The Water Cooler

9:44 AM

@Magisch yeah they are doing similar here - due to get a letter soon that we can show

12:19 PM

hey @avazula hope you're keeping well and sane

Hey!

I'm well, sane is a bit more uncertain

@avazula :( guessing they're running you pretty ragged given your industry

Yeah, that's the hardest part. We have hundreds of devices to produce ASAP so that the gov may use it for patients with Covid 19. I put my mod activities on hold (even though I check in a bit every day) but I drop by sometimes "to stay sane" indeed :)

hopefully you get through it without too much stress

seconded.. fingers crossed for you

12:25 PM

@motosubatsu britain already has a general lockdown right?

we don't have one yet here

@Magisch yeah they don't really like calling it that but that's what it is

Thanks :) So far WFH is doing wonders to me so that's a good thing

johnson's plan seems to have backfired

@Magisch if by "plan" you mean "flapping around like a demented fraggle and hoping it all goes away" then yes

better then what america is doing

trump is targeting april 12th to revoke all restrictions and go back to normal in the US

(from the federal side, that is, states probably wont)

12:30 PM

@Magisch you could pin random actions to a dartboard and have a blindfolded drunk throw darts to make decisions and it would still be better than America's efforts

How's it going for you two?

tense and silent in the office, I can't WFH, and am on rotating shifts now so that's doing a number on my sleep schedule and routine so eh

@avazula not too bad - still in the office unfortunately but at least that's better than not having any money coming in

:/

Lots of courage to both of you

I can't lie I'm worried for my employer, if we have to close the office it's gonna be brutal

for now orders are barely holding to pre-corona numbers. Orders by automobile companies are way down, but from medical manufacturing are way up. A mixed bag in general.

12:37 PM

I think it's less courage.. more a powerful need to eat and keep a roof over my head. If I can't work that's me and my employee left without enough money coming in to do both

I got savings to last me quite a while and my dad already said if I lose my job he'd support me if necessary, so that's not a huge stress factor for me, but man I'm contact anxious for everyone else here

Yeah, same here... many of my friends are undergoing temp unemployment

@avazula yup.. it's really doing a number on a lot of people :(

yup :(

1:46 PM

@Neo Mr Anderson

Good morning.

I just hope this thing passes quickly...

Bee

2:04 PM

@Neo I doubt it will

( hoping )

I am hoping for End of April

@Neo I hate to sound like a doomsayer but.. no chance

@Neo can you cast your mod eye over this: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/155417/…

Bee

2:26 PM

ahaha that is very ambitious

2:52 PM

Yep, to me that looks like subtle spam. Not enough to act on though.....

@Neo glad I'm not the only one who can see it

@motosubatsu I sure hope your wrong, otherwise Global Recession.....

Bee

@neo that's exactly what I'm expecting

@Bee I hope not....I am still optimistic about end of April.

@Neo honestly I'd like nothing better than to be wrong, I don't see any feasible way it could be done by the end of April. The only ways you could really end this that quickly would be a near-perfect suppression strategy executed on a global scale or just accepting that millions die

3:06 PM

@motosubatsu it may come to that....I don't believe human beings can self quarantine indefinitely.

cnn.com/2020/03/25/politics/…

this will help us in the US

short term anyway

@Neo no..there are limits to how functional a society you can have under the hefty curbs - which is why I think it will be a balancing act over the next 5-12 months of keeping society going while keeping deaths to a realistic minimum

3:45 PM

eeeek

I sure hope someone can impress us with useful treatment.

@Neo there's few things being looked at/trialed at the moment treatment wise

@Neo It's already here. It probably won't show up in the official statistics for another 3-4 months, and it won't officially be a recession until sometime in October, but the effects are real and already happening.

I think I will just bury my head in the sand on this and keep all the cash I can. :=)

It's quite plausible that 5% of American workers got laid off this week. That's already a recession, and it happened in 5 days. GDP is expected to decline by 5% in the next 3 months. That's 18 months of recession happening over the course of 12 weeks.

it's deciding between two evils

3:57 PM

And that's before most small businesses have even gone bankrupt yet.

every bit of economic activity beyond the lockdown essentials the virus will punish with more dead people and a step closer to the health care system collapsing

I think, people cannot stay inside......so in the end I bet we all get it. I hope we find a cure / decent treatment but hope is not a strategy.

the problem with that is

a lot of people (20%+) need some kind of medical assistance to get through it without severe long term effects or dying

every bit of more social interaction allowed will hasten the spread. And when the hospitals can't handle it anymore, the death rate spikes hard, towards the 10% figure rather then the 1% or so without

everyone is trotting out italy as a negative example, but even there the majority of severe cases can still be treated, and they have a harsh nation wide lockdown

a true health care system collapse is significantly uglier then what is italy right now

Italy has an aging population too...

the US has a chronically ill, largely overweight population

4:02 PM

Personal opinion (which I don't have time to debate in depth so take it for what it is):

Doing nothing comes with unacceptable costs (too many dead).

Shutting down literally everything except food, shelter, utilities and medicine will cause massive economic devastation and end up killing more people than it saves.

The goal should be to reduce the rate of spread as much as possible *while* keeping 80% of the economy still going.

some 30% of the US is a risk group

I can't say what would be best, because I have not the faintest clue

@Kaz I think that is what will end up happening....

every proposed solution has super harsh downsides that make you pessimistic as hell just thinking about

@Magisch Yep.

@Kaz this was more or less the original "mitigation" strategy in the UK - then the ugly numbers came out that it would translate to 250,000 dead

or when they ran the numbers against the US it was 1.1-1.2 million

4:06 PM

I heard different numbers about both

1.5-2m for the UK and 6m+ for the US

though, sack of salt, not even virologists agree on numbers on this, too many uncertainties

in the interests of citing I'm using the modelling here

agreed that there's a great deal of unkowns at play

nobody can really predict what a cascading health system failure could do to mortality rates and indirect deaths caused by overloaded hospitals not being able to deal with non-corona critical patients

nor how close you can cut it without having that happen

Super harsh take:

Acceptable loss. Half of them were dying, severely ill or only a few years from death by old age anyway. And you haven't actually saved the other half. You've just shifted them from public death by virus to diffuse death by poverty, homelessness, suicide, crime etc.

Shutting down that last 10% of the economy for not much marginal gain is, IMO, a move we will end up regretting.

I see your argument

but try to argue that and not sound like a monster

the line of reasoning creates a sort of visceral empathic reaction of disgust and rejection in people that is very hard to reason out of. This whole thing is basically a high stakes version of the trolley problem which nobody finds easy.

(not saying you sound like a monster just that selling that solution to the public is politically wholly unfeasible)

@Kaz there's going to have to be a certain degree of a losses to the virus deemed "acceptable" for want of a better word in order to balance against possibly greater losses of secondary causes - the $64million question is what course is best through the minefield

4:11 PM

I don't envy any politician right now

you decide between being an amoral monster and throwing a generation into extreme poverty

at least in the public's eyes

See South Korea, Japan, Singapore for examples of how you keep the economy more or less running as before while massively ramping up public health resources

I feel that is also partially a cultural issue

our government can't even stop corona parties without police intervention, over there they're distancing and wearing masks on their own

@Magisch Yep this is a fact. We had idiots at spring break visiting beaches in mass

@Neo yeah there's been similar idiocy here

I dont drink, ever, but in times like these I can understand people who would really just like to turn reality off for a few hours

4:20 PM

I drink on occasion and enjoy it.

@Neo I must admit I've had a glass of wine most nights in the last week or so

which is highly unusual for me

I have to admit, all of this is affecting me more then it should

I'm worried sick for many friends and colleagues who are in risk categories, for people who might lose their job, and it feels like I can't do jack shit

I think for me it's not so much acute worry as it is chronic low-intensity worry

DarkCygnus

7:01 PM

Suppaah

Had to come down to the office to do some maintenance to the servers

Passing by to say hi

Now in Guatemala we have a curfew, from 4pm to 4am :O

c ya later