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[Iduno]

Disappointment amongst parents today, when our government announced there will be no paid corona leave.

It's not that there's no funds for it, or that employers didn't want to cooperate...

Nope, it's cancelled because UWV, our government branch that is responsible for paying sick leaves, unemployment benefits, disability pay and since a year, corona support packages, doesn't have the time or manpower to deal with more support packages.

People have an idea that it needs to be nearly impossible for the government to get more employees even in an emergency. Which causes a lot of infrastructure issues like this. It would help a lot if less of the resources went to military and the like, and we had invested in infrastructure at all in the last 50 years, but people need to be shot more than they need to get places or have water or healthcare.

[martinuzz]

The main argument our government used to close the schools, was that this would force parents to work from home because they have to watch the kids, decreasing travel- and contact instances for the virus to make use of.

But it appears it doesn't always quite work the way it was intended.  Quite a few parents said that before the schools closed, they were working from home voluntarily, but now they had no choice than to go back to work in the office, because it was impossible to work from home with the kids around.  So not only did it not decrease travel- and contact instances, as was intended, no, it created more.. Not just the parent going to work, but also the nanny they now had to hire to watch the kids. 

[Akura]

Damn it. My mom's going full Karen here, as well as my younger sister. Now the reason she's refusing the vaccine is the belief that "the body should be able to fight off anything", and that she's "not going to be guinea pig for the next several years". And she's refusing testing because it means the government will track her. Fuck's sake, she's a 60-something woman who lives mostly off of Social Security. Nevermind the fact that, except for the past 20-something hours, "the government" for the entirety of this pandemic has been her God-Emperor Trump.

Let's see if she chokes on these words, along with everything else, when she's coughing her last through a ventilator. This kind of stupid can't be cured with reason. Or at least, I don't have enough patience to try anymore.

[LordBaal]

Don't be so hard on her dude. It's your mother, and is in itself a victim of years of misinformation and misunderstanding. Don't wish for her death like that. I get you are angry but if she don't want to take the vaccine right now don't push her around, it's her life and her choice.  In this strapped times it means a vaccine more to someone in the front in health care.

[Great Order]

You've pointed out to her that if she has anything with a chip and, at a minimum, wifi capability the government can track her right? Something like, say, a mobile phone? Or a computer?

Hell, if theoretically the government tracked her with a chip in the vaccine, they'd get less information than the phone would give her because that does things like log texts and internet browsing.

Doubt it'd convince her, as it's often said you can't rationalise a person out of a position they didn't rationalise themselves into, but if the conversation pops up again you can give it a shot.

[wierd]

...

I pointed out to one of my nurses, the following things:

1) Biblical "mark of the beast" is used to enable currency transactions. It is used to buy and sell.  RFID is not capable of this.
2) Even a minimalist chip, like an RFID tag, is FUCKING HUGE, and would need a goddamn cattle syringe to shoot you with. There is no way it would fit inside the damn needle they use to give the injection.
3) The technology to implant a device like this, requires the ENTIRE device be encapsulated, because of how damn corrosive/destructive the human body is to anything foreign inside it. This, combined with small things like-- ANTENNA PHYSICS--- means that the devices have hard limits on how small you can realistically make them. This makes sneaking them into your vaccination plan, a bit of a non-starter, that no amount of voodoo histrionics will make possible.
4) Due to the above, POWERING the device requires an outside power source, GREATLY reducing the functionality for it as an always-on tracking device.


Now, combine all that together, along with "They have conditioned you to always carry your goddamn cellphone with you, and your cellphone is able to conduct digital purchases", and you have a better case for your damn iPhone to be the "Mark of the beast" than that vaccine could ever imagine being.

But this kind of thing requires critically analyzing what is being claimed, and then rationally discarding it-- rather than just reacting with the desired fear, Uncertainty, Doubt that you have been instructed to perform.

[LordBaal]

On top of that, I don't think anyone in power is particularly interested on spending untold sums of money to spy on some random nobodies beyond mass surveys to make easier marketing products...

[Starver]

On top of that, I don't think anyone in power is particularly interested on spending untold sums of money to spy on some random nobodies beyond mass surveys to make easier marketing products...

Breaking News: freeonlinesurveys.com invented the Covids!

[feelotraveller]

So it seems like they will push ahead with the Olympics in Tokyo/July come hell or high water.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/21/ioc-tokyo-olympic-games-will-go-ahead-athletics
A critic of the plan commented

"Basically the IOC and [the Tokyo organisers] are now doing a Donald Trump and ignoring reality.”

[hector13]

Considering how much money it costs to get ready for an Olympics, which has already been delayed once at even further great expense, this is unsurprising.

Very stupid, but unsurprising.

[Loud Whispers]

Never were a fan of the pomp and expense the olympics generated. We ought to just do as the London austerity games did post WWII - you open with a march, you do some sports, you hand out the medals and thank everyone for attending

[Starver]

The sports themselves, top-league competitions of various kinds have already gone ahead (with lessons to be learnt, from some) and secure pre-quarantining/co-bubbling practices would be the way to go, and go for limited live-audience but with full broadcasting options.

For the pomp, if they aren't already wired up for the 'pixels' in the stadium for the crowd, they could probably run a whole lot of telepresence units dotted around representative cardboard cutouts of audience-members. I'm thinking an array of Aibos wouldn't be beyond Japan, or something like the Double 3 "ipad-onna-segway" things. Which might be a way to do the parade of flags (flagbearers in person, leading a 'nation' of remotely-present countrymen/women, as Aibos do dancing from the edge of the parade route and the near-ubiquitous mass-synchronsed lit-drones do something fancy in the air above them).


Several issues to overcome. Covid-test nobbling, for example. But by a month before the games there should be slack in the immunisation programmes to arrange for all confirmed competitors to be given the most appropriate product, put into action pre-agreed travel and accomodation covid-security. It won't be full capacity, as previously anticipated, but assistance for every country should prioritise over massive contingents from any single nation (US, UK, etc), perhaps helped by voluntary/can't-be-helped inability to attend due to difficulties of the pre-selection season.

The paralympics will he harder to accomodate (particularly with those with the more life-limiting conditions that put them at additional risk, although I think that'd apply more to the separate Transplant Games) though they'll have found the issues with their forerunner competitors in the non-para games, which won't hurt to fine tune things.


Look, I'm not responsible for all this, without the pressures of either budget or healthcare weighing down upon me on top of all the prior (not insignificant) logistics for such a spectacle. But if Japan can't work out a big old 6G-powered audience with RFD track'n'trace over the olympic park area, then I'll honestly cease to believe they've been building a mechagodzilla beneath the velodrome or prepared to launch a Firey Phoenix up from beneath the waves at the sailing venue.

[LordBaal]

Our local baseball league (we are kinda the only south american country were baseball is bigger than football) already decreted the final games will be without public. Dunno how they handled it before, I know at the start the games were without public but sometime in december I think they accepted public again at half capacity or so.

All other big sports are without audience from a year or so now.

[Dostoevsky]

So it seems like they will push ahead with the Olympics in Tokyo/July come hell or high water.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jan/21/ioc-tokyo-olympic-games-will-go-ahead-athletics
A critic of the plan commented

"Basically the IOC and [the Tokyo organisers] are now doing a Donald Trump and ignoring reality.”

I vaguely recall Japan acting just like this last year until they abruptly changed position. Issue this time is that if they delay another year it puts them alongside the winter games.

Culturally speaking, among older Japanese at least the 1964 summer games (the last time they hosted summer) are a really big deal and were a huge investment in the country - they had been similarly preparing for the 2020 games, so they likely feel hugely invested in this for good or ill.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm kind of very depressed with covid. Infections left and right