[COVID-19] General Discussion

[Bada-Bing!]

I am happy to still WFH. My firm sent us home on March 12 and have not been back to the office since. They've been pretty good at not forcing people back as well. They reopened the office on Monday and it's at about 10% capacity of what it usually is in the first week. Covid plan in place. Goody bags waiting for peeps including mask, gloves, digital thermometer. Still no one is going to wear the mask unless it becomes mandatory.

It's really getting on the trains which most concerns me. Especially during the summer months, wearing masks on hot stuffy trains and not being able to social distance on packed trains during rush hour. I won't go back until the hours are staggered properly. Tough because I work in London.

Going to take a lot to coax me back to the office.

 

[ncurd]

Snip

I've been back to site twice and we have strict personnel limit of 7. However most that's because we work in hardware development and some guys simply can't do their work remotely. Nobodies been forced in and we have strict rules about travel to work which is not allowed to involve public transport. You also need prearranged approval.

Whilst I'm sure my manager (whose also the site manager) agrees with us here I know the corporate overlords may have different ideas in government advice changes.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

I've not been back in office yet and I'm not sure when I will - zero pressure from the management to go in and I think they prefer people to work from home (I think the risk assessment they had done is no more than 4 in office at once for optimal safety)

Was planning on going back when gyms open but now I'm thinking about cancelling my gym membership, getting one closer to home, and staying fully WFH for the forseeable.

Losing the money (and time) saved on not commuting is going to be a bitter pill to swallow. Last time I commuted was March 6th.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

I am happy to still WFH. My firm sent us home on March 12 and have not been back to the office since. They've been pretty good at not forcing people back as well. They reopened the office on Monday and it's at about 10% capacity of what it usually is in the first week. Covid plan in place. Goody bags waiting for peeps including mask, gloves, digital thermometer. Still no one is going to wear the mask unless it becomes mandatory.

It's really getting on the trains which most concerns me. Especially during the summer months, wearing masks on hot stuffy trains and not being able to social distance on packed trains during rush hour. I won't go back until the hours are staggered properly. Tough because I work in London.

Going to take a lot to coax me back to the office.

I've got the same travel issue / concerns. WFH all the time is driving me nuts, but I'm not going back to London until I can be confident in the travelling. We can work effectively enough from home and I've resigned myself to WFH until next year sometime. Fair play to my employer, they've been very good through all this and we're under no pressure to go back.

On the plus side I don't mind not shelling out £4K p.a for a season ticket and station parking.

 

[Kiwiwomble]

At least another six weeks of lockdown in Victoria so upgraded the work station

 

[Bada-Bing!]

 

[Which Tyler]

I'm a chiropractor, so there's only so much I can do without touching people.
Equally, being medical, we were never obliged to close.
I tried WFH for about 10 weeks - remote consultations and advice, but it's just not the same.
Opened for face to face mid-May, but only for emergency patients.
Opened for more routine care mid-June.
Wife (massage) opened up this week, but only for shorter treatments.

It takes 30 minutes between patients to decontaminate and aerate my room - and to have a break from all the PPE. I'm dreading having to do all this in the winter - leaving doors open for aearation is fine when it's warm, less good otherwise.

So I've been back at work for 2 months now, and there's nothing "routine" about it. Financially, my earning have crept up to about 50% of normal (and my normal is pretty quiet)

 

[Kiwiwomble]

View attachment 8289

nice, how ya finding teams? mines super buggy...today it developed a nasty habit of hanging up on every meeting i tried to join

 

[Bada-Bing!]

nice, how ya finding teams? mines super buggy...today it developed a nasty habit of hanging up on every meeting i tried to join

It's been good. I have to put it on Mac OS
to use the microphone as I plug in a headset to take and make calls. But keep in touch with colleagues over the chat function.

And then log into work via Microsoft remote app, as our work is Windows based. The biggest headache so far has been too many people logged into to the servers and then crashing. We only have 3 servers to serve about 80 peeps working remotely.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

The biggest headache so far has been too many people logged into to the servers and then crashing.

Bane of my companies existence atm - there's constant messages flying about on the chat when someone is about to upload/download large files to make sure there isn't too many connected
Luckily I'm windows and the server is mac so I just fake connection difficulties and get the designers to send me files over WeTransfer instead

 

[Not Mike Brown's Sock]

Why no-one can ever recover from COVID-19 in England – a statistical anomaly - The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

Yoon K Loke, Carl Heneghan People living in England have become increasingly concerned in the face of Public Health England’s

www.cebm.net

This is a bit of a mess. Basically PHE class anyone who's tested positive and subsequently died as having died of COVID. No matter how long ago they were tested.

That's a monumental **** up there

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

That's a monumental **** up there

So on par for our handling of this then?

 

[Not Mike Brown's Sock]

So on par for our handling of this then?

I mean yeah, but it'll be interesting to see how much it brings it down.

I believe in Michigan when they changed the definition of a Covid death to someone who died of Covid rather than someone who just had Covid at the time and died of something else the death toll came down by 25% or something (from memory, I may be wrong tho).

If they don't even need to have Covid in their system at the time under our metric, it could be over 25% inflated in England (provided we're somewhat similar to the US in terms of demographic deaths)

 

[stus768]

I mean yeah, but it'll be interesting to see how much it brings it down.

I believe in Michigan when they changed the definition of a Covid death to someone who died of Covid rather than someone who just had Covid at the time and died of something else the death toll came down by 25% or something (from memory, I may be wrong tho).

If they don't even need to have Covid in their system at the time under our metric, it could be over 25% inflated in England (provided we're somewhat similar to the US in terms of demographic deaths)

Excess deaths still very high though. I'm more concerned it's keeping the current daily deaths high.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Excess deaths still very high though. I'm more concerned it's keeping the current daily deaths high.

yes I think the excess deaths is the more telling figure, showing direct and indirect deaths due to Covid compared to the average previous 5 years. More comparable with other regions of the country and also other countries death tolls.

 

[Groundhog]

I'm also still pretty happy working from home. I will be back in on Thursday the 13th though. We're gonna be rotating 3 days in work 2 days at home, 2 in 3 at home for the foreseeable with people split into two groups so max half of staff are in at once. I can live with that, I'd love an arrangement like that long term. Work delivered a nice big monitor and some other stuff last week, so my setup is pretty good now as well. Will miss my routine.

 

[ncurd]

Johnson giving speech at 11am on a Friday these things are annoying to track probably to bury Russian report when it comes out.

 

[Which Tyler]

I see the lovely Mr Hancock has re-written history to suggest that the government did follow SAGE's advice to lockdown on the 16th.
Do they genuinely believe this double-think? or they forgotten that A] people have brains, B] Google exists, C] written records exist?

If this is the best argument Matt Hancock’s got, the public inquiry will be a horrorshow

The Health Secretary was asked why the lockdown didn’t begin sooner... and his reply was frankly unbelievable

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[stus768]

I'm also still pretty happy working from home. I will be back in on Thursday the 13th though. We're gonna be rotating 3 days in work 2 days at home, 2 in 3 at home for the foreseeable with people split into two groups so max half of staff are in at once. I can live with that, I'd love an arrangement like that long term. Work delivered a nice big monitor and some other stuff last week, so my setup is pretty good now as well. Will miss my routine.

A mix like this is good for the foreseeable future. There are benefits to working in offices, training, team cohesion and culture are difficult to promote with everyone remote working. I miss the social aspects (pub) and it is somewhere you are forced to interact with people you may not generally chose to.

 

[Vieux Talonneur]

Significant return to normality by Xmas eh? Will believe it when I see it.