Staying alert
May. 17th, 2020 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiGoodness me, last weekend's broadcast from Johnson was such gibberish. The only thing that surprised me was that he presumably had reviewed it and didn't think he could do any better.
Fortunately I can work from home, and have been doing so since day 2, so there is no change for me. The current thinking (I don't think it would be fair to call it a plan) is that we'll be working from home until at least September. My line manager added a slightly cryptic ", and then ... we are not sure which office we'll be in". Currently we are in a satellite office, which is marginally more convenient for transport and (more importantly as far as I am concerned, though surely not now for this year) the Proms, but has the downside of not having its own canteen. Quite how we could move in to the main office is a mystery to me - it seems it would imply hot-desking, which current thinking seems to rule out with the social distancing and deep-cleaning implications. Or maybe the lease on the satellite office is coming up for renewal. As I was only there for one day, it will all be new to me anyway.
It feels as though I have heard more traffic in the street this week, but that could be my imagination. Some people may be able to return to their places of work; in any event, there is a background level of necessary journeys - I've been out to the local Co-op about once every five days, though R is now on a priority list and we're getting some supermarket home deliveries again. In principle, I'd like to go to a garden centre - we are very low on compost and I could do with a few other things - but I've avoided going this weekend and I'm a bit hesitant about next weekend as it's Bank Holiday time again. We'll see how things develop.
I read an interesting piece in the FT about how we are going to pay for all this. Despite manifesto promises, they reckon the government could get away with raising income tax - I think that is true, though whether they will I have doubts. The other least bad option, perhaps more surprisingly, was for a one-off wealth tax - this seems similarly unlikely for this government. Abandoning the triple lock was another sensible option - when it was introduced, pensioner poverty was a much more significant problem; now it seems dubious to raise pensions by 2.5% if neither prices nor earnings have risen so much. Abolition of higher-rate pension tax relief has been a threat for several years - at least in the eyes of the investment industry. There is a logic to the relief, but when its consequences are spelled out it seems quite hard to justify. Further changes to NI are, to my mind, a less attractive option, mainly because it would be yet another free pass for wealthy retirees. Or we could just inflate the debt all away, and bugger the consequences. One of the interviews this week on the Toady programme talked about changing the BoE's target from inflation to growth, seeming to be implicitly in favour of this disturbing option.
Who knew Jeremy Corbyn had a brother even more detached from reality? Until a week ago I'd never even heard of Piers Corbyn. He seems like the sort of character the tabloids should have been interested in. If he wants to go and rabble-rouse against the lockdown, that's his decision; I'm more concerned about the safety of police arresting him, with photos showing them obviously unable in the circumstances to observe social distancing themselves and without any PPE.
I've seen a few posts by people sharing screenshots of what are obviously clone (and likely bot) posts, railing against anyone who questions Johnson's handling of the pandemic. I'm sure there are corresponding posts from other points of view. It seems to me likely that Cummings or his ilk, or Putin, are the sources of such posts; their motivations are different but the disruption they produce would be similar.
There's a lot of hot air about whether antibodies equals immunity. I suppose we don't know yet. It would be truly novel if they didn't provide some sort of immunity - but how strongly and for how long? I've heard a lot of people saying you have to wait for a vaccine, without grasping that vaccines are generally intended to produce the same antibodies, without triggering an infection. (A vaccine might additionally be designed to produce antibodies for a mix of viral strains). Inevitably, there's quite a lot of Bad Science out there. No vaccine, or a second wave, risk eliminating the value of the lockdown.
Fortunately I can work from home, and have been doing so since day 2, so there is no change for me. The current thinking (I don't think it would be fair to call it a plan) is that we'll be working from home until at least September. My line manager added a slightly cryptic ", and then ... we are not sure which office we'll be in". Currently we are in a satellite office, which is marginally more convenient for transport and (more importantly as far as I am concerned, though surely not now for this year) the Proms, but has the downside of not having its own canteen. Quite how we could move in to the main office is a mystery to me - it seems it would imply hot-desking, which current thinking seems to rule out with the social distancing and deep-cleaning implications. Or maybe the lease on the satellite office is coming up for renewal. As I was only there for one day, it will all be new to me anyway.
It feels as though I have heard more traffic in the street this week, but that could be my imagination. Some people may be able to return to their places of work; in any event, there is a background level of necessary journeys - I've been out to the local Co-op about once every five days, though R is now on a priority list and we're getting some supermarket home deliveries again. In principle, I'd like to go to a garden centre - we are very low on compost and I could do with a few other things - but I've avoided going this weekend and I'm a bit hesitant about next weekend as it's Bank Holiday time again. We'll see how things develop.
I read an interesting piece in the FT about how we are going to pay for all this. Despite manifesto promises, they reckon the government could get away with raising income tax - I think that is true, though whether they will I have doubts. The other least bad option, perhaps more surprisingly, was for a one-off wealth tax - this seems similarly unlikely for this government. Abandoning the triple lock was another sensible option - when it was introduced, pensioner poverty was a much more significant problem; now it seems dubious to raise pensions by 2.5% if neither prices nor earnings have risen so much. Abolition of higher-rate pension tax relief has been a threat for several years - at least in the eyes of the investment industry. There is a logic to the relief, but when its consequences are spelled out it seems quite hard to justify. Further changes to NI are, to my mind, a less attractive option, mainly because it would be yet another free pass for wealthy retirees. Or we could just inflate the debt all away, and bugger the consequences. One of the interviews this week on the Toady programme talked about changing the BoE's target from inflation to growth, seeming to be implicitly in favour of this disturbing option.
Who knew Jeremy Corbyn had a brother even more detached from reality? Until a week ago I'd never even heard of Piers Corbyn. He seems like the sort of character the tabloids should have been interested in. If he wants to go and rabble-rouse against the lockdown, that's his decision; I'm more concerned about the safety of police arresting him, with photos showing them obviously unable in the circumstances to observe social distancing themselves and without any PPE.
I've seen a few posts by people sharing screenshots of what are obviously clone (and likely bot) posts, railing against anyone who questions Johnson's handling of the pandemic. I'm sure there are corresponding posts from other points of view. It seems to me likely that Cummings or his ilk, or Putin, are the sources of such posts; their motivations are different but the disruption they produce would be similar.
There's a lot of hot air about whether antibodies equals immunity. I suppose we don't know yet. It would be truly novel if they didn't provide some sort of immunity - but how strongly and for how long? I've heard a lot of people saying you have to wait for a vaccine, without grasping that vaccines are generally intended to produce the same antibodies, without triggering an infection. (A vaccine might additionally be designed to produce antibodies for a mix of viral strains). Inevitably, there's quite a lot of Bad Science out there. No vaccine, or a second wave, risk eliminating the value of the lockdown.