Life in isolation. The thread

[TheDreamlord]

Been exactly two weeks at home for me now. One thing I would like to suggest, if you are used to some regular excercise. My routine includes going to the gym 4-5 times a week for about 45-60 mins weights and some cardio (and boxing). The first week at home I was worried about what to do with excercise, since I start feeling uneasy if I do not do some sort of work out at least 2-3 times a week (my body starts feeling stiff and tense).

I started watching YouTube videos and doing various routines from there. I am particularly fond of this lady MadFit channel. Her excercise programs are excellent and varied and require almost no equipment. That got me into reading more about calisthenics and I am starting to really like this now. I am very surprised that in just two weeks, my body is actually building up more muscle than with my usual weight training, which I found very strange.

So, if people are getting short tempered or starting to get cabin fever, I think something like this will help.

[Zephro]

Nah sweating makes me even more angry. I usually exercise by walking literally everywhere I go in London so I get plenty of nice chill exercise.

Also my flat is basically too tiny for most of this crap. Technically I could move the coffee table to make room but it’s normally covered in plates and mugs or underneath it is entirely full of my wife’s knitting, or my wife is sat on the sofa behind me playing on the switch or watching Buffy. So an elbow in the face or me being in front of the TV are all issues.

[Skalpadda]

I started getting light cold symptoms last monday and this is no time to risk my or anyone else’s health, so have quarantined myself this week and the next at least. Then yesterday I got word that my workplace is reducing our office to a skeleton crew for at least a month. I can do a little bit of work from home and I’m keeping 90% of my income while on leave, so I can’t complain in a situation where many people are seriously ill or dying and lots have been warned they might lose their jobs entirely if this continues much longer. But it’s still a bit of a bummer.

Strategies for sanity:

I have a friend in pretty much the same situation and we agreed to call each other every day so we can get some complaining out of our systems and just generally check up on each other.

I’m taking a short (very short now that I’m not entirely well) walk in the woods every evening just to get some fresh air and light exercise.

Dug through piles of sheet music and selected some monstrously difficult pieces to learn. Should keep me occupied for months if needed.

Bought a pile of books last month, have a huge backlog of games, and the whole internet. Plenty of stuff to do.

Once I’m well again I’ll plan some longer day hikes for excercise. I’m trying to think of something useful to do if this carries on for a long time. Maybe I can offer my neighbours some help if they get sick or otherwise stuck at home.

[theclockworkrat]

I’ve been doing a mix of Ring Fit and cycling around the city to keep up my activity and stay relatively sane. I mostly miss my friends and family, but since my job isn’t going to close down any time soon (hospital) I still get some socialising in.

Online pub nights look like they’ll become a thing!

[Sarfrin]

It’s kind of frustrating here to, after doing a brief, successful, shopping mission, realize all the small things you missed, but also realize given you’re over 40, have asthma, and so on, that really shouldn’t go out and get them.

I also feel a bit pressured by the one out one in thing to shop as quickly as possible. That said, we’re not short of anything crucial.

I’m also concerned about the government’s destined-to-end-in-tears libertarian-style “Let the free market it sort it out!” proposed approach to getting the “Have you have covid-19?” kits out there. Apparently their plan, once the initial testing of the kits is done in a week or so, to try and just give them to Amazon, Boots, and so on to sell (thx for putting more money/power in Jeff Bezos pocket, Boris, you self-annihilating moron), and they will assume people who need them will buy them and so on, but this is simply not how these sort of markets work.

Seriously? WTAF? I was assuming the sane plan of giving the tests to medical experts so they can adjust our approach would be the first choice.

[BillButNotBen]

Also my flat is basically too tiny for most of this crap. Technically I could move the coffee table to make room but it’s normally covered in plates and mugs or underneath it is entirely full of my wife’s knitting, or my wife is sat on the sofa behind me playing on the switch or watching Buffy. So an elbow in the face or me being in front of the TV are all issues.

I don’t know the official guidance, but if possible maybe go outside for 15 minutes a day.
I just took my kids out to literally skateboard up and down the 10m infront of our building (not in UK tho). 15 minutes of fresh air and sun helps a lot.
It’s harder in a flat of course, I don’t know if you can get outside without bumping into people.

If you have a chair and a hallway, you can probably do some basic exercise. Push-ups, planks, wall sits, chair-reverse-situps or whatever they’re called. search on youtube for something like ‘7 minute workout’ or 'low impact 7 minute workout (if you have people living downstairs) and just modify it to fit your situation. (I had to drop all the star jumps).

[Hanimalle]

In more positive news, the air quality has never been so good and it only required a pandemic for us to achieve this, well done humanity !

[Sarfrin]

I just took my kids out to literally skateboard up and down the 10m infront of our building (not in UK tho). 15 minutes of fresh air and sun helps a lot.

We’re allowed out to exercise. People in our road bring their small children out to ride their bikes up and down for a while and to hell with anyone who would object to that. It’s not dangerous and kids need some vague semblamce of normality in their lives.

[Hanimalle]

I feel like this video suits this thread perfectly :

[TheDreamlord]

I prefer this one!!!

[ToomuchFluffy]

According to an article in an austrian newspaper (Der Standard) on the UK-health system there are only 6,6 intensive care beds per 100.000 people in the UK, as opposed to around 29 in both Austria and Germany. Apparently a lot of this reduction has happened during the last decade, but I suspect there’s probably a lot of people on the RPS-forums which follow these kinds of topics more closely than me. Especially regarding the UK I mean.

The source is in german, but I didn’t want to make claims without providing the source.

Edit: Oh, as of a few days ago we now have to wear masks in supermarkets (which they are obligated to provide). If I remember correctly it’s mandatory starting Monday.

[Hanimalle]

Edit: Oh, as of a few days ago we now have to wear masks in supermarkets (which they are obligated to provide). If I remember correctly it’s mandatory starting Monday.

Interesting, so you guys don’t have the same masks shortage issues that we have here in France ?

[LexW]

According to an article in an austrian newspaper (Der Standard) on the UK-health system there are only 6,6 intensive care beds per 100.000 people in the UK, as opposed to around 29 in both Austria and Germany.

I think the exact figures may be exaggerated or misleading, because it’s very clear Germany doesn’t measure anything to do with healthcare the same way others do (something even senior German doctors have commented on), but it’s certainly true that Germany has at least twice as many, maybe three times as many, by any standard. There have definitely been significant cuts in the last decade, but even with that in mind, I suspect there’s some more fundamental difference here, because I doubt we lost more than 50% (i.e. down from 13, say), and in fact I suspect the reduction was much smaller. It’s more likely that either German/Austrian hospital have extremely exceptional intensive care preparations, for no apparent reason. I mean, logically, Germany/Austria don’t suffer more diseases that would require intensive care, and the UK didn’t have a significant intensive care shortage until now (it did have a shortage, but a small one), so I don’t believe Germany/Austria were just running with, say, 4x more intensive care beds than they actually needed. Not sure what that is, but the discrepancy is too large to explain as “better preparedness” or “a better system”. Classification has to be involved to some degree.

Edit: Oh, as of a few days ago we now have to wear masks in supermarkets (which they are obligated to provide). If I remember correctly it’s mandatory starting Monday.

Yeah I thought this was really weird, because literally everywhere outside of Asia (where it’s been a cultural fashion to wear medical masks for like two decades or more, even when completely unnecessary and non-beneficial), there are reports of shortages of masks. As @Hanimalle says, do you guys not have those shortages? Do the stores just have enough that they can hand them out?

If not it seems like a good way to prevent both well-behaved citizens (who didn’t buy masks because they were told they shouldn’t, and they were needed for doctors) and the poor (who can’t afford the gouge-y prices people charge for them) from being able to get groceries.

It’s not entirely ridiculous because the main thing masks do is limit how much already-infected people spread the disease, and there will be a lot of people who are infected and either don’t know it, or are in denial/hiding it, but I am surprised given the lack of masks in most places.

[Zephro]

It definitely feels like one of those statistics where you can have too many beds. Like we have 7, they have 29 a normal optimal amount is 14 (plucked out of the air). Where apart from right now it’s a matter of “Well yeah but you’re paying for a load of empty beds and space why?”. I’d suspect the NHS is sub-optimal but not by that amount.

Like any time it snowed in London and everything ground to a halt so someone would trot out the amount of snow ploughs in Toronto or something as a stat. Where yes we would be more prepared if London had them, but the cost for the 2 days every 3-4 years is just silly. Though you look smart as a fox on those 2 days or during the unlikely event.

[Sarfrin]

I’d suspect the NHS is sub-optimal but not by that amount

It definitely is, because they totally ignored the results of that simulated pandemic exercise a few years ago. And that was based on a less serious scenario than we’ve got now. I agree with your snow plough analogy, but much higher stakes in terms of human lives demand a greater level of redundancy in the system (assuming you’re not completely devoid of human empathy, like the current government).

[Zephro]

I agree it requires more redundancy; but you’ll never know how much until afterwards. Again number out of thin air but if you got to 99% preparedness but could spend double to get to 99.9% (I don’t know anything about health care provision but in science experiments or engineering you often find the last 1% costs as much as everything else). If that 1% thing happens and you elected not to, then it’s a mistake after the fact. Same with the 0.1% if you elected for 99.9 instead of 99.999 etc. And all the while that money could have been spent on cancer screening say, or having better A&E coverage every day etc.

I’m not saying the right decision was definitely made or the like. But somewhere someone has had to weigh those things up. I really don’t envy them as they are inevitably going to end up some kind of wrong over time.

What the Tories have definitely done is totally fuck up the decision making processes via the 2012 re-organisation of the NHS and just cut money relentlessly. The more cuts that happen to the overall budget the more of these decisions over which set of deaths you pick from have to happen. So still, the Tories can go fuck emselves. But it’d be a lie to say it would never happen otherwise.

[ToomuchFluffy]

Interesting, so you guys don’t have the same masks shortage issues that we have here in France ?

My impression was that we had one too. Then they announced that we all had to use masks and that the supermarkets would provide them… But I didn’t visit that many different stores recently, so I don’t have a good impression on who actually provides them. As said, it’s not yet mandatory.

I’m assuming that shortages might apply to higher grade masks and other kind of protective equipment, not the low grade masks they are handing out.

I’d suspect the NHS is sub-optimal but not by that amount.

Yeah, don’t get me wrong; when I saw the numbers I was a bit suspicious simply because the UK is a neoliberal cliche at this point, so the numbers will fit the established expectations of a lot of people.

[LexW]

Yeah I think you’re missing Zephro’s point. There’s no way that two modern countries with basically similar healthcare systems, which are both doing pretty well healthcare-wise (Britain had no noticeable/huge issue with emergency care - it did have an issue, but one that would seem more like we needed 50% more beds tops) for the last decade, have a true 1:5 disparity in ICU beds. It’s just not plausible. I simply don’t believe that the Germans had, for no reason, 5x as many beds. It would be extremely expensive to maintain.

If the Germans had a stockpile of equipment and mobilized it and so on from mothballs, that would be plausible. But that is explicitly not the claim (and this claim has been made since early March, note). The claim is that they had, active, maintained, and staffed, 5x as many ICU beds. When presumably they don’t have 5x or even 2x the need for ICU beds (unless some crazy shit is happening in Germany I don’t know about). Something else is going on. I note a US analysis said they only had 3x as many as the UK/US, which is slightly more plausible but still seems unlikely, because the idea that you have all these ICU doctors and nurses just hanging out seems well… dubious.

It’s like the death rate. On paper it’s very low but one of Germany’s senior doctors was saying “I expect the actual death rate in Germany to be very similar to other countries when the final analysis comes in” (or something to that effect). Others said similar. And none said “No this is correct.”.

But we won’t have that final analysis for literally years, so…

Re: the exercise, what that called for was indeed stockpiles of stuff, not maintaining a vastly large number of ICU beds - having them available (if I understand it correctly).

[Sarfrin]

It’s like the death rate. On paper it’s very low but one of Germany’s senior doctors was saying “I expect the actual death rate in Germany to be very similar to other countries when the final analysis comes in” (or something to that effect). Others said similar. And none said “No this is correct.”.

But we won’t have that final analysis for literally years, so…

Re: the exercise, what that called for was indeed stockpiles of stuff, not maintaining a vastly large number of ICU beds - having them available (if I understand it correctly).

On paper it’s very low but they’re doing far more testing than us, so how does that work?

Whatever the exercise called for, they did none of it. Not a single stockpile or even a modest increase in ICU beds. They continued to cut everything the NHS did. And they’re still not doing enough. And now they’re asking us to believe them when they say that they’re ramping up testing and that hospitals have everything they need while no one who isn’t rich, famous or literally at death’s door can get tested and doctors and nurses are begging people in their communities to make PPE for them. So they’re absolutely lying and they’re absolutely culpable for every death that happens in this pandemic.

[LexW]

On paper it’s very low but they’re doing far more testing than us, so how does that work?

Because they don’t classify a death by, for example, pneumonia caused by coronavirus as a death from coronavirus - rather a death from pneumonia. And that’s the vast bulk of coronavirus deaths. Only where it’s direct like an uncontrollable fever does it appear that they call it that (and those are rare). This may have changed but it was certainly how it was initially. Whereas other people do it different ways, but pretty much all of them count anyone who tested positive for coronavirus, then died, as a death from coronavirus. Complicating the issue, some countries do post-mortem testing, and so retroactively count deaths they didn’t know were coronavirus as it, but most don’t. And others still are just inconsistent.