How are you today?

Not Games
161

Clippers ftw.

Re: Japan, certainly, cultural differences explain a lot. But social drinking and eating, karaoke, and the like are just as popular here as anywhere else, transit is packed, and I don’t believe physical contact is all that big a factor. Very quick and quite comprehensive uptake of masks may be the one overriding difference. But if that is correct, then a very quick and comprehensive push to have everyone wearing masks, with all talking heads wearing masks all the time, could maybe have saved more lives than any number of lockdowns. Obviously I’m not there on the ground, but the UK and US in particular still seem to be giving mixed messages about this, it’s incredible.

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162

I believe even the head of the CDC came out and said that wearing masks would do more to prevent the spread of Covid than even a vaccine. So yeah, if we didn’t have idiots who are convinced mask wearing mandates are some government plot to take away the freedoms of its citizens, or who could consider the health and well-being of those around them over their own personal comfort for a damn minute, the US would certainly be doing better than it is. Probably true of European countries as well.

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163

It’s easy to say it’s mostly the fault of the idiots, but it actually requires a lot of general social pressure, and consistent leadership, to get something like mask wearing up to effective levels. Even here I think a great number of people are only wearing them because everyone else is. The perception of risk here is very very low, but most people just don’t want to be the odd one out in a crowd. I would lay the blame squarely on the leaders, and not the idiots (well, if the overlap weren’t so large, but you know what I mean).

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164

Oh, there is certainly a failure of leadership here in the US. No question there. Just lump them in with the idiots!

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165

Your president was man enough to beat COVID (with millions of dollars of experimental treatment).

Here in the UK I feel the ‘lockdown’ is unenforceable as there are too many reasons to be out the house. That coupled with a weak test, trace, isolate system means we simply cannot get on top of cases fast enough.

There was a small bone in that the original Furlough scheme has been extended for one month, but really employers should have know that way before the day the scheme was due to end.

166

I’m going for the ‘Rapunzel’ approach…

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167

This very much.

Just a few weeks ago I realized how easily and quickly one succumbs to social pressure. I talked on the phone with the birthday-partying(1) family member about the party and suggested it wasn’t a good idea. We had a longish discussion about the whole situation. Later that day, I talked some friends who are also not quite as… strict… as we are. I started questioning myself if I wasn’t being too careful, if I was missing out on things I didn’t have to miss?

I picked one of my friends who I know is equally careful about this and called her to ground myself. Never in my life have I been so conscious of “changing” my opinion based on outside social pressure.

It’s unfortunate that we started into this whole debacle with a mask shortage and that instead of being honest with us about this, politicians here (and in many many other places) were afraid that people would buy up and hoard whatever PPE they could find (they were right, see toilet paper) and chose to lie to us about the effectiveness for masks only switching their positions once they had a plan for ensuring PPE supply for hospitals. I was one of the few who only went out “masked”(2) long before masks were mandated. My thinking was to scare of other shoppers at the supermarket and it kind of worked.

(1) 75th birthday just to show it’s not all young people partying
(2) improvised masks at first

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168

Yeah, lots of people feeling weird because they’re obeying all the rules while they watch their friends go out and party.

My girlfriend asked the medic for a (very locked down and pre-tested) outdoor film shoot she was on whether she was wrong to be so cautious and afraid compared to some of her friends. He said definitely not, she was totally right. So you’re certainly not the only one wondering if you’re taking it too far compared to social circles.

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169

Everyone I know who’s in any way working in medicine or medical statistics is very much at the “holy crap what are you doing out of your house” end of the scale. The more knowledge they have, the more pessimistic they are.

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170

Two people I was friendly with in the last city we lived in have gone full conspiracy theorist on Facebook. Horrifying to observe the descent into madness when you look at their pages. Can’t imagine what it must be like living somewhere these kind of people are numerous enough to do real damage.

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171

Okay, my posts on this yesterday were about lockdown / the situation, instead of about how I felt. This one is about how I feel after it was just announced on twitter than Farage is going to be making a new party which is anti-lockdown and pro- herd immunity.

I do not feel good.

“Writing in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice declare that “lockdowns don’t work” and say their new party will back a “focused protection” policy to protect only the most vulnerable to allow the rest of the population to develop herd immunity.”

I can barely write this and keep to any “non-political” rules, so bear with me while I manage not to all-caps it. I also don’t want to bring this much politics onto a boardgame forum, so ignore it if it isn’t your thing. And move the post elsewhere if it’s too much.

This is “bad”. We already know that lots of people look to Farage for a nice easy solution to a complicated problem. Him getting power off this (and the conspiracy / anti-vax / ‘covid is a hoax’ voters) is not great, but suggesting Herd Immunity is a possible solution is much, much worse.

His “Focused protection” and no lockdown means that the elderly will be isolated to keep them safe while the rest of the population is deliberately made to catch it. The main population will then be immune, which stops the travel of the virus enough to make the vulnerable safe too. Couple of problems with this:

1 It doesn’t work with covid because people’s immunity isn’t sticking longer than a few weeks, and there’s multiple strains out there which you also aren’t immune to once you’ve had one.

2 It relies on everyone catching it. That will happen very quickly, but even if you treat the bad cases in hospital, covid isn’t either “you die” or “you’re totally fine”. Young people who caught it have heart damage, nerve damage, brain damage and especially the permanently-reduced lung capacity from what it does to your lungs. This includes from asymptomatic cases: you still get the body damage. You Do Not Want This.

So his master plan is for the main population to be permanently damaged for life from deliberately catching it, and then the “most vulnerable” can be protected. We’re all most vulnerable, there’s just a group (mainly elderly) who are at much higher risk of death. Death isn’t the only problem with this new, unknown virus. “Long-covid” symptoms are still being discovered.

But it’ll work for him politically, he’ll be on the BBC every week and “Herd Immunity” will be treated like it’s an actual thing (instead of the nonsense it was when it was announced as policy in March for one day before every scientist I know started screaming and the government U-turned in 24 hours).

The media have shown they’re completely incapable of not jumping on a “controversy” and pretending it has 50/50 merit which deserves airtime. So it’ll work and people will die, and that makes me… sad and furious for the future, really. Same as when I read the name Farage in any context.

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172

This is a thing that very much touches on how I feel about it. When I was 16 I had brucellosis (probably from goat’s cheese), and later what was then called post-viral syndrome or “yuppie flu” (later ME, but the ME people get now is nothing like what I had then). It sounds a lot like what some people are reporting as post-COVID19 symptoms: specifically, the extreme fatigue, and the full and clear understanding that one’s mind is not working as well as it used to.

Now, I realise that there are other symptoms too; this isn’t the same thing I had. But those two in particular I really wouldn’t wish on anybody, and that hits me emotionally in a way that a general risk-of-death and risk-of-debilitation don’t.

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173

I caught Covid-19 in March and I can indeed attest to bad after effects. My lungs just aren’t where they were. With a history of mental illness lced with anxiety problems this is so problematic. Less oxygen to the brain makes dealing with panic harder.

I lost September. Was so worn out I slept most days of that month. My brian is still a little fugged now. I can really turn it on occasionally but I now spend a lot of time just sort of sitting to recuperate. I’m also trying not to worry about my kidneys but some things have changed a bit that do give me pause for thought. I hope it’s a bit longer than swine flu after effects rather than a very long time. But as this covid is novel, we can but wait and see.

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174

Sounds terrifying. Hope you make a full recovery, however long it takes.

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175

Yes, whoever goes around talking about her immunity has never had to deal much with it before. This social Darwinism can be very dangerous in the wrong hands.

Isolation has proved to work in NZ, and all the scaremongering about the economy has been disproved. There ha been an impact, but the housing market is sky-rocketing now (believe me, I am on the search for our first house here in NZ), when everybody thought it would be quite the opposite. Conditions here are different, I give you that, but still, politicians should know better by now.

Masks, even if not used perfectly, reduce transmission drastically. And they have no effect whatsoever in oxygen intake; they can be uncomfortable, but so are braces, seat belts, helmets or glasses at first, and nobody goes protesting against them. Social distancing, being sensible, proper use of family bubbles, all those do work. Anybody against them, they simply don’t know what they are saying.

In other words, as we say in H&S, the “it will be all right” goes as one of the most common sets of famous last words. Don’t let them be yours.

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176

This, in a rare use of profanity from me…

Fuck off Farage and your media appearances. The one UK ‘politician’ who is always available for comment on the opposing view. By doing so he seems more important and influential than he actually is.

He should get airtime in line with the number of MPs his party has, zero.

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177

Well, if we’re going to get political, I want to say that Nigel Farage is one of the few British politicians who doesn’t make me ill. He looks like someone who actually has a sense of the value of individual liberty, to a degree that would be unusual even for an American politician, and his specific positions seem to derive from that more consistently than is usual for politicians, no matter what core principle they hold (if indeed they have one). And I was really happy to see his long campaign for British independence from Europe finally succeed; it was one of the few pieces of good political news I’ve seen in recent years.

Having said that, I’m willing to go back to agreeing to disagree in mutual silence. I just don’t want to give the impression that everyone here agrees on supporting the authoritarian left.

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179

As a moderator, I think that’s possibly a good idea. I understand how close the political and the personal come at this time. If anyone feels like they must answer further on I want to remind them to think it over. I’d like to keep this thread so we can have a place to commiserate about the personal things.

I also want to take this moment to remind everyone that tomorrow’s US elections are going to to be stressful for a lot of people here in some way or another. Be kind to each other and remember that we may not all agree on some things.

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Thank you for that. As someone suffering with ongoing (perpetual!) issues including anxiety a thread like this can be important and helpful, but also rather distressing if things turn heated or tense. Keeping it focused on the original intention is perhaps more important than is the case for most forum threads.

It’s clear that you and I do not start out from the same political and ideological place. Nonetheless, I don’t wish to see anyone silenced, not least because I’m certain that we can all work together to avoid the need. Offering to step back a little as you have is appreciated; and I hope that all of us can use the opportunity to consider whether our own views might be better expressed outside of this particular thread.

(Jon, who has been struggling with depression again because there is just so much negative stuff happening right now)

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I have a lot of anxiety about the upcoming election; for one thing, it may determine whether I will be forced into an undesired retirement from work I enjoy doing. I haven’t talked about it here, because we seemed to have an agreement not to discuss political issues. I’m willing to maintain that custom, as long as others observe it as well. But I too look at the possible outcomes of tomorrow’s election with dread and anticipated horror. Nonetheless, I’m willing to have you go in peace.

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