Anti-dementors are driving round the Arc de Triomphe

[SockYarn]

new thread :-)

I'm finding the prospect of the 45747th weekend on my own a bit hard to take Especially after the realisation yesterday I won't be eligible for the August SE grant so need to stop spending on everything other than essentials.

Jourdain I'm cheering on your wee! Good luck.

@Nihiloxica

What has New Zealand done so well?

"Isolated country can isolate more easily" is hardly big news.

It's a gorgeous day today and we are off to swim again with friends. I think swimming might be what has tipped my mood back from a dangerous-feeling edge.

Not intending to start a run on Chicken sorry!

@Nihiloxica I miss swimming so much. It's my mobile meditation. I don't know of anywhere I can go at the moment. Stuck in the middle of the country without a wetsuit. Where do you go?

Bakewell yes, I'm drinking lots! I feel that I need to, I just can't actually go. It is damn annoying. I hope it rights itself sooner rather than later, since I majorly can't be doing with it!

I don't mind the screens staying. Or the hand sanitiser pumps.

NannyPhlegm I’m 100% with you, and at some point we’re going to all have to sit down as adults and have a serious think (acceptance) of our future.

Personally I don’t think a vaccine is coming. However, I’d like our medics and scientists to have a few drugs which give us a better fighting chance if we get a bad dose.

I believe we’re all going to have to accept our life expectancies will be lowered and that this thing is going to circulate and there’s fuck all we can realistically do to stop it.

My mum died just before lockdown - not COVID! Had COVID hit at any point during the last 40 years she’d never have survived it. We as a population seem to have become so very distances from the realities of Mother Nature that we’ve forgot life isn’t fair and that it can be short and cruel.

Anyway, Jacinda - worst type of head girl. Teachers loved her but you know she’d have been a right sly cunt in the toilets and have her minions hold you down whilst she delivered the verbal blows.

I can’t see them getting rid of the Perspex screens now they’ve paid for them. Happy for them to stay TBH.

@mightbealittlebitmad thank you. I think I will risk it. It's open until 8 so I'm just going to go as late as possible to try and avoid the queue. It's a lovely day here so hopefully all the murderers will be at the beach and not IKEA.

bakewell I swim in skins... even when the water is 2 Degrees. You honestly don’t need a wetsuit right now - More bother than benefit imo.

@CupCupGoose our Ikea was completely normal - lots of households & kids

@Jourdain11 sorry you’re having such a crap time :( agree with you re NS she really is buggered by geography!

@Nihiloxica I completely agree with you re NZ. Her only out is a very effective, widely used vaccine delivered ASAP ... unlikely & even if there is there’s no way in fuck this will be globally eradicated.

Occupational risk of death? I believe transport workers - taxi drivers being the classic (often middle aged male BAME not super healthy & have recurrent contact with multiple potentially infected people in a very confined space) - were at greatest risk. But a dead fat middle aged Asian taxi sells far fewer papers than a pretty young nurse so it’s obvious which way the media will spin the risks

@CupCupGoose - I went to ikea the other day. Once I stopped hyperventilating from the excitement of being out out I noticed how ‘normal’ it was. Don’t think there would be any problem going as a family - there were plenty of family groups when I was there.
Just that the restaurant was closed so no free coffee or meatballs. Takeaway hotdog and cinnamon roll made it better though

I hope the hand sanitiser stations stay, in fact I hope the lasting legacy of all is better hand hygiene across the board.

I think perspecs screens are a good idea. Tales of revolting mingers coughing and spluttering all over supermarket staff in normal times is enough to back this up.

I was just witness to a major episode of dementor mental gymnastics that it left me totally

Acquaintance from north of the border. Kicking off about the lack of school for her kids, it'll just be a few hours a week, she cant teach & work full time, shes fed up with her childrens education being wrecked.

So I post the us for them link & comment on how the blended learning is nonsense & will create and haves and have nots class system and NS needs to sort this out.

OH......MY.....GOD I had to laugh so hard at her response. She wants to protect teachers and kids and totally is fine with blended learning and NS is doing a fantastic job.

My head hurts.......

@InsaneInTheViralMembrane if the median age of death is 82 (I'm sure I read that stat somewhere) I'm not even convinced it will have an impact on life expectancy in the long run. And yes agree we are going to need to learn to live with covid. Like we have many other really nasty viruses. Scientists would say that this really isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things. It would be really worrying if something like Ebola became much easier to contract as it has around a 50% death rate. Covid now looks like it might have 0.5% fatality.

I hope the hand sanitiser stations stay, in fact I hope the lasting legacy of all is better hand hygiene across the board.

I hope the legacy is that public toilets all have both hot water and bloody soap

Oh and she disagrees that this will create a class system.

Fantasy: bus into Newcastle. Schlep around Fenwick's (our John Lewis isn't opening yet). Pick up some goodies in Waitrose. Sadly, I'm buggered if I'm wearing a mask on a hot bus for 2 hours.

Hope: wander into town. Check out the Saturday Market. See what's open, now. Pop into the nice greengrocers for some bits.

Reality: DH is in the garden, working on the decking, so I've no idea if I'll even get the bloody shower I need, never mind get to leave the house alone. I'm glad he's cracking on with it but he's sounded off about how to space stuff then dismissed everything I've said so I can already feel yesterday's black mood descending again.

@SpnBaby1967

I was just witness to a major episode of dementor mental gymnastics that it left me totally

Acquaintance from north of the border. Kicking off about the lack of school for her kids, it'll just be a few hours a week, she cant teach & work full time, shes fed up with her childrens education being wrecked.

So I post the us for them link & comment on how the blended learning is nonsense & will create and haves and have nots class system and NS needs to sort this out.

OH......MY.....GOD I had to laugh so hard at her response. She wants to protect teachers and kids and totally is fine with blended learning and NS is doing a fantastic job.

My head hurts.......

So she's just done a complete U turn? People don't make sense.

I didn't want schools to close, wanted them back asap and still do. I don't think blending learning is the way to go. I'm not going to suddenly change my mind unless we all start dropping like flies.

Is it that she is just being careful what she writes on social media?

Quite bakewell - I’m not posting from the privileged place of having 23 age/BMI - but I fancy my chances better against COVID than Ebola or bubonic plague (yep, still a thing in some deep, dark corners).

I find the general attitudes to JA and NS strange, you get the "How great are women at dealing with this" but you can't criticise them because they are women and therefore seemingly beyond reproach and any criticism is only because they are women. That is a very dangerous precedent to set.

Article in The times today discussing the disparity between state and private schools north of the wall.

I think the issues that a lot of people are struggling with are:

• they are used to the normal life risk and accept it. This is additional danger that they want eradicated (even though this is probably impossible)

• there is lack of information. Longer term it will become clearer that not everyone who died with covid died of covid. It will also be clearer that hopefully people who have longer term symptoms do actually get over them or we will know more about outcomes. Immunity and the role of previous exposure is also unclear and people are seeing it as absolute or nothing, neither of which are likely at all.

Going to McDonalds! Woooooooooo.

I’ve been mercifully short of dementors on my Facebook, but there have been a lot of “why can’t we be more like New Zealand?” posts. Because the UK hasn’t been that isolated and sparsely populated since the Dark Ages, for a start...

Obviously I’m very happy for NZ, and think our government are an incompetent shower of shite, but it’s still such a useless and unhelpful comparison.

@Jourdain11 I hope you can wee soon.