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Ed Rooney

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7 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Here in BC, only about 0.5% of the population has been infected, so I find myself wondering if the authorities didn't go too far with restrictions given the heavy economic and psychological impacts they have had. However, the fact is that low infection rates in Canada mean that the population is highly vulnerable. It wouldn't take much -- like the US/Canada border reopening to non-essential travel -- to set things off here. Once this virus takes hold in an area, it can spread like wildfire. My guess is that we're going to have to live with rolling shutdowns, etc. for quite some time as the virus continues to play hopscotch.

 

 


These figures usually tend to be based on confirmed cases where testing was done on symptomatic people. Certainly in the UK there was very little testing done when things were peaking back in March and April. The government abandoned the idea of testing in early March and it was until much later that they actually has the facility to test a lot of people. Even then, the symptoms are so variable and from asymptomatic to severe that testing for active virus does not tell the whole story at all.
 

In order to get a realistic estimate of how many people have been infected, it would be necessary to do extensive testing for Covid-19 antibodies in the general population. Reliable antibody tests are now available and studies tend to show far higher proportions of populations have actually had the disease than is suggested by the confirmed cases figures. Again an effective vaccine appears to be the only real light at the end of this tunnel and great caution is advisable in the meantime. 

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1 minute ago, MDM said:


These figures usually tend to be based on confirmed cases where testing was done on symptomatic people. Certainly in the UK there was very little testing done when things were peaking back in March and April. The government abandoned the idea of testing in early March and it was until much later that they actually has the facility to test a lot of people. Even then, the symptoms are so variable and from asymptomatic to severe that testing for active virus does not tell the whole story at all.
 

In order to get a realistic estimate of how many people have been infected, it would be necessary to do extensive testing for Covid-19 antibodies in the general population. Reliable antibody tests are now available and studies tend to show far higher proportions of populations have actually had the disease than is suggested by the confirmed cases figures. Again an effective vaccine appears to be the only real light at the end of this tunnel and great caution is advisable in the meantime. 

 

I believe that the most recent Canadian infection rates were arrived at by examining the country's blood supply for antibodies. Sounds complicated. Some experts in the US claim that the actual infection rates could be as much as ten times higher than what is being reported.  Sorry to hear that you're still suffering aftereffects. Hope they clear up soon.

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8 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I believe that the most recent Canadian infection rates were arrived at by examining the country's blood supply for antibodies. Sounds complicated. Some experts in the US claim that the actual infection rates could be as much as ten times higher than what is being reported.  Sorry to hear that you're still suffering aftereffects. Hope they clear up soon.

 

Thanks John. The last week or so has been quite a bit better so I'm hoping the trend is onwards and upwards from here. But the thing with this is that is has been entirely unpredictable so a crash can just happen seemingly out of the blue. And that has been widely reported. As I said, the reason I am even mentioning my health here is really to dispel false information as well as to give a little warning to take it very seriously even for the young and healthy. A friend of my son in his early 20s who was very fit and healthy before contracting it is still experiencing bad fatigue over 4 months on and there are numerous reports of similar. i used to say Keep on Truckin' now I could say Keep on Shieldin'.

 

It looks like Canada has done a good job of containing the pandemic. I know at least 10 people here independent from me who have had definitely had Covid-19 but have never been tested or have even had false negative tests and I am guessing that the figure is likely to be in the millions whereas confirmed cases are still way less so the US experts are likely to be right. 

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The daughter of a fellow allotment gardener works as an administrator in a local hospital. A fit middle aged woman, she caught the virus despite not having direct contact with the patients. Fortunately she did not require hospital treatment, but, like MDM, she has taken weeks to recover and is still not 100%. Her bosses at the hospital were insisting that she returned to work, but she was so fatigued that she had to spend her days in bed. Eventually medical staff intervened and made it clear that she was unable to go back to work,  but it is a concern that even those on the front line did not fully understand the severity of her condition.

 

Today we made our first trip by public transport since lockdown. All went well until we took a Metro train from Newcastle at 6 pm. The train was packed, standing room only, there was no chance of social distancing and some people were not wearing masks. We don't currently have a surge of cases here, but in that environment transmission would be a certainty. A big mistake.

Edited by Bryan
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4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

Here in BC, only about 0.5% of the population has been infected, so I find myself wondering if the authorities didn't go too far with restrictions given the heavy economic and psychological impacts they have had. However, the fact is that low infection rates in Canada mean that the population is highly vulnerable. It wouldn't take much -- like the US/Canada border reopening to non-essential travel -- to set things off here. Once this virus takes hold in an area, it can spread like wildfire. My guess is that we're going to have to live with rolling shutdowns, etc. for quite some time as the virus continues to play hopscotch.

 

 

 

Looks like the masking works better than absolute lockdowns, but closing places where people are inside in large numbers seems to be useful, too.  The annual Dia de la Revolucion was not held in Managua, but was celebrated locally in different department capitals, which spared the long bus and truck rides down to Managua.  Ortega pointed out that Nicaragua was too poor to shut down.  His wife was initially threatening to fire government workers who wore masks, but the rank and file FSLN pushed back and she's since been photographed in a mask. 

 

People really do need to wear masks.  There was a map of which countries and parts of countries were wearing masks.  Nicaragua wasn't as compliant as some Asian countries but was far more compliant than most parts of the US and Costa Rica was not even remotely close.  Shutting things down completely tends to end up with a rebound effect when things open up again. 

 

Precautions are weird -- if they work very well, some of the public will believe that the danger was exaggerated.  The reasons 2000 wasn't the year of computer disasters wasn't that the problem was exaggerated.  It was that a number of people who could program fixed the programs that hadn't taken into count four digit year dates. 

 

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Bryan said:

The daughter of a fellow allotment gardener works as an administrator in a local hospital. A fit middle aged woman, she caught the virus despite not having direct contact with the patients. Fortunately she did not require hospital treatment, but, like MDM, she has taken weeks to recover and is still not 100%. Her bosses at the hospital were insisting that she returned to work, but she was so fatigued that she had to spend her days in bed. Eventually medical staff intervened and made it clear that she was unable to go back to work,  but it is a concern that even those on the front line did not fully understand the severity of her condition.

 

Today we made our first trip by public transport since lockdown. All went well until we took a Metro train from Newcastle at 6 pm. The train was packed, standing room only, there was no chance of social distancing and some people were not wearing masks. We don't currently have a surge of cases here, but in that environment transmission would be a certainty. A big mistake.

 

Oh my, Bryan — sounds awful. I hope you got away with it. I would like to take a train over to Chester and to Leeds. But not now.

 

We're dealing with a new and deadly virus. We won't be right again until we develop a useful vaccine. This is not a math problem. It's a pandemic like the one in 1918 that killed 50 million people worldwide.

 

Do you think Boris reads my blog? He did backtrack on his "normal by Christmas" statement after I made fun of it last week . So maybe . . . maybe. . . . Nah. 😜

 

Edo

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44 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

Oh my, Bryan — sounds awful. I hope you got away with it. I would like to take a train over to Chester and to Leeds. But not now.

 

We're dealing with a new and deadly virus. We won't be right again until we develop a useful vaccine. This is not a math problem. It's a pandemic like the one in 1918 that killed 50 million people worldwide.

 

Do you think Boris reads my blog? He did backtrack on his "normal by Christmas" statement after I made fun of it last week . So maybe . . . maybe. . . . Nah. 😜

 

Edo

 

We just had a story in the news today that a policeman lied when crossing the border into Northern Territory. He did come from an infected area. He resigned. Howzat??

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7 hours ago, Bryan said:

The daughter of a fellow allotment gardener works as an administrator in a local hospital. A fit middle aged woman, she caught the virus despite not having direct contact with the patients. Fortunately she did not require hospital treatment, but, like MDM, she has taken weeks to recover and is still not 100%. Her bosses at the hospital were insisting that she returned to work, but she was so fatigued that she had to spend her days in bed. Eventually medical staff intervened and made it clear that she was unable to go back to work,  but it is a concern that even those on the front line did not fully understand the severity of her condition.

 

Today we made our first trip by public transport since lockdown. All went well until we took a Metro train from Newcastle at 6 pm. The train was packed, standing room only, there was no chance of social distancing and some people were not wearing masks. We don't currently have a surge of cases here, but in that environment transmission would be a certainty. A big mistake.


There has been a big reaction to the recognition of longer term effects as it is basically a major inconvenience to those who want people to return to work as soon as they are better. There don’t appear to be any official figures yet on how many people experience longer term symptoms but I have seen numbers around the 1 in 10  to 1 in 20 mark for symptoms bad enough to prevent returning to normal life. Currently the timescale is too short and the recording by the health authorities too haphazard to tell anything. 
 

Hopefully your trip on the metro will not lead to anything bad. I am sure that Newcastle was a lot worse than reported back in March and April so it may not be so bad now. My son is at uni there and he and all his friends had it back then. Typically their symptoms were on the mild side and many others were probably asymptomatic. But for sure it was rampant back then. They are all at home now of course. The lack of students at the moment must be a positive as there is no doubt that young people going back to uni will contribute to further spreading. 

 

The seemingly  haphazard easing and tightening of restrictions and the complexity of the regulations is not helping anyone. The removal of shielding for the most vulnerable is lunacy but I guess the most vulnerable are also likely to be the most sensible. I have to wonder what they do in No 10. It seems like they just tack on bits of bandaid here and there with no consistency or underlying logic. 
 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

We just had a story in the news today that a policeman lied when crossing the border into Northern Territory. He did come from an infected area. He resigned. Howzat??


A policeman lying. No way. Unheard of. What next? The prime minister’s chief advisor breaking the lockdown rules - never happened?  😀

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23 minutes ago, MDM said:


A policeman lying. No way. Unheard of. What next? The prime minister’s chief advisor breaking the lockdown rules - never happened?  😀

 

The policeman did the right thing by resigning, the prime minister’s chief advisor didn't. Saw some interesting images last weekend on the live news feed. A Trafalgar Square small protest in which the police intervened. The photographer grabbed a shot of the stop and search form, it was filled it in as Dominic Cummings, address Barnard Castle. Face masks also referenced Dominic Cummings. I wish I was there but not worth taking the risk for.

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32 minutes ago, sb photos said:

 

The policeman did the right thing by resigning, the prime minister’s chief advisor didn't. Saw some interesting images last weekend on the live news feed. A Trafalgar Square small protest in which the police intervened. The photographer grabbed a shot of the stop and search form, it was filled it in as Dominic Cummings, address Barnard Castle. Face masks also referenced Dominic Cummings. I wish I was there but not worth taking the risk for.

 

I guess the policeman would have been forced to resign by his superiors. Makes me wonder who is actually in charge here. Is this the United Kingdom or are we living in the disunited land of King Dom? 

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2 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

Oh my, Bryan — sounds awful. I hope you got away with it. I would like to take a train over to Chester and to Leeds. But not now.

 

 

 

Thanks Edo. I suspect that the cross country trains may be OK. We travelled across to Carlisle and return by train (Northern Rail) and it was less than half full, while everyone on board wore masks. There was a passenger announcement to the effect that masks were compulsory. At Carlisle station there was a one way system in operation and hand sanitiser available. It all felt reasonably safe.

 

I guess that we should have anticapted the Metro problem, but I was dissapointed that there didn't seem to be any official guidance on how to act, and there was no control over the numbers boarding the train.  With the beneft of hindsight we should never have got on that Metro,  we could have taken a bus,  but water under the bridge...

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On 30/07/2020 at 08:47, Thyrsis said:

 

Not a good year for potatoes. Early Maris Piper were okay but Belle de Fontenay and Ratte not good at all. Digging Lady Cristl at the moment, okay but not many of them. Sarpo still slowly growing.....

 

We've had he first report of potato blight on our gardens today. My plot is OK so far, but it will only be a matter of time and I'm in the process of lifting the spuds. If (when) it does appear I'll cut all the remaining tops off.

 

I've found that it pays to plant early and risk frost damage, rather than have to deal with blight, slugs and rats later in the season.

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48 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

I was born in Brooklyn, NY, but all my ancestors were all Irish. And I have an Irish passport in my pocket. Potato problems make me nervous. 


Or to put it in a different light, another story of neglect and total lack of care for its citizens by a remote elitist Westminster government which led to what was effectively a passive genocide where at least one million people died unnecessarily and a few million more were made homeless and/or destitute, many forced to emigrate to America in terrible conditions. 

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2 hours ago, MDM said:

 

I guess the policeman would have been forced to resign by his superiors. Makes me wonder who is actually in charge here. Is this the United Kingdom or are we living in the disunited land of King Dom? 

 

The people who built this effigy of DC obviously thought he was the puppet master, image 2A5C96H

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1 hour ago, Mr Standfast said:

So, anybody taking any pictures?

 

Was photographing a field full of sunflowers this morning. Uploaded a selection of 9 this afternoon. Hitting Kent tomorrow in the Mondeo for a days photography. Poor car is more likely to be scrapped at its MOT later this year. If it's economically viable to repair this time it certainly won't get through the next MOT. It is old and has done me well, has an 02 plate so getting on a bit.

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The AC blower on my car failed this week so instead of doing the sensible thing and taking it to the garage I thought I'd fix it myself. It was basicly just changing a part, how hard could it be?

 

Bought the part, ( a rheostat) on amazon, watched a couple of youtubes and off I went. Like I said how hard can it be?

 

Removing the glovebox was ok, only 5 visible screws, 2 hidden ones and 2 secret tags hidden behind trim, kneeling on the tarmac was a bit sore on the old knees, but still, how hard could it be?

 

Actually finding the old rheostat was a bit tricky, then I realised I'd been watching youtubes for a left hand drive car and everything is the otherway round on my right hand drive car, but I was still thinking, how hard can it be?

 

So I managed to pull the old rheostat out, if you're wondering, what it's like; well it's black plastic, located between black bulkheads in the dark footwell, carpeted with black carpet, had to hold a torch with one hand, steady myself with the other hand, locate the hole with the other hand and push the part in with the other hand, all the time thinking how hard can it be? With a bit of pereverance it came out. A look at the offending part showed some heavy cracks and poping a multi-meter across the main resistor showed it was a dead resistor, in fact it was an ex-resistor. Clearly I was half way there, I had no doubts about this job now, nearly done!

 

Getting the rheostat into it's location proved to a bit harder than getting it out, it only took 4 hands to get it out but pushing it back in needed 5 hands, imaging needing to push something into  place with 2 hands and getting your weigth behind it but only being able to get 2 fingers onto it! Any way it popped into place, eventually. Did i mention the kneeling on the tarmac? That was starting to irk.

 

So time to test the blower, I'm not the sort of person rashly go to all the trouble of putting it together without testing it first!

 

It did'nt work, exactly the same problem as before. How hard can it be? I was begining to to come to a conclusion. So I looked at the old part, laying folornly on the tarmac, did I say what kneeling on that was like? The old one was'nt on the floor the new one was.  I had put, the broken part back in...

 

That was the worst thing this week, I'm pretty lucky really.

 

The best thing was a picture in the inbox of my grand daughter.  She was sitting in the back of the car with an ice cream cone, almost cross eyed looking at the ice cream. Smiling like a star with ice cream all around her face  and melted ice cream running all, and I mean all,  the way down her arm. She's 4.

 

And I took some picures!

 

All the best and stay safe.

 

😷

Edited by Mr Standfast
typo's so many typo's...
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I have spent most of the week sanding back all the cupboards in my kitchen. They were heavily varnished and the yellow dust, despite my best efforts, has of course travelled everywhere. My fingers have been worn almost to the bone, getting into all the crevices of the cornice and door inlays. My knees hurt from getting down to sand back the kick boards. The doors were fixed with long ornate hinges that made it impossible to sand behind. So I duly spent a very long time trying to remove them, they were sunk into the wood. Not an easy task as some of the screws snapped and some of the hinges would just not shift. I will need to get the grinder out for some of them. Needless to say new hinges will be required. I am having problems removing the handles from the fixed drawer fronts below the sink :( 

So eventually, after sanding back everything to clean wood, carrying out all the filling that my hinge removal subsequently required,  I prepared to paint with primer/undercoat. Now, being in Portugal when I purchased the paint I glanced at the back of the tin and 'thought' I translated it ok. Seems not, one little word I was not sure of so resorted to Google translate. It says, the paint adheres very well and in most cases there is no requirement to sand the surface!!!!!  I have tested it on the 4ft high glass door front that I almost dropped getting off single handed and had yet to sand. It works. Oh well, hopefully a better finish will be achieved with all my hard work.

Jenny   

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2 hours ago, george said:

I have spent most of the week sanding back all the cupboards in my kitchen. They were heavily varnished and the yellow dust, despite my best efforts, has of course travelled everywhere. My fingers have been worn almost to the bone, getting into all the crevices of the cornice and door inlays. My knees hurt from getting down to sand back the kick boards. The doors were fixed with long ornate hinges that made it impossible to sand behind. So I duly spent a very long time trying to remove them, they were sunk into the wood. Not an easy task as some of the screws snapped and some of the hinges would just not shift. I will need to get the grinder out for some of them. Needless to say new hinges will be required. I am having problems removing the handles from the fixed drawer fronts below the sink :( 

So eventually, after sanding back everything to clean wood, carrying out all the filling that my hinge removal subsequently required,  I prepared to paint with primer/undercoat. Now, being in Portugal when I purchased the paint I glanced at the back of the tin and 'thought' I translated it ok. Seems not, one little word I was not sure of so resorted to Google translate. It says, the paint adheres very well and in most cases there is no requirement to sand the surface!!!!!  I have tested it on the 4ft high glass door front that I almost dropped getting off single handed and had yet to sand. It works. Oh well, hopefully a better finish will be achieved with all my hard work.

Jenny   

 

Ooops. I have (among other things) a couple of these to remove broken or worn screws. Your local ferragens will have it. Always worth a try before getting the drillbits out.

Google remove a damaged screw from wood and you'll see how it should work and if there are any alternatives in your case.

 

wim

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Supposed to be receiving a delivery of settee and dining room suite yesterday.

 

Van arrived showed driver where the settee and dining room suite were to go.

 

"Dining room suite?" says the driver. "There is no dining room suite on board just a settee."

 

Driver checked and told me "Dining room suite is late from the manufacturers and will be delivered on 10th."

 

Dohhh!

 

Allan

 

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