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Coronavirus.

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We have been advised not to go to pubs and restaurants, cinemas and other public places, to protect ourselves and others from the Coronavirus. Are we still able to work? Can we still obtain stock? Will we continue to visit workplaces like offices, shops or homes? Will we be provided  with fiscal support if we can not trade, especially if we are self employed?


University College London is predicting up to 250,000 potential fatalities from Coronavirus in the U.K.


How does the pandemic affect you?


Whaddaufink?


Z.




  • 0
    I think for the first time in a lifetime pretty much, we are facing a truly existential problem, i.e. one that puts at risk the very existence of life as we know it.

    And the threat is not fully known, so the duration of such measures may be days weeks months or years. The last two would be very serious for all of us.


    Government advice is just that, advice, but your local conditions may vary - just because in one house someone is infected does not mean a job in the next town is dangerous today, though it may be next week.

    Until told otherwise, I'd assume that work does count as 'necessary travel', certainly the  more emergency calls, but even so , before setting off I'd start by calling to ask customers if they have any symptoms themselves or immediate family, and and if they still want us to come.

    Leaving those jobs to later in the year or considering stop gap solutions

    - "here is a plug in table lamp, I'll come back and fix the lights and take it away when you feel better.. " . 

    Similarly, avoiding hugging and kissing random strangers is probably good, but in our line of work and this country, that won't be too difficult.?


    If things run on for long enough , then running low on stocks of parts may become an issue. We have seen loo roll shortages, but these are just a flash panic. Real shortages of light bulbs, or brass for terminals, or wire, or something may come eventually, but that will be slow to manifest and hopefully obvious enough that we will have time to adjust to that.


    I for one am really wondering about where this will go, and I am not self employed,  and am relatively lucky(*), my feelings go out to those who are.


    If there are to be a quarter million excess deaths over a year or so, that is bad but bearable - after all in a perfectly normal year we lose a million or so in the UK.

    If it is all over a few weeks it probably isn't.



    * for me personally, the biggest hit so far has been The Scout Association advising all groups to stop meeting, but clearly that is the tip of the iceberg and trivial in the greater process.


  • 0
    I have a monthly 18th Edition course next week along with the start of a 2391. I have only mild concern about this virus for my own sake but my good lady falls in to that broad category of “at risk” people. She is currently working from home and will do so for at least the next 12 weeks. I know life has to go on and hiding away from contact with others may do nothing other than slow the spread of the disease to more manageable levels and may not prevent you getting it at some future date as it remains in residual form. 

    if I am to heed government advice then I don’t think I could construct a case to say that the courses are essential. Still, I remain somewhat perplexed!
  • 0
    By the way Zoom, keep the topics coming. I have been at home for the last week and even though I have been working on a project, I still feel I am edging towards that stir crazy phase!
  • 0
    I would advise a little stockpiling of vital spares. Lamps and fuses and batteries  in particular. Shortages of cable and accesories may be less of a problem, if things get really bad there will probably be less new installation work and therefore less need for cable and accesories.

    Existing installations will have to be kept in working order by replacing failed lamps, fuses, and batteries in alarm panels and in emergency lights.


    In the near term, if rewiring existing premises, I would urge storing any serviceable cable and accesories that are removed from the old installation. Under most normal circumstances I would consider it poor practice to re-use second hand material, but in an emergency you or a customer might be very glad of serviceable used stocks.

    I would even save used lamps of the more expensive or hard to obtain types.

    If these items are not needed, it is simple enough to dispose of them in a year or two years time rather than now.


    I would purchase spare hand tools, especialy the smaller items that are liable to wear or loss.


    If you can do so safely, keep a reserve of fuel for your vehicle. Consider spare tyres, most are made in China and some are already in short supply. Vehicle bulbs also.
  • 0
    Good idea to have a place where this can be disussed with some calm pragmatic rationality for a change.

    A sense of perspective needs to be regained. We have a particularly malevolent strain of flu and nothing more, no matter how the media hams it up to be otherwise.



    Yes there are those whose ages and prevailing medical conditionals ,which make them more vulnerable, but the same can be said for any other 'flu nasty' we have experienced in the past.



    Quite why such a fuss is being made about this particular one escapes me - it just makes me ask the question - what are they not telling us? And just where has it really originated from and how?

    Mixed stories about eating bats and other unfortunate creatures somewhere in China? A bio  warfare lab escape? Who knows?



    To be honest, I am struggling to make sense of it all. Never let a crisis go to waste eh?


  • 0

    what are they not telling us?




    Well, I think mostly what "they" are not telling us is that they are not really sure what to do for the best either. I'm sure Boris's knowledge of Greek and other classic civilsation is no more use than my physics - though I can say when looking at rising numbers that they look much less scary on a logarithmic plot....

    Even the mortality seems to vary enormously by county - which may actually suggest that in some places more people have it than we realise, deaths are easy to count, folk with mild symptoms rather less so.

    The other elephant in the room not mentioned very loudly is that once you go into isolation, you cannot come out, or at least when you do the risk is unchanged. Unless you expect a cure in the mean time,  So all these folk still trapped  in tower blocks in Wuhan may not have caught the disease, but they are a vulnerable to it as soon as they come out. So at best you have to release the restrictions very slowly, zone by zone.

    IF you like numbers, here are some sobering tables and charts


    Compared to the 1918 'spanish' flu, where in the end we think it fizzled out by the time that about 27% of people had got it (so a touch under 6 billion from an estimated  world population of 1.8 billion back then, but of course with a lot less travel and interconnections), and of them we estimate that about 1%, say 50 million, died.

    Some figures make it look like this new one could be about twice as deadly as that, even though medical understanding has improved quite a bit in the last century, but we are extrapolating from the wrong end of the curve at the moment, we'll only know for sure in hindsight.


  • 0

    Quite why such a fuss is being made about this particular one escapes me



    Because it has a mortality rate at least 10 times higher than normal flu strains and, unlike flu, it's a novel virus so there is no vaccine and no-one is already immune. So whereas a particular flu strain will only infect a manageable chunk of the population, covid-19 will infect nearly everyone eventually.

    And whereas flu is treatable in the very sick by ventilators and ICUs, when we exceed the NHS's capacity for those treatments, people who would have normally recovered will die instead.
  • 0

    whjohnson:

    We have a particularly malevolent strain of flu and nothing more,




    This may be true but the fatality rate for this one is about 3.5% compared to about 0.1-0.2%, or about 20 times more deadly. As there are 17,000 deaths from flu in the UK on average each year this would indicate about 350,000 deaths, so the UCL prediction probably takes into account the measures taken to stop the spread. Bearing in mind that this is nearly 50% of the total annual death rate for England and Wales so it is fairly significant.

    As to what we are not being told, as nobody really knows where it originated (or even exactly when - mid-November 2019 is possible but as there was no test on those who (potentially) had it means that nobody knows. As nobody knows the origin they can't exactly tell us where it came from, hence the rise of various conspiracy theories. (That doesn't necessarily make the conspiracy theories wrong but they should be considered critically on the evidence available - as should the suggestions about bats)

  • 0
    I have recently been involved in several electrical installation jobs that are "doom related" rather than run of the mill. Some members may recall the disaster recovery offices that I recently did.

    I have also installed several battery charging PV installations for long term back up lighting and limited power. Nothing elaborate, a few hundred watts of PV, a few hundred AH of 12 volt battery capacity, and consumer unit, wiring, lamps and sockets.

    Such an installation can provide basic lighting for many years, almost indefinatly if replacement batteries can be obtained.
  • 0
    The other big issue for many will be getting paid for the work you are doing. We have a major hotel project underway at the moment. It seems to stumble through with late, part payments for all the disciplines involved. The client seems mostly dependent on the cash generated by their other hotel operations. Those operations are likely to be well and truly whacked as the virus grips and people retreat from socialising.

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