any 2nd peak or local outbreak is deemed to be the peoples own fault, nothing to do with shoddy government guidance...