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    Originally posted by Eggchaser View Post
    I see that the Government are settling up "scientific advice" to take the fall.



    Meanwhile in "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, YOU FUCKING IDIOT?!?" news, as I was cleaning my wife's car this afternoon in the bright sunshine, I heard the chimes of the ice cream van. Jesus wept.
    We had the ice cream van around today too.

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      North Carolina's health director says the state won't set-up drive-through testing because it expects the private sector to do that. Narrator: It' won't.

      NC has really jumped the shark as a state.

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        So any union advice re those of us in rota. We don't have any antibacterial wipes, handwash, gloves, aprons, masks. We have one digital forehead thermometer ... should we check kids and staff?? If temperature do we send them home , we don't have any paracetamol and if we did can we hand them out??
        This is from one of the teachers at my school in our union WhatsApp group.

        I'm so glad I'm not going in for a few more days as this shows the ridiculous and, more importantly, downright dangerous job we are being asked to do. We're fucking teachers not trained medical staff.

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          Originally posted by Antepli Ejderha View Post
          We had the ice cream van around today too.
          As I got back from my walk along the canal (quieter than you would expect) I could hear it in the next street.

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            "Liberty"


            https://twitter.com/warren__terra/status/1241803844163497984

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              Chronicle reporting up here that the coastal areas and tourist hot spots in the North East were absolutely packed. Long queues for the chippy, car parks full, and local shops getting shelves stripped.

              Heard an ice cream van here too, yet the wind outside is seriously chilly.

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                Give him Liberty and give everyone else an easily communicable disease.

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                  This "the flu kills more people" canard is getting tiresome. Feel free to cut and paste.

                  A) If we don't do anything, and even if we do a lot, this will likely kill a lot more people than that. All the numbers show it is more deadly and more infectious than the usual flu, partly because that's just how the virus works, but also because we have flu vaccines and we have collectively built up more immunity to non-novel strains of the flu. And we don't know what we don't know about this virus, whereas the flu has been studied more thoroughly so we are better able to manage the risk. Also, there's a good chance that some number of people who get COVID-19 will have permanent lung damage that impairs them for the rest of their life and probably shortens their life. So that has to be factored in too.
                  https://www.sciencealert.com/the-new...hing-in-common
                  https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/13/21176735/covid-19-coronavirus-worse-than-flu-comparison

                  B)
                  We can and should do a lot more to combat the regular flu, so our usual response to that is too low of a bar to set for how we respond to future viral outbreaks. Not enough people get vaccinated. Not enough people are willing or able to stay away from groups when they are clearly sick. We don't wash our hands enough or clean our built environment well enough. Etc. The same goes for the specious argument about how we still have cars even though people die on the roads. We can and should do more about that, but driving has gotten progressively safer over the years. COVID-19 rates are skyrocketing.
                  https://www.health.com/condition/col...u-die-from-flu

                  C) Most importantly, the seasonal flu doesn't overwhelm the medical system. If somebody dies of the flu in the hospital, there probably was not much that could be done for them that wasn't being done. With COVID-19, lots of people who would have lived in times of normal patient volumes will die. Some percentage of them would have died anyway, perhaps, but the lessons of Italy and Spain are that a lot of them would not have if the system weren't overwhelmed. But now that it is overwhelmed, there won't be enough staff or equipment to treat all of them, so the hospital will just have to play the odds and treat the people with the best chance of surviving. Older and sicker people will be given a sedative to die as peacefully as possible. My friend the nurse near Philly has already got the directive of how to choose who to try to save and who to let die. This is not how medicine is normally practiced in this country or, as far as I know, any country not in th middle of a war or massive natural disaster.

                  D) The economy is going to take a massive hit and lots of people will need help in the coming months and years. But there are many more ways for governments and society to fix a damaged economy than there are ways to bring dead people back to life. I think Keynes said that. If he didn't, he should have.





                  Is the ice cream truck usually out and about in March? Not really warm enough for that, I wouldn't think.

                  Here it starts up when the pools open on Memorial Day. (end of May). In fact, it might not even start then because they probably need a high school kid to run it and they're not out of school until mid June.


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                    Was he the one who never washed his hands, because that doesn't protect you against infection it just means you are weak or some such bull****?

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                      He's an opthalmologist . . .

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                        It was very balmy in leafy Hertfordshire today, we were in the garden, er, gardening and my son was wearing shorts. Clear blue skies, a lovely day to be out and about (if a deadly virus wasn't on the loose).

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                          https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1241814549759696896?s=20

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                            Originally posted by Eggchaser View Post
                            It was very balmy in leafy Hertfordshire today, we were in the garden, er, gardening and my son was wearing shorts. Clear blue skies, a lovely day to be out and about (if a deadly virus wasn't on the loose).
                            That seems to be true for lots of places. Really great weather here. Really great weather for this time of year in New England. But also, pandemic. Can't win, why try.

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                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                              He's an opthalmologist . . .
                              I'll need more info than that, ursus. There are, after all, people with Republican political beliefs and degrees in Biology who contest the existence of evolution.

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                                Originally posted by Eggchaser View Post
                                It was very balmy in leafy Hertfordshire today, we were in the garden, er, gardening and my son was wearing shorts. Clear blue skies, a lovely day to be out and about (if a deadly virus wasn't on the loose).
                                It was warmish in the direct sun today in this part of Herts. But the air temp was only 12 or 13 degrees as I found out when I threw the door to the garden open. I had to shut it pretty quickly again because of the chill it was creating. 12-13C is still pretty parky for an ice cream truck to be going around.

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                                  Originally posted by Janik View Post
                                  I'll need more info than that, ursus. There are, after all, people with Republican political beliefs and degrees in Biology who contest the existence of evolution.
                                  I went to college with a few of those. The cognitive dissonance is remarkable.

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                                    BTW, Kontaktverbot is a great word.

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                                      There must be creationist MDs, but I have to think that they wash their hands.

                                      It was Tillis of North Carolina
                                      BBC News - US senator questions forcing food workers to wash hands
                                      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31127704

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                                        Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post
                                        NHS to contact most vulnerable groups, asking them to stay at home for 12 weeks.
                                        .
                                        My parents' 12 week self-isolation started yesterday We're fortunate in that my brothers and sister all live nearby, but it' easy to imagine cases where the situation is different.

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                                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                          It was Tillis of North Carolina
                                          BBC News - US senator questions forcing food workers to wash hands
                                          http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31127704
                                          Ta. And that ties up neatly with HP's post at the top of the page.

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                                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                            There must be creationist MDs, but I have to think that they wash their hands.

                                            It was Tillis of North Carolina
                                            BBC News - US senator questions forcing food workers to wash hands
                                            http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31127704
                                            He's up for re-election this year. His opponent really needs to hammer this home over the next few months.

                                            Rand Paul was always a fucking moron, but there are so many questions: Why is he such a fucking moron? Why is his gym open? Why is the pool open? Does he actually hate people who use his gym? Is it the Senate gym? Can he be prosecuted for manslaughter is anyone catches the virus in his gym?

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                                              Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                              Is the ice cream truck usually out and about in March? Not really warm enough for that, I wouldn't think.
                                              There was a time, must be some years back now, when the ice cream van used to work during at least part of the winter. On one memorable occasion I recall our local van running merrily along behind a snowplough.

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                                                In another, tasteful triumph for capitalism, Talksport have started running adverts for funeral directors.

                                                As for outdoor sports which could possibly continue under current circumstances - jousting?

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                                                  Played golf again this morning. Today's was at a cheaper course. Frankly, if the golfers and courses behave like today's, they should shut it down. None of the precautions were in place: Rakes were in bunkers, non family were sharing carts, large groups were hanging around chatting, the cups were recessed and people were pulling pins, the two guys we were paired up with were all "I'm good, I've got a good immune system", and ignored comments like "you should have like you have it, and try not infecting other people". I feel less confident that Californians are going to be rational and cautious after that. Maybe we can't be trusted to behave like adults.

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                                                    2 interesting local developments over the weekend here:

                                                    1. We have 2 big holiday lets in our hamlet (8-10 bedrooms) which are normally hired for group celebration events (luckily rarely rented to noisy arseholes, who get told to look elsewhere). Upcoming bookings have been cancelled, so instead the owners have taken initial 3 month short-term lets with a couple of uber rich London families escaping the metropolis instead. One has gone for £15k rent a month (!). Not sure about the rate on the other one. Rentiers gonna rent, I suppose. I suppose this will be replicated at other local holiday lets, and a sudden inflow of sharp-elbowed entitled twats doing the renting will no doubt help to push our local, rural services over the edge. Not good.

                                                    2. We live next to a National Trust property (Scotney Castle). Yesterday, it was overrun with so many people driving out for a ramble the social distancing request became a joke , so the NT has had to close the grounds off to visitors today and for the foreseeable. A knock on effect was the day visitors were like locusts in the village stores, stripping them of stock when they’d been mostly immune & off-grid to the supermarket panic shopping of last week. Also not good.

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