Lockdown
 

So... if we are put into lockdown (either real, or in all but name), what's your game plan?

I'm now five days into working from home as I was kicked out of the office due to a cold last week. Already the cabin fever is starting to bite and it's not even hot yet. The closure of the gyms was a blow for me but I'm now running in the mornings with the dog and using my kettlebells.

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I've been working from home for months as I'm the only permanent employee in UAE and I didnt like my office in JLT much. This week, my company implemented WFH globally (about 1,000) people and I've got to say I'm impressed. We've pretty much cut out the silly meetings which are really just gatherings and we seem to be getting more done in shorter time. I've advocated WFH for knowledge workers for years and am very surprised how quickly people are adopting it and how well they are performing.

My way to avoid cabin fever and lack of social contact was always to head out to coffee shops and HH 1-2 evenings a week. This aspect of CV19 (I don't trust the unhygienic people of Dubai) is having a bigger effect on me at the moment.

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Result, working in shifts as of tomorrow. One day on, one day off.

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Euphemism?

I'm trying to be 'locked down' at the moment. In reality, with a visiting Mother it means we're working from home with her on the balcony and then going out for dinner. It's hardly a challenge at the moment.

If restaurants and my local actually close so there isn't anywhere to go then I'm not sure. It'll be mentally a real challenge actually and I'll have to properly work from home instead of rolling out of bed hungover and sitting in my jammies all day like I have this week. Up, shower, shirt on, desk, focus etc.

Went for a walk this morning and barely came across anyone so the reality of still being able to get some fresh(ish) air and stretch the legs is there. You just go out and walk and don't get close to people or touch stuff.

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Not much change for us , a few guys with central functions are working remotely and there's a bit of flexibility in working hours . I don't use the gym that much as most of my stuff is done in the back garden with a few bits . Running and cycling still going strong but the track at NAS is now shut so if you want to ride long its Al Qudra with all the Lycra bound fatties.

You can still get a drink up by me but for how long i'm not sure , we're hearing a proper lock down is imminent .

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Ordered loads of board games this week. Currently considering getting an inflatable pool for the garden.

Trying to get a swingball.

Bring it on.

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Ordered another desk from IKEA. We have a nice desk but with both working from home the dining table is a disaster zone. 92dhs and free delivery. If that's not a bargain I don't know what is.

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My office was already set up as I do a reasonable amount of WFH anyway. Mrs Millhouse needs a lot of attention and decided to sit next to me yesterday. I told her that this isn’t how it’s going to work.

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:rofl:

When I'm on the phone I know I'm loud and unfortunately I'm on the phone a lot at the moment.
She's on skype calls with the teachers she manages etc and they're all HOPELESS with this tech, bless them. Every couple of minutes "your screens gone", "can you see my screen? no? OK. How do I share?", "Susan, you're on mute", "can everyone go on mute please". Day one was carnage.

One thing we did do that was good was get up early and get some exercise done and we've agreed a lunch break together, which will be nice. She makes a cracking sarnie.

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India went into full lock-down last night, though it had been the case in Mumbai since Friday night. So here's looking at a full 25 days at home, with no movement except essential food or medicine. Planning on a full Grizzly Adams beard by the end of it, perhaps a selfie every day to document the descent into madness. The temptation to **** off home as soon as it lifts will be strong I think.

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From BBC news today:

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Cheers geezer - I'm going to stick it out for now - while I'm in gainful employment at least. I suppose I'm in a different scenario to the tourists as I'm in my own apartment with company support.

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Yeah, fair play. Still earning, why not ride it out. Stay safe though, India has the potential to just explode with this.

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That's the plan for now at least - mostly also due to the fact that there are not really any other viable options. At least in the short term.

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I saw a great picture in India this week. Everyone in face marks, queuing for something - each with their face no further than 2 inches away from the back of the head of the person in front.

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Finding food and stuff easy enough?

I'm cautious with some of the things that are supposedly corona related in India. Not sure if true or not but hilarious regardless.

The guard taking temperatures from about 5ft away for people leaving the train stations was one.
The pictures of people trying to get back to their home regions were both sad and head-shake-worthy.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/british...2f701d571.jpeg

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Similar in Kenya - they were all queuing for a boat standing about 2m apart. The queue was miles long. Boat leaving time passed so the police decided to tear gas and beat the queue away. Classic stuff.

And this is why, to sadly quote Trump, the cure is worse than the disease. We have handed away massive amounts of civil liberties, forced people into severe economic hardship, pushed countries into long-term austerity (again), further dived the rich and poor, and setting our selves up for a total post-covid social, economic and political **** up due to what is, in a nutshell, an overreaction by weak leadership who don't want any negative postings on Instagram. Even with the current rising in cases, more people have died in car crashes this year to date than due to covid.

Millions of people will die of starvation, malnutrition, suicide, and other easily preventable diseases as a result of covid policy that will not be accounted for. That's the real human cost. Sitting on our arses in front of Netflix, working out using a video on youtube and forwarding memes isn't doing the right thing for society: that is exactly what will be killing people.

All that said - I'm quite decent at swingball now, so it's not a total loss. Struggling to get a piano delivered though.

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Predictions for End of UAE Enhanced restrictions?

I'm going for just after Eid... Ramadan is 23rd April. Hard lockdown is "subject to evaluation" and they can't release just before the cultural mass gatherings of Ramadan, so for me, it will be Eid, or immediately after. Unless by some miracle everyone stops dying (or at least the do the right thing and stop testing and reporting) before then.

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Yeah, the videos of police in India just battering people randomly are just tragic.

I'm not sure the cure is worse, I'm very sure that nobody will really know that definitively either way. I also don't think those things you suggest are easily quantifiable or properly link-able to covid. A bit like deaths that come because hospitals are over-stretched in the reverse argument.
Don't get me wrong, the economical impact is worrying, for sure. The cost of these bailouts are going to hurt for a long time, but what would the potential costs be if there was no control in place?
Quoting death figures is basically proving that what's happening is the right thing to do, limiting deaths. I find this comparison a strange thing to go with.

Yeah, probably right. Eid in late May would be a bit chaotic though wouldn't it? If we're locked down until then, people may head out in droves. Maybe there'll be some sort of easing before there. A few things reopen a little? Or maybe that's the point it starts, which would be timed similar to the Wuhan 7-8wks of lockdown I think.

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Peoples behavior is off the scale as well . We've had people phoning the police because someone is taking their dog for a shite out by us . Jesus man, i thought id heard it all from these woodentops over the years .

Two days in a row I've been stopped by the police during work hours , all very pleasant as i had the work documentation and a visa copy . Interestingly International City has massive restrictions around it . Looked like road blocks in and out this morning .

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I don't really get the issue. Get a permit, do your shit. Job done.
There's nothing to do, malls, bars, restaurants, everything is shut anyway.

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IC, Satwa and Al Quoz is at the top of my list for the next wave of total shutdown and cleaning. Then, if there is a God, it will be the ***** at the marina, just because.

What I hear coming out of some of the labour camps at Al Quoz isn't so great. What you have to remember is that this is where your supermarket assistant and security guard lives.

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The only ones in and out are the Union Co-op delivery teams so it looks like its heading that way at the moment . Hoping they road block that JBR and they can bus the fish & rice in to all the Insta nonces for a few weeks , real solidarity for the lockdown !

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I know that all media is Dubai-biased, but I do get the impression that the situation in Dubai seems to be worse than in other Emirates. Or is it just, like I say, media bias?

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AD island is very crowded - think Hamdam and all those hookers... Dubai certainly cranking it up a level though.

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JBR in lockdown would be great insta viewing.

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But it seems to me that the point that you are missing is that this "cure" is to avoid something far far worse than we are currently experiencing. It's only because of the social curbs that we have contained the epidemic in most places to current levels. The epidemiological models all indicated potential outcomes so awful that they simply had to be excluded by taking these actions and even the most bone-headed governments have fallen in line, eventually. The death and illness rates without these actions would not only have damaged the economy in a far more fundamental way than is happening now, but also would very conceivably have led to a far greater social fracture than we may currently anticipate.

Not every "younger" "healthy" person who gets the virus experiences mild symptoms; a significant proportion get very ill indeed and some die. And even the ones who are mildly ill are economically inactive for that period. The multipliers are horrific. There is an enormous difference between a 20% and 30% daily increase in cases. Fortunately, that argument seems to have been won.

Oh, and by the way, do keep that car-crash-death yardstick to measure this by and keep checking the comparison.

This article gives a fairly dispassionate, straightforward and level headed description of epidemic modelling, what it's for and how it's used. And why it may have saved us here just in time. And in future why it should make authorities take these things much more seriously much earlier in order to avoid this kind of disruption.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...-right/609271/

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It's not lost or missing on me. I get it.

Total annual car crash deaths : 14m
Total annual flu deaths : around 400k
Total annual malaria deaths: around 400k - mostly kids
Total Syrian war dead: around 500k - with many more driven into poverty, displacement, and unreported indirect death
Total void deaths to cause total economic (social and political just not seen yet) armageddon: 70k

Yes, covid will probably hit a million dead. This is 8% of the car crashes, and around the same as the flu and malaria combined. We don't stop the economy due to cars, flu or malaria.

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What would the economic cost be of banning cars?
They're deeply unpleasant stats but realistically speaking, Syrian war casualties and malaria deaths are not in London or New York or Rome. Which is probably why those cities are not panicking about comparing covid to them or worried about shutting down and ruining their economies in the short term to stop them from happening as much in the short term.

I think it's comparing apples with polar bears.

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The media loves to play up every young person who dies from the virus, but they are so rare that it's why they play it up. And almost all of them had existing health problems. Despite this, the virus predominately kills the elderly with existing health problems. Most elderly people do survive, which you'd think some people don't know when they shriek about how everyone's going to die. It's the elderly and sick who die. And they are going to die anyway, in matter of time. I saw a doctor comment a few weeks back that the majority of UK deaths would be people who'd have died this year one way or another.

It is a nasty virus. But life is also nasty. Every year hundreds of thousands of people die from heart disease and lung cancer, and the regular flu too. Throw in diabetes and kidney failure. There's a big overlap between the deaths from the virus and those other deaths. But we don't shut down the economy over heart disease deaths, do we? Or ban cars despite that every time you get into a car you are at risk of death.

It's rather intriguing that everyone's favourite quasi-socialist country, Sweden, is taking a let and live attitude towards the virus and if they come out no worse than most of the surrounding countries that shut down, well, we have the answer right there.

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Our ability to answer that question is increasing by the day.

And in there hides the basic answer in all of this: media coverage and interest

If you really want to avoid COVID move to Vanuatu - apparently one of the last places to not have it. Be careful of the locals though as they can get a bit bitey.

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Yes and no, you could argue it's being answered by the day but the answer is just as negative as a lockdown situation isn't it?

The basic answer is those countries (and many others) simply don't care about those issues enough to do anything. They're not on the doorstep and affecting them. It's not pleasant but it's a reality.

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One interest stat (which undermines my own arguments don't get we wrong) is that around 1600 people die per day in the UK - that's the baseline. Covid is adding around 700 to that right now. Which on the face of it is alarming, but the reality is that - as you say - many of those 700 would be in the 1600 anyway. Services will be stretched but it's not the total wipeout we are being told it is.

Oh, and if I get it - as an asthmatic that can bearly process a cold, I'd probably be brown bread.

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We don't shut down the country over heart disease because there are cheaper, less dramatically impactful ways of materially reducing heart disease deaths. Similarly, we don't ban cars because there are cheaper, less dramatically impactful ways of materially reducing car crash deaths. Unfortunately, without a vaccine, or evidence of successful ways to treat the illness, the only current way of materially reducing covid19 deaths is through social isolation.

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If you are going to look at deaths, then the relevant measure in terms of capacity to cope is the daily rate. Covid-19 daily deaths are already far in excess of that from car crashes in most of the affected countries viz. average UK daily car crash deaths is five and we're now above 400 for Covid. You really think that supports your point? In fact people in car crashes now are more likely to die because the hospitals and emergency services are so overloaded.

Car accidents don't also incapacitate 20% of the productive population due to illness and quarantine (the very conservative modelling of what would happen with no controls).

Covid will exceed 1m dead with all of the controls in place. Without them, they would likely have far exceeded car crashes and potentially all other sources of death combined. It is a specious argument now of course, but if you were in power, would you be willing to take that gamble?

Malaria is an interesting one because most of the deaths are in poor countries. The failure to develop an anti-malaria vaccine is a clear indictment of the way we have privatised most major pharmaceutical research. Big pharma isn't pursuing it because there is no money in it. The governments of the countries most affected don't have enough money left to do the research after their senior officials have filled their Swiss bank vaults. I agree it's a scandal but it doesn't invalidate the case for controls to prevent the spread of Covid-19, one of the most contagious epidemics ever to emerge (and this is before any mutant variations have had a chance to develop).

The Covid controls are to AVOID armageddon. Some countries acted early and avoided such dramatic action. Some thought they had and seem to have got it wrong...Japan, oft quoted by the sceptics seems to be getting into a mess as we speak.

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Brilliantly put: this is the point.

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Without controls, health services will be swamped so that hundreds of thousands - likely millions - more people globally will die, of all sorts of things, than would have otherwise died. And a huge proportion of them would be the healthcare workers that we need to look after us. Look at what has happened even where there are controls. Have you not seen any of the footage from hospitals in Lombardy?

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"Yeah but 500,000 people a year die from flu"

ETC.

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Yeah no major dramas, after the initial period of panic most of the food is readily available in the shops or by delivery. There's a lot of overblown media stuff focusing on India, police heavy handedness etc. but by and large everybody is reasonably compliant.

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The videos of the rozzers whacking everyone with sticks are eye-opening for sure.

Deliveries here are starting to struggle. A french supermarket have had my cash for 14 days and delivered squat. Part of me is just assuming they've surrendered completely.