Author Topic: Life after COVID-19  (Read 20288 times)

  • Offline neXus

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Life after COVID-19
on: April 07, 2020, 01:43:32 AM
COVID-19 is not going to go away but at some point it will be like the Flu. People will die from it each year but we will have vaccines in place, younger generations will naturally be more immune and the world will go to some form of normality.


But what will that normality be? What things do you guys think will stay the same and what will change permanently?

Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #1 on: April 07, 2020, 07:08:26 AM
personally I hope WFH is proven and remains more common, reducing travel will help co2 emissions

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  • Offline Clock'd 0Ne

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #2 on: April 07, 2020, 08:14:13 AM
100% as above on WFH. It needs to be recognised as a normality and not an exception, thankfully tech is forward thinking on this and so its starting to get a lot of traction. My position was advertised as 100% remote (the odd trip to the office was accepted for big events, meeting the team and being inducted, etc) but we have a new starter joining next month who will not even get to meet anyone in the office and will need their Macbook posting out to them; I'll be inducting them remotely. Strange new world.

Not sure of the likelihood of this being a recurring event like the more common strains of flu, so far this has been categorised as more like SARS/MERS which are infrequent. I hope so anyway.

Hopefully with the sheer volume of ongoing parallel research now happening, this will become a time when we work out ingenious ways of putting some of these viruses to bed properly without the same level of effort needed each time (the same way they are starting to figure out how treatments that can attack any cancers). On that note: https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-vaccine

Right now though, I can only see the culture of fear and surveillance getting stronger, while the economy continues to tank. Pay off your mortgages ASAP folks.
Last Edit: April 07, 2020, 08:19:08 AM by Clock'd 0Ne #187;

  • Offline Serious

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #3 on: April 08, 2020, 10:34:03 AM
The speed of spread of covid-19 certainly shows up the vulnerabilities of our society over the last 50 years. Fast and cheap air travel has proven to be a vulnerability and the UK amongst others have shown that a lazy government can make the issue far worse by not closing the borders and checking all travelers.

The lack of a decisive lockdown in the UK points towards the lack of control of the government, or the dislike of government control, and this is also the case in the USA where known covid-19 deaths are almost at the level of Spain. The fact that this coincides with the B***** issue is very bad news for UK companies. Neither issue is going to go away quickly.

How long it will be in the background is still unknown, it might just vanish again in a few months or it might become a constant issue. What is obvious is that the governments need to be more aware of the issues and ready to act much quicker than they have done.  That might mean rethinking the idea of travel for business and holidaying. Fictional writing, TV and films have all had instances of a severe pandemic being carried around the world killing billions. I would hope that the governments accept the message of this lesser pandemic, but then the governments have always tended to be slow at learning lessons from history.

China locked down very quickly which restricted their recorded deaths although the number may be massaged by the government. South Korea instigated a policy of mass testing which seems to have worked well enough.

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #4 on: April 08, 2020, 10:53:59 AM
... so far this has been categorised as more like SARS/MERS which are infrequent. I hope so anyway...

SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) are both coronaviruses and related to covid19. SARS effectively vanished after being isolated and few cases of MERS have been reported recently. The latter is endemic in Egyptian tomb bats so it will pop up every so often. Both seem to be more dangerous to the individual but less likely to spread person to person.

  • Offline neXus

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #5 on: April 09, 2020, 01:13:36 AM
100% as above on WFH. It needs to be recognised as a normality and not an exception, thankfully tech is forward thinking on this and so its starting to get a lot of traction. My position was advertised as 100% remote (the odd trip to the office was accepted for big events, meeting the team and being inducted, etc) but we have a new starter joining next month who will not even get to meet anyone in the office and will need their Macbook posting out to them; I'll be inducting them remotely. Strange new world.

Not sure of the likelihood of this being a recurring event like the more common strains of flu, so far this has been categorised as more like SARS/MERS which are infrequent. I hope so anyway.

Hopefully with the sheer volume of ongoing parallel research now happening, this will become a time when we work out ingenious ways of putting some of these viruses to bed properly without the same level of effort needed each time (the same way they are starting to figure out how treatments that can attack any cancers). On that note: https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-vaccine

Right now though, I can only see the culture of fear and surveillance getting stronger, while the economy continues to tank. Pay off your mortgages ASAP folks.


My Boss hates WFH even though every time I have with my setup being better then the office and less disruptions I do way more - He always forces it into his head that I do not to justify it not being a good idea. It is not so easy for me there though being the lead developer and leading the team, teaching juniors and helping them etc.

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  • Offline Clock'd 0Ne

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #6 on: April 09, 2020, 08:21:17 AM
Our team lead is in Aus and we talk to him once a day in the morning if he's around, it just needs a bit of planning. Onboarding people is the biggest challenge but that can be tackled with screen sharing and video conferencing. It will never be quite as good as being in the same room but I'd say its 70% there, good enough provided your onboarding process is decent. If it isn't decent, you should improve it!

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #7 on: April 09, 2020, 08:45:29 AM
Nothing stopping you having a constant private internet voice connection, work sharing, and bulletin board. Heck every gamer group now has access to discord.

Plenty of other work sharing packages out there and in reality being able to get people together without the often long journey into an office is a boon for everyone.

Edit missed a comma.

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  • Offline Clock'd 0Ne

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #8 on: April 09, 2020, 08:52:54 AM
Most corporates use Slack & Zoom/MS Teams now, I don't think Discord would wash well with corporate IT.

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #9 on: April 09, 2020, 09:40:02 AM
I woulds agree with that, I used Discord as an example, but there is Discord for Business and some small companies do seem to use it. Skype for Business is also available.

Then if this report is right we are now in an entirely different ball park.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/51-recovered-coronavirus-patients-test-positive-again-in-south-korea/

  • Offline neXus

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #10 on: April 14, 2020, 01:58:16 AM
Most corporates use Slack & Zoom/MS Teams now, I don't think Discord would wash well with corporate IT.


We switched to teams at our company because it is on office 365 so comes with that and is all linked with the other stuff but JESUS does it hog memory and memory leak like crazy. Over the course of just a few hours the amount of memory it uses is insane.
Slack is HTML5 and JS application based for the most part just as spotify is for example and uses way less. We half considering moving back to Slack because of this. It seems it has been an issue for some time with a lot of reports for months on the MS forums and they simply done nothing to address it.

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #11 on: April 14, 2020, 07:11:16 AM
It always amazes me how M$ can take an existing proven platform (Skype) and manage to make it even worse. At least they haven't done that with GitHub so far.

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  • Offline Rivkid

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #12 on: May 02, 2020, 09:36:18 AM
So BT are moving from 800 odd sites to 30 over the next few years, with the message being you're going to have to sit in on of the 30 sites (and not just any of them, the specific few that align to your area of the business...) and be expected onsite 9-5, 5 days a week. Properly old school. Then mid way through that plan the entire business has had to go and WFH almost overnight due to COVID19, and its working fine - but the message is still that the workplace plan will continue. It's going to mean so much talent lost, very likely myself included. Stupid when WFH works so well.
Career, Wife, Mortgage... my sig was better when it listed guitars and PC's and stuff!

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Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #13 on: May 03, 2020, 08:08:28 AM
What a backwards, mental attitude.  ::) Sorry to hear that man

Re: Life after COVID-19
Reply #14 on: May 03, 2020, 08:18:12 AM
The speed of spread of covid-19 certainly shows up the vulnerabilities of our society over the last 50 years. Fast and cheap air travel has proven to be a vulnerability and the UK amongst others have shown that a lazy government can make the issue far worse by not closing the borders and checking all travelers.

The lack of a decisive lockdown in the UK points towards the lack of control of the government, or the dislike of government control, and this is also the case in the USA where known covid-19 deaths are almost at the level of Spain.

China locked down very quickly which restricted their recorded deaths although the number may be massaged by the government. South Korea instigated a policy of mass testing which seems to have worked well enough.

I have to disagree. I think the UK government at all times has followed scientific guidance, they've been willing to adapt their approach as required and they have been transparent in doing so. You suggest it was late for the UK to act, but the UK was late in contracting the virus, we were at a completely different stage in the battle, the government was performing contact tracing and quarantine prior to the lockdown (the clue was in the "Containment" name of the phase), and at the time there was limited evidence of asymptomatic transmission.

The moment it became apparent asymptomatic transmission could occur, we moved to Delay, performing contact tracing on limited communities e.g. care homes and set about a gradual reduction in the amounts of social interaction.

"Herd immunity" you may scoff... but that is still the ONLY plan on the table for the entire world. In the East where they performed actions like welding shut doors on apartment blocks to contain the infected (the government did provide food and water to them though for the duration) and implemented road blocks around cities, they are now fighting against resurgences of the virus and it only takes one missed contact trace, or one bypass of a lockdown (Italy is a prime example of this - they did not lock down the entire country at once) for it all to go wrong and they'll be fighting a second or third wave.

In the West, every single country has adopted the view that in the absence of a vaccine they need to infect a majority of their population, whilst not overwhelming their health services.

The government got a lot of heat for not closing the schools down a week earlier than they did especially as they brought in social distancing measures for the rest of the UK population but it made complete sense. Schools are controlled outlets of the disease, limited numbers, they are the least adversely affected population according to all reports and Schools provide the key role of daycare for essential workers. They were in effect the sluice gates to the dam of social distancing.

When a dam is about to burst, you don't shut everything and let it come over the top flooding the valleys below. You keep the water draining in the hopes that although it is an increased flow, less death and loss of property occurs. This was no different.

All the government needed was for people to follow the advice and clear out of pubs and public areas, shield older populations and stay home, letting the kids who are less likely to die from this disease, act as spreaders to people who are of child bearing age. The majority of which will be nearer their 30's than their 60s again a lower mortality rate.

Shield the older generations and bobs you're uncle, we'll have most of the people infected, hopefully with milder symptoms and sufficient NHS capacity to assist those who have more severe symptoms, quickly and without risking the health of the older generations.

Immunity in relation to SARS and MERS is measured in years, for many other viruses it is decades. The mere fact that your body has recovered without assistance from external anti-virals is sufficient to assume at least for the short term, your body will now effectively fight off an exposure to a moderate viral load. That isn't to say you can't get it again, that is to say your body has some resistance to it, which is all immunity is.

Ultimately the aim is still to simply ride it out. It always has been and every single western government is following suit. The only places where they've done "lockdowns" in more controlled states are now seeing incidents of resurgence within small areas, it only takes one missed contact trace to cause a huge second spike once again.

The world's plan right now is to keep infection rates from spiralling but not to eliminate them, until such point that most of us have been infected and are showing some level of resistance to the virus. At which point, Covid-19 won't be able to establish sufficient footholds within the global population to cause further pandemics or public health crises.

There have been failings by the UK government, but on actions and timelines, I think our Government has done the one thing ALL governments should do and that is listen to their scientific advice and crucially... (which the US is not great at right now), BE ACCEPTING OF CHANGE. It is okay to reassess a situation and change stance, which is something the UK Press seems to consider as a negative?! which is absolutely bloody mental.

"So you got it wrong then?"
"The data changed, we reviewed it, we changed our approach"
"So we took the wrong approach first then?"
"No... we took the right approach then, and we're taking the right approach now. Situations change"

It's almost like the UK press would prefer our government be on rails.

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