Generic Virus Thread

[Wainy316]

Cov fans last night.

Can you imagine what it'll be like when Plop win the league?

[Xann]

[GarethRDR]

13 hours ago, Mozzavfc said:

Did either of you find a union that does a good job/ you'd recommend?

Thankfully the issue my team and I had (which was coming very close to industrial tribunal territory) resolved itself in the end (in the most hilarious manner, in short our employer got so held up by their own notoriously Kafkaesque processes that the time-frame within which they could have forced the issue passed) so I'm afraid I've no recommendations.

[blandy]

14 hours ago, Mozzavfc said:

Did either of you find a union that does a good job/ you'd recommend?

If you're looking to join a union, then this is the kind of thing to follow

Quote

In many workplaces, there is already an agreement in place between the employer and a trade union. This is called a ‘recognition agreement’. It means that the union has a legal right to talk to the employer on behalf of its members who work there. Sometimes a big employer will recognise more than one union for different groups of staff.

First, find out if this is the case for your employer by asking your colleagues, or looking for a clues such as a union noticeboard. In larger employers there may be a national deal in place that covers all work locations, so also try searching online.

If there’s already a recognised union where you work, they’ll be the best one to join. They’ll have more rights and greater scope to represent you. They’re also more likely to have union reps in the workplace that you can go to for advice and support.

YES: There is a recognised union where I work

 

 

 

[Genie]

Quote

The number of coronavirus deaths in the UK would have been halved if lockdown had been introduced a week earlier, a former government adviser has said.

Prof Neil Ferguson, whose advice was crucial to the decision to go into lockdown, said the outbreak had been doubling in size every three or four days before measures had been taken.

The prime minister said it was still too early to make such a judgement.

That’ll be the week when the public were demanding a lockdown and the government were allowing 250k people at Cheltenham and 50k at Liverpool etc etc.

More on the link

[villakram]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

That’ll be the week when the public were demanding a lockdown and the government were allowing 250k people at Cheltenham and 50k at Liverpool etc etc.

More on the link

Neil Ferguson is entirely discredited given the gross error in his earlier "modeling", this speaks nothing to his personal behavior during this sorry episode.

The true way to save lives would have been to strictly quarantine the old folks homes. Not done, hence over 50% of the dead. 

It's also worth nothing the happy throwing of pointed fingers at the lower class people having fun, whilst speaking nothing about the flights that kept shipping people all over, and the wealthy who benefitted from this (the case with Cheltenham & CL game too obviously). 

Edited June 10, 2020 by villakram

[HanoiVillan]

58 minutes ago, villakram said:

Neil Ferguson is entirely discredited given the gross error in his earlier "modeling", this speaks nothing to his personal behavior during this sorry episode.

The true way to save lives would have been to strictly quarantine the old folks homes. Not done, hence over 50% of the dead. 

It's also worth nothing the happy throwing of pointed fingers at the lower class people having fun, whilst speaking nothing about the flights that kept shipping people all over, and the wealthy who benefitted from this (the case with Cheltenham & CL game too obviously). 

No, this isn't right. Neil Ferguson's personal morality is irrelevant here.

The effective doubling time for the virus at the time was roughly 7 days. Of course if you wait 7 days to do something about it, there will be roughly double the consequences.

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, villakram said:

Neil Ferguson is entirely discredited given the gross error in his earlier "modeling", this speaks nothing to his personal behavior during this sorry episode.

The true way to save lives would have been to strictly quarantine the old folks homes. Not done, hence over 50% of the dead. 

It's also worth nothing the happy throwing of pointed fingers at the lower class people having fun, whilst speaking nothing about the flights that kept shipping people all over, and the wealthy who benefitted from this (the case with Cheltenham & CL game too obviously). 

Ferguson was very unlucky.

He hadn’t realised that the rules and guidance don’t apply to the people making the rules.

There was never any reason for him to resign. He could actually just do whatever he liked. Including checking if his cock was still safe to use.

 

 

[ferguson1]

7 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Ferguson was very unlucky.

There was never any reason for him to resign. He could actually just do whatever he liked. Including checking if his cock was still safe to use.

 

 

[fightoffyour]

Can't find when this was posted some months ago, but this actually happened:

 

[Demitri_C]

20 hours ago, blandy said:

If you're looking to join a union, then this is the kind of thing to follow

 

Have to say my union unison absolutely sucks. Im thinking if cancelling. I think its worse when the union is part of the staff as they are scared of certain members of senior staff

[NurembergVillan]

11 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Ferguson was very unlucky.

He hadn’t realised that the rules and guidance don’t apply to the people making the rules.

There was never any reason for him to resign. He could actually just do whatever he liked. Including checking if his cock was still safe to use.

Should've gone to Spunksavers.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

Have to say my union unison absolutely sucks. I'm thinking if cancelling. I think its worse when the union is part of the staff as they are scared of certain members of senior staff

If your Union Rep(s) are rubbish, then get different ones - they are elected/re-elected by members every couple of years - so use your vote, get colleagues to vote in the rep elections.

If/when Reps don't do as you wish, tell them! Let them know that you and colleagues are unhappy - they know they need people to vote for them if they are to keep their roles, so they need to see feedback and act on it.. 

To an extent Unions are only as good as their members - if the members are passive and uninterested, the Union can't do as much or as well. If the members are engaged and interested, the Union is much more powerful.

Imagine you're a manager, for a moment - you decide you want to cut the London weighting payments for staff due to virus and WAH - if  your impression is "a few people will grumble for a bit" then you might go ahead and cut the payments.

If on the other hand, your impression is that the mother of all Union sh*tstorms will follow any attempt...then you'd think again.

Or imagine you're the Union Rep, and the management say they want to cut the London weighting. Even if you're "scared" of the manager, if all your members are coming to you demanding you put across their anger and saying they're not taking this lying down - you're basically compelled to pass that on, and you can do so to the manager you're scared of, saying "look, it's not me - these people are furious and are demanding action - if you don't listen to them, then there's going to major problems resulting from this"

You're a member, you pay your fees - make them work for you.

[ml1dch]

 

Twelve weeks ago. So that's gone well.

[Dante_Lockhart]

As an employer this whole thing sucks balls. I've had more anxiety over this than anything previous I think. Something so stupid that common sense (on the most part) will deal with has turned into a huge load of paperwork and stress.

[chrisp65]

Really hoping it wasnt teacher’s that wrote the message on the white board.

 

 

[villakram]

16 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, this isn't right. Neil Ferguson's personal morality is irrelevant here.

The effective doubling time for the virus at the time was roughly 7 days. Of course if you wait 7 days to do something about it, there will be roughly double the consequences.

Well let's focus on his professional incompetence then.

[blandy]

17 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

The effective doubling time for the virus at the time was roughly 7 days. Of course if you wait 7 days to do something about it, there will be roughly double the consequences.

Not nit picking, but I'm not sure that's right. 3 to 4 days (I believe) was what it was. AT first I took it to be that he or the media were wrong, and a closer approximation would be the deaths would only be around a quarter of what they were, but then I wondered if he had just been cautious and also included deaths not due to virus, but due to lockdown, so that category (size unknown) counted against the 3 quarters, leaving somewhere between a half and 3 quarters, so he said a half, being cautious.

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

Not nit picking, but I'm not sure that's right. 3 to 4 days (I believe) was what it was. AT first I took it to be that he or the media were wrong, and a closer approximation would be the deaths would only be around a quarter of what they were, but then I wondered if he had just been cautious and also included deaths not due to virus, but due to lockdown, so that category (size unknown) counted against the 3 quarters, leaving somewhere between a half and 3 quarters, so he said a half, being cautious.

Point taken, though I'm now wondering if the seven days I have seen reported elsewhere is potentially a difference in how you measure two generations (ie, is it measured from the Person 1 catching it to Person 2 catching it, or Person 1 catching it to the point when Person 2 becomes infectious?)

[blandy]

46 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Point taken, though I'm now wondering if the seven days I have seen reported elsewhere is potentially a difference in how you measure two generations (ie, is it measured from the Person 1 catching it to Person 2 catching it, or Person 1 catching it to the point when Person 2 becomes infectious?)

Yeah, it's unclear.

I was going on what was reported that "the number of infections was doubling every 3 or 4 days" So my simple maths was  Day 0 - 1 person has it, day 3 (or 4) they've passed it on to one other, and by day 7 those now 2 infected have now each passed it on again to another, so that's now 4 people with in 7 days, Had they locked down at day 0, just the original 1 (out of 4) would have it.

And that micro scenario multiplied across the whole country ....leads to a 4 fold (approx) increase in cases nationally over the week that wasn't locked down. And so a proportional scaled 4 times increase in the number of deaths resulting.

A bit (lot) inexact, but that seems the rationale. Might be wrong though.