Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mko]

I think this is on the "panic" mode of the panic vs complacency debate. The odds are good for Tom Hanks. The odds are good for any individual person. The problem comes when (like in Italy) everything happens at once and the healthcare system becomes saturated.

I don't really think it is. My point to these guys was to save up their sick days and holiday days, because we'll probably all be told not to come in for a month at some point.

Oh you sweet summer child. You're both assuming people get those (I don't :V) and assuming they're allowed to save up that much (Just yesterday I read through our personnel policy -- the tl;dr is that workers that do get those things cap out at about half a month, hahaha). Nevermind saving up that many hours would take like a decade or something like that.

Is it different in countries where even the relatively decent workplaces don't aggressively hate their employees (i.e. not the US)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country

"In the majority of nations, including all industrialised nations except the United States, advances in employee relations have seen the introduction of statutory agreements for minimum employee leave from work"

For example Poland has 13 days of public holidays + at least 20 paid holiday days chosen by employee.

Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Russia, Pakistan, China and Ivory Coast has laws about minimum holiday days. USA is an outlier here.

And in case of being sick you have - obviously - paid sick leave in a civilized countries. And some not civilized.

[Iduno]

The public data on Italy shows that they´re having worse results than anywhere else. That´s hard to argue with.

Perhaps you have heard of a little country known as the United States? The one where they are publicly fighting to keep the numbers hidden, so it looks like everything is fine, and is known for having the worst possible healthcare system?

Now the US public will realize shit’s hitting the fan now that famous people are getting the Corona.
Like, 10 minutes after the Tom Hanks news came out an NBA player tested positive right before a game.
The NBA ended up putting the rest of the season on hiatus and quarantined the two teams in their locker rooms for testing

Yeah. I feel bad about cheering for anyone getting sick and dying, but rich people getting sick and dying is the only way the rest of us have a chance.

That said, I've seen far too many posts on facebook

Well, there's your problem.

I wonder how many pilots are going to lose their flight license, when they can't make enough flight hours because of all the travel restrictions.

They've been wasting fuel flying empty planes around. That's not a joke.

I've been having trouble with the fine line between downplaying and avoiding panic.

My rule of thumb for delineating overreaction/downplaying is in how does one follow the recommendations of the WHO and their local healthcare authority. Ignoring those because what do they know is downplaying. Taking additional precautions because what do they know is overreacting.

It's pretty messed up when we're doing both at the same time. It spreads like the flu, we should know how to handle this by now. Also, people are dying, and maybe we want to examine if "ignore it, go to work to avoid losing your job, infect customers and coworkers, if people die it's only because you didn't wash your hands better, not because life is broken" is really the best way to handle it.

"In the majority of nations, including all industrialised nations except the United States, advances in employee relations have seen the introduction of statutory agreements for minimum employee leave from work"

For example Poland has 13 days of public holidays + at least 20 paid holiday days chosen by employee.

Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Russia, Pakistan, China and Ivory Coast has laws about minimum holiday days.

And in case of being sick you have - obviously - paid sick leave in a civilized countries. And some not civilized.

Just because it works fine in literally any other country in the world, and it improves lives and the economy, doesn't mean it would fly here.

[ChairmanPoo]

The public data on Italy shows that they´re having worse results than anywhere else. That´s hard to argue with.

Perhaps you have heard of a little country known as the United States? The one where they are publicly fighting to keep the numbers hidden, so it looks like everything is fine, and is known for having the worst possible healthcare system?

Well yeah but the US just self quarantined from everywhere but UK (thanks Donald), Italy is next door. Madrid is closer than that. I´m more worried about those foci, for obvious reasons. Doesn´t mean that I dont feel for you guys.  TBH I think in the scenario that is looming the lack of labor laws and social support is going to be as bad or worse than the nature of the healthcare system over there.  It might be that the US is an early adopter of vaccines or antiviral treatments. But if the infection peak is actually worse than anywhere else because everything and everyone kept going on as if nothing happened because they literally had no other option.... :/


News in Spain: around 3000 infectees, 87 dead. Not great data overall. 32 more deaths, around 800 more infections.
In the Basque country the numbers are 8 dead, 261 infected (20 more than yesterday). We´ll see if it  stays that way


Mind you the next 5-10 days are bound to be bad. We´re seeing the results of the mass rallies that were held last week at the behest of both the far left and the far right parties. Last one was on Sunday, given that the median incubation time is around 5 days I expect we´ll still see a nasty increase until midweek next week. Later, hopefully the measures that were put in place this week will kick in.

[Reelya]

I think this is on the "panic" mode of the panic vs complacency debate. The odds are good for Tom Hanks. The odds are good for any individual person. The problem comes when (like in Italy) everything happens at once and the healthcare system becomes saturated.

I don't really think it is. My point to these guys was to save up their sick days and holiday days, because we'll probably all be told not to come in for a month at some point.

Oh you sweet summer child.

What the fuck man? I'm talking about advice I gave to people who work in the same room as me, for the same company as me. I'm assuming we all get the same leave entitlements, because it's in our workplace agreement, as well as being a legal requirement in this country. I never made a general point. "These guys", in the anecdote, are people who sit within a few meters of my desk. This is Australia where we have proper workplace agreements and conditions.

4 weeks paid vacation and 10 paid sick days a year is the minimum legal standard here for a full-time worker. BTW here if you're classed as "casual"  they have to pay you an extra $6 an hour (if you're minimum wage) to account for not getting those paid days off.

The company had a slight drop in available work (unrelated reasons) and was encouraging people to take paid leave (because they have to pay out your leave eventually anyway if you leave the job). But it was optional, they couldn't force or pressure you to take the leave, that would be illegal here. I said to the other guys it's best not to take the paid leave now because we may need it soon.

BTW - I ended up being sent to another office to help out, but they have some leftover people in the main office, and I visited there, and one of my colleagues is watching the entirety of Lord of the Rings trilogy during work hours. That's how much free time they have, on company pay. So they can't just cut people's hours because they're full-time employees, that's how it works here, so they told the guys "ok watch movies and shit". That's how it works in most advanced nations that aren't the USA.

[martinuzz]

Planes stopped flying empty a few days ago, when the European airspace authorities promised that companies would not lose their airport rights for not using their quota, so at least that waste has come to an end.

Meanwhile over here, the number of infected rose by another 111 yesterday, raising the total to 614.So far, 5 people died, of whom 4 were over 80 years old and one 68 year old who already had severe medical issues.

[Zangi]

I think he might've thought you were a Murrican, where such nice options are very rare for the common folk.

[ChairmanPoo]

Planes stopped flying empty a few days ago, when the European airspace authorities promised that companies would not lose their airport rights for not using their quota, so at least that waste has come to an end.

Meanwhile over here, the number of infected rose by another 111 yesterday, raising the total to 614.So far, 5 people died, of whom 4 were over 80 years old and one 68 year old who already had severe medical issues.

That´s the profile in Euskadi as well. Median age of deceased is around 90.

[Frumple]

I think he might've thought you were a Murrican, where such nice options are very rare for the common folk.

Nah, it just looked like general advice, and I had missed the earlier context somehow or another. If it was specific to whatever relatively non-hellscape employment situation they're in, the post doesn't particularly apply.

[McTraveller]

Some helpful perspective:  https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/

[Reelya]

Yeah sorry, i thought from the statement it would be clear that I was talking about my own workplace.

to give an idea: I live in a big city, pay the ridiculously high inner-city rent, work normal hours (38 a week) in what's not much more than a minimum-wage job here, but was still able to save over $20K in the last year. Decent work conditions make a lot of difference.

[ChairmanPoo]

350 infected in the Basque Country, 11 death. So much for the situation being under control.

Stupid rallies last week are probably driving this burst in cases.

[nenjin]

What's the course of treatment that early intervention is supposed to help with? Anti-virals? Respirators for people who can't breathe on their own? Just generally having someone to feed and hydrate you while it runs its course?

[Reelya]

The public data on Italy shows that they´re having worse results than anywhere else. That´s hard to argue with.

Yep, that's why I picked on them with regard to Reelya's figures.  4500 infections in 90 days vs. 12000 in 45 on an exponential scale?  Assuming that there haven't been multiple independent sources of infection that implies that the baseline rate of infection there is a lot higher than what was assumed in the theoretical figures.  And yes, this is complicated by the fact that there probably have been multiple 'patient zeroes' - yet to be established - but it is a useful real world example.

Especially since the ealier discussion was about the expected number of cases in the USA going forward, and it seems (to me at least) that their response so far has actually been far worse than that of the Italians.

Just noticed this one, and it's a good point. the 2.4 infections per person thing is just an average. So, on average any one person could infect about 4500 by three months. However, some people will infect a lot more than that, and some people will infect less than that. So, if there's one point of origin, that guy could infect 10 people as a "super spreader" before those 10 people go on, to infect about 45000 people (since we're averaging across 10 people) over the next 90 days from that. Planes would be a good source of these super-spreader infections since you're all crammed in there breathing recycled air.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Edit: today's USA virus cases on that site were +307. Yesterday was +294. BTW if the number of new cases caps at around 300 a day, that may be an artifact of limited throughput on testing, which itself would be a worry.

[Il Palazzo]

Planes would be a good source of these super-spreader infections since you're all crammed in there breathing recycled air.

Pretty much all aeroplanes have HEPA filtration, so the air is hospital-grade clean.

[Iduno]

Planes would be a good source of these super-spreader infections since you're all crammed in there breathing recycled air.

Pretty much all aeroplanes have HEPA filtration, so the air is hospital-grade clean.

Sure, as long as everyone is kept separated, and aren't sitting inches/centimeters away from each other. It works like smoking and non-smoking areas; those planes will be loaded with the plague for a decade after sick people quit being there.

I think that metaphor started getting away from me, so I'll just leave it there.