Coronavirus: General discussion (see opening post for rules)

[6Foot2]

I feel good about having left education too!

 

Back to coronavirus...

[stevejp]

I am very glad I have left education

I'd like to see someone try and tell me that I could work in a school with 350 children who don't do social distancing and yet I am not allowed to go home and cuddle my grandson

 

I’d certainly like to watch (and hear) you dealing with that person! (From a suitably safe distance, of course). I suspect that frogdom might be the least of their worries!

[kennysarmy]

Took the morning off and got my last game of golf in for a while.

Damn virus!

 

Here's hoping we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks as planned!

[mikeprice]

I've checked with my MP and apparently I will be able to play the piano during lockdown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

which is great

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cos I couldn't before

 

 

 

sorry

 

thought people needed cheering up

[sigma]

In the event of an outbreak, I realise that the advice had changed, but I didn’t realise that the provider of the advice had changed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/03/advice-schools-covid-infection-pupils-classrooms-test-and-trace

[elsiegee40]

Took the morning off and got my last game of golf in for a while.

Damn virus!

 

Here's hoping we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks as planned!

 

I got a haircut in on Tuesday.

 

We went for a meal in our local Turkish restaurant last night. It was the first place we ate out after lockdown 1 so it seemed appropriate.

[jthompson]

Saw this last night, pretty late. BBC News: All pupils and staff must wear masks in secondary school corridors

[smurfomatic]

Saw this last night, pretty late. BBC News: All pupils and staff must wear masks in secondary school corridors

 

We've just been told the same - as a prep school that goes up to Year 8, it means our top two year groups need to wear masks, but the rest don't have to! Also, teachers who teach one lesson with Y7 & 8 have to wear masks all the time...

[the_quick]

Hold on, I thought that requirement was from September? Our pupils were wearing them in corridors all the time.

[mavhc]

Suggestion vs law I guess

 

Half a million new cases a day now, getting up to 50 million. Deaths are rising rapidly too, 7 day moving average is up to 7000 per day, that's twice as many as human driven vehicles kill per day.

[foofighterjim]

Hold on, I thought that requirement was from September? Our pupils were wearing them in corridors all the time.

 

It was a requirement if your region was under local restrictions, we started September without the need to have masks on but by the end of the month we had to wear one in all communal areas of the school.

[bald_pig]

Hold on, I thought that requirement was from September? Our pupils were wearing them in corridors all the time.

 

We've been doing it here as well, I think it was required in Scotland but not England? Regardless, apparently our governors refused to sign off any covid policy unless the mask requirement was included.

[6Foot2]

Link: Sainsbury's to cut 3,500 jobs and close 420 Argos stores [bBC News]

 

Sainsbury's is to cut 3,500 jobs with the closure of 420 Argos outlets and all its meat, fish and deli counters.

 

The 420 standalone Argos stores will close by March 2024, although Sainsbury's said it would open 150 Argos outlets in its supermarkets.

 

Boss Simon Roberts said Sainsbury's was responding to changing consumer habits and the growth of online shopping...

 

...However, the redundancies increase the mounting jobs toll announced by companies facing a coronavirus hit to trading.

 

On Wednesday, John Lewis and Lloyds Banking Group said they were cutting a combined 2,500 jobs...

[stevejp]

Link: Sainsbury's to cut 3,500 jobs and close 420 Argos stores [bBC News]

 

I get the closure of the Argos stores - if you’re going to buy something out of a catalogue without seeing it, then you might as well buy on-line. But closing the fresh food counters? With the renewed interest that people seem to have in the quality and source of their food, I’d have thought these were more important than ever. The butchers, bakery, fishmongers and deli counters at our local Morrison’s are always busy.

[mavhc]

I'd like my food sealed by a robot in a factory, not handled by a human full of weird rna

 

Meanwhile 4th Nov had the highest ever death rate from sars-cov-2, over 9000.

[mikeprice]

 

Maybe this is why they want to do a mass test in Liverpool

 

we have the right experience

[Andrew_C]

I'd like my food sealed by a robot in a factory, not handled by a human full of weird rna

Your packaged food isn't packed by robots. It is packed by minimum-wage slaves, standing shoulder to shoulder on production lines. Why do you think there were so many outbreaks in food plants?

[Rob_D]

I get the closure of the Argos stores - if you’re going to buy something out of a catalogue without seeing it, then you might as well buy on-line. But closing the fresh food counters? With the renewed interest that people seem to have in the quality and source of their food, I’d have thought these were more important than ever. The butchers, bakery, fishmongers and deli counters at our local Morrison’s are always busy.

Our local Sainsburys has had the fresh meat/fish/deli counters closed since the start of the first lockdown. In fact, they now seem to be in the process of ripping them out. Bakery's still open though.

[smurfomatic]

Your packaged food isn't packed by robots. It is packed by minimum-wage slaves, standing shoulder to shoulder on production lines. Why do you think there were so many outbreaks in food plants?

 

Indeed, the major outbreak here in Northampton was at the Greencore sandwich factory, which has hundreds of people working there.

[jmak]

I'd advise cooking what you buy from the fresh meat or fish counter...

[mikeprice]

Our local Sainsburys has had the fresh meat/fish/deli counters closed since the start of the first lockdown. In fact, they now seem to be in the process of ripping them out. Bakery's still open though.

 

Our Tesco fresh meat/fish places closed ages ago - I think it was the same across a lot of stores - if not all

[Katy]

Our local Sainsburys has had the fresh meat/fish/deli counters closed since the start of the first lockdown. In fact, they now seem to be in the process of ripping them out. Bakery's still open though.

Same here - in them closing in March and still being closed. I was waiting for them to re-open but guess they won't do now hopefully most of the stuff they sold will end up on the shelves pre-packed, used to spend a fortune on the deli counter every time I visited.

[6Foot2]

Link: Coronavirus: Reopening schools causes R transmission rate to surge, study suggests [The Independent]

 

Reopening schools following coronavirus lockdowns is linked to a surge in transmissions within a month, according to the first study to look at the impact of lifting restrictions on the R rate.

 

Children’s return to classrooms was followed by an average 24-per-cent rise in the R transmission number, University of Edinburgh researchers found after analysing data from 131 countries.

 

The only other measure linked to a higher increase in the rate is lifting a ban on groups gathering, which led to a 25-per-cent rise in R. To create their models, the authors linked data on country-level R estimates from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with information about non-pharmaceutical interventions from the Oxford Covid-19 government response tracker...

[elsiegee40]

'I was refused a home Covid test after credit check'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841185

The Department for Health and Social Care, which is running the test system across the UK, says it uses a credit reference agency, TransUnion, to verify people's identities to "reduce fraud and prevent multiple testing kits being ordered, diverting capacity from where it is needed most".

 

Anna Miller, from charity Doctors of the World, questioned whether identity verification for home test kits is creating the solution to a problem that doesn't exist - at the expense of people like Laura.

 

"The types of people affected are anybody who has little to no credit history or credit footprint," she says.

 

"People whose financial situations tend to be organised by other people in a family and women, like elderly people, are likely to be more disproportionally affected.

 

"Alongside these groups are young adults who've not had much time to build up credit histories, recently arrived migrants in the UK for the same reason and people on low incomes who might not have access to mainstream credit."

 

"The situation seems a bit crazy to me, to be honest. We are guests in the UK, we're trying very hard to keep the population safe by self-isolating and getting tested," she says.

 

"But not being able to verify our identity was very strange. We're both on the electoral roll, we both have bank accounts here, we're on a lease, we both have bills.

 

"There are many ways the government could have accessed our identity information, so the reason the government has chosen the credit path is a mystery to me."

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by elsiegee40

[Andrew_C]

the reason the government has chosen the credit path is a

way to gather information they can sell to others.