outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

the number of daily deaths in the UK is still in triple figures.

and they've just been on the telly setting forward their autumn / winter preparations.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58560031

I didn't think I was necessarily taking sides either except I guess I am taking the 'the predictive power of human beings with respect to anything concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be magnificently shitty' side

If the case numbers keep going down, so will hospitalisations and deaths too xp

In terms of government announcements that's just to look like being on the safe side. Hospitalisations and deaths are at like 1/5 of the early year peak. There won't be another lockdown unless there is a new variant that changes this.

We must be just about out of Greek letters at this point so I assume the variants are about done.

So Hebrew letters then, like Cantor dust etc?

We must be just about out of Greek letters at this point so I assume the variants are about done.

― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 14 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Good to see you are thinking about this.

what I was saying back during Alpha in the US, that there are some people who are never going to 'trust' that things are much safer now because of just how traumatic this pandemic has been....I feel like that's like 10 times as true now.

people are already accusing some of the leading stats guys of being 'liars' when they post analysis showing a drop in cases, I've had friends chastise me for downplaying the pandemic (wtf).

however I have learned I am capable of enduring way more than I ever thought of mentally speaking. I would have assumed I'd have ODed on my SSRIs by now if you told me back in 2019 what was coming

That's a good point Neanderthal, I think people are also just skeptical of "good" turns at this point and just ready for another shoe to drop. Without getting into any blame game, I really think the Delta variant pulled the rug out from under a lot of people this summer. Some of the folks I know irl who navigated the pandemic really well, from a mental health standpoint, are really, really struggling right now because they (understandably, to a great degree) bought into the vaccination campaign marking a major turnaround point. Not that I think people should be dismissive of real, verifiable data because it "feels off", but I do get people being really hesitant to embrace positive trends after this summer.

Totally. My husband hasn't seen his family in Hawai'i except for a quick two-day visit in 2019, we were planning on going this Christmas...no dice. My parents' plans? No dice. It's all been thrown to shit, I want to make plans for a tour when my next book comes out in spring 2022, and I'm not doing so until the absolute last minute...

I've also put various plans and activities on hold that I was jumping into in the spring, it's very frustrating and demoralizing. I'm going to stick with this, but I also realize that if I just said fuck it and did what I wanted to, things would probably be fine. I'm painfully aware that life is continuing on pretty much as normal all around me, and that I'm the one who is opting out of it at this point.

The book tour is going to happen, I think. But I long to see my in-laws, actually, and the rest of my husband's family...but a bunch of haole mainlanders visiting O'ahu right now isn't a prudent decision.

Yeah, I get it. We had a big trip with a group of friends to Costa Rica planned for September of 2020, cancelled for obvious reasons. When it became clear that simply pushing that back wasn't going to help, we finally nixed the idea and revised it to a trip to Austin for a week, planned for... October 2021. Now also cancelled, since most of the group have kids under 12. We also cancelled our annual family trip to the Upper Peninsula for the second year in a row.

I don't regret these decisions and wouldn't have felt comfortable taking any of these trips given the state of the variant. Still, it fucking sucks to keep scratching plans with no end in sight.

Yeah. :-(

Not just COVID but uh, wow

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/radon-treatment-mine-radiation-covid/2021/08/06/2bcf9ebc-f08f-11eb-81d2-ffae0f931b8f_story.html

Cannot be said enough!

I feel like there should be more collective soul-searching about commuting. Millions of us did it five days a week, year after year, and it was horrible and expensive, and it turned out to be almost entirely unnecessary.

— James Plunkett (@jamestplunkett) September 14, 2021

Absolutely agree, sadly I'm not working for a place willing to reexamine that idea and I'm back to commuting ten times a week. I hate it.

Pfizer CFO on timeline for #covid19 vaccine for kids, today at Morgan Stanley conf:

-results in kids 5-11 by end of Sept, filing for EUA early Oct

-filing for EUA for kids 6 months - 5 years about a month later, early Nov

(clarity on timeline for younger kids is new) (1/2) pic.twitter.com/ZJCZwfWj1T

— Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) September 14, 2021

into my (kids') veins

nice!

Next tweet says 4-6 weeks likely turnaround time for EUA from filing, but it'd be nice to see if some of Biden's moves can help expedite that (assuming, of course, everything checks out).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/14/bob-enyart-conservative-radio-covid/?itid=lk_fullstory

Enyart is at least the fifth conservative radio talk-show host to have died of covid-19 in the last six weeks after speaking out against vaccinations and masking. The others are Marc Bernier, 65, a longtime host in Florida; Phil Valentine, 61, a popular host in Tennessee; Jimmy DeYoung, 81, a nationally syndicated Christian preacher also based in Tennessee; and Dick Farrel, 65, who had worked for stations in Miami and Palm Beach, Fla., as well as for the conservative Newsmax TV channel.

Five? That's a rookie number, need to get that number up etc.

Do they have a reserve pool for regional right-wing radio or are they going to have to start bringing in 20-year old Twitch streamers

the depth of conservative talk radio is infinite, i think. there are sooooooo many people with awful looking podcasts and 25K followers, somehow. they may suck, but they're used to talking for long periods of time and being an asshole, so they're ready

Not just COVID but uh, wow

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/radon-treatment-mine-radiation-covid/2021/08/06/2bcf9ebc-f08f-11eb-81d2-ffae0f931b8f_story.html🕸

Cannot be said enough!

🐦[I feel like there should be more collective soul-searching about commuting. Millions of us did it five days a week, year after year, and it was horrible and expensive, and it turned out to be almost entirely unnecessary.
— James Plunkett (@jamestplunkett) September 14, 2021🕸]🐦

my personal dashboard starting to look good again. hitting the clubs (trader joes) again when that 7 day avg case rate goes below 1000 (i.e. 10 per 100,000).

https://i.imgur.com/NBF6lE8.png

Agree about the insanity of commuting but I also strongly believe that being physically around other people is an important part of fellowship, brother/sisterhood and workplace solidarity and I don't just mean mental health (though I do also mean that!) but in sticking it to the man who is always trying to divide you and screw you over. Being around people is important. I dread a future where we all just live in our little boxes on zero terms contracts getting Deliveroo three times a day.

I agree, and once the noise dies down on the debate of it we can reach a compromise where we can make the time we spend both in and out of office more fruitful.

i was reading an article by esteemed obama administration economist austan goolsbee proposing that since letting people work from home is like giving people a raise, perhaps employers may ask people to work longer hours or take less pay in exchange for the benefit of not having to commute. and that is why i do not like economists.

Well, that's just complete bullshit anyway. Yes, it is a bit like getting a raise on the employee's end inasmuch as there's less time sucked out of the day, less spent in travel expenses, etc. but that doesn't adversely affect the employer. If anything, there's almost certainly some cost saving on the part of the company (less electricity used, less money spent on things like office supplies and coffee or whatever). You could almost say that, if the actual work doesn't suffer, it's a win-win. Ohhhhh, except that thing where the employer doesn't wield as much direct control over the employee, and that just wouldn't be fair to the bosses of the world.

oh boy, the two most bullshit parts of my day THAT I DONT EVEN GET PAID FOR are gone, might as well take on extra work FOR ALSO NO ADDITIONAL PAY

I also strongly believe that being physically around other people is an important part of fellowship, brother/sisterhood and workplace solidarity and I don't just mean mental health

it has been kind of a depressing paradigm shift for me, my whole life was spent waking up, going ~somewhere~ until about 4 or 5 and then returning home, for all the benefits of WFH it kind of sucks that I'm just...not around people anymore. there were a lot of people at work who were like...not friends exactly, but we'd hang out occasionally and chat a bunch, now I think it's plausible that I just never see some of these people again

i find work relationships to be exhausting to maintain when i have all these actual friendships already and just working in the same place is not really enough to make me want to talk to ppl or feel like we have a lot of common ground, but i have always been a hermit who would fully embrace WFH whenever it happened

a few places have started unions remotely tho. fellowship is not all gone

i changed jobs in june 2020 and haven't seen anyone in person except for one outdoor lunch with some of them. it is a weird and disorienting feeling to not ever see anyone, and to have no prior experience to compare it to. but i'm still on the side of preferring 100% WFH. i am an introvert though.

Real good with WFH except on the odd occasion where I need to go to an actual meeting that makes a difference to what is being worked on. Totally accept those are needed.

Commuting because the rich need commercial rents to be paid leading to a potential housing crash and recession? Not my problem.

* otherwise leading to

The pandemic has taught me: I'm an introvert but no longer shy.

Agree about the insanity of commuting but I also strongly believe that being physically around other people is an important part of fellowship, brother/sisterhood and workplace solidarity and I don't just mean mental health (though I do also mean that!) but in sticking it to the man who is always trying to divide you and screw you over. Being around people is important. I dread a future where we all just live in our little boxes on zero terms contracts getting Deliveroo three times a day.

Agree with this, it was one of the problems I ran into trying to do union organizing as an adjunct; we weren't WFH at that point, but there was no central office, people just drove in, taught a class and went home. So it was hard even tracking people down, and even though our contracts were awful, there was no momentum to get anything changed because there was no community at all.

The pandemic has taught me: I'm an introvert but no longer shy.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 15 September 2021 13:25 (fourteen minutes ago)

Agree about the insanity of commuting but I also strongly believe that being physically around other people is an important part of fellowship, brother/sisterhood and workplace solidarity

Sorry but this is fucking horseshit that gets pushed by middle managers as an excuse for "butts in seats" and I'm disappointed to see it trotted out here. This "brotherhood" at my office includes a toxic person who literally throws stuff around the office at least once every two weeks because she can't control her anger and, because of that person, another that spends an hour after employee A's outbursts crying because she feels threatened. As a result, the rest of us pop on headphones first thing in the morning and leave them on all day. Some fucking brotherhood. I gave up playing a 10 minute card game with my son every single day for this?

Dude that really sucks and sounds toxic. Sounds like an HR problem at your workplace, but that's no excuse. I am sorry that's happening to you

Not saying that my experience is universal, but there is not one single thing that has been "good" about being back, now that's been a month. Due to all the bullshit drama and random drop-bys, my productivity is down, my morale is down and I'm wasting more time commuting again. I wasn't expecting to WFH forever, but a day or two a week would go a loooong way towards making me feel more balanced.

It is toxic, unfortunately our HR has done nothing about it. I don't want to get into the details too much, but for HR to take things seriously we've learned that you need at least one supervisor to "buy in" on escalating the issue. Unfortunately, Employee A is considered a "hard worker" and since her outbursts ALWAYS happen when her supervisors are away (she knows what she is doing, which makes it more infuriating), no one believes the complaints.

Sorry Tracer, I don't mean to make you bear the brunt of my frustration over my specific situation, but I also don't buy into the whole fostering "brotherhood" bullshit even in the best of times.

one of the cool things i've been learning while organizing is that some people i have had civil conversations with in the office for years turned out to be scabs and transphobes :)

definitely don't miss the stress that comes with having to be in the same room as people you hate

i do think it's important to have an aspect of work that is not work, for instance ppl to shoot the shit with, because as long as work is a necessity to live there should be as much incentive to not do it as possible built into the structure (sorry to reveal myself as anti-work here) but i guess for me now that is saying hi to my cats during the workday

I do genuinely like several of my coworkers, but because Employee A is also know for eavesdropping on conversations and repeating it to everyone she can, we don't feel safe discussing anything personal or even minor work "bitch sessions".