Deaths everywhere, yet we are still going to work this morning. Why?

[TwirpingBird]

I am sitting here watching BBC breakfast with another harrowing video of ITU nurses at breaking point, ambulances lined up outside, 1800 dead yesterday, and headlines of 'lockdown isnt working', 'people arent complying' blah blah blah. Its all 'you need to follow the rules, you need to stay at home. I am seething.

My husband is leaving for work in an hour where he will enter 5 houses today to do completely non essential work because the government deem him a 'key worker'. My best friend will go to work in her office in a interior design company because she is a 'key worker'. Her husband will go to work giving quotes for kitchens in people's houses because his boss deems him a 'key worker'. None of my friends are on furlough. We are all seeing nobody outside of work. We are all sticking to the 'rules'. But how could we possibly expect the rules to work when everyone is still getting in their cars this morning?

I am raging angry. I am SICK and TIRED of being told 'follow the rules'. WE ARE!!! The rules make no bloody sense. And people are still dropping like flies, and experts are saying the lockdown isnt working, and the public are still being tarred as 'lacking empathy' because we are killing people. We are going to work! Kids are still in school! And then we come home and we do what we can but its never going to be enough. I am starting to wonder why I am bothering to hide myself away, managing a 2 year old and a newborn alone 5 days a week, naively thinking I am helping to manage transmission, when in reality its not helping at all because people are still at work.

One of my retired relatives who is shielding but still went abroad for 2 months in the Summer to their holiday home & lives here in a million pound house which has had work done throughout the pandemic. And who broke the rules at Christmas recently told me they couldn't understand why cases are going up & perhaps I should give up my job so my dc dont need a school place. I was told to think of the bigger picture & about what really matters. Oh & last month they didn't want a vaccine but now they want one but are annoyed at the wait (under 70).

The same points keep coming up.

Yes you might be able to work from home - but possibly not everyone of your colleagues can. You don't know why they are choosing to go into work. They may have an abusive family set up, suffer from isolation anxiety, share a crappy house share with no WIFI, no heating, noise and disruption

Yes you believe you can work from home and your boss is an evil micro manager- but maybe your boss is desperately trying to keep the business afloat and can't afford to facilitate the IT etc to mobilise home working

Yes you worked from home the first time- but we all thought it was finite and we pulled together. But its ten months on. Maybe your employer is hemorrhaging profit, productivity slumped. They need you in the office.

Yes screech for a total shut down- but whose going to work the factories that make the stuff you keep ordering on line, and drive it around and sort it in warehouses

yes Costa isn't an essential for you- but for shift workers and homecarers working 14 hour days and truck drivers it is

We all have our own story

@CouldBeOuting

My “friends” son tested positive for Covid at the weekend. Yesterday there was a post on FB showing the whole family gathered to celebrate the youngest siblings “lockdown birthday with my bubble” so as well as the 23 yo lad with confirmed Covid there was his Mum, Dad, two younger siblings and two grandparents. When someone commented about the son “shouldn’t be mixing with anyone and the rest of you should be isolating” the response was “but he feels okay so it’s probably gone”. I felt like saying “PEOPLE ARE DYING - FOLLOW THE RULES” - but I just blocked them. You can’t fix stupid.

Why would they even put that on Facebook? Are they really that stupid?

yes Costa isn't an essential for you- but for shift workers and homecarers working 14 hour days and truck drivers it is

I was behind a police car picking up a coffee from a drive thru yesterday. I was just picturing the MN threads about it.

We need a form of a working economy

People have lost sight of one side of this through media obsession

First off all it is not 1800 deaths in 24 hours and also the government are trying to keep the economy going also ... there are more people who are losing business etc so it is a fine balancing act my friend is a paramedic and SIL and icu nurse and said it is horrendous I think the mental health for the nurses will be bad and also in society the whole thing is just awful

@redsquirrelfan

We still have people going in to our office because they don’t like working from home

I don't have a problem with that - our office is also open for "hardship cases". There are probably 5-10 people in an office housing around 300. What I have a problem with is the employers who claim that people are not working at home and force them to come in, even though they can work effectively from home. If they are not working, deal with it as a disciplinary matter, not punishing all the ones who do work.

This is office culture 101.

In any fairly large office or team there's slackers/people who take the piss lover various things etc (whether in the office or not). They're never dealt with on an individual basis, everyone else just gets punished. Isn't that what team leaders are for?

Why would they even put that on Facebook? Are they really that stupid

Yes they are! They regularly post pics of their rulebreaking. Not just Covid either. Things like the car speedo showing 100mph. A day out in good weather with the children (when younger) saying “told school they’re ill so we can make memories”.

Stupid doesn’t really cover it....

OP, maybe try yoga or meditation? You need to calm down

I’ve come into the office this morning as it’s my turn to come in to do the post etc. The motorway was steady and I’d say about 70% of usual car traffic. I would say in March/April it was 20%

The vast majority of younger people are at very low risk, and most of us need money to live. If 1in 8 had antibodies in December what is that level going to be now with the infection peak and vaccines, 1in 4? We don’t see the damage to the economy but it’s going to effect services, access to healthcare for years, more so younger people who have a much lower risk from covid. Nobody wants to take the risk but for most of its as simple as if we need to get paid then we need to work

‘Cases are plummeting the restrictions are working’

Not according to the news this morning. This is just one of the many pieces.

www.itv.com/news/2021-01-21/covid-no-decline-in-very-high-rates-during-first-week-of-latest-england-lockdown-study-shows

@rowmaccerd

Reading this astounds me.

I am on the Isle of Man, I know it can't be compared to any of the UK but the basic principle is the same.

We went into lockdown about two weeks ago because there were a handull of cases after none at all and no restrictions, masks or distancing for six months.

Community buy in has been huge. Places closed, everyone who can wfh did. Anything that isn't essential stopped, no travel other than for limited reasons. People have gone to prison for breaches.

I haven't left the house for ten days and barely a person has been past. We have had post and a gas delivery and that's it.

No cases in the community for 9 days now and fully expect an announcement about going back to normal later today.

I have no idea how you go about it somewhere the size of the UK but everyone needs to stay at home for a couple of weeks and break the infection cycle.

There just doesn't seem to be the willingness there to do it.

Unfortunately the perfect tine to do that was over Christmas when so many places were shut anyway.

@rowmaccered

This is because the Isle of Mann has got things right at an early stage. They have acted quickly and hard for a short time but the key point is they have done this when cases are very very low This gives them time to break the cycle and ensure they can identify everyone who may have been infected and isolated.

In the UK we could have done this only when cases were very very low, so possibly in February or early March but no-one was taking this seriously then. So although the IOM has done things right, they have also been lucky that cases of Covid only appeared there quite late on so the politicians had no excuse for not acting very hard as soon as one or two cases of community spread were identified.

@PortChee

yes Costa isn't an essential for you- but for shift workers and homecarers working 14 hour days and truck drivers it is

I was behind a police car picking up a coffee from a drive thru yesterday. I was just picturing the MN threads about it.

I don't think its essential at all. My dh takes a thermos of coffee to work.

[quote ArseInTheCoOpWindow]‘Cases are plummeting the restrictions are working’

Not according to the news this morning. This is just one of the many pieces.

www.itv.com/news/2021-01-21/covid-no-decline-in-very-high-rates-during-first-week-of-latest-england-lockdown-study-shows[/quote]
You wouldn’t expect much reduction in the first week because given the incubation time they’d have caught it before the lockdown. Even more so when we had Christmas mixing.

Everyone is an essential worker on a personal/individual level though. My husband isn’t a key worker but is going into work everyday as it is essential to our family that he gets paid so we can pay the bills. Some people can’t WFH because they don’t have the facilities, need to get out of the house everyday for their safety or mental health, 2 different people could be doing the same job but will have individual circumstances. People look at this so black and white but really we all live in the grey areas. WFH has a massive knock on the economy down the line as companies will shut large offices to reduce overheads, less people paying for transport, lunches/coffees near the office, the cleaner and building maintenance gets laid off its a massive butterfly effect. Less people working = less tax paid, the revenue the country has needs to be spread thinner where do we take the shortfall from the NHS? Schools? Benefits? It’s a fine line balancing the economy and pandemic-one can’t trump the other as they both cause death and destruction albeit in completely different ways. Living in poverty will reduce your life expectancy and children living in poverty have much worse outcomes in many areas. Comparing now with the first lockdown is comparing apples and pears. The economy is different and the population are fatigued in many ways. I don’t know what the answer is but we are still going to work for many reasons.

Hilarious that’s a government that’s wasted FIVE years on a battle to “TAKE BAKC CONTROL!!!” - ie principally of our island’s borders ... didn’t close the bloody borders when a worldwide pandemic struck. Worked well enough for China, New Zealand, Japan

I know it would not have solve it all on its own, but its one of many things that would have helped somewhat that they didn’t do.

I think the problem is that the U.K. has been kept in a form of lockdown for nearly a year. People are exhausted by it. I think it would have been more effective if the U.K. had had short periods of total lockdown followed by no restrictions at all, rather than the never ending half way house that has been in place
since June.

[quote Peppafrig]@DecemberSun and what do you propose all the rest of us who have to go to work to keep the Ecomony going do with our children? All the construction workers , manufacturing workers etc. Should we all be placed on furlough for childcare reasons ?[/quote]
It isn't my problem to resolve. Schools are not safe for children or staff. That's the truth, despite the government lies.

Schools need to be a lot safer if we are to stop the spread of the virus. And, initially, we need to restrict how many children are in school to the children of vital workers.

The government could pay to employ more agency staff if they want more children in. But they don't give a shit about teachers' and school staff's health, so they won't.

It also seems that a lot of people on MN don't give a shit either. Usually the trolls from U4T. Sociopaths.

What about the people who have been in offices throughout all lockdowns because they are key workers?

[quote lovelemoncurd]@bigmistake1 have you ever been in a pupil referral unit?

Probably not. Methinks! [/quote]

Errr yes I have as I work in SEN provision. I also have a son with ADHD and Dyspraxia who demonstrates some really challenging behaviour. All down to my poor parenting, of course ,

I think the difference between myself and yourself and your DH is that I have an understanding of SEN and also some of the economic and psycho-social circumstances that lead to some children ending up in PRUs.

It’s more than the first week. It’s 10 days.

This is the original item. It talks about an uptick in infections

www.imperial.ac.uk/news/212953/coronavirus-infections-falling-england-latest-react/?fbclid=IwAR1Im3OOd1I9mTDU6moQFz0bslbhDLBgzA13tKwzLZicJJ_xGD0isDJbVAo

While I’m sure there are employers taking the piss, the bottom line is productivity often is better on site.

This is a really outdated view. There are benefits to being on site, especially if the work is team generated, or where you have less experienced team members who are being trained on the job. But productivity isn’t linked to an office environment. If you have team members who are less productive at home, they are just as likely to be the less productive members in the office environment too. That’s a management issue and if staff won’t work well at home discussions need to be had with them about why.

More enlightened employers assess their staff on an output basis rather than “hours worked”. We haven’t see any drop off in output in our team overall. The shirkers are still shirking. Unfortunately one of them is our line manager and he was crap when in the office so no change there. We actually have one guy who was really crap in the office, always arsing about on his phone, took forever to complete tasks. His output has really improved since he started working at home. Not sure why, maybe it’s because he lives with his parents and they are on him if he is slacking! In our business prior to Covid it was not unusual for people who had a particularly difficult task which needs a lot of focus, to decide to work from home so they had the quiet needed to complete it for the deadline.

I’ve worked from home for years and my productivity is far greater without the constant distractions in the office environment and without tagging on a commute at either end of the day.

@lovelemoncurd

I know. My husband leaves for work and has done every single day since last March teaching SEN kids in a PRU. They don't want to be in school. Their parents don't want them at home. So my husband has to put his life in danger because others don't know how to raise their children and our useless government can't make decent decisions 😡

Why doesn’t your husband look for a new job if he despises his so much?