-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
I'm in my final year at university, and they just cancelled the standard examinations. They're looking to move towards remote assessments now, whatever that means. We are, of course, still being told to study. It feels so pointless right now, because it feels as if the criteria is going to be changing.
What's weird is that UK has a tendency to keep going in circles.
Last week the herd immunity thing, earlier this week with the closures, and now they are like we won't shut down movement which basically makes it so that it's the herd immunity strategy again.
Last week the herd immunity thing, earlier this week with the closures, and now they are like we won't shut down movement which basically makes it so that it's the herd immunity strategy again.
Very similar experience when checking in with my boss today. When I asked what the long term plan is now the schools are off I was told there is not one as they are keeping their options open in case things change in the coming days. When I pointed out the schools are very likely closed until August at the earliest, I was met with disbelief. So many still see this as a minor blip, a week or two and we'll knock this pesky virus on the head and things will go back to normal.
Also, no-one is talking about it but it's clear a number of employers are reluctant to explore home working because once you let that genie out the bottle, you cannot put it back in.
I cannot believe I'm saying this, but the Government need to get at least a little authoritarian with this. No more advice, start laying down the law. It's painfully clear that neither business or people can be trusted to do the right thing.
Economic confidence falls to lowest since 2008 but half think government handling the coronavirus crisis well
Poll finds that majority of people think the government is handling the coronavirus situation well.
Weirdly the people viewing this all positively are the same demographics that voted for Brexit and the Tories in the last election. So very odd.
Poll finds that majority of people think the government is handling the coronavirus situation well.
Weirdly the people viewing this all positively are the same demographics that voted for Brexit and the Tories in the last election. So very odd.
Not surprising. When they were absolutely fucking up our press held the public to account instead.
How is it scaremongering? The facts of the virus are pretty clear, the 1 percent death is really scary, which most people don't seem to understand how bad that is. The speed and rate of spread is incredibly high. But that's not the worst, its the 10 percent that need hospitalisation and treatment to survive. Which if enough people get it to quickly will overwhelm any hospital infrastructure in the world. Those are facts, almost every other country seems to understand the severity of this, and are taking decisive action to protect their countries. The UK government is like "maybe shall we do something, maybe not, or maybe we'll give advance warnings, we don't really need to shut down everything so soon, we don't really need to give NHS staff proper equipment or test them, we don't really need to do much testing in general(against WHO guidelines, I think now they are doing testing its probably as inept as all their current actions), we'll just continue to advise people vaguely what to do. People aren't listening and are fucking confused and don't have clue what is going on. Where I am everything is open pubs, clubs, restaurants, cornershops, hairdressers, half of the people are panic buying, the other half are just going out like its some kind of holiday. They are just making sure it spreads more for longer, maybe we'll be a good example for what not to do. I hope to hell I'm wrong and we're lucky somehow, but it doesn't seem likely to me, and it won't be down to much the government has done its tragic and disgusting how they are handling this.
Theres not a chance that we will see more deaths than the United States just be sheer volume of population - the same with Italy which suffers as a result of close multi-generational cohabiting. You might be worried or stressed - I get that, I'm on day 3 of self-isolation with 2 children myself, but please keep some perspective.
Just got home from school and it was oddly normal. The party line was just to keep on trucking (even with Year 11) and I think kids liked the sense of normality and the fact that I was just getting on with lessons as if nothing was bothering me helped.
They had a few minutes when they asked questions at the end of the lesson and they all appreciated that I didn't know the answers but was being honest with them.
Pretty proud of them to be fair.
They had a few minutes when they asked questions at the end of the lesson and they all appreciated that I didn't know the answers but was being honest with them.
Pretty proud of them to be fair.
kids are pretty resilient to things like this, they will cope, we all will.
Really hope the panic buying situation will calm down eventually, since we're going to be dealing with this for some months.
I work for a large college group and they have been negligent in maintaining full teams of housekeeping/cleaning staff for years. ATM we are down to 2 people for what should be a 5 person team. And one of those people is a contractor who is unfamiliar with my campus and has no supervision. There is no supervisor atm.
The job doesn't get done even close to properly at the best of times because of the cultural attitude of looking down on certain occupations and insisting that cleaning should be run on a shoestring budget. For years minimum wage workers have had teams cut, areas increased in size - the whole "you need to do more with less," schtick .
We don't have the proper cleaning products (no masks) or training to deal with the virus-not even hand sanitizer. And the students have been stealing whatever anti-bacterial soap that isn't screwed to the wall in a locked dispenser. We have had next to zero input from anyone above.
If the UK gov is determined to keep schools and colleges open - even after a complete lockdown has passed - then there needs to be a nationwide initiative to supply the correct equipment, correct chemicals and training on usage.
Negligence has the potential to become criminal negligence very soon.
How much do you guys know about how cleaning is performed at your place of work? If it is anything like mine, you should be wary - to say the least.
The job doesn't get done even close to properly at the best of times because of the cultural attitude of looking down on certain occupations and insisting that cleaning should be run on a shoestring budget. For years minimum wage workers have had teams cut, areas increased in size - the whole "you need to do more with less," schtick .
We don't have the proper cleaning products (no masks) or training to deal with the virus-not even hand sanitizer. And the students have been stealing whatever anti-bacterial soap that isn't screwed to the wall in a locked dispenser. We have had next to zero input from anyone above.
If the UK gov is determined to keep schools and colleges open - even after a complete lockdown has passed - then there needs to be a nationwide initiative to supply the correct equipment, correct chemicals and training on usage.
Negligence has the potential to become criminal negligence very soon.
How much do you guys know about how cleaning is performed at your place of work? If it is anything like mine, you should be wary - to say the least.
Last edited:
Exactly. The UK would have to have a death rate statistically five times as high as that of the US to outweigh the difference in population.
Props to my employer who enforced full WFH on as Wednesday of last week and literally said... They'd rather be wrong than sorry... We also have lots of support and HR are rolling out well being / mental health support and sessions / literature etc.
They've taken it really seriously and have been honest in saying to people it's likely for the long term not a couple of weeks.
Incredibly good decision from them.
Can't believe so many companies are still head in sand
Wouldn't be so sure about that honestly (about Italy). The UK's on a worse trajectory than they were in the beginning, you've yet to take any measure to slow it down, and you have like half as many ICU beds as them.
I get it's no use running around in hysterics but maybe more people should be worried about it over there.
Its strange. I've been very flip-flop on the governments action. If you were to ask me yesterday I would have heavily criticised their early strategy of herd immunity but praised their impressively quick change over in strategy when they realised what a disaster that would be. Daily press conferences and Boris (so far) attending each one I think is another positive action they have taken. The rumors last night of London lockdown with UK to follow was also comforting me in thinking the government were going to really start cracking down on this.
Now? With apparently no lockdown prepared, I am back to thinking the government are not being close to aggressive enough on tackling this disease.
I voted SNP btw.
Noticed this. First time we have received death numbers before case numbers, quite strange.
Just been told that as well as the WFH policy they started on Monday, because of the schools closing, in order to look after the kids we're free to take holiday at "no notice", can take unpaid leave if needed, and can shift our work hours to whatever we need - as long as the work gets done, they don't mind.
TBH I wish every employer was like this for y'all.
TBH I wish every employer was like this for y'all.
Do we have any evidence the lock down is working in other countries? Italy,Spain and France the numbers are still really bad... in China they stopped it spreading but now it is coming back through the borders...
This won't be popular but not a chance there can be a lockdown until a vaccine, so it might be we are all going to have to get it.. I am just not seeing the evidence to say a lockdown will get rid of it, unless we close the borders until a vaccine arrives
This won't be popular but not a chance there can be a lockdown until a vaccine, so it might be we are all going to have to get it.. I am just not seeing the evidence to say a lockdown will get rid of it, unless we close the borders until a vaccine arrives
I am in a similar position with my masters degree, not too sure what a remote assessment means but sounds exploitable as fuck. Not looking forward to the studying at home either, nothing worthwhile is going to get done.
Going to put that down to Boris being useless and ineffectual in providing leadership when it's needed. The man looks like he's coming apart more every day.
There is a two week delay. If you look at the plateau, Italian cases are no longer accelerating, they are increasing but no longer exponentially. It DOES work.
The issue with deaths is they are not on a timeline. Someone might last 6 weeks then die. The plateau of deaths might be 3 or 4 weeks AFTER the level of new cases start to level off.
AND THAT'S why it's so important to fucking act now rather than fannying about until the numbers start to stack up.
He has no core beliefs, as proven by his flip flopping in the past. He's going wherever his advisors tell him and clearly they're flapping around with completely different opinions. The graduated increase in measures = more authoritarian; but then this nonsense about London = someone else clearly bent his ear. It's a complete shitshow.
The idea behind a lockdown has never been to get rid of the virus, it's supposed to slow it spreading so that the health system can do the best it can.
It takes weeks for a lockdown to have an effect on case numbers and the point is not to stop the outbreak completely, but to slow down the spread so that your health service is not completely overwhelmed like we see in Italy at the moment. The hope is that over time with the development of antivirals and with increases in healthcare capacity, you can cope with less stringent restrictions later.
When he said "We'll do the right thing at the right time"...he actually meant the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Assessment has moved from exams to 1 piece of coursework per unit, to be submitted remotely.
yes, it's not ideal but in the circumstances it's the only thing to do. I have a feeling that marking will be lenient, as will entry for 1st years come September.
Between February 20th and March 5th, Italy went from 0 to 148 deaths. This period predates the nationwide lockdown by five days.
Between March 4th and March 18th, the UK went from 0 to 108 deaths. A day later and it is up to 137.
Sort your shit out, Boris - you clown.
Time is ticking and you're barely ahead of Italy despite all the dire warnings you had from Italy that you could have heeded.
Wanker.
Between March 4th and March 18th, the UK went from 0 to 108 deaths. A day later and it is up to 137.
Sort your shit out, Boris - you clown.
Time is ticking and you're barely ahead of Italy despite all the dire warnings you had from Italy that you could have heeded.
Wanker.
I don't want to comment too much on the rumours about military deployment that are going around, but I've just come for a walk with the kids around my small village (just outside Sheffield) and two military helicopters have just flown over very low and very loud.
Not going to jump to daft conclusions, but I've never seen it before. Worth noting for just how utterly unnerving it felt as much as anything..
Not going to jump to daft conclusions, but I've never seen it before. Worth noting for just how utterly unnerving it felt as much as anything..
I can confirm this (specifically Bournemouth). People are idiots.
What are the chances that they are deliberately misleading about the lockdown so as to mitigate a mad rush when they do indeed do it and make it effective immediately?
They closed schools but instead of doing a lockdown immediately at the same time and cause further hysteria, they decided to say otherwise and then put a lockdown into effect immediately a couple of days later.
It's nonsense I know, but this country and the govt is acting all sorts of nonsense in the first place
They closed schools but instead of doing a lockdown immediately at the same time and cause further hysteria, they decided to say otherwise and then put a lockdown into effect immediately a couple of days later.
It's nonsense I know, but this country and the govt is acting all sorts of nonsense in the first place
One of the things you'll find is that, as soon as something like this is in swing, people will start seeing the military *everywhere* and taking that as a harbinger of imminent military involvement. You'd be amazed at how many small military readiness exercises, QRA shouts, low-level training, live-fire exercises etc. go off every week of the year, and in normal times they just tend to fade into the background.
For example, just last week I was photographing a cross country. A four-ship of F-15s (operating out of Lakenheath, in England, going by the tail codes) came low and loud from the north, having clearly just been running a low-level sortie through the Highlands low-fly-area. I've never seen them up this way before, but speaking to a few contacts later it seems to have been a standard sortie, and they just ended up using the Highlands LFA (I think the Mach Loop in Wales is out of favour at the moment for a few reasons). That's the kind of standard movement that can catch people unawares, and in times of heightened alert it can feel like Something Significant, even if it's not.
TL;DR Don't panic too much about military movements right now, and expect any deployments to be announced properly - even if Boris and chums are in headless-chicken-mode, the military tends to be very sensitive to public perception and won't just start appearing without proper warning (obvious disclaimer for genuine need-to-get-deployed-this-minute emergencies, but we're not there yet).
The BBC say the army is being trained for use, doesn't mean it will happen, prepared for anything but I imagine it's a given at some point, there isn't enough police or NHS support so they'll use them to keep things oiled and smooth if things ramp up to be needed which all you can say is wise and the right thing to do.
It's what slowed it down in SK and China. The reality is that serious controls will have to be maintained for like a year. The lockdown strategy depends on things shutting down for a couple of weeks, then areas being re-opened as the situation is assessed and patients are identified. There would likely have to be further lockdowns as required to deal with re-emergence.
You can say people won't put up with that, but the alternative is that a minimum of 250k might die.
Literally a line to get inside the quality food store in hounslow, looked packed inside too judging by what I could see through the windows.
I've never been more glad to be a civil servant, I'll tell you what. all these stories of people getting let go or being forced to take unpaid leave is horrifying.
My dad was saying they should just keep the old and weak locked up while everyone's else gets it. So bad it hurts.
Labour would have been worse, we don't have the money because Labour spent it all, Tories had to make cuts because of Labour etc.
Idiots.
Daniel Kraemer on Twitter
“Some pretty morbid stuff in the Coronavirus bill today. Including giving local and national authorities power to force others to give info about their capacity to deal with "transportation, storage or disposal of dead bodies"”
twitter.com
Yikes
I can barely follow what he's trying to say and I feel like he can't either.