Brexit, for once some facts.

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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There seems to be a big, and growing, push from the government for people to return to their place of work. But, the most prominent, symbolic and recognisable place of work in this country remains closed. That place is of course, the House of Commons.

How can they possess hope to get this, return to your place of work message across, when the very people delivering it have not yet returned to their own place of work?

The mixed messaging, lack of leadership and double standards is staggering.
No I think this is entirely sensible. After all, unlike the rest of the workforce, they demonstrably do little that's useful, sensible or productive, so no point in going to the Commons.
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oyster

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Nov 7, 2017
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I expect this move will actually undermine any vaccination program. There is already much distrust of the government, the health system in every way, and vaccination in particular. An abbreviated approval process might well ensure that those already not happy will dig in harder. And those who might be on the edge will move towards not accepting it. Even those who might now be minded to agree to vaccination could waver if the approval appears to have been rushed and not subject to proper testing.

UK to give emergency approval to any Covid vaccine breakthrough
Legal change will enable population to be immunised as quickly as possible
I am also concerned what pressures will be brought to bear on anyone who is not willing to have the vaccination under these circumstances. For example, withdraw any support for those who are isolating or shielding, refusal to allow school attendance (though that remaining mandatory), etc.
 

Nev

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that will inevitably eventually lead to immunity due to evolution. If a vaccine proves impossible as might well be the case, immunity will be the only answer.
If someone catches the virus and like most people who get it make a complete recovery the evidence seems to suggest (one or two exceptions are starting to emerge) that they have some immunity. I have always assumed that this then would indicate that a vaccine would also have a good chance of providing some immunity.

I would have thought if lots of people keep getting re-infected (which does not seem to be happening) then the chances of finding a successful vaccine would be extremely low. I am quite hopeful that a vaccine (probably more than one) will be found, we will probably need to be vaccinated on a regular basis say once a year or every couple of years.

The anti vaxers out there aren't going to like it, but if they don't want the vaccine then fair enough, that's up to them.
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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If someone catches the virus and like most people who get it make a complete recovery the evidence seems to suggest (one or two exceptions are starting to emerge) that they have some immunity. I have always assumed that this then would indicate that a vaccine would also have a good chance of providing some immunity.
The problem is though is that it's a moving target, and why we've always failed to produce a vaccine against the common cold despite huge international effort.

Our human immunities are much better than vaccines at dealing witn moving targets, just look at all the things we catch and easily survive but which killed entire races in the Americas when we first went there, showing how lethal they really are to those without natural immunity.

I don't think there's any certainty of a single treatment vaccine against Covid-19. Worse still is if we have to settle for a vaccine like the influenza one, the vaccine having to be altered and re-applied every year but still often not entirely effective. Over the whole world population that would be an expensive nightmare with limited effectiveness.

Evolutionary immunity at the cost of a small increase in deaths of the elderly like myself meanwhile would be a far better solution.
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oyster

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Nov 7, 2017
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I must say working from home is attractive but can't really last very long.
What is ridiculous is commuting. People spending many hours each week. The costs of transport (pollution, monetary, land usage, and so on).

In my view, it would be far, far better for people to work reasonably near their homes, if not in them. Although it isn't always easy or even possible.

Imagine you live in a town and lots of the inhabitants commute to a city. Instead, have a building in the town set up for office work. The big companies in the city could rent anything from an occasional desk space through to whole floors and let their people who live in the town work there rather than the city offices. Individuals could rent desk space as needed.

Of course, changing from mass commuting to any other approach is not without difficulties. Long term it has so many possible advantages.
 
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Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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Southend on Sea
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What is ridiculous is commuting. People spending many hours each week. The costs of transport (pollution, monetary, land usage, and so on).
Don't you need to leave work outside your home?
Anyway, you can't really take the parts home and assemble your bike in your garage.
Even if you can do that all by yourself, your productivity will suffer.
The main reason for team work is the quality of the end product.
People tend to make the same mistakes. If a bike is assembled by one person, you'll find typically 3 times more faults at quality control stage than a team of 3 people working on the same bike.
 
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flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,216
30,617
What is ridiculous is commuting. People spending many hours each week. The costs of transport (pollution, monetary, land usage, and so on).

In my view, it would be far, far better for people to work reasonably near their homes, if not in them. Although it isn't always easy or even possible.

Imagine you live in a town and lots of the inhabitants commute to a city. Instead, have a building in the town set up for office work. The big companies in the city could rent anything from an occasional desk space through to whole floors and let their people who live in the town work there rather than the city offices. Individuals could rent desk space as needed.

Of course, changing from mass commuting to any other approach is not without difficulties. Long term it has so many possible advantages.
Fully agree, but there is another way.

Long, long ago Harold Wilson as PM was promoting it:

Forge ahead with mechanisation and automation in what he called the "White hot heat of technology", with the aim of creating his "age of leisure" by the elimination of most of the work for subsistence. Thoroughly sensible.

We have the potential but instead we do stupid things with it like self drive cars, so instead of commuting in our cars, we will be commuted by our cars, bored stiff by having the time occupying driving and the pleasure we get from it removed. Stupid things like automating the trains that take us on those socially damaging commuting journeys, instead of eliminating the need for them. Spending trillions on space research efforts when we don't yet have the slightest idea what we have in total in our own planet.

As Harold did, we need to spend more time thinking about what we do with our undoubted abilities, instead of chasing progress only for progresses sake with disregard for what is best for us and the planet.
.
 
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Danidl

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Sep 29, 2016
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If someone catches the virus and like most people who get it make a complete recovery the evidence seems to suggest (one or two exceptions are starting to emerge) that they have some immunity. I have always assumed that this then would indicate that a vaccine would also have a good chance of providing some immunity.

I would have thought if lots of people keep getting re-infected (which does not seem to be happening) then the chances of finding a successful vaccine would be extremely low. I am quite hopeful that a vaccine (probably more than one) will be found, we will probably need to be vaccinated on a regular basis say once a year or every couple of years.

The anti vaxers out there aren't going to like it, but if they don't want the vaccine then fair enough, that's up to them.
I hope that a properly infected person will then on recovery have long term immunity. However it is very early days yet. We are only into 5 or 6 months of this in Western Europe, with any significant population exposure.
 
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Nev

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I was listening to a phone in about working from home on LBC the other morning. A chap phoned in who had been told he was likely to lose his job. He was an office manager, his office based in outer London. The entire company had been working from home since lockdown. The bosses had informed him that they had not seen any reduction in efficiency since home working started. They also told him that the cost of renting office space was £18k a month (in central London it can be around 2 to 3 times this much) for the size of company he worked for.

If this kind of thing is fairly typical, then I think a lot of companies are going to carry on working from home, or perhaps bringing in staff one or two days a week, and hence needing much less office space. I think CV should be seen as an opportunity for the government and others to completely re think how we work in this country and what our large town and city centers should be used for.
 

Danidl

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Sep 29, 2016
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The problem is though is that it's a moving target, and why we've always failed to produce a vaccine against the common cold despite huge international effort.

Our human immunities are much better than vaccines at dealing witn moving targets, just look at all the things we catch and easily survive but which killed entire races in the Americas when we first went there, showing how lethal they really are to those without natural immunity.

I don't think there's any certainty of a single treatment vaccine against Covid-19. Worse still is if we have to settle for a vaccine like the influenza one, the vaccine having to be altered and re-applied every year but still often not entirely effective. Over the whole world population that would be an expensive nightmare with limited effectiveness.

Evolutionary immunity at the cost of a small increase in deaths of the elderly like myself meanwhile would be a far better solution.
.
I think you are missing the point about evolutionary immunity ... It only works on the young requires sexual, and multiple generations . Now any disease which affects primarily older people does not get corrected by evolution..if anything it tends to proliferate.
 

Nev

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We have the potential but instead we do stupid things with it like self drive cars
I was reading an article the other day on Uber, who have never made any profit. Their business plan is based on predatory pricing and so force out most other competitors and then switch over to driverless cars and make a fortune. Unfortunately for them, driverless cars have taken far longer than they initially expected and for town and city journeys could be still many years away.
 
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Danidl

Esteemed Pedelecer
Sep 29, 2016
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I was listening to a phone in about working from home on LBC the other morning. A chap phoned in who had been told he was likely to lose his job. He was an office manager, his office based in outer London. The entire company had been working from home since lockdown. The bosses had informed him that they had not seen any reduction in efficiency since home working started. They also told him that the cost of renting office space was £18k a month (in central London it can be around 2 to 3 times this much) for the size of company he worked for.

If this kind of thing is fairly typical, then I think a lot of companies are going to carry on working from home, or perhaps bringing in staff one or two days a week, and hence needing much less office space. I think CV should be seen as an opportunity for the government and others to completely re think how we work in this country and what our large town and city centers should be used for.
Yes. The implications for Insurance companies and pension funds will need a lot of working through. These are the funds which build these massive buildings as long term cash cows.
 

jonathan.agnew

Esteemed Pedelecer
Dec 27, 2018
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Fully agree, but there is another way.

Long, long ago Harold Wilson as PM was promoting it:

Forge ahead with mechanisation and automation in what he called the "White hot heat of technology", with the aim of creating his "age of leisure" by the elimination of most of the work for subsistence. Thoroughly sensible.

We have the potential but instead we do stupid things with it like self drive cars, so instead of commuting in our cars, we will be commuted by our cars, bored stiff by having the time occupying driving and the pleasure we get from it removed. Stupid things like automating the trains that take us on those socially damaging commuting journeys, instead of eliminating the need for them. Spending trillions on space research efforts when we don't yet have the slightest idea what we have in total in our own planet.

As Harold did, we need to spend more time thinking about what we do with our undoubted abilities, instead of chasing progress only for progresses sake with disregard for what is best for us and the planet.
.
I agree, but before consumer/worker rights become the priority in society in this way (as in the eu)we have to prize big business' (& its finger puppits our elected representatives) sweaty claws from the controls (for whom we are consumers/money generators). For the sake of Starbucks and phillip green's bottom line we're going to be shoehorned back onto overcrowded tube trains and into Macdonald's for a second spike instead.
 

oyster

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2017
10,422
14,609
West West Wales
Don't you need to leave work outside your home?
Anyway, you can't really take the parts home and assemble your bike in your garage.
Even if you can do that all by yourself, your productivity will suffer.
The main reason for team work is the quality of the end product.
People tend to make the same mistakes. If a bike is assembled by one person, you'll find typically 3 times more faults at quality control stage than a team of 3 people working on the same bike.
For several of the recent years, I was working in a shared office space. The company based many miles away.

I would get up, go to the office space, work, come home.

I'd have all the advantages of separating work and home but be close enough for it to only take a few minutes whether I cycled or drove.

I'd have many of the advantages of a workplace such as other people being around.

And as much of my work was already based on remote access to customers, that side didn't really change.

Yes, there are downsides. Lack of sufficient contact with colleagues. Though much of that depends on how well the company manages things.

No - it would be total rubbish for bicycle assembly.
 

Woosh

Trade Member
May 19, 2012
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Southend on Sea
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Southend is pretty compact. All of us live between 1-2 miles from work
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,216
30,617
I think you are missing the point about evolutionary immunity ... It only works on the young requires sexual, and multiple generations . Now any disease which affects primarily older people does not get corrected by evolution..if anything it tends to proliferate.
Not so, the infection does have effects in any age group, albeit to varying degrees, so does have an evolutionary effect. And as I posted, a long term policy.
.
 
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flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,216
30,617
Unfortunately for them, driverless cars have taken far longer than they initially expected and for town and city journeys could be still many years away.
As I've long maintained, we will never see them. They are impossible in our infrastructure and we aren't going to be able to completely replace that. The way we are going with the world and its economy we'll be lucky to even survive with what we've got now.
.
 

Woosh

Trade Member
May 19, 2012
20,387
16,884
Southend on Sea
wooshbikes.co.uk
As I've long maintained, we will never see them. They are impossible in our infrastructure and we aren't going to be able to completely replace that. The way we are going with the world and its economy we'll be lucky to even survive with what we've got now.
.
you will be proven wrong in your lifetime!
when I started, paper tapes were still in use, silicon hard drive was thought possible but not soon. Some 40 years later, SSDs are as cheap as chips. Computers rule our lives for sometime now. Best get used to it.
All the driverless cars need are:
1. legal insurance
2. a barcode or transceiver on each moving vehicle to help with identification
3. a transceiver buried under the road surface to help with positioning
 
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Danidl

Esteemed Pedelecer
Sep 29, 2016
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Not so, the infection does have effects in any age group, albeit to varying degrees, so does have an evolutionary effect. And as I posted, a long term policy.
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Sorry flecc, and since you are interested in biology, I would have assumed you knew. . Evolution is a very crude mechanism. Unless a disease renders an individual less capable of reproduction, or reduces fertility, it has no effect. This is why for instance Cancers of the elderly are not controlled , and in fact can increase. Whereas diseases such as CF, with which I am familiar, are held very strictly under control
 

jonathan.agnew

Esteemed Pedelecer
Dec 27, 2018
2,400
3,381
you will be proven wrong in your lifetime!
when I started, paper tapes were still in use, silicon hard drive was thought possible but not soon. Some 40 years later, SSDs are as cheap as chips. Computers rule our lives for sometime now. Best get used to it.
All the driverless cars need are:
1. legal insurance
2. a barcode or transceiver on each moving vehicle to help with identification
3. a transceiver buried under the road surface to help with positioning
plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Our brave new infrastructure remain about primates watching (much higher quality) pornography and tele shopping and voting for boris and trump.
 
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