UKC

I know it could be much, much worse as I have a job (but for how long, unsure), my wife is still getting some money despite being furloughed and in general we are in decent health as a family but I think this COVID bastard is really starting to get to me. 

Is anyone in the same boat?

Im listening to businesses going bust, massive layoffs, loony world leaders (UK, Brazil, US), massive uptick in new global cases yesterday - almost 100k between Brazil and US alone, the highest single day's reporting FFS!, endless Zooms, seeing people go nuts in public places, litter and fly tipping all over, desperately needing some people contact of an adult kind outside of the house, mass elephant deaths in Africa (poaching not the cause, early indications suggest).  No sleep night after night, weather gone bad again and then I make the mistake of watching Leaving Las Vegas a few nights ago which I cant get out of my head.

The world is a f*cked up place right now and I dont see any end soon and with the rush to open up the UK economy I feel this is not going to end well.  I just cant see a quick end to this.

Its a rainy summer Wednesday morning and the news isnt good. It's making one feel very, very melancholy. 

Sorry for the dreary post.  Staying positive is really hard at the moment.

Would it be worse if I told you it was Thursday?  

Yes, because that would add insanity to the equation too...

Have a like....

We are not starving and we are not in a war... A lot of people in the world are contending with both these scenarios (Yemen, Syria...). In reality life is 95% as good as it was in January for most people.

I would say turn off the news, and dont pay any attention to speculation about the future. A lot of people are doing really very well out of other people being frightened and scared (advertisers "helping" you through the crisis for example...)

Could you meet up with a friend in a socially distanced way? 

Watch this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04jmx7l/marvellous

There are no guarantees in life but if that doesn't lift your spirits then you probably need professional help.

I think this will become a force for positive change. Pre covid the shitty way our world was heading at breakneck speed could be conveniently ignored by most. Now a lot of the worst aspects of that unfurling disaster have been put on pause and the most rapacious and dishonest world leaders and economic activities have been the most fully exposed. Tragedy resets world views. 

This is true

I'll tell you how much worse. My wife's employers social committee has decreed Thursday lunchtime is the perfect time for a group Zoom Zumba session. 

It is the end times

You're absolutely right, the world's really not very good at the moment. But as you say, you do have blessings to count.

Personally, I find music one of the best therapies for getting out of the doom-spiral. I can't play anything unfortunately but I love listening to lots of different stuff. If you're like me, I challenge you to go on youtube and try to find the best thing you've never heard before, in whatever genre you're most into now. When you find something that's the new greatest thing ever, it'll have cheered you up a little bit. Really amazing music can be a reminder that humanity isn't just a terrible waste of time.

Obviously if you're not really into music much, this isn't going to work.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZTEa7xCnGCQ&

I think the penny is beginning to drop, a lot of people think that life will just carry on as normal once July begins, the furlough was good, but for many it will be unemployment’s waiting room it’s just not hit yet, when the Tsunami hits it’s going to be messy throw in some brexit mayhem, an ineffectual government and I’m not optimistic.

I have serious long term worries about keeping a roof over my families heads I’ve had 17 days work in the last six months, I’ve seen people pleading for work on linked in I’m trying contacts in industry only to find them looking for work too. 
 

If we can’t after this and brexit learn a little national humility and start addressing some of the institutional faults and frankly misplaced universal myths we have about ourselves then we’re probably going to mark the 10 years from 2016 as the point Britain reached tipping point in its post empire decline.   

Things are obviously extremely dire right now, but I tend to think it's best to focus on the positives in order to stay sane.  Global infection have been rising rapidly over last six weeks without a noticeable upsurge in deaths, so maybe the increased testing is a positive.  Deaths all be it high are looking like they are hopefully peaking in Brazil, and the deaths per capita at the peak is way lower than what we experienced in Europe so that's obviously a positive.

An upsurge in infection in USA is obviously a concern, but as shown by high Infection rate amoung young people in gulf countries and Singapore does not automatically translate in high number of deaths.

Looking at data on sites such as worldometer suggest current global CFR is around 2.5 percent down from long term average of 5 percent, so increase testing is obviously a good thing increase our ability to contain local outbreaks.

In the UK the ZOE/Kings college community monitoring program has shown daily infection for the UK have halved in the last week.  All the mass gatherings and anti social behaviour across the UK, rammed beaches does not look like that it's yet caused an upsurge in infections, though I admit the litter problem is upsetting.

The virus is largely suppressed in Scotland so for me that's a major positive.

Obviously it's difficult for people with long term financial issues and unemployment, my girlfriend is out a job in a few months and has not been able to to find a new job, stressful for us as a couple but we are not letting it get us down, staying positive and finding ways to maintain happiness is best for good mental health, so I don't think I will ever let outside events effect me, I don't want to patronise anyone, bit a little positivity in life can't be a bad thing.

I think we'll sink into terminal decline, bitterness and blaming other people rather than do anything constructive.

Then again I'm a cup half empty kind of bloke.

I find a trashy tv programme can help, and thinking about the light at the end of the tunnel. 

There’s not a lot of positive news stories at the moment because the ‘social’ side of life is completely missing. 
 

There will be a massive uptick soon. The recession is not due to people not having money to spend. It’s due to people not being  able to spend it. 
 

Pubs opening will be the start. The youngsters will all start meeting up and if they’re going out they’ll be buying new clothes and pretty soon everyone will work out that the disease doesn’t affect a large proportion of the population. 
 

We’ve got through far worse and at least the government realise that spending the way out of this type of stagnation because there is money that’s just not moving, will be different to trying to make cuts due to there being no money to move. 

...then I realise it's an oncoming express train...

Or there's no light at the end of the tunnel because it's broken, the national grid has collapsed or someone's vandalised/stolen it.

youtube.com/watch?v=fvn4CeaJp_s&

I think there'll be a lot of that, and an increase in intolerance as people look for an outlet. I like to think it won't last forever, but I think that'll happen, particularly following the Brexit campaign* given the green light to some to be more openly intolerant, which can be seen in the spike of recorded hate crimes against LGTB people and people who aren't white, and other groups following the result.

Edit: *The nature of the campaign did, rather than being in favour of Brexit meaning one is intolerant, a greeny liberal none racist or homophobic relative didn't vote, but was broadly pro Brexit on democracy grounds.

My family (sister/mom) are thousands of miles away with grandpa being in the hospital at the moment. After a heart surgery earlier this year and now with an infection, none of us are too optimistic... 

I cut the ties with the closest and the only circle of friends during lockdown. I think it was brewing for a while. After getting mocked for not wanting to meet up pre-lockdown, I gave up trying to save those relationships. It’s probably a good decision, but painful nevertheless. 

I also joined a running club a week before lockdown - figured a weekly club run would help me with socialising. Well...

I also live on my own, so feeling a bit lonesome sometimes (often!). I actually haven’t arranged to meet anyone apart from bumping into neighbours or acquaintances. On a bright side, I talked to neighbours I haven’t since moving in 4 years ago.

Work is fine, I have been visiting local nature areas, we can drive further from Friday onwards, my health is fine... all things considered, it’s not as bad as it seems! I struggle more than some, less than others. Just trying to keep the healthy mood and keep moving on. 

I found out the other day that Red Dwarf Series 1 is all available at the click of a button.

Put it on and pretend it's the 1980s again!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x269pjp

I don't know.  

There's positive stuff going on, and I think there will be significant new growth in some sectors as a result of this pandemic, and that the UK is a leading place for that growth.

I'm making major changes to my life as a result of the last few months, and I think it's promising both for me and for job creation in the UK, but I don't really feel that now is the time to be harping on about things that are going well, as it hardly seems fair or kind when I know a lot of people are staring into the abyss.  I doubt I'm the only person who doesn't feel that now is the time to celebrate success or growth, so I think that's contributing to the one sided "doom and gloom" tone of the news.

Beyond the problems and opportunities created by the situation, the UK is still one of the better places to live in the world.  Okay - perhaps you'd say that means we just have a long way to slide yet...

Combining Season 1 Red Dwarf, the question "How much worse can things get?" and the common habit of looking to the USA to show us 10 years into our future.

This.  This is how much worse it can get.

youtube.com/watch?v=8mlnntKi2no&

The weekly surveillance report is out from PHE in the last couple of hours.  

Despite the various illegal mass gatherings, crowded beaches, increased school reopening, increased return to work and the "Leicester spike":

• Detected cases are falling (figure 1) and seroprevalence testing doesn't contract this (figure 35)
• Outbreaks in schools are not rising despite now having data on two weeks post reopening (figure 9)
• Excess deaths are nudging the baseline (figure 32)

On top of that, everyone seems to have realised that government need to make pillar 2 numbers available at postcode level to local councils and health teams very quickly, which should see future flare-ups tackled and squashed more responsively.

So I think this is all moving in the right direction despite all the social factors increasingly working against containment, which is reason for cautious optimism.  My main concern is that R is such that elimination might occur around November, and I think it would be prudent to get there before the cold comes, as for whatever reasons that brings other respiratory infections right up, so probably will for Covid. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-r...

... and the next ski season begins...

What do you think of the theory that opening the pubs on July the 4th is part of a plan towards what can be termed 'heard immunity' (though it isn't in the sense that vaccination is)?

I don't think it would work without serious consequences, and I think Johnson & Cummings now understand that, perhaps unlike in February/March.  

I thought that was going to be "They're dead, Dave. Everybody is dead, Dave, everybody is dead"

But it was so much worse than that...

Yup.  

To have Holy quipping whilst delivering those lines shows how completely and utterly the Americans failed to understand why it was funny in the first place.  They’re just unable to comprehend it.

Oh, I didn't get that far.

Jane Leeves would have worked as Holly in the original series, though, I think. With the original lines...

Lockdown started as a bit of a laugh but when the house next door got sold to a large family who began turning up in several cars and using the garden for partying our stress levels rocketed. We had been planning to move to Scotland on my retirement on 31 July and so we brought it forward by a month and yesterday we filled the car with two bikes, food, clothing, cat and the kitchen sink and drove up. Now we're here and it's blissfully quiet and we are beginning to settle and relax. We have been ignoring the news and will continue to ignore it, mostly. 

I've recently (re?)*discovered Rick & Morty and am getting through a couple of episodes a night. Usually on a beanbag, with Guinness and biscuits. On Season 3 now, so unfortunately that train will soon run out of steam

*I had seen an episode or two before but never managed the time to view (er, out climbing & going to bed tired, rather than sitting up waiting to feel sleepy)

Welcome to Scotland! I hope it continues to be good for you. 

I think with 2020 R&M's time has come. Exactly the mindset to adopt to armour yourself against the seemingly endless parade of End of Days crap going on outside our front doors.

youtube.com/watch?v=E_qvy82U4RE&

This year is certainly turning out to be the shitshow that just keeps giving. People are dying in their hundreds of thousands, often in intensely lonely and miserable circumstances, the Global economy is tanking and all around the World there are politicians in power who'd have been over promoted if they were managing your local Nando's.

On the upside, the ongoing environmental disaster dictated that we needed a dramatic reset of the economy; this was never going to happen in a million years and then CV19 turned up and reset the economy for us. People are massively readjusting their priorities, consumerism, fast fame and the decades long focus on surface over substance is starting to take a back seat as people start appreciating close friends and family more and perhaps recognising the essential fragility of life. We're being starkly confronted with how crap our politicians actually are, hopefully opening the door to real political change. Bottom line: all the current turmoil and heartache is awful, but things were pretty crap in loads of ways before CV19, hopefully this will present as a catalyst for positive change in a whole heap of areas.

I remember first watching Leaving Las Vegas as a 25 year old and not being able to get Elizabeth Shue's arse out of my head. Mindset is everything!

I got up yesterday with 'a big plan' and found that I need a new valve in my combi boiler (a plumber neighbour came to look and will replace it on Wednesday), so get as clean as I like to be, I now need to heat a huge cauldron of water and boil a kettle, and fill my kitchen sink with one kettle and cold water, and wash my hair from that, and use the water from the cauldron and a cup to rinse with, and then fill my bath with six kettles and added cold, and use that to wash the rest of myself and use what remains in the cauldron and a cup to rinse off further with.

It's a barrel of laughs, or a cauldron. 

What Stichtplate said rings true, there's a lot of thinking one can do, to crease a state of gloom, and a lot of thinking to keep it at bay, it can sometimes come down to just deciding not to think about everything going on in the world and speculating about the future. I once came across something in a Buddhism book, along the lines of speculative thinking about the world and other people can lead to an agitated mind. It can obviously lead to cool discoveries too, I guess it's about spotting where thoughts can lead, and lessening the unhelpful branches of them from developing, or spirals.

I think things will start getting better over the next 6 to 9 months.

Biden will beat Trump and go back to Obama's foreign and trade policies with regard to the EU.  We will have the two large western blocks (US and EU) singing from the same song sheet and working together and that will restore the 'world order'.  Putin will wind his head back in and China will be more focused on trade and less on military expansion. 

Without Trump in the White House the Brexiteer plan of becoming a US satellite will fall apart.

Scotland will vote in the SNP with an overall majority in the next Holyrood Election and, with Westminster blocking a referendum, that will be taken as a plebiscite on independence.  There will be a UDI vote and Scotland will be on its way out of the UK and back into the EU.

Oh ...how I admire your optimism!

Thanks for vindicating my decision to get an electric shower instead of one just running from the bath’s taps through a mixer ! 

We started off with Brexit.  Leave the EU and make Britain 'Great' again.

Then Covid.  I don't think things will get better quickly.  The CEO of the world bank stated some weeks ago that we are  heading for the biggest economic downturn in 70 years.  I heard another economist on R4 say this will be the worst depression in in 300 years.

Business may now be 'open' but there's still going to be lots and lots of business which cannot survive the following months with social isolation reducing the number of customers, and unemployment will rise reducing the amount of spending in the economy, making things tougher.

Many people have short memories.  You only have to look at previous economic downturns.

Still, I keep smiling and being cheerful.  Its all we have to look forward to.  

Timmd please confirm for us that you don’t have an electric shower that you didn’t use because you assumed it needed a working combi boiler

Yep, it’s a hard old time. Keep your chin up mate. It’ll pass. 

I was reading a Twitter thread from the owner of a Leeds comic shop and he said they were really struggling. The shop is open but there's just no-one in town, no-one coming through the doors and it's just not cost effective to bother. They've still got their online business but as people go back to work they're reading (and and thus ordering) fewer comics. Unfortunately I think this will be the case for a lot of businesses. I'm not seeing much appetite amongst my friends to go to non-essential retail, pubs and hairdressers - maybe we're an unrepresentative group being fairly scruffy and not much enamoured of shopping but it doesn't feel like there's a huge amount of pent up demand waiting to be unleashed. Personally, between Covid and Brexit the only thing I'm likely to be spending money on above and beyond rent/bills is restocking my no deal food stockpile...

I'm putting all my hopes into it being so bad it will be good ...now, where's my bugout bag?

I never knew.  My world is a darker place!  I didn't watch enough to see what they'd done to the Cat.

On the upside I did watch the first two episodes this afternoon whilst ironing with my cats.  My kids (7 & 9) watched with me and thought it was hilarious.  Unfortunately I think the youngest who is a stickler for rules found himself naturally aligning more with Rimmer than Lister!

Of course I don't.

Best not to ask.  There’s a second attempt at a US pilot that has Terry Farrell as the Cat.  Definitely going in a different direction.

Jr isn’t ready for red dwarf here but give it time...  

It was not an unreasonable possibility, there’s no need for the “Of course”. I’ve been guilty of worse such as spending some years incorrectly assuming that my new fancy front door was self-locking from the inside...

Things get better tomorrow. I might drive up the A9 and back in the pissing rain just because I can.

Essentially everywhere has learnt not to let it get into care homes anymore. The problem is that there's a new issue - any jurisdiction on a herd immunity / open the economy quest is going to relax restrictions more and more because the hospitalisations aren't occurring to scare people into being careful. This means more and more virus in the community on an exponential basis rising faster than can be tested for then suddenly they can't protect the shielders anymore, and they can't stop untraceable community transmission.  This is where the bad American states got to yesterday and had to lockdown again.

If we can track and trace, we are good to go. If not, it's a return to lockdown. I'm optimistic, but they absolutely must improve the publication of data including pillar 2 postcode data to local councils, and also to the general public at the LTLA level.

So I was in a zoom today with a council worker friend who said oooh there's an outbreak at a local store but I can't tell you which one because my arse will be grass. Then we all go is it Sainsburys, is it Asda etc until they say I can't possibly tell you and then we all go OMG do not go to Sainsburys.
 

I often have tried to imagine what would a pleb living in Roman times think when they realized they were not living in the final civilization, but instead living in a doomed civilization, no better than those Etruscan dupes before them...
If they knew their civilization was too flawed to survive, would it be worth doing anything anymore? What would you say to this person if you could send a message back to the past?

'Embrace life and make the most of things' ?

There's arguably more profound things, regarding what they might record for future generations, but it's the only life they'd have, too.

Indeed they do have short memories!. In the late 20s and early 30s a large number of people in the UK were struggling with access to any food. In the second half of the 40s and early 50s, during the end of rationing, things were really tough. Unless the coming recession becomes a complete breakdown in the UK economy this 300 year stuff is just spinning finance numbers. I'm not denying things will be very bad, short term it will be terrible for many businesses and many more people will be using food banks and pay will get worse. However a lot of the major change for the better in the UK happens after major national tragedies.

Don't eat the tinned salmon!

Oh I must admit that I have lost sense of where the Scottish restrictions have got to on going to places. Has that restriction of mileage been lifted now then?

Yes. Lifted yesterday.

But no border crossings?

Oh how good it would be to go munro bashing, even in the wet weather.

" We are not starving and we are not in a war..." 

Pretty good then!! 

A big recession will soon sort that out....

... and anyone who thinks we're not in some sort of modern type war with Russia is deluding themselves. 

Do we think a no deal brexit will help us recover from that?

Remember that whatever the situation you can always adapt. Focus on adapting the best you can to the situation instead of waiting for things to get better, which can be gruelling and disappointing.

Hope you feel better soon.

Hahahahahaha.......

I'm definitely struggling with lockdown at times now. But still trying to see the positives. 

I'm a paramedic which would seem to be a fairly secure job at the moment, and whilst masks and aprons are no fun, and a few colleagues have been hospitalised it hasn't been anywhere near as bad an experience as media had us believe before Covid19 hit the UK.

My husband is covering his own and the bulk of someone else's (maternity leave) job for the last 3 months, and as such hasn't been able to take any annual leave, but it's definitely a time where being overworked is preferable to not being needed.

Lockdown with a two year old can be exhausting, and worrying regarding her development, but today she told a random man in the queue for the ice-cream shop (that opened today and deserves a celebration on its own) that our dog is a 'good boy' and showed him how to stroke him! Considering she has barely interacted with anyone other than me, her dad and our neighbours for 3 months (back when she could barely speak) this is a big deal and I was so proud of her.

Just need the rain to stop now!!

​​​​

It doesn't do one any harm to have to adapt or improvise, I don't suppose, it's 'a hiccup rather than vomit' in the scheme of things...

Edit: I don't yet have a solution for if my gas and electricity both go kapput, some kind of camping solar shower might be a plan - and my camping stove to heat the water.

While agreeing with the general tenor or your post I would just point out that food banks are under great pressure and they need as many of us as can afford it to make extra contributions in cash or in kind.