General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat
- Thread starter phillm
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
can the police minister now dispatch cops without reference to chief cunstables and police & crime commissioners?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Dunno. Send in the army I say
Was wondering today about 'herd immunity' and immune systems. Most the population have been distancing, staying out of (most) shops and work placeherd immunity on the way
how much impact does that have on the immune system generally? Does that have any impact on the 'so called' herd immunity?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
"Herd immunity" is just the situation which arises when enough people have been exposed to the infectious agent and are now immune, to the extent that there are insufficient infectable hosts for the virus to be able to stay in circulation.Was wondering today about 'herd immunity' and immune systems. Most the population have been distancing, staying out of (most) shops and work place
The problem is that you usually want to achieve herd immunity via something controllable like vaccination, which - nutjob woo-merchant loonytunes times aside - is a LOT safer than just letting people get infected. Added to which, we don't know anything about the immunity behaviour of SARS-CoV-2, or even whether any immunity to subsequent infection is even conferred at all...and then, of course, there are the risks of complications from the infection itself.
Anyone thinking of going for herd immunity in the current situation was, in my view, guilty of a callous and cynical half-wittedness of epic proportions. #therearenotenoughlampposts
I see dead people!
If their selfish risk taking was limited to them I would wish death on them and their families. Sadly they will potentially spread it around for us all to share.
The UK has not had it in my lifetime.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Numbers
an ting!
Don’t apologise, I’m fuming about this. The crowds not your pedantry.Disgusting thing to say.
It's FEWER
sorry
As above I don’t get out much.Pedantry? PEDANTRY???
elbows
Well-Known Member
Was wondering today about 'herd immunity' and immune systems. Most the population have been distancing, staying out of (most) shops and work place
I've touched on this once or twice before I think, when trying to describe the logic behind certain established thoughts that sounded all wrong in this pandemic.
Epidemiologists spend most of their time dealing with epidemics, not pandemics. And they are used to operating in situations where mass vaccination is an option.
So in much of their working lives, one of the dangers they are highly attuned to is overall levels of population immunity against an existing virus starting to drop, because once that drops to a certain level then the situation becomes ripe for an epidemic. They would favour some kind of equilibrium, rather than the cycle of boom and bust (boom and bust being epidemic years and years with only background levels of virus activity).
When you remove vaccines from the toolkit and are dealing with a new novel virus where the population doesnt have existing immunity, their instincts are still inevitably primed to the stuff I've just mentioned, but there becomes little chance of generating acceptable public health policy from such thinking.
High levels of population immunity remain a desirable goal, but can hardly be sold as a desirable goal if there is no decent, sane and safe means of actually achieving it. Some people got in a mess over this because they could not let go of the goal despite the way of getting there being unacceptable in so many ways in the case of this pandemic. In the case of the UK government getting in a mess over it in March, it was part of their doomed attempt to sell their original plan, and we can see in SAGE papers that the idea came from someone within the behavioural modelling group, and the idea of bringing it up was for a very specific purpose:
So it was just part of an attempt to justify the original UK plan, a plan that involved doing too little too late. And people were not happy with the plan, and it was while desperately having a final attempt at selling the plan to the public that Vallance decided to try that line of explanation that one or more people in SPI-B came up with days earlier. It blew up in his face straight away and the plan they were trying to defend using that herd immunity line was dead within a day or two.
Returning to the immunity stuff, let me create a fake scenario and then suggest what epidemiologists would think of it. If you told them we could stop anyone in the UK getting flu for the next 10 years, but then it would come back in and we would have no vaccine to deal with it initially, I'm pretty sure they would shit themselves with horror. Because thats the opposite of equilibrium, its a situation ripe for a huge epidemic, and they might fear something equivalent to a pandemic as a result. This is obviously a made up scenario but I'm using this inflated example to explore what sort of thinking they would have about people being kept tucked safely away from all infections for long periods of time.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Just cry there's a Tory in the water and the beach would clear faster than you can say Maastricht treaty
Numbers
an ting!
First day in the office for me since this started. Just fancied a change, came in via car and the company have some real good protocols in place, provide masks etc. which are mandatory to wear in shared spaces. My floor usually holds a cpl of hundred people, there’s about 20 tops.
Probably come in every Friday from now on.
Probably come in every Friday from now on.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I'm back at work for a bit - helping set up an office block with 100-odd socially-distanced work stations.
There are separate up and down stairs, but no masks - though we're tending to work separately and there are very few people on site. We're tending to work fairly light hours - 9.30 to 3.30 ... as it takes a while for stuff to get done ...
The guy I'm working with most lives alone like me...
My colleagues are looking and acting distinctly rough after not seeing them for 12 weeks - my first experience with people I know.
I've been chosen to work on site partly because of my own iffy mental state - I'm hoping that a month or more of this will help me finally go to HR and hand in my notice once I've brought the contents of my desk home on my bike - two panniers at a time...
It feels very weird not wearing a mask - though the workstations won't be used by clients for several weeks....
the top person at work is a medical doctor and the place is stuffed full of scientists, so I assume they have everything covered.
There are separate up and down stairs, but no masks - though we're tending to work separately and there are very few people on site. We're tending to work fairly light hours - 9.30 to 3.30 ... as it takes a while for stuff to get done ...
The guy I'm working with most lives alone like me...
My colleagues are looking and acting distinctly rough after not seeing them for 12 weeks - my first experience with people I know.
I've been chosen to work on site partly because of my own iffy mental state - I'm hoping that a month or more of this will help me finally go to HR and hand in my notice once I've brought the contents of my desk home on my bike - two panniers at a time...
It feels very weird not wearing a mask - though the workstations won't be used by clients for several weeks....
the top person at work is a medical doctor and the place is stuffed full of scientists, so I assume they have everything covered.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
No word yet on going back to work but have to go in later this week to retrieve my stuff (moving to new workplace in autumn)
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
you're a trusting soul
I had a text from my manager (admin not engineering) yesterday, asking if it is okay for her to ring me on Thursday to discuss what may be happening in the near future. I presume it is about a phased return to work, but experience tells me to be prepared for anything.
Occupational health are calling this morning to ‘see how I am’. I guess to prepare my manager’s approach.
Occupational health are calling this morning to ‘see how I am’. I guess to prepare my manager’s approach.
Myself and most colleagues are still just getting general texts saying "as you were" each Friday from the team-managers.
In our particular CS organisation, no thought was ever given to arranging for (m)any of us to work from home ...
A few higher managers, and one or two others doing properly emergency work, have actually been going in twice a week and WFH for the rest, but that's it.
Getting each of the rest of us a work-systems-secure laptop and printer wouldn't be an issue, even though expensive.
But it's overwhelmingly physical paperwork that we deal with in the offices, and they must have decided that physically delivering this to us several times a week (or even daily??
), and collecting the processed files from us as well, would be too complicated logistically.
There are thousands of us doing this type of work, we're a huge employer, and I'm among the minority who actually live near central Swansea -- most colleagues live well out of town.
So I can see why they knocked any idea of WFH on the head very early!!
Even now, only very limited numbers from our standard teams are going back, and on a highly part-time basis (two days a week right now for those who are going in at all, as I understand it).
Our normally very busy offices have large number of banks of desks on each floor -- there are usually at least 50 to 60 individuals on our floor alone, for instance.
Apparantly, desk-dividers have been built, plus loads more of sanitiser provided, but they're being correctly ultra-strict about physical distancing in the office, and all sorts of other stuff.
And for myself? I'm in what Public Health Wales and my employers count as in a 'vulnerable' category.
Not high-level vulnerable (like post-transplant or whatever), just standard vulnerable, as if I'm over 70 (I said 'as if'!
) but generally OK.
So myself and a few others are likely to be among the very last to go back -- unless the Welsh Government make BIG changes -- and there's no news of this for the time being.
So TLDR? :
I'm still at home (and not required to be strictly shielding either), and not WFH!
And on a CS thing called 'special leave' for the indefinite.
That is, on 'feather-bedded' full pay 
, too! 
I do appreciate my extreme luck (PCS rule!!).
Because although technically (and really) in a 'vulnerable' health category I've actually been in cracking health this year ....
In our particular CS organisation, no thought was ever given to arranging for (m)any of us to work from home ...
A few higher managers, and one or two others doing properly emergency work, have actually been going in twice a week and WFH for the rest, but that's it.
Getting each of the rest of us a work-systems-secure laptop and printer wouldn't be an issue, even though expensive.
But it's overwhelmingly physical paperwork that we deal with in the offices, and they must have decided that physically delivering this to us several times a week (or even daily??
), and collecting the processed files from us as well, would be too complicated logistically.There are thousands of us doing this type of work, we're a huge employer, and I'm among the minority who actually live near central Swansea -- most colleagues live well out of town.
So I can see why they knocked any idea of WFH on the head very early!!
Even now, only very limited numbers from our standard teams are going back, and on a highly part-time basis (two days a week right now for those who are going in at all, as I understand it).
Our normally very busy offices have large number of banks of desks on each floor -- there are usually at least 50 to 60 individuals on our floor alone, for instance.
Apparantly, desk-dividers have been built, plus loads more of sanitiser provided, but they're being correctly ultra-strict about physical distancing in the office, and all sorts of other stuff.
And for myself? I'm in what Public Health Wales and my employers count as in a 'vulnerable' category.
Not high-level vulnerable (like post-transplant or whatever), just standard vulnerable, as if I'm over 70 (I said 'as if'!
) but generally OK.So myself and a few others are likely to be among the very last to go back -- unless the Welsh Government make BIG changes -- and there's no news of this for the time being.
So TLDR?
:I'm still at home (and not required to be strictly shielding either), and not WFH!
And on a CS thing called 'special leave' for the indefinite.
That is, on 'feather-bedded'
full pay , too! I do appreciate my extreme luck (PCS rule!!).
Because although technically (and really) in a 'vulnerable' health category I've actually been in cracking health this year ....
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