Coronavirus

[darlowolf64]

Shouldn't you have been done a couple of weeks ago ??

No, I’m over 50 but no underlying illnesses so not yet

 

[Paul]

No, I’m well, well over 50

 

[darlowolf64]

 

[Dennisons Wrong Foot]

In Texas the governor has decided the mask mandate is no longer needed and that all businesses can reopen at 100% capacity. Texas ranks 48th in US vaccination rate.

Fair to say that not everyone agrees with him, and some businesses will continue to insist on masks. My store will be one of those.

 

[Premier Quality]

He sounds special. Republican?

 

[Dennisons Wrong Foot]

He sounds special. Republican?

Whatever gave you that impression?

 

[The Weasel]

I must have missed something. Nothing on the BBC news by way of update to their front page story yesterday that the search for the missing Brazil variant person was narrowed to 379 households in SE England. Surely we dispatched 379 coppers in cars to visit each household, tell em to pack their bags and then escorted them to nearest quarantine hotels for a quick spot of testing and tracing. Surely today the good news story is that we've got them located and in a safe place. Surely, we wouldn't let this patient zero continue to amble around SE England free to spread a highly transmisable variant that the vaccines have little effect on. Surely not.

 

[Kenny]

Or the hysteria whipped up by variants is designed to keep everyone on edge as they see numbers falling and still 5 and a half weeks until things get relaxed.
Might get attention tomorrow as today was Budget day.

Just to be clear not saying we shouldn't be concerned by variants but it just feels slightly dodgy that we have only concentrated on 4 or 5 out of thousands of variants and the media only decided to go OTT since December.

 

[Premier Quality]

That would actually be quite clever - That alone probably rules it out though!

 

[Dire Wolf]

Does anyone else receive the self employed income support grant? I received the last one in early December, to cover 3 months of lost earnings and the latest announcement is that the next grant will be available mid to late April. Now, I'm no mathematician, but that seems to me that the new grant is going to leave me with very reduced income from the end of February to nearly the end of April, almost 2 months. The next grant is to cover the period of March to May I believe, so am I supposed to have eeked out a grant covering a 3 month loss of earnings over nearly 5 months?

Having just moved into a new home it is making things very much a struggle at the moment. Thankfully, my partner has been working throughout and one of my customers has been paying me as normal for the much reduced level of service I have been allowed to provide, which has meant I have been earning something at least. I'm sure there will be plenty of self employed people who have not been so fortunate and have had a real struggle to survive.

I don't understand why a grant that covers a 3 month period isn't available again as soon as that period ends?

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Yes, in the same boat.

They did this with one of the earlier grants, we essentially ended up with a missing month.

It's shameful, we should be able to apply now, not some unfathomable wait for another six weeks or so. The system is in place (in fairness it does actually work well, it's just the pointless delay to the process that makes no sense) so press the button.

 

[Dire Wolf]

Yes, in the same boat.

They did this with one of the earlier grants, we essentially ended up with a missing month.

It's shameful, we should be able to apply now, not some unfathomable wait for another six weeks or so. The system is in place (in fairness it does actually work well, it's just the pointless delay to the process that makes no sense) so press the button.

So it's not just that I'm being bad at maths and hopeless at budgeting then...

You are right, the system is actually very easy and effective and once you submit the application the money is paid out very quickly. It seems like for this one or the last one in the summer they are going to require more evidence of the impact on your business. For me this should be pretty simple, I can demonstrate a significant reduction in invoices that I have generated which is one of the forms of evidence they will ask for.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Think this one is the same as the others. Basically if you got the grant before you'll get it now. They're dressing the delay up as "taking into account 2019/20 tax returns" but they were all in over a month ago, surely...if you didn't submit on time then tough shit really. They're not normally shy in hammering you if you don't have it there by the end of January.

The summer one - it seems to depend on whether you've had a 30%+ downturn in trade. Well that'll be practically everyone then, won't it. Don't know why they're even bothering with that.

 

[Tredman]

Ouch

 

[MARKakaJIM]

But there are plenty of countries there with high obesity and low deaths.

 

[Tredman]

Only 3 are called out, but those three are fairly closed countries (either geographically or because their neighbours hate them)

 

[MARKakaJIM]

It's just a really bizarre scatter, you'd think there'd be a stronger bottom left to top right trend if obesity was that big of a factor.

Having a very strong low deaths trend up the left hand side and then that cluster top right is weird, perhaps it's more coincidental and there's something else at play that's a factor in both Covid mortality and obesity which is prevalent in those nations? Don't really know what to make of it to be honest, can't say as I've ever seen a spread quite like it!

 

[Johnny75]

To me it shows how irrelevant weight in a population is. You could also argue that the majority of the countries in that graph with deaths over 100 are currently experiencing cold weather.

Is weather a factor and is it more of a factor than obesity?

Age seems to be the only relevant measure of mortality so far.

 

[Tredman]

There are two sizeable clusters - bottom left & top right. There are clearly loads of other factors at play (urban density I would imagine, clarity of government response), but its clear that obesity is a very serious issue.

 

[Johnny75]

I don't see how you can come to that conclusion without any further information.