Corona lockdown thread, tell about your situation

[John123]

13,729 deaths in the UK so far with one scientist predicting we could see 40,000 die during this wave alone.

The joys of living in an overcrowded island nation.

[Mads Barnkob]

In Denmark the curve is as flat as it can possible get. We have seen a huge drop in deaths from normal influenza and even sexually transferred diseases are dropping like a stone due to social distancing. It has come to a point where we have fewer deaths in 2020 as we had in 2019. There is no proof of a over-deadliness due to covid-19, can exceed the statistical uncertainty.

Dead per 1.000.000 population: https://www.datawrapper.de/_/qvFdX/



I had time to walk through all my black boxes and if you have 20 minutes to waste...

[klugesmith]

At the end of last week, I joined the ranks of the 0.7% of Californians who have been tested for Covid,
and the 89% of testees whose results were negative (“virus not detected”).
 
Not due to any cough, fever, congestion, loss of smell, or known contact with anyone known to have contacted any Covid patient.
 
Got referred for testing after a long-scheduled visit with a new dermatologist, in a week that “Covid Toe” was getting to be talked about in medical circles and the news.   A visit by video (!), with some uploaded still pictures of a minor finger ailment.
 
Next thing you know, I was directed to report for drive-through testing.  Only contact with clinical staff was through open window on driver’s side of my car.  Had to lower my mask an inch so they could put an awfully long swab all the way up my nose.

[Hydron]

I took my partner in for a test a few weeks back in NZ - she'd gotten a new cough (most likely allergies) and that plus recent international travel made them request a test. Can confirm that the swab looks long enough to tickle your brain!

Came back negative in a bit over a day's time. She was in a slightly less exclusive group than you - over 98% of tests have been negative in NZ (covering at least ~1.5% of population, hard to tell exactly without knowing the number of re-tests).

Since her test they've widened the testing criteria to "any new respiratory symptoms/fever" or "you went to a supermarket where we're doing random population testing" - no "COVID Toe" needed! (I hadn't heard of such a thing before your post).

Unfortunately we've just arrived back in the UK, where the criteria seems to be "severely ill in hospital" - a number of colleagues have had it and not even been close to being tested, so the current UK prevalence numbers are a fantasy at best - the tests they are doing are coming back with a positive rate over 1/3.

[Mads Barnkob]

I start at work again tomorrow, first day back at my desk in 47 days. I was home sick just before the isolation started, so have an extra 5 days to add to it. It is no longer required to work 100% from home, but still to be planned to do so if possible. If physical presence is needed and you can do the job within the guidelines set by our "CDC", then we can do it.
 
I have turned my whole workshop around, been in every drawer, box, crate, container, shelf and cupboard. I sorted a lot of stuff, re-found a lot of things and threw nothing out!

I guess this video is the culmination of being home for 7 weeks.

[John123]

You could walk around town and woo fair maidens with that suit covered in magnets!

[Uspring]

Ahhh, so sad. The proud knight, Mads of the Barnkobs, is going back into slavery after 47 days.

Thank you for the entertainment in dreary days.

[klugesmith]

As we all know, USA continues to lead the world in cultivation of coronaviruses.  Be interesting to hear outside views about that.

A local electronics flea market (hamfest / swap meet) just cancelled the August event, 6th in a row in this 7 month season.
So I'm still overwhelmed by things that deserve to be given away (?) instead of landfill / recycling / e-waste.

My regular workplace has been partly opened up for a couple months, with very conservative rules for those selected to go in.  Wear face-covering mask while in building, even when alone in room, except while eating or drinking (which must be done alone).  Wash hands frequently. Avoid spending time close to others, except where it's necessary to get a job done.   Thursday evening I had to step out of a laboratory while experimental disinfecting robot (made in Denmark?) patrolled the room.  It's like a miniature Zamboni machine.

Am hoping to get one of the color-changing paper dots that they use to monitor UVC exposure.  And learn how many mJ/cm^2 they say is enough.  The run time per battery charge is limited, of course, almost completely by power to the lamps.

[Uspring]

As we all know, USA continues to lead the world in cultivation of coronaviruses.  Be interesting to hear outside views about that.

A bait, ain't it?
I think the US infection rates are way too high to be good for the country. But I'm stating the obvious and I don't want to get into politics here. Some observations:

Germany, the country I live in, has been fortunate. In march, when infections began to rise seriously here, videos and pictures from Northern Italy went viral, showing completely exhausted crying nurses, desperate doctors and military convois carrying loads of coffins during the night. Italy is not far from here and a popular place to visit for holidays. People got scared and behaviour changed significantly even before official measures were taken.
Apparently the somewhat similar situation in New York didn't provide as much of a shock to the American people. But curves seem to flatten in the US now and reproduction numbers drop below 1 in many states.
Hereabouts the infection rates are low now, most measures relaxed, Italy has been forgotten and the rates are increasing again. That is similar in many other European countries. Californians are doing much better now than Germans, their reproduction number is around 0.86, while Germanys is at 1.2.

I've played around with all sorts of pandemics calculations, but i found their predictive value limited, since people tend to adjust their behaviour according to what happens around them. That often limits runaway scenarios such as exponential growth.
A simple rule, which seems to hold is, that when the newly infected rate decreases, behaviour is relaxed until it increases again. Different countries will stabilize their infection rates at differing levels. Most of them.

An interesting consequence of constant infection rates is the appearance of chains of infections, i.e. an infected person will on the average infect exactly one other one. That will continue on and on until the pandemic ends. Since on the average it takes 4 days from being infected to passing the infection on to the next one, the single person at the start of the chain will have caused infections in 50 others in the course of 200 days, i.e. ~1/2 year.
In Germany we have a mortality estimated around 1% for covid, so for a chain of 50 infected, there is a 50% chance that there will be a dead one after you within the next half year, which could have been avoided, if you hadn't been infected.
That is, of course, a statement about averages and need not hold for single individuals.

[friday]

gone back into level 3 here in Auckland NZ

[Hydron]

At least you get takeaways and stuff in level 3, I caught most of level 4 which was pretty shit given I was meant to be going for a holiday and for my sister's wedding (which is now rescheduled and I won't make it to).

Just be glad that you're somewhere where (despite the cockups in border testing) there is actually a reasonable level of competence and giving a shit (though I wouldn't want to be a non-citizen/PR resident stuck outside right now, not much compassion being shown for them).

The UK's effort has shown how fucking awful the people in charge are here (if Brexit craziness wasn't already proof) - they managed to basically choose the worst possible options other than going full Trump/Bolsonaro for months on end, and we came back to the UK from NZ to people talking about the number of deaths per day (still rather high in late April despite massive under-reporting) and incompetent ramblings/lies from whoever they wanted to throw under the bus that day for the presser - a far cry from the discussion of daily _cases_ and clear communication we'd gotten used to.

[Twospoons]

TBH I'm rather liking L3 lockdown, as I get to work from home again instead of commuting and spending 2hrs a day driving.  There's often a silver lining to be found.

[Hydron]

I've been almost exclusively working from home since mid March (including a few weeks while in L4 NZ), am also enjoying not doing 2 hours a day commuting. I'm able to do most of my job as efficiently or more so than being in the office (helps that my home lab setup is generally better than the kit we have at work), the main issues are that it's hard to train people without being in the same location and I don't have things like a -40C capable environmental chamber .

Anyway, seems we'll need to "Stay alert" (ugh what a terrible slogan) for the long term here, dealing with constantly changing and poorly communicated restrictions until widespread vaccination. I wonder what the EE jobs situation is like back in NZ...

[Twospoons]

As we all know, USA continues to lead the world in cultivation of coronaviruses.  Be interesting to hear outside views about that.

You probably heard DT crowing about New Zealand having a massive surge in cases. 13 I think it was on that day. And this from the guy in charge of the country posting 40,000+ cases on the same day.  What a twit - desperately trying to distract from his own failings.

The thing that really gets me is the people complaining about wearing a mask (we have them here in NZ too), that being told to do so by the government is somehow taking away their rights and  freedom. They seem to have forgotten they are also legally required to wear clothes in public - no-one complains about that.

[rikkitikkitavi]

I wear facemask regulary due to work in cleanroom and I laugh at the profilc use of facemasks amongst the public while standing close together at public transport , in queues etc. what do they think?
The added safety from the mask is for sure hugely offset by the increased risc behaviour of people thinking it is safe. Only if maintaining dilligence and the other safety measures it would be beneficial to use a mask.

Total waste of money and false safety. Just my opinion though.

Like that UVC robot, what do they expect it to do? Perhaps if they run it for a prolonged period it would ozonize the office. Naaa, some VHP (vapourized hydrogen peroxide) or just frequent hand washing and maintaining physical distance. The radiation , apart from beeing far to low to be of use in most areas, doesnt reach all surfaces obviously.

We are all gonna get it, sooner or later. Perhaps a vaccination is available beforehand you get it. If the vaccine arrives sooner the countries that went for a harder lockdown would benefit as they would have saved some lives.  Most of us come out alright. A lot have died, more are going to die still. Sucks big time. But it wont spread like a wildfire, rather like that glowing embers , and the occasional bursting into flames when it lands on somthing flammable.

But I think that flattening the curve is a correct measure, to prevent the hospitals beeing flooded.

In Sweden we didn´t manage to prevent it spreading amongst the elderly in care take homes, and it did scythe its way through there but every year it is the same when some influenza or stomach disease runs rampant and kills of the most fragile. It is just a budget quiestion of having properly trained personel and protective gear and perhaps some better medical treatment instead of just saying profylactic care in the end stage (ie sedate them and let them asphyxiate) . It would for sure prolong the life for some, but old senile people doesnt vote...

[Uspring]

The added safety from the mask is for sure hugely offset by the increased risc behaviour of people thinking it is safe. Only if maintaining dilligence and the other safety measures it would be beneficial to use a mask.

I, for my part, don't think, that wearing masks will protect me from getting infected under all circumstances. But I don't claim to be representative for, e.g., the Swedish people.
Anyway, there are other situations, where masks reduce infection probabilities. Covid is a respiratory disease, so viruses come out of your mouth and nose and stopping some of them there will reduce contagiousness. But, of course, it is not a 100% effective measure.

It needn't be. If you look at reproduction numbers, you'll notice, that in most countries they hover around 1. Say you are in a country with rising numbers, e.g. R=1.1, then a reduction of contagiousness of just 10% will stop exponential growth. In other words, if a mask prevents only one out of 10 infections, the curve will flatten.

Basically, there is a budget on what efforts can be relaxed. In my country, summer vacation is mostly over now and schools are being opened again. Probably that will cause more infections. I think, that if you ask people, whether they will wear masks in order to compensate the effect of open schools, or close schools, while obtaining the freedom to not use masks, they will opt for the masks. A problem is, that not everybody realises, that it is that kind of decisions, that they need to make.

We are all gonna get it, sooner or later.

Perhaps this is true. But respect for the lifes of others should motivate us to put up a very good fight against the virus. Giving up is not an option.

[Twospoons]

I wear facemask regulary due to work in cleanroom and I laugh at the profilc use of facemasks amongst the public while standing close together at public transport , in queues etc. what do they think?

Remember when Mac users thought they were immune to computer viruses? Leading to the same sort of risky behavior you describe.
It comes from "silver bullet" thinking  ... this thing some people have whereby there is a single solution to a problem.  Reality is always much messier. Masks need to be seen as part of a system, not a solution in and of themselves.  Nothing is going to be 100% effective (health workers in hospital grade PPE are still getting sick).  But adding a mask to hand hygiene and social distancing has to be useful at slowing the spread.  Education and clear messaging is the key. Thats what worked so well here in NZ, that and everyone getting on board with the plan.

[friday]

we went from 3, to 2.5 (if no one has heard of that) and now we is at level 2, next Im guessing is level 1.5, or 1 and a bit

[Mads Barnkob]

In Denmark we are locking down bit by bit again, daily new cases are "skyrocketing", but without deaths following after.

Either we are better at treating it now or the virus is not as powerful anymore? Could also be that those most prone to die from it did in spring, its hard to make a judgement on that.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/

[Hydron]

Well the UK testing in spring was an absolute joke - you couldn't get one unless you were in hospital on oxygen (while my GF got one in NZ in March due to recent travel and a minor cough, thankfully negative), so it's hard to interpret the numbers from back then!

The UK is well on the way to becoming a joke again unfortunately, govt is pushing people to go back to school/work, but when people get cold/flu/covid symptoms they're being told to drive many hundreds of km for a test! Maybe getting Serco to run everything wasn't such a great plan...
(Serco being a big govt services contractor with a track record of gross incompetence, to the point that they keep being fined for it, but of course "somehow" gets contracts again and again)

Sounds like kiwis are pretty well represented here btw!