Coronavirus General Discussion

I would hope people who are genuinely exempt will be treated kindly.

HOWEVER... having been, for several years, the primary caregiver for someone - my mum - whose medical issues included just about the worst bout of pneumonia you could imagine (as in, six weeks in hospital incuding a week in the high dependency unit, including ventilator support for a couple of days, then a month in a care home, then about eight months to recover to the point where she began to regain some independence and a year before she was anywhere approaching a lifestyle most people would consider 'normal', and which was sustainable only with an awful lot of support) on top of a heart condition that often left her breathless, I would suggest that anyone whose respiratory system is so compromised that a basic paper or cloth mask has a serious negative effect on their breathing probably needs to stay home right now for their own safety. For someone with those health issues, Covid-19 would be a death sentence.

I’m hoping that this is one of the attitudes to die out after this. There’s no reason to pass your germs on to other people.

That's part of the attitude that has to change. There shouldn't be anything disciplinary about being ill.

If you go over a certain level of sick days then it is fair to change over to statuary sick pay instead. What happens if you have a doctor's note?

It's not as easy to get a sick note due to GP waiting times.

Masks were made compulsory on London transport a few weeks back. I've only used the tube a couple of times but I saw an awful lot of people not wearing them. There is no enforcement, I doubt there will be in shops either.

jcs619 The final decision is with your employer, are they indicating a keeness to return and have started trials in the office and openly discussed returning to the office.

The Company I work for think that the infrastructure for returning to the office will only allow a few non-essential people to be on site at any time and it will be at the request of the employee and unlikely to become the norm until next year. Having an infection issue on site and the repurcissions is seen as a risk not worth taking as the performance metrics have not been impacted by working from home.

The Government can advise but they cannot force and by now you should be getting a feel for which camp your office is tending towards.

'Man Cock' said this morning that masks arent needed in offices. So I suspect next week BJ will overturn it.

So we don't need to wear them in restaurants and cafes but what about Pret? Is it a shop of cafe?

Looking at the news today, it’s clear that the government have no clue about aerosols or that they don’t care. Many were onto this months ago but, even with the sclerotic WHO now moving on it, they still deny it.

If it is down to individual workplaces to protect you then, at the least, you meed to lobby your employers to have full compliance with mask wearing. I can only think the government is taunting people to take industrial action.

That sort of idiocy infuriates me.

It is not clever to demand simplistic instructions from the government, dig out edge cases where those instructions won't work and then claim that the government is stupid because a general rule doesn't work in a specific situation intentionally chosen because it makes no sense. The real world is complicated. It isn't neatly divided into separate categories such that you can say "here this rule applies, there that rule applies" and have no overlaps or fuzzy boundaries. In the real world you have to deal with situations as they are, with all their complications.

People aren't either gay or straight, or either black or white. Roads aren't either urban or rural. Houses aren't either old or new. And retail premises aren't either shops or restaurants.

Of course there are shops where masks are appropriate because people are moving around and mixing in close proximity, and there are restaurants where they aren't appropriate because people are seated apart and need to be able to eat, and there are places where both functions occur and people need to engage their brains and think because the government obviously can't visit every single location in the country and make the decision whether masks are required on a case by case basis. Does anyone really think nobody in the government knows that such places exist? Does anyone really think it's smart to mention them, as if they'd noticed something nobody else could have thought of?

The way some people are going on it reminds me of when the Brexit referendum happened. We had someone here say that the idea of free movement in the EU was fine in principle but the idealists who dreamt it up didn't realise that it would also allow criminals to cross borders to escape justice and we'd be powerless to prevent it. Except of course they'd realised that, which is why there were procedures in place to deal with precisely that situation. Misrepresenting a situation in order to pretend it's a problem doesn't make it a problem.

So why is it "bonkers" to say that if you're shopping in a food shop you should wear a mask but if you eat the food there you should take off your mask? Not only is it the obviously correct thing to do, but the person whose tweet was repeated here had clearly worked out for themselves the correct way to deal with the situation and decided to make out it was a problem anyway. Of course things look stupid if you flatly refuse to apply thought to them. It doesn't mean they're stupid. It means you are.

With wearing masks my comment is aside those with medical breathing problems and those not able to legit manage masks. I have seen that on TFLs site it says staff and bus drivers dont have to wear masks. And a couple of papers said that staff in shops wouldn't have to wear one.

So as a sales girl in a shop that is opening back up this week, what sort of magical powers do I have over everyone else that comes in to the shop and why then do they not work when I go in to say the Boots thats a few feet away.

Same with some police and the tfl staff outside of bus drivers who are kind of shut away from passangers on the bus.

Yes I know nothing is stopping shop or tfl staff but giving leniency in a global pandemic?

Thing with the testing that as I have said its done based on credit check so if you dont have one. Like a lot of people I read on twitter are refused a test. And again a global pandemic why is a credit score a barrier? I did one of those free credit checks and apparently they couldn' verify me even though I have a 10 grand student loan and on the electoral roll.
Nothing to say a vaccine wont use the same method.

Like in the States I know that many people dont have or cant get health insurance and even that is disturbing to think about. Under a global pandemic why should any of it be a barrier?

I am not a conspiracy peddler but even at best its getting more and more dodgy by the day. Don't get me started on the cashless society stuff either as I am currently going on about that in the "Cash" thread.